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separatist-apologist · 2 years ago

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What do you think about the theory that Rhysand was never supposed to be the main love interest? I can kind of see it, but was curious about your thoughts.

I disagree vehemently, and I would argue that there were a million obvious hints in ACOTAR that show Feyre was always going to end up with Rhysand. I think two things can be true: that she loved him and he was always going to be her first love AND that Rhysand was always meant to be her last love.

But just to back it up:

As early as page 15, the infamous:

I slung off my outer clothes onto the sagging dresser- frowning at the violets and roses I'd painted around the knobs of Elain's drawer, the crackling flames I'd painted around Nesta's, and the night sky-whorls of yellow stars standing in for white- around mine.

And then again, on page 31 when discussing why she'd chosen Isaac as a lover:

Relatively handsome, soft-spoken and reserved, but with a sort of darkness running beneath it all that had drawn us to each other, that shared understanding of how wretches our lives were and would always be.

When Lucien pays Feyre his backhanded compliment on page 53, he uses familiar night imagery often used to describe Feyre:

Your eyes are like stars, and your hair like burnished gold.

Here, on page 87, an amusing bit of foreshadowing about Feyre's future:

Prythian was ruled by seven High Lords- perhaps this she was whoever governed this territory; if not a High Lord, then a High Lady. If that was even possible.

When Feyre is faced with the Bogge and wants to look, she soothes herself (pg. 90):

I stared at the coarse trunk of a distant elm, thinking of pleasant things. Like hot bread and full bellies....A starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless.

On 116, when Feyre finds the map of Pyrthian of all 7 territories, only one is spared any detail outside of the place she currently resides:

The other six courts of Prythian occupied a patchwork of territories. Autumn, Summer, and Winter were easy to pick out. Then above them, two glowing courts: the southernmost one a softer, redder palate the Dawn Court; above, in bright gold and yellow and blue, the Day Court. And above that, perched in a frozen mountainous spread of darkness and stars, the sprawling, massive territory of the Night Court. There were things in the shadows between those mountains- little eyes, gleaming teeth. A land of lethal beauty.

On 125, Feyre considers what she might want if she were immortal:

Did Tamlin or Lucien ever grow tired of day after day of eternal spring, or ever venture into the other territories, if only to experience a different season? I wouldn't have minded endless, mild spring while looking after my family- winter brought us dangerously close too death every year- but if I were immortal, I might want a little variation to pass the time. I'd probably want to do more than lurk about a manor house, too.

The first time Feyre really starts to relax around Tamlin and find joy in Prythian and her circumstances is at the pool made of starlight, which is such a long passage I'm just glossing over. Tamlin does comment she makes TWO jokes that day, and I'm choosing to draw a parallel between this moment and in ACOMAF when Feyre smiles for the first time after her ordeal under the mountain during Starfall. Feyre feels most at peace surrounded by starlight. [pg 159ish]

On 169, when Feyre thinks of her nightmares:

And though my dreams continued to be plagued by the deaths I'd witnessed, the deaths I'd caused, and the horrible, pale woman ripping me to shreds- all watched over by a shadow I could never quite glimpse-I slowly stopped being so afraid.

When Feyre can't stay away on Calanmai / mating bond language that SJM loves (pg. 183):

There was a string- a string tied to my gut that pulled me toward those hills, commanding me to go, to hear the faerie drums...

And then obviously this, on page 188:

Standing before me was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen

Like Feyre, Rhys is couched in Night imagery (pg. 189):

As if he'd been molded from the night itself I could have sworn tendrils of star-kissed night railed in his wake (190)

On 235, when Rhys goes to visit Tamlin, he alludes to the fact that he has his reasons for aligning with Amarantha, which are later explained in ACOMAF:

Her whore I might be, but not without my reasons

Also Feyre describing Rhys through the entirety of the scene in the Spring Court dining room is like...a brick to the face (starting page 234):

Rhysand smiled- heartbreaking in its beauty.

His voice dropped to a whisper- an erotic caress of sound that brought heat to my cheeks

Rhysand laughed- a lovers laugh, low and soft and intimate

And from the way darkness seemed to ripple off him, from those violet eyes that burned like stars...

No- I would never dare to pain that dark, immortal grace-

Rhysand, when he realizes Feyre (who he is beginning to suspect might be his mate) is there (pg. 237):

A flicker of excitement- perhaps even disbelief- flashed across his features

Again, described in the same night imagery:

The sunlight didn't gleam on the metallic threads of his tunic, as if i balked from the darkness pulsing from him

on 310, when Amarantha demands Rhys explain the mix-up with humans, she thinks this when he lies:

Humans all look alike...I didn't believe him for a second. Rhysand knew exactly how I looked- he'd recognized me that day at the manor.

On 312, once again hating Rhys but thinking this about him:

She must have allowed him more power than the others, then, if he could still inflict such harm while leashed to her. Or else his power before she'd stolen it had been...extraordinary, for this to be considered the basest remains.

The obvious on 328:

"Yes, I'd say almost my entire court bet on you dying within the firs minute; some said you'd last five, and"- she urned over the paper- "and just one person said you would win."

Amarantha frowned at her list, and she waved a hand. "Take her away. I tire of her mundane face. " She clenched the arms of her throne hard enough that the whites of her knuckles showed. "Rhysand, come here."

The bargain of chapter 37, too numerous to detail (this is already so long)

The entire scene of Feyre in his bedroom, but especially this on page 342:

Indeed, it was still Rhysand's face, his powerful male body, but flaring out behind him were massive black, membraneous wings- like a bat's, like the Attor's. He tucked them in neatly behind him, but the single claw at the apex of each peeked over his broad shoulders. Horrific, stunning- the face of a thousand nightmares and dreams. That again-useless part of me stirred at the sight, the way the candlelight shone through the wings, illuminating the veins, the way it bounced off his talons.

344:

They grabbed for me, but he bared his teeth in a mile that was anything but friendly- and they halted. "No more household chores, no more tasks," he said, his voice an erotic caress. Their yellow eyes went glazed and dull, their sharp teeth gleaming as their mouths slackened. "Tell the others, too. Stay out of her cell. And don't touch her. If you do, you're to take your own daggers and gut yourselves. Understood?

When Rhys is trying to get a rise out of both Amarantha AND Tamlin on 349:

The Faerie Queen straightened a little bit- even Jurian's eye seemed fixated on me, on Rhysand. For the rest of my life- he said it as if it were going to be a long, long while. He thought I was going to beat her tasks.

Page 355, when they're talking (more mating bond foreshadowing):

Sadness flickered in those violet eyes. I wouldn't have noticed it had I had not...felt it-deep inside me.

His help in the second task, but especially this pep talk when she's breaking down over the thought of nearly dying on 366:

Don't let her see you cry. Put your hands a your sides and stand up. Stand. Don't give her the satisfaction of seeing you break. Good. Stare her down- no tears. wait until you're back in your cell. Count to ten. Don't look at Tamlin. Just stare at her. Good girl. Now walk away. Turn on your heel- good. Walk toward the door. Keep your chin high. Let the crowd part. One step after another.

369, this feels blatant:

It took me a long while too realize that Rhysand, whether he knew it or not, had effectively kept me from shattering completely.

Rhys visiting Feyre after that kiss and explaining why he's been making her dance, and what he hopes to accomplish on page 384:

Regardless of his motives or his methods, Rhysand was keeping me alive. And had done so even before I set foot Under the Mountain.

-and-

"When you healed my arm...You didn't need to bargain with me. You could have demanded every single week of the year." My brows knit together as he turned, already half-consumed by the dark. "Every single week, and I would have said yes. " It wasn't entirely a question, but I needed the answer.

A half smile appeared on his sensuous lips. "I know," he said, and vanished.

390:

Darkness rippled near the throne, and then Rhysand was here, arms crossed- as if he'd moved to better see. His face was a mask of disinterest, but my hand tingled. Do it, the tingling said.

394, Feyre once again drawing our attention to Rhysand during this horrible moment:

Rhysand's face had gone pale- so, so pale.

399, obvious foreshadowing:

Rhysand yelled my name again- yelled it as though he cared

400-401, more mating bond language:

Rhys's arms buckled as he fought to rise, and blood dripped from his nose, splattering on the marble. His eyes met mine. The bond between us went taut. I flashed between my body and his, seeing myself through his eyes, bleeding and broken and sobbing.

Chapter 45, when Feyre is dead but tethered to Rhys's soul, like COME ON.

412, more mating bond language as Feyre goes to Rhys:

I was pulled from sleep by something tugging at my middle, a thread deep inside.

414-415, two final scenes:

"You never told me you loved the wings- or the flying." No, he'd made his shape shifting seem...base, useless, boring.

He shrugged. Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me. I tell very few about the winds. Or the flying."

-and then-

His eyes locked on mine, wide and wild, and his nostrils flared. Shock- pure shock flashed across his features at whatever he saw on my face, and he stumbled back a step. Actually stumbled.

Sorry this was so long. It escaped me BUT Feysand was always right there from the beginning. They were always going to be together, from book 1. SJM is a fated mates writer, and I think it's a blatant misrepresentation of the book she wrote to say ACOMAF is a retcon, and Feysand was never going to happen. People are free to disagree with me, of course, and say I'm wrong (but I'm not).

#feysand #pro feysand #all the tamlin asks lately like i know what yall are trying to do and i came prepared #im not saying feyre didnt love tamlin or that she didnt do all that for him #but i am saying books are written intentionally #and feysands groundwork was ALWAYS there #it was never going to be anything but feysand endgame

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veronicalodgefaghag · 4 months ago

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"THOUGHT EXERCISE TIME you have to script one (1) hiram/archie kiss into the existing show somewhere. no plot impact at all, it's never going to be brought up again onscreen it just becomes part of the overall texture of everything that's already going on in canon between them. where does it go, for maximum high camp and/or dramatic impact (double spaced on lined paper by whenever)"

Well?

Didn’t answer this ask back when it was going around cause I wasn’t into Riverdale enough at the time to feel prepared to answer it. I’m on a riverblogging kick tonight and it’s been weighing on me so here goes:

My personal favorite answer is @normiewizard ’s post about Archie going for it earlyish in the grand scheme of things and Hiram just Knowing That about him and Having That Over him for the rest of the show, that was a stroke of genius on their part that makes me fucking insane.

As to answering the question for myself, so much has already been covered by more adept hirarchie scholars than I, so I’m gonna go with my gut feeling from the very beginning and say my answer from the very beginning of this question going around has been the possibly very basic scenario of “Archie kisses Hiram during the stabbing dream in No Exit.” As a first half of season 3 scholar before any other area with this show, and an Archie scholar this is just the obvious answer to me. I love Hiram as much as the next guy and am very interested in him because I’m obsessed with Archie and Veronica, but I don’t feel I know him quite well enough as a character. Whereas, I know Archie very well. Hirarchie is most interesting to me as the result of Archie’s relationship with Grundy and its/her shaping of him, so Archie’s desire for him which Hiram is quite aware of, finds amusing, plays into (and don’t get me wrong, Hiram is attracted to Archie of course, and as many have said, there was a sexual relationship there in the show on our screens if you’re watching one way. To think there are some people to whom Archie being forced to fight in a secret underground prison fight club is not forced sexual violence… we live in different worlds.) is most interestingly explored from the Archie’s character side of things in a situation like this where we are not seeing Hiram’s true reaction to anything, but Archie’s mind’s Hiram. To actually answer the question, I think that Archie comes into the room, picks up the knife and kisses Hiram as he holds it between them. Hiram’s sly smile in this scene is then a reflection of the knowing way he plays Archie wrt his desire for him and his vulnerability resulting from the Grundy relationship. We go to the shot of their shadows on the wall now, and shots of their faces and the knife stabbing in. Yes, Joaquin parallels but also season 6 Archiereggie stabbing to death/gay sex parallels. I also think that Hiram should be awful about it (Archie’s desire for him) in some way in Archie’s imagination, because Archie’s dreams in that episode are all cruel to him because he is cruel to himself, but specifically because the kiss alone (despite the stabbing) could convey the wrong idea about what Archie thinks of Hiram kind of? If that makes sense?

I think No Exit is perfect if we’re talking about it never being mentioned in the show like you’ve prompted because so much of that episode is never mentioned again. Archie’s dream sequences in No Exit lay bare so much of his subtextual conflict that is never brought up again and doesn’t really add to anything because it all already underlies his whole story—his having to kill his “soft” self most importantly, but also, like the other core three showing up in their first episode outfits, “are you working on any new music, Arch?” pushing the show to finally acknowledge that he does. not. do that anymore after so much of his story revolves around music for the first season. This is of course another thing Hiram is responsible for in large part. So then this sojourn of his from Riverdale, spurred by an event which involved his being kissed by Joaquin, during which he runs away with Jughead (acknowledged by the show as making then look queer), ending with his subconscious instigating a Hiram/Archie kiss that never gets mentioned again but sets the final tone for his return to Riverdale as a man revived from death works so beautifully to me.

I’m really torn on whether I think that, in this hypothetical version of the show, they have kissed outside of that offscreen, or they eventually do or what. Like is this Archie taking his own control of something Hiram already physically uses against him as he kills him? Is this him acknowledging not only his homosexual desire but the homoerotic capacity/side of the relationship with Hiram only in his near-death subconscious? Tangentially relatedly, what if Grundy is the game master who hands him the “kill the Man in Black” card instead of the warden who’s another of his dead sexual abusers anyway?

#just posting this now before i ruminate on it forever #i was sent another hirarchie ask at the same time so i have an opportunity to redeem myself if i think this is all shit when i wake up #tomorrow #rvd #riverdale #hirarchie #hiram lodge #archie #gay-archie originals #my analysis #anon #ask

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drabbles-mc · 9 months ago

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Once in Twenty Lifetimes

Takeshi Kovacs x Kristin Ortega

Written for the 2024 Candy Hearts Exchange!

Warnings: 18+, language, smoking/alcohol, light angst, slight steam

Summary: She had spent so much of her life making sure that she blended in, and she'd been successful at it the way she'd been taught. Now, though, it was all going to hang in the balance when the one other person left that knew who she really was, was getting spun back up. And of course he was getting spun up into the sleeve of her partner. (Envoy!Kristin AU)

Word Count: 6.8k

A/N: i sat down thinking i was just gonna write a little something something for this au idea as a treat for the exchange but then i got super into it and fuckin carried away lmao. oh well! i had a good time! 😂

Altered Carbon Taglist: @garbinge @destinedtobeloved @justreblogginfics (If you want to be added to any of my taglists, please let me know!)

“Takeshi Kovacs. Look me up,” he offered the statement to her with a smirk. It didn’t quite pass for charming, per se, although it probably wasn’t his intention anyway. From what she remembered, which was everything of their stint running parallel to each other thanks to Envoy’s total recall, that hadn’t ever really been his strong suit.

Plus she wasn’t in any mood to be charmed in that moment.

There were a million and one reasons that she shouldn’t have gone to seek him out. There were endless layers to the problems it could potentially cause. Bancroft selling out Ryker’s sleeve like a hand-me-down from an older sibling was bad enough, but putting Takeshi Kovacs into it? It brought the situation out of the realm of infuriating and into one of being unbelievable. Bancroft wheeling and dealing Ryker’s suit was a personal vendetta. Tak’s stack being put into it felt like a cosmic one. He should’ve been dead by now anyway. Same way she should’ve been, but a lot goes on in two hundred and fifty years, and clearly real death didn’t want anything to do with either of them just yet.

He said it, though. He confirmed it. She’d heard the rumors beforehand and there was an intuitive twist in her gut that told her there was some substance to them, but she didn’t want to believe it. He was looking her in the eyes and telling her his name and she still didn’t want to believe it.

“You can’t be who you say you are,” she said, partially to keep playing her assigned role but partially because she simply didn’t want to believe that it was really him. “All the Envoys died.” A lie. One that she would be living proof of even if Tak wasn’t.

“All except one,” he retorted easily.

Asshole. Another thing about him that had apparently stayed consistent across the centuries. What was it that he said to her back then? Every sleeve, every time? He wasn’t wrong about that at least. He was wrong about everything else, though. All except one? He’d been out of storage for five minutes and already felt comfortable making sweeping, definitive statements like that. Sleeve-jumping was a skillset they’d all developed, but still. That was a long time to stay down. And to turn up on a planet you’d never been to before? All that and over two centuries down and maybe she would’ve come off ice making the same grave mistakes. Maybe she could make his work in her favor. She just had to make sure that she could keep Takeshi and Elias separate.

She was so busy thinking about all of that, memories going in a relentless playback against the inside of her skull, that she almost didn’t realize that she was still talking with Miriam Bancroft. That part of her was on auto-pilot, or at least it was until she had to get herself the fuck out of there before she landed herself in even deeper hot water.

“Yeah, there’s your kid, there’s your car, and there’s your…” she thought on it for a moment, trying to pick something that felt honest to her feelings in the moment but would still feel like something Police Officer Kristin Ortega would say, not the woman she was back when Takeshi really knew her, “new pet terrorist. You’re welcome,” she added, mostly for good measure, but it also felt good to say it.

“The terrorist can hear you,” he spoke, just barely turning his head to follow her as she continued to walk, but not committing enough to the act to turn his whole body. “I’m standing right here.”

“Yeah, good,” she stared up at him, waiting for him to meet her eyeline, “’cause we’re not done, you and me.”

There was a moment when he was looking down into her eyes that she thought maybe he saw it. Maybe he saw the flicker of the person that he knew once, the person that she was back then. Dozens of sleeves ago but it was still her in most of the ways that mattered. Most, not all. He looked back and forth between her eyes and she waited to see recognition flicker in them. He’d always had that edge to him, after all. It got drilled into all of them during their training but there was something about the way that Takeshi was wired before he even became part of the Envoy core that made him take to it faster and better than most. She envied him for it back then, but maybe now they were more on the same playing field. Or they would be until he got his full footing.

Everyone thought they knew why it bothered her, but still they asked. They were probably hoping for some other nuggets of information, more vitriol about Bancroft and the rest of the meths maybe since she had such an outspoken issue with the lot of them. The rest of the precinct saw her anger and they assumed that it was all because of Ryker. Like she was a woman so simple as that. Elias was part of her frustration with this scenario of course, but the puzzle was so much more complicated than that. It was difficult in ways that she simply couldn’t risk trying to explain to any of them. All of the reasons that she feared Tak and the potential fall-out of him being taken off-stack, were all the same reasons that the rest of the precinct would no longer trust her if they found out the truth about her past.

She’d been born at just the right time, in her opinion. Born late enough to reap all the benefits of a stack, but early enough so that she could manipulate it easily to her benefit when she had needed to most. Data infiltration and manipulation was still easy when you knew the right people and had the right tools, but back then it had been so much easier. It also didn’t hurt that Envoys learned to be on the cusp of it all anyway. All of that was why she was able to wipe her entire past off the record, rewrite it the way that she had wanted to. She created someone who was just enough of a force that she wouldn’t have to water herself down too much, but it was dialed back enough to not get her put on a fucking watchlist. Or even worse, get her thrown into storage off the principle off it. They were all supposed to be masters of disguise, and it had served her well in the aftermath.

She sat in the precinct trying to play over every possible scenario in her head. She wanted to be able to see every possible outcome. If the two of them spent enough time running circles around each other, he was bound to figure it out, right? Figure her out? Eventually the fog would dissipate and he would see her. He’d see past the sleeve. There was no certainty for her in what she thought his reaction to it was going to be if and when that happened. Maybe she could get him thrown back in storage before she had to worry about it. Get Ryker back in his own sleeve. He was so much less of a problem on that front—all that time spent being partners and he still hadn’t even skated close to the chasm of truths that separated them. She hoped it stayed that way—it kept life simpler for the both of them.

Although if Takeshi got his sleeve torn to shreds in the midst of whatever this new deal with Bancroft was, she supposed that none of it would really matter for Elias anyway. What a mess.

She wasn’t surprised, to say the least, when she found him later, strung out and stumbling through the streets. It seemed pretty on-par for Tak—that specific brand of recklessness. For so many years she watched him equate the word Envoy with invincible even though they all knew that it wasn’t the case. It didn’t help that he wasn’t exactly known for his drive for self-preservation. Regardless, the drugs fell in alignment with the Tak she once knew, and she also knew that Ryker’s sleeve would soak them up like a sponge put into a pot of water. A disaster of a marriage.

“Bancroft spent all that money on a nice sleeve for you, and this is what you’re doing with it?” she asked sarcastically as she walked up behind him.

He turned around to face her, a stumble in his step that he was too far gone to even try and hide. “Didn’t think you’d give a fuck about me wasting Bancroft’s money.” He paused, eyes narrowing as his delayed processing caught up with the situation. “You’re following me.”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “That’s what police do to psycho-terrorists.”

“Come on, you cannot call me that.”

He was stoned out of his mind on, well, it could’ve been just about anything. Or a combination of things. The longer that Kristin looked at him, the more she was certain that she could throw a dart at a board and it would probably land on something that he’d ingested since the last time she saw him. That wasn’t the point. The point was that he was stoned out of his mind and the reason that he was telling her that she couldn’t call him that was because he was being a petulant child, not because by calling him that she would be lumping herself into the exact same group. She knew that it wasn’t nearly that deep and yet she still found herself fighting the urge to flinch at the layers to the comment. Even if she hadn’t caught the physical reaction in time, she wondered if he would’ve even caught it with the state that he was in.

He wasn’t really paying her any mind as he tried to continue on his way. It was hard for him to come off as determined when he couldn’t think straight and he was in a place that he hadn’t ever been before. With each step she took to keep her stride with him, she was trying to separate out all the files in her head. She was trying to keep two neat piles, or even two messy piles if she was being honest with herself: one pile for Elias, and one pile for Takeshi.

She was just as much Envoy as Takeshi was—she could compartmentalize just fine for the most part. But it wasn’t often that she ran into the issue that she was currently facing, one that had so much overlap between sleeve and stack. She’d burned through so many sleeves back then, and continued to go through them albeit at a much slower rate even when she got out of the core. She’d watched others do it too, Envoys and civilians alike. But this wasn’t just putting someone’s stack into a new sleeve and needing to adjust to the new face. This was a face that she knew, the stack that belonged to it still fully intact somewhere in storage, and someone completely different occupying the real estate in the meantime. Someone else that she knew. And it wasn’t as though either of the men who made up the Venn diagram in her head were known for being uncomplicated individuals on their own let alone when they were tethered to each other.

She tried to toe the line with him, anything to get more information out of him. The pendulum swung back and forth between banter and sniping comments. It wasn’t as though either of them had any lasting impact on him. The comments rolled right off—either because of the drugs or the Envoy conditioning, she wasn’t sure.

“What was the other one?” she asked rhetorically as she downed her drink. “Oh, yeah. Icepick. I liked that one.”

“Yeah, that was a good one.” He looked over at her, a hoodedness to his eyes that would’ve almost come off as flirtatious if he’d been sober. “You should call me Icepick.”

She rolled her eyes, using it as a tactic to avert her gaze. “I never called you that,” she muttered, half under her breath.

“What was that?” he asked, tilting his head slightly as if to get a better look at her.

She looked him square in the eyes. “I said I’m not fucking calling you that.” She said it with enough conviction to sell it.

Another smirk, paired with hazy, drug-addled eyes. “We’ll see about that.”

The more that they fired back and forth, the more she wondered if it was possible that she had really changed that much. Apparent assimilation was supposed to be one of the key tools in their toolbox as Envoys, sure. But it was also hard to believe that she had done it so effectively that she was flying completely under Takeshi’s radar. It wasn’t humility—that was never her strong suit the way that charm hadn’t ever been Tak’s. It just didn’t seem to fit. There were so many things that seemed off about the entire situation, but she couldn’t quite name them no matter how much information she tried to pull out of Takeshi about Bancroft, about anything he was willing to give her.

Then there was a sharp sting in the back of her mind as the thought reared its ugly head. He should remember me. Her face scrunched, action unmitigated as she tried to beat the impending spiral of thoughts into submission—she couldn’t afford to lose herself to that right now.

He was already up and making his way towards the door. “I’m going back to my hotel.”

His voice snapped her back to attention. Shooting up out of her seat, she followed him. “You can’t really be staying in that fucking AI hotel.” She shook her head. “They’re like crazy ex-girlfriends, you know.”

He looked down at her as he adjusted the backpack on his shoulder. There was a smirk on his face, one that seemed slightly more intentional this time. “You know a lot about crazy ex-girlfriends, Ortega?”

She scoffed. “Probably not as much as you but—”

He cut her off, a shift in his tone, a seriousness that she could pick up on. “Give it a rest.”

She followed him clean out the door onto the sidewalk, trying not to let herself get discouraged by him ignoring her attempts to walk alongside him or, ideally, get in front of him to stop him. “Kovacs!” she called after him.

Without turning around, he waved at her over his shoulder. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Officer Ortega.”

She huffed, allowing herself to stop. She whispered loudly to no one other than herself, “Fuck me.”

Takeshi didn’t hide the surprise on his face when she showed up to the hotel later before anyone else in the police department managed to get there. He didn’t get the feeling that she had just been lurking outside the door. If that had been the case, the scenario wouldn’t have played out the way it did, gotten as out of hand as it did. Or maybe it would have—he had no idea how she operated. But she strode in confidently, despite the worry and frustration on her face. She looked around and took in the state of the mess and Takeshi had no choice but to sit there and watch her do so.

“Couldn’t even make it twenty-four hours out of storage without killing someone?” she asked as she walked over to him, gun still clutched tightly in her hand even though it was pointed at the floor.

Poe tried to intervene on Takeshi’s behalf. “If it weren’t for—”

He didn’t want anyone coming to his defense, even when he could do with a little bit of assistance. “Waiting down the block for this to happen?”

She shook her head at him, finally holstering her gun once she was standing in front of him. “Might as well have been.” She looked around the destroyed lobby once more. “Had a feeling trouble was going to follow you.”

“Any trouble that would be following me,” he paused briefly as the red and blue lights of other responding police vehicles started to filter through the front windows and door of the hotel, “should’ve stopped being trouble a few centuries ago.”

She reached out and turned his face to get a better look at the damage, not hesitating to touch him, fingertips still drawn to his chin and cheek like it was still Ryker knocking around inside that sleeve. The tension that resulted from her touch, the momentary fighting against it, reminded her that it wasn’t, but it was too late to take it back.

“Seems like you might be enough of an asshole for it to follow you around for a couple hundred years, Kovacs.”

He grunted, pulling away from her touch, hating the way his sleeve wanted to lean into it despite how badly he was trying to recoil away. “Maybe.”

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck this was all about?”

“Thought you just told me,” he said, rising to his feet so he was towering over her once more.

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Can’t help it. Every sleeve, every—”

“Every time, yeah. Your consistency is admirable,” she snapped.

His eyes narrowed, chin dipping down so that he could study her face. “What—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish his question. The other police officers came storming into the building, guns at the ready despite the fact that there was no more commotion coming out of the hotel. After all, it wasn’t as though there were other guests that were being disturbed. Once they all started taking stock of the situation, their guns disappeared back into their holsters as well. A few of them started peppering Takeshi with questions, although they didn’t seem as enraged about it all as Kristin had been. They stole his attention just long enough for Kristin to glean what she thought she needed from the scene and slip out without him noticing or being able to stop her.

Not only were Tak’s plans for the night effectively ruined by the men who stormed the hotel with every intention to kill him, now he also had Kristin’s words rattling around the inside of his skull like pinballs. She finished his sentence with no hesitation and what was bothering him the most was that he couldn’t say with absolute certainty if he said something while he was high out of his mind or not. He must’ve. There was no other way she would’ve known, no other reason. Or, at least, there would’ve been no other reason that felt at all feasible. The thought crossed his mind, but, no, there was no way that was possible. He’d had too many things happen to him too quickly after getting spun up again, that was all. Morning would come around and he’d had a perfectly good reason for all of it, one that didn’t make him feel insane.

The next time he saw her, she had the same air of confidence about her that she always did. He kept his expression neutral, not wanting her to know that he’d been turning her words over in his head ever since she’d spoken them. He tried to come off as impassive but he could feel the anticipation tightening in his chest, questions that he couldn’t ask and answers that he was in no position to get. He managed to keep his curiosity tamped down until he was dismissed by Bancroft’s lawyer, another situation that had more questions than answers.

He trailed Kristin out, taking no time at all to catch up to her. He was walking alongside her but he wasn’t looking at her. “Gonna need a couple minutes of your time, Lieutenant.”

She forced herself not to look at him either. “As much as I would love to give you a couple minutes of my time, Kovacs, I need to keep looking into who tried to kill you. You know, the thing that you asked me to do about two fucking minutes ago.”

He grabbed the side of her arm and pushed her into the next alleyway that they came across. She started to protest until she felt her back hit the brick wall behind her. He purposely invaded her space, bodies close but not quite touching. He looked down at her, not letting the anger in her eyes unnerve him.

She glared up at him. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“Who are you?” he asked, voice low.

“What?”

“Who—”

“I fucking heard you.” She pushed him away and he gave in, not that she pushed with that much force but he figured maybe it would help get some answers. “You know who I am, Kovacs.”

“No, I don’t. But you seem to know an awful fucking lot about who I am.”

She could see it in his eyes that he was skirting dangerously close to the truth. He would’ve already gotten there if he hadn’t allowed himself to put up a barrier of thinking that there was such a thing as an impossible outcome. Apparently being on ice for a couple centuries dulled the don’t expect anything so that you’re prepared for everything part of their training. Too bad Quell wasn’t around to chastise him for it—he’d undoubtedly enjoy it a lot more coming from her.

“That’s because it’s my fucking job.” She side-stepped, glad that he didn’t make any move to stop her. “Which, I’m trying to go do so that maybe you won’t have another group of mercenaries coming after you.”

“Not gonna keep following me around just in case?” He followed her. “What if—”

“Just call the precinct like everyone else in Bay City,” she told him dismissively.

“Right,” he replied with a chuckle.

Even though he couldn’t see the annoyed look on her face, Kristin was certain that he knew it’s how she looked anyway. “You work your case, if that’s what you want to call it. And I’ll work mine.”

She felt the distance between them growing as he stopped but she kept walking on. He called after her, a smart remark about seeing her soon. He was right, of course. Until they put Takeshi back in storage there was no way that she was going to be able to just keep avoiding him, not with Ryker’s sleeve on the line.

While she knew that there was no getting out of seeing him again, she certainly didn’t expect to see him before the day was out. She definitely didn’t expect him to show up at her apartment door, banging on the dense metal of it like he was a cop with a warrant.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Kovacs?” she asked, too tired to even sound properly annoyed.

“Found out some interesting news today,” he said, brushing past her and into the apartment without waiting for an invitation. He strode down the stairs, taking stock of the place as he went. “Some things that made the picture a whole lot fucking clearer on who you are and what the fuck you’ve been doing.”

Her blood ran cold for a moment. She went down the stairs slower than necessary, thinking maybe it was going to buy her some time. Tak was standing in the middle of the kitchen, palms flat against the top of the island as he leaned against it. His eyes kept darting around the room, taking as much of it in as possible, but they always came back to Kristin.

“I knew it,” he said with a shake of his head once she finally crossed the threshold into the kitchen. “I knew there had to be a reason you were so interested in all of this. And I was right.”

“Were you?” she asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as she could.

“Yeah.” He let himself return to a fully upright position, taking the few small steps to collapse the distance between them. He stared down at her. “When were you gonna tell me that they spun me up into your boyfriend?”

“Ryker is not my boyf—”

“What the fuck, Ortega?”

“What would it have mattered, hm? What would it have changed?”

“Well it would sure fuckin’ explain why so many extra people have it out for me. Can’t imagine cops with records like Ryker’s are exactly known for having a lot of friends.”

“Like I said,” she grit out, “it didn’t matter—wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Bullshit. You wouldn’t have cared about an Envoy running loose in your city if he wasn’t running around wearing your partner.”

He still hadn’t put those pieces of the puzzle together. Maybe finding out who his sleeve was, the relationship to her, maybe all of that was enough to sate his curiosity about why she was so invested in him. And sure, that was definitely a large part of it. The other part of it was going to make itself reckoned with sooner rather than later—Kristin could feel it deep in her gut. She could chalk it up to Envoy intuition but really at that point it was just common sense.

She paused those thoughts when remembered that she was in the middle of an argument. “That’s not true.”

“Wouldn’t be a priority of yours, though.”

“You don’t know that.”

He retreated farther back into the kitchen, rooting around to get his hands on something, anything that had alcohol in it. “So, what’s Ryker’s deal?” he asked, his head practically shoved into her fridge. “What makes him so special that you’ll run around the city to—”

“He’s my partner,” she said sharply. “It’s what you do for your partner.” She stepped so that she could lean back against the island. “Not that I’d expect you to understand that.”

“Why’s that?” he asked when he found a bottle of clear liquor on the counter. He opened it while he waited for her to answer, pulling a face when he wafted the scent of the alcohol. It’d still do the trick.

She couldn’t give her honest answer, one born from information about the people they were before. She watched him helplessly look through cupboards in an attempt to find a glass. She could’ve made it easier but she was getting a mildly twisted joy out of watching him go through the small struggle. “Being worried for someone else doesn’t seem like it’s your strong suit. Envoy compartmentalization, right?”

He finally found a glass, setting it down on the countertop with a surprising amount of care considering how tired and annoyed he was. He didn’t say anything as he proceeded to pour a hefty serving into it. Bringing the glass to his lips, he downed almost all of it in one go before setting the glass back down with a clatter, a scant amount of liquor still swirling at the bottom.

He let out a sharp exhale as the lingering burn from the alcohol in his throat subsided. “You don’t know anything.”

She wished she knew how to tell him just how wrong he was. Since she didn’t know just how to do that, she settled for, “You’re not as special as you think.”

He finished off what little was left in his glass, leaving it empty on the counter beside the bottle as he went back so that he was standing next to her. She was leaning with her back pressed against the island but he came and stood so that he was facing it again. Instead of placing his hands on top of it, he leaned so that his forearms rested there instead. He clasped his hands, staring at them instead of the countertop as he felt Kristin’s eyes studying him.

“Bet you didn’t talk like that to Ryker.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not him, so I guess it doesn’t matter, right?”

He turned and looked at her. “Make it sound like it’s so easy to separate it out.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

“Right.”

Despite the instinctive urge to make another snarky comment, he stayed silent. He unclasped his hands, letting his fingertips drum against the smooth surface of the island. It wasn’t a habit that was his own, just the sleeve’s reaction to nicotine withdrawal. He never personally cared for smoking, and if he thought that his stint in this sleeve was going to be a long-term one he would’ve thought about putting in the effort to quit. That just seemed like too much work for too little payoff at the moment.

Kristin heard the familiar tapping of his fingers before she turned to see it. She hated that Elias smoked, always chided him about it. And she knew that Tak’s draw to the nicotine was because of the sleeve, not because of any intrinsic desire. Because of that she was perfectly aware of the fact that she shouldn’t encourage him, but it almost felt like a freebie given the circumstances. She wouldn’t have to tell Elias—he’d never know if she didn’t say anything.

Without a word, she pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back of the top drawer of the island. Elias didn’t think she knew about it, not that it was any great hiding spot.

Takeshi looked quizzically back and forth between her and the pack of smokes. From the second he got spun up all she and everyone else had been doing was chastising him for smoking. It felt like a trick.

She gave the pack a slight shake. “If it’s offered, take it,” she said passively.

His eyes narrowed instantly, his entire body tensing. “What?”

“Take it,” she repeated, “before I change my mind.”

She watched the conflict on his face and chose not to say anything. If he had a question he could ask it, if he had a thought he could share it. But she was done trying to pull information out of him—Tak and Ryker. He was the one who showed up on her doorstep, after all.

“So when you said that I knew you,” he said as he reached and took the pack from her, fingers curling around it and the lighter pinned to the back of it, “you meant that the guy riding my sleeve before me knew you. That any reaction, pull or push, I felt about you had nothing to do with me and everything to do with Ryker.”

She watched him put a cigarette between his lips and spark it to life. She raised her eyebrows, partially because she was surprised by how much she enjoyed watching him do it, but also because she was surprised at how much work he was putting into finding the wrong answer.

Finally, she shrugged when his gaze landed back on her. She watched the smoke curl out from between his lips. “Something like that.”

“What was he like?”

Kristin ignored how he referred to Ryker in the past tense as she chuckled, wondering if he really had any interest in Elias at all or if he just wanted to try and glean something more about her by watching how she spoke about him. Regardless, she decided that she would indulge him in the smallest way possible. “You two would hate each other.” She knew what the follow-up question was going to be so she answered it before he could really ask. “You have the wrong things in common.”

He had an urge to try and get her to elaborate, but he stopped himself. Tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette, he tried to figure out what it was exactly that he really wanted to say to her. He could feel the energy rolling off her in waves. It wasn’t tension, not in the traditional sense. He could feel that there were layers of depth that he hadn’t worked his way into. She was keeping him out. He was stopping himself. He wondered how much of the blame could be put on her, how much of it on him, and how much of it was simply old sleeve memory complicating things for him.

“You must’ve really pissed off Bancroft to get him to do this,” he finally said, gesturing to himself with the hand that was holding the cigarette.

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. Suddenly the empty glass and nearly full bottle of liquor were looking much more inviting than they had been. “You don’t have a monopoly on pissing people off, Kovacs.”

“Stiff competition,” the rebuttal rolled off his tongue easily before he pulled another drag off his smoke.

“Enough years doing anything and you become a professional, right?”

“How many years is that?” he asked outright, forgoing subtlety because there didn’t seem to be much point to it anymore.

She looked over at him. “Enough.”

“Ortega…” he started and then trailed off. He was scratching at the walls of the truth, could hear it rattling around on the other side. He ground out the butt of his cigarette, funneling his frustration into the action before letting it drop from his fingertips.

“Takeshi.” It was only when she said his full name that she realized how long it’d been since she called him that. Using it to talk about him when he wasn’t around was much different than using it while talking to him. Centuries had passed since the last time she used it so casually with him.

He read it all over her face, too. He could see the way that it felt foreign and familiar all at once. It sounded familiar, too. There was something in the tones of the word, undercurrents in his own name that he recognized even if the voice was different. He stared at her intently, head tilting slightly in thought as he tried to look past what he could physically see. He heard her voice from the alley. “You know who I am.”

His eyes widened just slightly as the realization finally began to crash over him. When he spoke again, there was a certainty to his tone that hadn’t been there before. “Kristin.”

She’d been doing nothing but agonizing over what would happen when he realized who she really was, but now that she could see that he had, all she felt was relief. Her shoulders dropped with the lessening of the weight on them.

“That took you a little too long.” She peeled herself away from him, crossing to the counter where Takeshi had left his glass. She refilled it and drank from it herself. “Still got tunnel vision.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” His voice was tight, but there was still a lingering sense of bewilderment to it.

“Well for one thing I didn’t think it was going to take you so fucking long to figure it out.” She poured more liquor into the glass. She let out a quick, quiet wince as the liquor burned down her throat again. “They don’t know.”

He didn’t need to ask her who they were, or what exactly it was they didn’t know. His time off-stack might have been limited this time around but he knew the danger that being known as an Envoy would put her in. “None of them?”

She shook her head, contemplating a third pour. “None of them.”

“Not even—”

“I said none of them.” The relief was starting to disappear, dread slowly starting to take its place, and she poured herself a third helping to cope.

“You think I’ll say something.” It wasn’t a question.

“I think that there are very few things that you have ever cared about, Tak. I know that Bancroft definitely isn’t on that fucking shortlist.” She paused. “I know that I’m not either—never was.”

She looked over at him and she saw the way that there was a flicker of hope in his eyes when she said that last part. He knew she was right, that even back then she was never someone he paid much mind to. His concern had always been Reileen, and then Quell. Apparently a couple hundred years on ice hadn’t dulled his devotion to the latter. Kristin had a feeling that she knew what he wanted to ask, but she was content to make him actually say it.

To her surprise, he didn’t ask anything. “You haven’t heard anything,” he stated.

She shook her head. “No. But I’ve never gone looking.” She could feel the tension in the room thicken at that. “It was a miracle that I made it out. I wasn’t going to waste that by—”

“It wouldn’t have been a waste.”

“Not to you,” she snapped. “You were Quell’s favorite—of fucking course you would’ve gone looking for her. I was just another Envoy. Dispensable. Part of what was offered.” She sighed, forcing herself not to pour another drink. “I managed to survive so I did what we do best. I blended in.”

“Kristin Ortega,” he said her name in its totality, exploring each letter of it with fresh eyes and ears now that he knew who she was.

“Not a far cry from before, no?”

He shook his head. “No.” There were so many things that he could have, and probably should have, asked her, but in that moment he didn’t care about any of it. He easily collapsed the distance so that he was beside her again. He looked at the way her hands were wrapped tightly around the edge of the counter. He copied her position, only his grip wasn’t vice-like the way that hers was. Their pinkies nearly touched. “If we’d been better friends back then, would you have said something?”

That got a scoff out of her that dissolved into a laugh. “There’s no lifetime where the two of us are friends, Kovacs.”

“Not even in this sleeve?” It was teasing, but not cruel.

She turned her head, still having to look up slightly to meet his eyes even though he was leaning onto the counter. “The sleeve was never the problem.”

“This is probably my best shot though, right?”

She smiled and it was genuine even through the exhaustion. Maybe all the liquor was catching up to her. “Probably.”

Neither of them moved. In the thick silence of the apartment, they could each hear the other breathing. They knew enough to know where it could so easily go. It wouldn’t be anywhere good, at least not long-term. But what did long-term even mean for them anymore? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. There was that unspoken mutual understanding, after all, that they were each looking for someone in the other that they weren’t ever going to find. He might’ve been wearing his sleeve but Takeshi was never going to be Elias. And Kristin might’ve lived through the same hardships and lived to tell the tale, she might’ve known the history and the fight, but she wasn’t ever going to be Quell. They looked at each other and saw the truth, but they were both still pining after delusions.

Tak’s hand moved a fraction of an inch, the movement smooth as it caused his hand to brush against hers. She let out a short breath and he could smell the alcohol on it. Her lips parted slightly, like she was going to say something. Maybe she was going to say it was a bad idea, maybe she was going to send him home. Whatever she had been planning to say, he saw it in real time as it fell by the wayside.

She pulled her hand away from his only to reach and place it on the back of his head instead, pulling him closer. His body moved of its own accord. Some of it was just the natural motions of things, but there was also the familiarity of his sleeve and hers, chemical reactions that were innate that he had no control over. For a moment he fought it on the principle of it all, but then he felt the hunger in her, every movement of her lips and tongue against his a taunt to get him to reciprocate in kind.

So he did, grabbing her and placing her up on the counter with ease. She looped her legs around his waist as his grip tightened on her sides. He leaned into her, bodies pressed as tightly together as they could be with the barrier of their clothes still between them. If he wanted to, he could chalk his eagerness up to too many years on ice, an abundance of hormones in a sleeve that had been in the tank, body mechanics operating outside of his control. He could’ve said any and all of those things and none of them would’ve been a lie, per se. But as his hand slid towards the button of her jeans, he knew that the full truth was much, much simpler than that—they were both just taking what was offered.

#altered carbon #altered carbon fanfiction #takeshi kovacs #kristin ortega #takeshi kovacs x kristin ortega #kristin ortega x takeshi kovacs #candyhearts exchange #candy hearts exchange 2024 #my writing #fanfiction #drabblesmc

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doctorkinktraveller · 1 year ago

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DOCTOR [behind door]: When did you first realise?

JACK: Earth, 1892. Got in a fight in Ellis Island. A man shot me through the heart. Then I woke up. Thought it was kind of strange. But then it never stopped. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War One, World War Two, poison, starvation, a stray javelin. In the end, I got the message. I'm the man who can never die. And all that time you knew.

DOCTOR [behind door]: That's why I left you behind. It's not easy even just looking at you, Jack, because you're wrong.

JACK: Thanks.

DOCTOR [behind door]: You are. I can't help it. I'm a Time Lord. It's instinct. It's in my guts. You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a fact. That's never meant to happen. Even the Tardis reacted against you, tried to shake you off. Flew all the way to the end of the universe just to get rid of you.

JACK: So what you're saying is that you're, er, prejudiced?

DOCTOR [behind door]: I never thought of it like that.

JACK: Shame on you.

DOCTOR [behind door]: Yeah.

[Yana's laboratory]

JACK [OC]: Last thing I remember, back when I was mortal, I was facing three Daleks. Death by extermination. And then I came back to life.

[Radiation chamber]

JACK: What happened?

DOCTOR [behind door]: Rose.

[Yana's laboratory]

JACK [OC]: I thought you'd sent her back home.

DOCTOR [OC]: She came back. Opened the heart of the Tardis and absorbed the time vortex itself.

JACK [OC]: What does that mean, exactly?

(Yana is crying.)

DOCTOR [OC]: No one's ever mean to have that power.

[Radiation chamber]

DOCTOR [behind door]: If a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god. A vengeful god. But she was human.

(Flashback to Parting of the Ways, Floor 500 of the satellite.)

ROSE: I bring life.

(Jack remembers his first coming back to life.)

DOCTOR [behind door]: Everything she did was so human. She brought you back to life, but she couldn't control it. She brought you back forever. That's something, I suppose. The final act of the Time War was life.

[Yana's laboratory]

(The words echo in Yana's head.)

DOCTOR [OC]: Time war, time war.

JACK [OC]: Do you think she could change me back?

DOCTOR [OC]: I took the power out of her.

[Radiation chamber]

DOCTOR [behind door]: She's gone, Jack. She's not just living on a parallel world, she's trapped there. The walls have closed.

JACK: I'm sorry.

DOCTOR [behind door]: Yeah.

JACK: I went back to her estate, in the nineties, just once or twice. Watched her growing up. Never said hello. Timelines and all that.

DOCTOR [behind door]: Do you want to die?

JACK: Oh, this one's a little stuck.

DOCTOR [behind door]: Jack?

JACK: I thought I did. I don't know. But this lot. You see them out here surviving, and that's fantastic.

DOCTOR [behind door]: You might be out there, somewhere.

JACK: I could go meet myself.

DOCTOR: Well, the only man you're ever going to be happy with.

JACK: This new regeneration, it's kind of cheeky.

DOCTOR: Hmm.

#doctor who #YANA #utopia #captain jack harkness #10th doctor #10th incarnation #david tennant #john barrowman

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as-warm-as-choco · 10 months ago

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How Do You Live? (boy and the heron)

just came back from the cinema celebrating Miyazaki's birthday finally watching BOY AND THE HERON i wanted to cry the whole time i was speechless just overflowing with magic the direction divine the many distant shots of Mahito within vast space (which was just magical backgrounds) the music (especially when pelicans started eating the warawara) the lore of it all my heart couldnt take it i just wanna stay inside hayao-san's worlds forever i dont wanna get outtt omg THE SHINYA OHIRA opening scene >_< *pukes stars* the young parallel world KIRIKO jumping on the gigantic fish and slicing it in two till the tail and giving mahito to try and THE GUTS all spilling and burying him under T_T_T_T when the heron first started talking and the fuckin design and voice acting was haunting(ly beautiful) when he was making the bow and the arrow and stealing tobacco and give it to the grandpa when he raised the stone and just the blood started rushing so so so much ?? when he was first crying and there were 2 tears on both corners of the eyes plus one all 5 of them standinggg the parakeets which brought so much more cartoony life lmao the granniesssss and their designs?? when he found his mom and those paper devils just flew around hurting/burying them both till his young version of his mom burned them the warawara for real they just had fun animating them also the crowd scenes also the backgrounds ill say that again i mean my eyessss my soullll is healedddd (of course im gonna go watch it at least 5 more timessss lmao) happy birthday you magical madman of a grandpa i love you with all my heartttt i thank you for everything thank you for existing thank you for raising me and feeding me dreams and eternal fantasy thank UwU forever i love you i have so much more to say about teh movie so much livelinessss when they caught the fish and the sea suddenly was full of insane trees and the boat shadow creatures THE FACT WE GOT TRIPPY SATOSHI KON SCENES when the heron showed mahito his mom and she started melting then the ground swallowed tehmmmmm ughhhhh the corridor to his ancestor who was playing with those blocks im glad i exist every time i existing in your films thank you for creating the safest weirdest most magical places for me to call home

okay okay when his new mother caressed his bandage and she said its her fault she let that happen to him. when the heron made THE FROGS AND MUDSKIPPERS AND another creature climb all over mahito and swallow him till his mother threw the arrow that was the second time i lost my mind completely after the ohira scene T_T

<3 i'll make it out of here for you and because of you i promise <3 joe hisaishi played while i biked in the darkness back

#HAPPY BIRTHDAYYY HAYAO-SAN I LOVE YOU FOREVERRRRR #I CANT PUT INT OWORDS MY FEELINGS BUT UGHHH #memories #hayao miyazaki #the boy and the heron #how do you live?#if anyone is in amsterdam and want to watch together at the lab111 holler back #Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka

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virgoingfaraway · 1 year ago

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Homesick

The other day I heard this Noah Kahan song for the first time. I love his music but I've never sat down and listened to an album of his from start to finish. I have a tendency of doing that with the most beautiful of artists. It stems from some deep-seated fear, I guess. I don't know. I couldn't fully articulate it if I tried. But anyway, I heard the lyric, "and I will die in the house I grew up in..." for the very first time and I wasn't fully focused on the song because I was vibing and driving but that one line was like a punch to the gut. I immediately started weaving this web in my head. It just really brought me back to all the times when I was younger and I'd think to myself, "I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home." All the while fully knowing that my own home didn't actually feel like the safest of spaces, but wishing that it did, and wishing I could just exist vulnerably and outside of survival mode. But I existed in my body. My whole life was in my mind, it seemed; and my mind has not always been the kindest of places... so to me these lyrics specifically parallel the very nuanced reality of being stuck with yourself and the fantasy of the kind of love and support some of us have only dreamed about. Am I homesick because these walls of mine do not feel like a home or am I homesick because I have never felt peace within myself? Suffice it to say my mind will die within this body- even if this body does not die within these walls.

#noah kahan #song analysis #musicians #lyric quotes #lyrics #homesick #musings #rambling

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labrats-and-clonetroopers · 2 years ago

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"I Won't Bury You Again" Ch. 1 - Leo Dooley & Chase Davenport, Lab Rats [Elite Force]/The Dark Tower (C.S. Lewis) Crossover

Masterlist

Lab Rats/Mighty Med/Elite Force Masterlist

Request Guidelines

Synopsis:

Leo was the one who heard all of Davenport’s confessions in the elevator. He was the one who sought out Douglas, who had been the one to originally break into his and Marcus’ lab. He’s the one who’s been trapped in and escaped from a freaking parallel universe.

He knows, better than any of them, that all the secrets surrounding their past will never fully come to light.

But he needs to save his brother. And if that means chasing a ghost from Douglas’ past, then he will. No matter where it leads him.

Story Warnings: violence, minor character death, mentioned drug use, mild horror, moderate blood and gore

_______________

Leo knows. He knows that none of them, not Davenport, not Douglas, nor his mom, or Adam, Bree, Chase or Daniel, will ever know everything. Every part of the complex web of secrets and lies that connect their lives.

He heard Davenport’s confessions while trapped in the elevator. Heard them, acknowledged them, and stored them away. Donald Davenport’s life before he clawed his way to success read like a nightmare. And while he is still an incredibly flawed man, Leo can respect that some things, some things should be left undisturbed in the past.

But some things, they just nag, tug at his gut, as if some intuition is telling him that he needs to pull at this thread, that he needs to uncover it.

Leo had always expected that Douglas had continued to keep secrets, that he would never reveal the full truth. Not intentionally, at least.

And there’s always been something about Marcus’ story that never fully added up. A comment he made during their confrontation in Giselle’s lab, to Douglas.

“You created me to betray someone I never could. But you, you I can betray.”

He brought it up to Douglas one afternoon. Found him sitting alone in the dining hall, hunched over the table, frowning, looking at his phone.

Leo pulled out a chair, sat down next to him. His uncle barely glanced up, “Oh, hey Leo.”

“Watcha doing?”

Douglas stilled. “Just looking through some old photos,” and he deflated, weary.

It was an odd mood for him to be in. Leo frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Douglas dismissed. “Anything going on with you?”

Leo shook his head. “No, just chilling. Enjoying having all the students and Adam gone for the day. Video-chatted Janelle. We have a date planned for Wednesday.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It will be.”

Silence settled over them. Leo leaned back in his chair. “So, I was wondering something.”

Douglas looked back up. “Wondering what?”

“About something Marcus said,” and he watched his uncle immediately stiffen at that name, “He said you had created him to betray someone, someone he couldn’t betray. Thing is, that doesn’t make any sense; he didn’t hesitate to betray Adam, Bree, and Chase.”

Douglas had lowered his head, fixated his gaze on the table. “He wasn’t referring to them.”

“Then who?” Leo pressed. “Wait a minute, if he wasn’t referring to them, then you didn’t originally create him to capture your kids…”

“That was why I built him, technically. The whole situation was just a bit more complicated at the time.” Douglas corrected, then sighed. “Look, Leo, I really don’t want to talk about this.”

“Well, you never talked about Giselle either, until she just showed up, and we both now how that turned out,” Leo asserted. He leaned over the table, looking Douglas in the eye. “Who did you create Marcus to betray?”

Douglas met the intensity of his gaze. “You need to trust me, Leo. Leave it alone.”

#another ao3 story that i'm finally posting here #honestly i should've done it a while ago #as i've gotten a lot of good feedback there #leo dooley #chase davenport #brotherly friendship #family relationships #angst #mild horror #mystery #douglas davenport #i won't bury you again

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starswallowingsea · 1 year ago

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oops 11pm typing up a review for What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

I got this as my book of the month back in January and after reading the first chapter, kinda put it off because it felt too much like the Slenderman Stabbing case which is a bit too close to home. Picked it up again recently after my wifi went out again and I needed something to read and ended up enjoying it (although my gut feeling was kinda proven right at the end unfortunately). 4/5 stars, full review under the cut, spoilers ahead.

So first things first, this is supposed to be an adult thriller, but it very much reads like YA which doesn't bother me that much but it does for other people so just a heads up on that.

Now to the meat and potatoes. This book follows Naomi Shaw, a mid-30s woman from a middle of nowhere town in Washington state who survived a stabbing attempt when she was 11 while her two best friends watched on. It left her permanently scarred and brought the three of them closer together during the recovery process.

Our story begins when the person they accused of being the one who stabbed them and also of being a serial killer with at least 6 other victims dies in prison from cancer. Naomi gets a call and returns to her hometown for the first time in years and meets up with her two friends who survived the attack with her and one of them says she's tired of hiding their secret.

Oh yeah. When they were 11, they found a skeleton in the woods and began worshiping her as a goddess based on this bead bracelet on her wrist that read Persephone. They had 7 rituals to complete to show their dedication to the goddesses of varying degrees of severity, up to and including self mutilation. Typical 11yo things.

It's not too long after this that the friend who wants to tell their secret winds up dead in the same woods with a gunshot to the head, ruled a suicide despite no weapon being found at the scene and a lack of gun powder on her hands that would indicate self infliction of the wound.

At this point, Naomi suspects there's something going on and decides to look into it more with the help of this podcaster that's been snooping around about the case. There's a lot that begins to happen around this time in the book that gets everything going and makes it a much easier and quick read.

I will say that a lot of the ensemble cast, even the best friends of Naomi, weren't always super well defined but we do have an unreliable narrator in the first person so her biases color a lot of things with regards to the Mayor's family especially. The pieces come together pretty quickly too once you start unraveling the threads of the story and I personally wasn't really gotten by any of the twists all that much. They made logical sense when they were revealed regardless of if I had predicted them or not.

Is it the best thriller out there? No. Is it a good read for the end of summer? I think so. I've been in kind of a reading slump and needed a quick easy read like this to help pull me out and it was still pretty enjoyable. Though I'm still not sure how I feel about any potential parallels with real world cases (again, the slenderman stabbing seems awfully close to what happened here, just without the false accusation of another person as the attacker).

#shay speaks #what lies in the woods #book review #bookblr #'why are you so fixated on that case' it literally comes up regularly still in local news. im from that part of wisconsin #they will not shut up about it

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liskantope · 2 years ago

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Thanks for clarifying in response to my last ask! Back to the post you were discussing, specifically re: trolling (as opposed to more general "compulsive wittiness"), you speculate that "there’s another much more sinister component to" the sort of troll culture that's popular online among young right-wingers. What sort of component would you say that is? I figure you might be referring to people using shock humor to create plausible deniability around their actual beliefs, which I've def seen happen. Speaking from experience, if you're in an unhealthy enough place, sometimes not even YOU can distinguish between your genuine beliefs, your gut feelings, and provocativeness; from what I've heard this sounds like it might be the case for not just male trolls but also some radfems like Solanas.

You're absolutely right about using shock humor (or, I have noticed, excessively many layers of irony) to create plausible deniability, and I can certainly believe what you're saying about it getting to the point that you aren't even sure where what you're spewing out to the world begins and your actual beliefs end. (Coincidentally, the day I started writing this response I had just looked up Nick Fuentes because of current events and saw that he peddles Holocaust denial with a "just kidding guys" / "I'm only talking about Cookie Monster making cookies, any parallel to a real-life historical situation is your mind making connections on its own!" façade to it, and it's like... this technique can be taken really far to a really bad place.) I don't have any familiarity with Solanas and have fairly little exposure to radfems in general, so I can't speak to whether this issue is prevalent there, but I could imagine that it might be aside from the fact those spaces are a whole lot less male-dominated.

It took me some moments to recall what in my post from well over three years ago I was referring to when I said "there's another much more sinister component", and I don't think it's quite the thing that you brought up. It's even vaguely come back to me that at the time, I was kind of hoping someone might ask me what I meant so that I'd get around to expanding on it. I'm not sure I'll do it justice now because I haven't been thinking about it quite as much lately (the issues on my mind on this side of the pandemic era have been somewhat different and I think three years ago I was more preoccupied with trollish hate speech than now).

I think the "more sinister" thing I was referring to was the motive to bully based on perceived vulnerabilities.

Here's how it works according to my perception: a bunch of people make it clear that such-and-such thing (usually an expressed idea in the form of a really heavy, sensitive topic or a threat, but not a concrete action going beyond words) really isn't a joke, it's both incredibly upsetting and directly harmful, they're very triggered by it and so on. And a few bullies, who on some vague gut level don't understand and are irritated at that expression of speech or expressed speech in general being viewed as beyond the pale, decide "well, if you're so weak that this expression really hurts you, I'm just going to poke that hornet's nest as hard as I can", partly under a rationale that it's doing a service to teach those people to be less weak, but probably from a deeper motive of liking to feel power at the direct expense of the vulnerable.

The "expressed idea" can be anything from trollish offensive speech to spewing vile ideology to issuing (usually empty) threats of violence. The "more sinister thing" is that last "liking to feel someone else under their boot" motive I ended the last paragraph on, and it's often quite independent of any actual horrible ideological belief (which the bully may or may not hold).

And I have a long-time frustration with how many of the victims of this behavior frame it and the motivations behind it: they say it's simply proof of the ideology the troller believes and how prevalent these horrible ideological beliefs are and so on, when I imagine the primary motive of the troller is usually quite different. I'll bet a ton of guys posting pro-Nazi comments on forums or calling in death threats to Anita Sarkeesian events couldn't care less about Hitler's cause or feminist claims of sexism in the video game industry -- they are just disgusted by the fragility of the groups of people they've chosen to victimize and enjoy the feeling of being able to hurt them so much with very cheap anonymous words.

And I'm pretty sure that if I were to float this alternate view of what makes these scumbags tick, it would be met with an accusation of wanting to defend them. Not only am I not defending them at all, but what I'm suggesting is arguably an even worse motive than the one commonly being ascribed to them. Someone who aggressively but earnestly promotes their ideological views or fights their ideological war with words, even if their ideology is a completely hideous one like Naziism, at least is waging a battle for a greater cause than themself. Someone who trolls for the sake of directly hurting someone else and feeling bigger and stronger than them, under a half-formed rationale of justly punishing them for being more fragile than the troller judges they should be, is truly occupying the very lowest rung of sliminess in my eyes.

And... I know this has become a hobbyhorse of mine that I keep circling back to, but this points to, let's just say, a disadvantage of being more rather than less fragile. To be clear, in most of the examples where this trolly bullying comes up, the affected group has very very good reasons to be sensitive to the deliberately-provocative ideas they are being forced to handle (e.g. Holocaust denial), and as far as death threats go, of course those need to be taken very seriously because there's always a greater-than-zero chance that a death threat has actual murderous intentions backing it up. But the more a group of people publicly plays up how incredibly triggered they are at the most subtle expressions of ideas that suggest a threat to them, the more they're creating a great big target sign for bullies hungry for a cheap means to a feeling of power over others. It's something I wish more people would keep in mind.

Anyway, this is all quite separate from the "compulsive wittiness" I had begun that other post by talking about.

#trolling #holocaust denial cw #bullying #neo-Naziism #anita sarkeesian

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tokiro07 · 2 years ago

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Was I the only one who briefly thought Billy daughter was Lucy, the Unhealth negator that Andy met that one time? I had to check the name on the wiki to make sure it wasn't her. Mostly the snotty nose was what threw me off.

Another one that I brought up in my review, no, you are far from the only one

Like half of the comments on MangaPlus were people freaking out about Lucy being Billy's daughter, despite the fact that that's absolutely impossible with the timeline

Now, admittedly, my gut reaction was also "IS THAT FUCKING LUCY?!" but then I stopped to think for a second and realized that it was just a visual parallel, not the same literal character

It's possible that Veronica and Betty are related to Lucy in some way, but I think it's more likely that we're being set up for Billy to find a new family in Loop 101, especially since Tatiana is more than likely going to be back with her family

Of course, I still think that Billy is going to be a father figure for Tatiana, but who says a man can't have two adopted daughters?

#undead unluck #uu spoilers #spoilers #fouryearsandananime

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scribbledonausednapkin · 2 years ago

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Azula Always Lies

Azula & Zuko childhood stories (cross posted on AO3)

An exploration of Azula and Zuko’s relationship before and after Ursa is banished. Fire sibling dynamics including trauma and drama.

Chapter 1: Jealousy

“Did you know I can do all the basic forms now?”

For a seven year old, Princess Azula was already well spoken, disciplined, and manipulative. Her appearance was unwelcome, but unsurprising. Her caramel eyes examined her older brother with intense scrutiny just as their father’s always did. Prince Zuko didn’t want to know why she was bothering him while he practiced his basic forms for the third time that day.

Late afternoon waned to evening in the west courtyard of the palace in the Fire Nation’s capital. The prince’s footsteps made firm slaps against the cream stone as he punched forward with strength, keeping a low stance on bent knees. His ponytail swung sharp in the air while beads of sweat slid from his hairline down his nose and into the crevice of his eye, stinging his tear ducts. Focus, that is what he needed to do.

“Are you ignoring me?”

Azula frowned. Her arms crossed in front of her red and black tunic, her feet pointed out, her shoulders drawn back like a military general: she always demanded attention. Two perfectly aligned black tails of hair swung softly on either side of her face and she pursed her lips as Zuko’s tensed hand sliced through the air.

“I’m busy Azula,” Zuko replied through gritted teeth as he continued his form to completion. A measly flame popped out from his fist, nothing like what he wanted to happen. Like what was supposed to happen.

“Ha.” Azula laughed and Zuko jerked to her scowling. “Busy with what? Baby flames?”

“It wasn’t a baby flame!” Zuko’s face turned red and he clenched his fist stomping down one foot in frustration. Azula smiled, licking her lips like a predator eyeing its prey.

The princess stepped forward purposefully, stopping for only a second to take a breath before and nod before she began the same motions Zuko had practiced just moments before. She was quick, precise; each movement was powerful as she brought her weight forward with confidence. Quick breaths in through her nose partnered with well timed exhales through her mouth went parallel to her bending exertions. Then she went further, extending the formation and coupling it with the last basic form all young firebenders must master. Small flames flicked off into the air as she continued without hesitation. She gave kick high into the air, perfectly arched and it curved above her head before sweeping back as she braced herself on her front foot. With her knee locked and stance strong, she bolted her arms together in a pushing motion ahead of her. A large crackling flame shot out of her palms soaring forward until it seared against a blood red column by the gate.

The sunset laid golden shadows over the courtyard as Azula’s flame sizzled from existence.

“See? It’s easy.” Azula returned to the straightened stance of a practiced royal. She was a natural with her element and her role in society.

Zuko huffed in his position in front of her, face flushed, but eyes wide as he watched his sister’s effortless production of golden orange flame. There was a hollow feeling digger deeper into his gut and he swallowed any emotion threatening to show off in front of Azula.

“Yea, for you,” Zuko looked down at his feet in disappointment. He kicked the barely visible dust, feeling the small particles cling to the bottom of his bare foot. Everything came easy to Azula.

“Oh dum-dum, it’s not hard. Why don’t you try again?”

The seven year old smirked. Zuko gazed off to the side of the courtyard, eyes trailing up to the sky, a blend of yellows, oranges, and reds; a smear of thin, wispy clouds gave it a grainy appearance overhead.

“What good would that do?” His voice was singed with venom and emptiness. Azula’s brother shot her a parting glance, turning away and stalking back toward the palace doors.

“I’ll tell you what you’re missing.”

“How would you know?” He shot, feigning indifference, but in actuality he was curious to what she meant. Still, his annoyance kept his feeling walking forward.

“I’m the expert arent I?”

“You’re not an expert.” Zuko rolled his eyes.

“At least I’ve mastered all the basic forms,” she retorted. He stopped.

He took a breath thinking of his father’s disappointed face when his golden eyes watched Zuko’s attempts at firebending. Then a flash of what they looked like when Azula hit a perfectly timed kick. He turned around to her satisfied glare.

“Fine.”

He repeated his forms, concentrating so intensely the creases in his eyebrows felt stiff and unmovable. His breaths were short and pointed. Still, nothing more than an ember appeared when he punched out toward the gate. He sighed and his shoulders dropped in disappointment. His eyes found Azula’s which were crinkled in amusement.

“So?”

“Hmm,” Azula took a small step to the side, eyeing him from head to toe. Her body found its perfect posture yet again, arms clasping behind her.

“See, the problem is, you should never tried in the first place.” The edge of her lip quirked up in victory.

Her brother panted, still recovering from his attempt at a fire fist. As he realized he had been played by his younger sister, yet again, he winced; a half groan half yell reverberated from his throat and his foot turned sharply in the opposite direction guiding his heated being away from Azula. He should have known better.

Anger bubbled in his belly as he stomped toward the palace doors. Zuko was trying to do what his mother said and leave when his sister got like this. Azula was a girl. Azula was younger. He should be the bigger person, she was only seven.

“Where are you going? Too embarrassed to say anything? Why don’t you just admit you’ll never catch up?”

She was quick on his heals as he took his first step on the short palace stairs.

Her tone? Arrogant. Her hovering? Suffocating. Her throwing her perfect prodigy naturally gifted glorious flame having hands in his face? Insufferable.

“Fine! You’re better!” Zuko turned around rapidly, arms flailing as he rounded on his little sister. She stepped back as he barged forward down the single step back into the middle of the courtyard. “You’re better! Is that what you want to hear? You’re better than me, Azula! You win!”

Azula had maintained the space between them as Zuko shouted at her. It was what she wanted he knew, but he couldn’t help it. She knew just how to get under his skin.

“You don’t deserve to be firstborn.”

The little girl replied loudly with a smile on her face, bronze eyes narrowed. Her hands moved to her hips, hinging forward as she taunted him.

Zuko exhaled deeply, brows knitted, teeth grinding.

“Even father thinks so.”

Without a thought Zuko lunged at his sister in rage and shot a fist through the air. A bright orange flame, much stronger than any he had previously conjured, exploded from his clenched knuckles, hitting Azula square on the shoulder.

—

Zuko awoke with a throbbing headache. The room was dark, but as his senses regained themselves he could feel the damp sheets under his back, a chill washing over him. His eyes were still heavy with exhaustion, but he could faintly hear a familiar, soft voice strained in a argument with a low and commanding sound that shot terror through him like electricity.

“He is just a boy, two hours in the sauna was far too long,” his mother pleaded by the door way. He kept his eyes low, but just over the edge of the thin red blanket covering him, he could make out her form, a silhouette in the dim light.

“If he wants a flame so badly, he will have to earn it.” His father’s voice was oozing with disgust.

Earn it. Yes, now he remembered. The heat of the sauna burning him from the inside as the clock ticked away minute after minutes. At first, he had tried to use it as an opportunity to center himself; maybe if he concentrated he could achieve true flame. He had finally done it thanks to Azula’s teasing; his anger had made him stronger. He meditated cross legged as long as he could on the wooden planks of the sauna floor until the dryness in his mouth spread to his throat and then his lungs burned with every breath. His vision had blurred and the black edges had taken over as embers stung his every pore.

“That is not what this was about.”

A deep scoff.

“Azula told me what happened. The boy can barely produce a puff of smoke, so he attempts to bully his sister out of jealousy. He is weak, pathetic.”

A gentle shake the shadows head.

“No, you’re wrong-”

Her breath hitched, scratchy and quick. Zuko stiffened lowering the edge of his blanket as he forcefully pressed his body deeper into the mattress. From this more open position he saw the black shadow of an arm protruding from his mother’s throat.

“I am never wrong.”

A gasp. His mother was released as quickly as she was seized. There was a light cough before she replied, voice low and firm.

“Fine, but do not be sure that your daughter is telling the truth. Azula lies; she always lies.”

#avatar the last airbender #avatar fanfiction #azula fanfic #zuko fanfic #azula x zuko #fire siblings

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