#the woes of being an old man no one liked enough to be taught things

[riderkaitlyn5]

Florida: AJAJFHJDOSRIYIAHJD

The Director: What is this?

Florida: it's just a laugh!!

The Director: How can I do it?

Florida: Press any key

The Director: 4

[marmotish]

I’m remembering that pic with Freyja emerging from a lake with Excalibur and now I’m headcanoning that she probably accidentally apparated in the lake during one of her unwanted time/dimension shifts, and just grabbed the sword bc she has no idea what dangers await on the surface as she swims up.

Cue her being confused by the group of young men worshipping her as the Lady of the Lake—? Wait why are they taking her sword? She found it first. Huh. Merlin looks nothing like his immortalized painted depictions. Guys. Really. She isn’t the Lady of the— aaaaaaand Lancelot looks like an older Francis. Well, rats. Now she’s feels obligated to stay, at least long enough to convince her adopted son Francelot—er, Lancis—*ahem* that swooning after married queens is the worst thing he could do in his spare time and make sure he behaves. In fact, does he have to be a knight? Surely he could put his skills into something safer, like bakery or farming? Sure, it’s not glorious, but it’s fine work that brings an honest wage that people appreciate more than knights chasing after dragons and the like. Knights are totally contributing to collateral damages to crops, anyway, with their “heroic quests.”

Bonus: she actually is related to The Lady of the Lake, or she’s related to Mordred/Morgana. She is not pleased in either of these options.

I’ve officially decided that time travel AU is part of Freyja’s canon timeline because a) it’s fun and b) it gives a lot more freedom creatively in terms of what she’s up to between graduation in 1991 and 1996, between 18 and 23 years of age.

Her appearance in medieval Britain is her third uncontrolled time shift, which occurred after falling off the Titanic in 1912.

After getting Excalibur taken off her by King Arthur, she is taken aside by Merlin who, with his powers of prophecy and visions of the future, had been expecting her. Freyja had to explain that she wasn’t a water fairy, rather a witch with a terrible grasp on time travel. She believes there’s nobody better equipped to help her with her time travel woes than the most famous and most powerful wizard of all time.

She spends a couple of years in this time period, learning all she can from Merlin. Who turns out to be quite different from what she was taught at school. A trickster and shapeshifter, he takes on the appearance of whatever he feels will be most advantageous. Appearing as a wise old man in the court of Camelot more easily gives off the impression of years of experience and knowledge in the eyes of Muggles. His next most common form to take is that of a talking blackbird, in reference to his name.

As part of her role as Lady of the Lake, she is involved in the care of young Lancelot. She teaches and guides as best she can, given she is only about 20-21 at the time. She’s all too painfully aware of Lancelot’s future concerning his doomed affair with Guinevere, and right up until she’s tasked with taking him to Camelot at the age of “18” (he’s actually 15), she’s trying to talk him out of becoming a knight.

[euphietea]

Respite.

Shoei Baroi. fluff. cw. implied mental health struggles. alcohol use.

You rest your cheek on the broad muscle of his shoulder, watching the lights pass by as you leave the city. They streak your vision like meteorites burning in orbit. Barou was a responsible driver, considerate of the weight you add to his cruiser. The tires of the bike surf along a gentle current rather than navigate rubble-studded streets like most riders do.

You shift in the leather prison that is his old riding jacket. It is sweltering outside and the humid summer only just began to cool with the transition into twilight. He still insisted on wearing leather regardless, Mr. Safety as always. He looks so good in riding gear anyway, so you don’t complain. He even insists you wear the leather prison hand-me-down despite your protests.

“Don’t be a fucking moron,” he growled, throwing the jacket into your arms moments before leaving his apartment. A man of action more than words, but you could read him clearly when he spoke: ‘please be safe.’

You stroke the cherry-wine leather along his obliques, adoring the smooth suede texture over the curve of his muscle. If something were to happen – if the bike ever fishtailed out of control – he would never forgive himself if he didn’t dress you up in protective gear. He cared more than you could ever hope for you.

When you met him, you really did think he was a delinquent or some gangster. You asked to kick a soccer ball around and he asked if you were ‘fucking stupid’. You weren’t. You just needed a physical outlet when your skin crawled from the clutter of your apartment. Some how, he obliged and taught you some tactics. Barou never asked about you and you never really asked about him. Every now and again you’d catch each other and decide to kick a ball around.

At first, he really seemed like someone who only gave a shit about himself. Soccer seemed to be the only thing he genuinely cared about or talked about. You asked him what he did for a living one day and that’s when you learned he worked at a bar. It was a little bar that salary men and women frequented. Occasionally, college students would go there and get plastered.

You’d visit him when he worked, and he’d walk you home when you were too drunk to go alone. He never touched you more than he had to in those times – just enough to keep you steady. But like a rat being trained to push a lever, his warm hands were a treat drawing you back each night. You learned that when he wasn’t obsessing over a straight shot, he was a great listener to his customers. You’d see him give water, offer bags of chips, and just quietly listen as the man in a pinstripe suit cried about his lost marriage.

You even unloaded some life woes onto him: You talked about how it was hard to function some days. Work was a lot to handle when you could barely manage to garner energy for the laundry. The world seemed foggy, and you didn’t have a compass. The city was loud and overstimulating. The heat was sticky and drained you of whatever life force you had. Going to the bar and seeing him was pretty much what kept you showering. Barou was appalled by the fact that you would drink nothing but protein shakes and vitamins to keep up sometimes, so he’d just give you food off the menu for free. You even cried about your ex, who apparently hadn’t even thought you were in a relationship!

When all this began, you couldn’t imagine that one day he’d help you clean your grubby apartment (while complaining and lecturing you, of course). He’d help you with laundry and dishes. He’d help you cook and teach you a few cheap recipes that you could microwave. Because he worked out, he’d drop off some vitamins for you when he bought supplements for himself.

Eventually, you two were just... together. Peacefully. Coexisting.

The bike comes to a gentle stop. Barou kicks the bike stand out and swings off. He pulls his helmet off, espresso locks swept around his shoulders. Your gaze softens on him, “You’re so pretty.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his head. He extends his hand to you, helping you off, “Now close your eyes.”

“Awe, I thought you didn’t like surprises,” you jest with a fake puff of your cheek.

He squishes the air out of your cheeks with just one hand, thumb one the right cheek and the rest on the left, “But you do. So close your eyes, or you’ll spoil it for yourself.”

“Alright, alright. Feisty tonight!” With a laugh, you close your eyes. The familiar hold of his fingers around your shoulders melts you to your core. You’re guided away from the side of the road and down a little hill, “Shoei, where are we—”

“Quit yapping,” he barked, “It’s not far. Watch your step, there’s a branch.”

Soon enough, you both stopped. The city sounds were drowned out by the songs of cicadas. With his permission, you open your eyes.

The soft surface of water spread out across the expanse before you. The reflection of the stars above, seen only miles out from the city, came to greet the earth by the grace of the lake. Surrounded by trees and darkness, the only light was the moon and the colony of fireflies searching for their mates.

You open your mouth, then close it, squeezing your lips together as you bite back the lump in your throat. Everything had been so overwhelming lately. The world, work, keeping up with your own needs. Barou helped you so much, but even with his help, you could fall behind on yourself. But here, it felt still. It was serene. The air was cool now that night overtook the sky and the breeze picked up the lake’s chill.

“Gimme,” Barou’s voice snapped you out of your mind.

“Huh?”

“The jacket. Give it to me,” His fingers gestured to hand the leather demon suit over, “You don’t like wearing it, anyway.”

“I—” You rub your eyes free of the moisture piling at the lashes, “Yeah. It feels gross, and I’m sweaty.”

“Then let’s get it off of you,” Barou tugs the zipper down steadily and peels it from your arms. He folds it neatly and places it on top of the bike seat. You feel his eyes roam your form, dressed in a tank top and shorts. The sweat along the surface of your décolleté radiant with scattered light. He drank you like a finely crafted wine, admiring every little bit that you offered him.

As always, he seldom said how he felt, but you could always tell by the softness of his eyes and the ease at which he kissed you that you were a treasure he would never let go of. You were his gem that he polishes each day for the joy of seeing it shine. When he wipes away your grateful tears with a loose grin, you know for certain that he didn’t just care about soccer.

[melonteee]

ooooo is it garp hating hour? i know i know, grey morality and all that but i just literally cant fathom 'raising' a kid (well mostly throwing them at other people to raise just to come rough em up every few months), having them at one point ask if they deserve to live WHEN THEYRE NOT EVEN 13 YET because of someone elses actions, and then like. blaming them for their impending execution when they finally find a purpose that brings them happiness. and still acting like you loved them or truly cared for them.

especially when ace found HUNDREDS of people who loved him enough to put their lives on the line to save him AS A PIRATE, while his surrogate marine gramps literally sits there and watches.

pirates who then had enough love and honor to then ensure aces beloved little bro survives even after ace himself dies

bro. he wasnt happy at all under you. youre now THREE FOR THREE, no marines. the problem is you, garp. (and the system, but obviously)

i try to be impartial and understand where characters are coming from, but garp just... he knows too much! seen too many of the atrocities commited by marines and the world gov! he should 100% know better by this point!

garp is my breaking point baaaaaby!

(sengoku is also on thin ice but eh)

No fr you're right about all of this, Garp has an extreme victim complex to me.

"Ohhh why does my own son hate me?! Why does my grandson defy me!! Oh woe is me!! They just need to be marines!!!"

Maybe you're being a cunt towards them with your own bootlicking beliefs you STUPID!! STUPID GILF!!!! Sexy outside but a YUCKY INSIDE!!

However I think the point of Garp is he doesn't want to BELIEVE the marines are so bad to the point they're unfixable. Garp DOES see bad things in the marines, and he WANTS to fix it - but in doing so, he's made Koby! Who is now ALSO deliberately blind to the filthy ways of the marines. Koby HAS seen it (such as Captain Morgan and Akainu), and because he's following Garp's example, Koby believes he CAN fix the system from the inside with some elbow grease.

We KNOW the marines cannot be fixed from the inside, we have marines like Smoker who also know this and marches to the beat of his own drum due to how much he hates the marines and their false, taught sense of justice. Garp is even a VICE ADMIRAL and he STILL can't change whatever the hell he wanted to change!

Garp truly believes there IS justice in the marines, or justice in BEING a marine, and this is why he's such a bootlicker. He's an old man stuck in his old ways, and instead of seeing merit in or UNDERSTANDING the revolutionary army his son has started - he's decided that's the WRONG way to go about justice.

Garp believes old people are not worth saving or not welcome in the future, and in doing so, he's internalised this as an old man HIMSELF and refuses to change. It's kind of sad, but to me, Garp just doesn't want to realise he's been in the wrong his entire life.

[i-rove-rock-n-roll]

An excerpt from Down We Fall

The wedding was going to be the highlight of the day. Everyone was excited, gossiping on how it was going to be the most splendid sight. The wedding of the century, now that the prince and princess had finally decided to get their act together.

At 5 o’clock that morning, the steward was wide awake, checking and rechecking his list as he absentmindedly struggled with his shoes. The first visit was to the kitchens. He watched the crew running back and forth, gathering ingredients and mixing bowls. The head chef already barking out orders, despite being the smallest woman in the kitchen, the steward couldn’t help but be amazed at her sudden power over the normally unruly kitchen staff.

“Thatcher, start making the hor'dourves-no, not alone you stupid boy, Janice will help you, won’t you Janice? Maurice, start peeling some potatoes, Michael can’t be the only one doing what I ask--Thatcher, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT MESS IN FRONT OF YOU? HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT AN HOR D'OEUVRE LOOKS LIKE? DON’T GIVE ME THAT ‘I WASN’T TAUGHT’ BULL, YOU’VE WORKED HERE FOR SIXTEEN YEARS!”

The steward slowly backed out, beginning to get the inkling of what the phrase ‘fear for your life’ meant.

Kitchens, check.

The next stop was the ballroom, where they had begun to divvy up the decorations for the castle. The steward entered to arguing, but thankfully, no screaming. Yet. The taller of the decorators seemed as though he had swallowed helium, his voice getting higher and more shrill with each statement from his partner.

“If we had just started with a few of the decorations each day this week--”

“IF WE HAD STARTED ANY EARLIER THE DECORATIONS WOULD BE SOILED.” the man cried, sharp arm movements punctuating the air between them as his partner rolled her eyes. “WE’RE RISKING ENOUGH AS IT IS DOING THEM ALL THIS EARLY IN THE DAY!” His partner raised an eyebrow.

“Are you finished?” The tall decorator nodded, suddenly sullen. The steward blinked, baffled by the sudden change in attitude, and shook his head. Nearby, a man hanging some of the decorations from the ceiling reached a little too far and the ladder tipped, crashing.with a force to shake the castle. The decorators rounded, prepared to yell at the man, before they heard his screams and looked up, seeing the man clinging to the rafters for dear life. The steward excused himself politely, though none of the people within the room had even noticed he was there, and he quickly made himself scarce.

Ballroom, check.

By noon he was only a little over halfway through the list, having found the florist to be quite normal. Stomach growling, he didn’t dare swipe much more than a sandwich from the kitchens. Not after he saw the head chef...he shuddered. She looked about ready to pull a Hansel and Gretel on that Thatcher kid. He suspected the only thing holding her back was that it would slow up the production time. Not to mention she'd ruin the oven, which was brand new.

Munching absently on a pear he snagged from a passing waiter, he continued on his way.

The tailor was an older gentleman, that spent more time jabbering about how each cut of fabric would've clashed in his day. How one couldn't pair a satin ribbon with anything lace of a particular color, unless you wanted to look the part of a true fashion disaster. The steward nodded politely, not listening to a word, and asked how the outfits looked. Satisfied when he saw no stains and that they weren't going to (hopefully) catch fire anytime soon, he bid the tailor adieu (even as the old man was spinning another tale about the woes of how no one wore plaid or navy anymore).

Tailor, check.

The reception was to be held both indoors and outdoors, with tables set up in the pavilion for the royalty, and in the garden, for the peasantry. The only real difference was that one group had to contend with possible insect invasions and maybe a paper lantern catching fire in the wind. Both groups, however, would get cake.

The steward counted the tables, missing the look on the one man's face when he told him he was a couple short, as the extended family was, in fact, invited. He just barely missed the screaming of “Where are we going to get another table?!” when he stepped out.

Pavilion, check.

The gardeners had spend ages trimming each tree and bush to round perfection. The didn't bother with anything intricate, as they had barely agreed on whether the bushes should be round or square, and nearly punched the man who asked why not make them triangles and be done with it.

Garden, check.

Blushing bride and groom?

He had just made to go find them when they came to him. Actually, they came out the window. Flew out of the window really. Glass shattered everywhere, and the steward could see the glint of metal as the soon to be married couple drew swords and tried to slaughter each other.

His quill snapped.

Of course nothing could go perfect.

[pilferingapples]

Almost every adaptation gets Javert’s parental issues backwards. He doesn’t hate criminals because of his parents, he hates his parents because he was taught to hate criminals. It’s implied that Javert never even knew his parents, if I remember correctly, since he was raised by the state. He doesn’t want revenge on them for not being there for him, and he certainly wouldn’t be emotionally devastated at being forced to arrest them— the Brick explicitly says the opposite. His parents mean nothing to him; they’re just another set of people he’s morally obligated to put behind bars.

Ooh let me answer in two parts!

" ...he certainly wouldn’t be emotionally devastated at being forced to arrest them— the Brick explicitly says the opposite. His parents mean nothing to him; they’re just another set of people he’s morally obligated to put behind bars"

Yep yep yep! It's one of the defining traits of his character--all criminals are just criminals, and he's made his mind up a long time ago on that. Making Javert sympathetic and respectful towards Fantine or Gavroche or any of the class of the miserables -- at least before his derailment-- is one of the most offputting things a straight adaptation can do, IMO; it's missing a major point about the character and the message of the story regarding social damnation.

That said , I do think looser adaptations have some leeway there--it's pretty clear that Javert does have some issues with his parents/childhood that he is very decidedly NOT working through, and that's fair to explore in things like Owarinaki Tabiji.

So on to the precise details of his childhood--let me acknowledge first that I am far from the fandom's best Javert History scholar and very open to being corrected on errors here, but I *think* all we really get about them or his childhood is from Vague Flashes on the Horizon, and it's this:

Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,-- those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an inspector. During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of the South.

...he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys, and would have denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban.

--So I think that last bit means his mother is out on parole, the way Valjean was supposed to be? It's a translation of course but I'm pretty sure that's what the ban referred to there is. So all we get is that he was born inside a jail (he was born with men like you, he is from the gutter too--) , his mother was in prison and at some point was released, and at some point in his young adulthood he joined the police and worked in the South. How long he stayed with his mother, whether he ever knew his father, and so on, is all up to interpretation.

Given his parallels with Eponine, I think it's very fair to read him as having had a rough childhood with his mother at least into the age when he'd be old enough to remember it ; but also fair to assume he was basically parentless from infancy or toddlerhood. We just don't get much info!

[liddolwhynot2000]

Falling

____________________________________

Summary: Cause Levi can't help falling in love with you.

____________________________________

Pairing: Levi Ackerman X Reader

____________________________________

Levi sat on a log, elbows on his knees and hands clasped together, staring at nothing in particular. The sun was setting, but he hardly cared to watch it, too lost in thought.

When Kenny had taken him under his wing all those years ago, he had taught Levi plenty of things. How to use a knife, how to make ‘friends’. Some lessons he preferred to forget, while others he latched on to as a way of life. There was one lesson in particular that he would spend the rest of his life following, almost religiously.

Violence is always the answer.

Hungry? Threaten someone into giving you food. Being held at gun point? Kick the crap out of them. Not getting the answers you want? Torture. Rip out their nails. Break their back.

That was the guideline for surviving in the underground. Dominate everyone using brute force. Make a reputation so fierce that only senseless morons would challenge you. Admittedly, it had worked well for him. He had become the top dog in that dreary, dark hell. Able to eat three times a day, wear decent clothes. He, Farlan and Isabel had survived well for a good amount of time. That is, until they had their first taste of sunlight.

In hindsight, taking that mission had been a foolish mistake. He had lost his cherished friends, and while he now got along with his cormades, it just wasn’t the same. Other parts of his life, however, continued to remain as before.

The surface may have lacked the unhinged lawlessness of the underground, but Levi still utilized his usual methods of living, albeit more legally.

In his years in the military, he had used his superior physical strength to instill fear and discipline. Cadets, high ranking members of the military, even the Queen often cowered before him in fear. Any other man would enjoy the thrill of it, reducing the most powerful people in his country into meek versions of themselves, unable to properly look him in the eye.

And he did. A part of him would always be smug about it, solely because underground filth like him, who had been expected to waste away his life, had managed to climb to a position at the top that no else held.

But it was tiring now. He had become so.. lonely. Everyone he had let into his heart left him. His sweet mother, crazy Kenny, his siblings in all but blood, Farlan and Isabel. Here he was, surprisingly wealthy and popular, but missing his precious people.

Alas, he would never let someone in like that again. The rest of his life was destined to be spent alone, threatening everyone in hearing range and dying on the battlefield. And, with a sigh, he accepted this miserable fate.

What he didn’t know was that meeting you would lead to him burning down his self established fate to ashes and dust, with his very own hands.

____________________________________

Why you had even thought about approaching him was incredulous, Levi mused to himself. An exhausted soldier sitting in the dark of a room, staring mindlessly at the table. He had showed no expression on his face but still, normal people would have been scared off just at the sight of him. You weren’t, and that’s how the two of you met.

You had made him some nice herbal tea and brought it to him. Giving him some plain biscuits along with the beverage. He had eyed you suspiciously, not willing to entertain you with even a thank you. Your intentions had been unclear to him at the time.

What was a beautiful woman like you, even Levi privately admitted to double taking at the sight of you, doing offering tea to him of all people. Kindness didn’t exist in people, he had never seen it in anyone besides his mother and Isabel. So you probably had a hidden motive. Maybe you needed a favour? Or were trying to integrate yourself in with the higher ups for better pay? Or maybe one of those dumb admirers that thought they could change him?

Once you left, after giving him another smile and telling him you hoped he would enjoy the tea, he decided to dismiss all thoughts of you. He wouldn’t help you with shit.

He did enjoy the tea though.

____________________________________

For the next two months, he began seeing you everyday. Not by choice, he told himself. He had accidentally made it a habit to sit in that room, all by himself, everyday, at the exact same time.

And everyday, without fail, you would bring him tea and biscuits. Sometimes there was a cake slice, or cookies, or even a nice meal, like rice with boiled vegetables.

He learned about you in that time. Your name, for one, which sounded oddly pleasing on his tongue. You were a garrison cook, tasked with making meals for the garrison engineers, whose office had been established right next to the Survey Corps headquarters. It explained why he kept seeing you everyday. A part of him had been strangley thrilled to hear that, as if the idea of seeing you everyday was something he actually wanted.

You never flinched around him or stuck around to talk to him for too long. Bringing him his tea with that sweet smile, asking about his day, wishing him well. You never made a face or took his obvious reluctance to talk to heart. His short answers and grunts, his crass language, they all had no effect on you. It was clear you really wanted nothing from him. No favours, no urge to get close. You were just being… kind.

And as someone who had hardly experienced genuine kindness in his life, he would let you continue. Besides, it was the first time someone was behaving around him without Levi having to force them. It was too refreshing for him to stop.

____________________________________

Levi eyed the tray in front of him warily. There was a cup of steaming tea, some sugar cubes he could add, a few biscuits and two sandwiches. He hadn’t touched it yet, even though he knew it would taste amazing, much like everything else you made. But he was rather preoccupied, unable to make sense of what he was feeling.

You hadn’t showed up today. He had waited, expecting that knock on the door, your light footsteps as you entered the room, your cheery voice to greet him. Instead, it had been another cook. Levi had scowled as the girl had blushed and stuttered around him, putting the tray on the table, not quite able to talk to him, or look him in the eye.

‘C-captain I was told to give this to you-’

His irritation had shot up through the roof and with his usual impatience, he snarled at the girl, asking for your whereabouts. Initially, he got no solid response out of her, because she didn’t know. But in the end, as she made to leave, terrified beyond belief of him, she said something that had his heart inexplicably stopping.

‘Sh-she might be o-on a date. That’s why- why she didn’t bring it today. I think’

Now here he was, eyeing the delicious spread infront of him. Except he didn’t have much of an appetite. His mind was jumbled up, unable to comprehend why he felt so.. Hurt?

Were you actually out on a date right now? Allowing some shitty lowlife to woe you? He felt resentful, unsure of himself. It shouldn’t matter to him. It wouldn’t matter to him. He refused to allow it to.

With a grimace, he put his feelings aside and began eating. He knew better then to waste good food.

____________________________________

The next day, when you came with the tray, you told him you had gone to visit your cousin who had given birth to a baby girl. The relief he had felt, knowing that you hadn’t been making goofing off with some hormonal piece of shit, had stunned him. He continued to suprise himself, by behaving like he had been possessed. As evidenced by how before you could leave, his hand shot out to grab your wrist and the words escaped his mouth before he could stop them.

‘Oi, stay. Let’s…eat together. ’

Your eyes had widened, no doubt shocked that he actually wanted you around. With a tentative smile, you nodded in agreement, taking the seat next to him. You carried the conversation, with him silently listening and interjecting his own opinion. Somehow, he had even managed to make you giggle, causing a warmth to spread in his chest. Before the two of you knew it, the tray had been emptied of its contents, yet neither of you made to leave for at least an hour more.

Later, while sitting in his chair, preparing to sleep, Levi thought back to when he had held your wrist. He marvelled at how soft and delicate you had felt in his grasp, wondering what it would feel like to have those arms hold him. Would you feel just as soft, pressed up against him? He could tell you would be gentle, he knew you possessed no mean or rough bone in your body.

Fantasising about you, and yearning to feel more of you, he drifted off to sleep.

____________________________________

He hated being on sick leave. Abhorred it. He felt useless, couldn’t do shit. Yet here he was, on a one month leave and it was all becuase of his dumbass titan brat.

Eren had been practicing hardening in his titan form, but had positioned himself wrong. He had gotten out of the crystal carcass too soon, and the damn thing had toppled over the entire crowd of soldiers standing near by. Which included him. Most had made a get away with their gear, but Erwin, having only one arm, hadn’t been fast enough. Leading to Levi having to save him in the nick of time. And fracturing his left arm and spraining his right leg.

The doctor had banned him from strenuous activity and had made it clear that he would have to spend at least a month taking it extremely easy. His Ackerman bloodline meant that, unlike other normal people, he would be completely okay within a month.

That hadn’t been enough to stop Levi from grumbing or threatening Erwin or calling the doctor an old hag. Once his fury had partially subsdided, he grudgingly accepted that he needed the rest.

He had thought of going to live at the modest house he owned, which was near headquarters. It had been a gift from the Queen, for his part in taking down Zeke Yeager. The new beast titan shifter had gained all his memories and had been instrumental in them winning the war against Marley. Last he checked, Connie had been appointed to the Northern branch, his power better utilised there in case of attacks from behind.

Erwin hadn’t allowed him to leave, insisting he had no one to take care of him and that he would probably start doing push ups after resting for a day. Which was true. Damn that bastard for knowing him so well.

So here he was, stuck in his room, waiting on the annoying brats to give him food three times a day. There was a knock on the door, probably a soldier with his breakfast, having no idea they were about to be on the recieving end of his ire. And God help Eren if he was dumb enough to be standing out that door. He called them in, only to freeze at the sight.

There you stood, that precious smile on your face, holding a tray of food in one hand and a basket. He couldn’t care less about anything else, all he could focus on was the fact that you were standing infront of him. He felt enchanted, he hadn’t seen you the entire week he had been forced to spend at the hospital.

I missed her, Levi realized.

‘Good Morning Levi!…’

You began chattering, asking for his well being, handing him the tray of food. You had brought him a care package full of goodies, which included lemon cookies, his favorite flavour.

‘Why are you here?’

The question had been asked with his usual bland tone, but there was an emotion behind it only he could identify. There was an excitement welling up in him, as though he knew the answer already.

When you told him you had heard about his injury and had wanted to visit him, he had felt pleased and touched. When you continued on and told him that you had offered Erwin to personally take care of him with your usual duties, so that all the other soldiers wouldn’t have to divide the work between them, Levi was stunned.

’.. Since we’re friends, I figured this way I could help you out and.. ’

Levi took a sip of his broth, which tasted far better then the stale soup the kitchen usually served, watching you move around his room. Anyone else would have been physically hauled and thrown out the window by now, doctors orders be damned. Yet he felt okay with you neatly folding his blanket, straightening out things that he hadn’t been able to because of his injury, comfortably taking charge of his room.

For a brief moment, he saw a vision of you taking care of him like this in his house, as his wife.

As you sat before him, drawing him into conversation, Levi decided that having the month off wasn’t going to be as miserable as thought it would be.

And he was right.

Seeing you three times a day, enjoying meals with you, you fussing over him because you caught him doing pull ups, your bell like laughter that rang in his ears long after you went back to work, it all made him feel more then he could ever define.

Remembering you bandaging his arms everyday, your hands gentle, expression sympathetic as you shyly avoided staring at his bare, muscular chest, Levi decided he would have to acknowledge what he was feeling after all.

____________________________________

Love.

He was in love with you.

Levi leaned into his chair, setting down the pen had had been writing with. The realization had struck him suddenly and he needed to process it. He had never felt so alive, so amazed.

It had been a year of knowing you, and without even trying, you had made him fall in love with your very existence.

He cherished any moment of time he could spend with you, and you often haunted his thoughts when he couldn’t see you. You were the one he wanted to see first after getting back from a mission, becuase he knew if anyone gave a fuck about him being alive, it was you.

Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to smile, remembering how you had hugged him that one time. He had seen you straight after a deadly battle, covered in blood and small wounds. You had been so concerned, grabbing him by the hand, dragging him to his room.

He recalled how you had been applying alcohol on the injury at the corner of his mouth, causing him to hiss in pain. Frowning, you had applied it more carefully, then brought your mouth closer and lightly blowed air on the wound to reduce the sting. You had either been too caught up in worrying about him or had pretended not to notice, but his eyes had defintiely darkened at having you in such close proximity. Your lips only inches away from his, a hand resting on his shoulder, it had been an effort to not tug on your wrist and seat you in his lap and starting something he had been craving to. Once you had finished helping him and had decided he was in better condition, you had hugged him, a moment he could never forget.

You were shorter then him, so your head rested on his chest as your arms wrapped wrapped around his back. His arms had a mind of their own, immediately taking the oppurtunity to rest on the small of your waist.

Breathing in your scent, burying his nose in your hair, he had savoured the moment. When you pulled away from him, he had frowned, not liking the tears welling up in your eyes.

‘N-never be so reckless again! I got so worried and..’

You had buried yourself in his arms again, silently crying, berating him for being so careless. Your soft form had been pressed against his rough stature, he had never had someone be so gentle with him, care about him this much.

Back in the underground, doctors often had to be threatened into treating him. He had always used force, but there was no need to use any on you. There never had been. And hopefully, there never would be.

Knock knock

Startled, he snapped out of his day dreaming, chuckling to himself. To think he had gotten so lost in his memories with you..you really had become his everything

Expression neutral, he regained himself and called the soldier in.

Now, if only he could somehow tell you.

____________________________________

A/N: I hope y’all enjoyed this! Maybe I should do a part 2? For the confession? Does anyone want that? Constructive criticism is always welcome. My asks are open so pls send requests. Till next time!

[vampiresuns]

Interlude 1: Do Not Stand Over My Grave And Weep, Part 2

⟡ PART 2: FRIENDS ARE THE FAMILY YOU CHOOSE ⟡

2.2k words. In which Anatole’s friends start uncovering the mystery of his death and sudden reappearance. 

CW: Death and discussions of it.

What to catch up with Anatole’s Apprentice series? You can do that here.

He had met him at University. He had been his friend since he was 18 years old. Anatole and Medea had been Leonore’s first lasting friends, the first people who outside of his family, had taught him permanence was not entrapment. They had filled his life with growth and laughter; he had suffered their woes, he had celebrated their triumphs, he had followed them into Vesuvia despite his original wish to travel the world. 

He still travelled, but he always came back to them. Medea and Anatole weren’t just friends: they were family now. When Leonore closed his eyes he could see them holding hands and jumping into the water one summer evening in Prakra. He could see Medea using his thigh as a pillow under a tree. He could see Anatole dancing. He could see Medea and Anatole dressed to the nines for their new Court jobs. 

He would know them anywhere. He would know them by the way their steps sounded alone.

It took Leonore some moments to remember where he was, Octavia gently nudging him. Sabine, who he didn’t realise had gone, announced themselves again, saying they had lost Anatole’s doppelgänger in the crowd. 

Only it hadn’t been a doppelgänger. Leonore knew his best friend, he knew Anatole when he saw him. 

“No,” he said at last. “No, that’s him. That’s him, Octavia. That was him, and I need to find him.” 

“Leonore, wait! Anatole’s dead.” 

They began bickering about it, Octavia trying to stop Leonore from head diving into a wild goose chase, not realising Selasi, the Baker, was listening to them. 

“Excuse me, forgive me for overhearing, but are you talking about Anatole Radošević? The magician from Moonstone and Jasmine?” 

“Yes! His aunt owned that shop,” Leonore said, jumping to talk to Selasi, who inspected him with a careful eye. 

“I don’t know what prank you’re playing, but he’s alive as can be. I opened a little after the plague subsided and he and Asra have been getting bread from me for three years, almost. They’re attached at the hip, so if you know Asra—“ 

Leonore leaped to shake his hand. “I do know, Asra! Thank you, thank you so much.” 

Selasi tried to tell him Asra wasn’t around, that he was on a journey, but that he could tell him where to find Anatole if he promised he was a friend, but Leonore sprinted towards the shop without letting him finish. Sabine set off to follow Leonore as Octavia called to both of them, which left her standing alone with Selasi. She made some apologies, and Selasi told her not to worry. 

“Where did you say you knew him?”

“Leonore went to University with him,” she said, thinking the least she could do was to assure the man they were Anatole’s friends, not some random people with weird motivations. “I know him through his cousin.”

The baker hummed. “I didn’t know Anatole had any family besides his late Aunt and Asra.”

Something about the way he said it, the casual certainty of it, gave Octavia a chill. She thanked him, and tried to catch up with Sabine and Leonore, not wanting to say anything Selasi might not know. She risked him stopping them, or worse, telling Anatole, which she didn’t think would be a good idea. Octavia just had a bad feeling about it: she didn’t expect people to just know who Anatole was, or had been, that could be conceited. Anatole himself hated being anticipated by his job, wanting to have the opportunity to present himself and do the best he could do. 

Yet from there to the sureness Selasi had had when he said he didn’t know Anatole had any family besides Paris and Asra? It was weird. The Radošević-Cassano weren’t meant to be separated; if Octavia knew anything about them from Milenko, it was that they were very close knit. The only people in their families that Octavia could think of as not being regarded ever, were Matilda and Krešmir, Vlad’s and Valerius’ late parents, who hadn’t even raised the siblings. All she knew about them was that they were neglectful and Matilda had the idle ennui of someone who was too used to having everything, and was used to using cruelty for fun. 

Milenko had only talked about them a couple of times, and she had never heard the Consul even mention them, let alone Vlad, Anatole’s father. One way or another, the Cassano didn’t detach themselves from their family, nor did the Radošević, and Anatole had only ever been extremely proud of the people who had raised him. That had been their way since the days of Cassano Arianamenzi, the first of them, and she could testify that legacy had not washed away with time. If anything, it had become stronger. So why would Anatole not speak of it?

Unless he didn’t remember them. She had read about such a thing once, doing research for one of her most early plays. A shiver went down her back, making her hug her arms around herself and walk faster.

When Octavia reached the Moonstone Leonore and Sabine were talking to a tall man who seemed to guard the shop. None of them had seen him before, but he seemed to know them; he called them ‘people from before’. 

“You used to give Anatole clementines, which he doesn’t like—” he said. He was tall, covered in a cloak, and had moss green eyes, though they were barely visible.

“He says they taste fake,” Leonore completed.

“So he gave them to me, before— it doesn’t matter. You won’t find him here.”

The only thing stranger than the stranger was that none of them could remember him as they tried to piece their afternoon together. However, Octavia had heard Selasi say Anatole was occupied in the Palace, and perhaps they could try their luck there. 

“Then let’s go,” Leonore said, already standing up. “Maybe Medea knows something we don’t.”

Medea Pryce was the daughter of two archaeologists and the granddaughter of another one. Both her father’s and her mother’s family had settled in Vesuvia some generations ago because its cultural diversity and rich history was good for the archaeological craft. Anatole wasn’t the first Radošević-Cassano she had met — her Grandmother was acquainted with Bastiste Cassano, one of the Cassano elders, and thus with Consul Valerius, whom Batiste called her spoiled grandnephew. Medea’s parents, on the other hand, were acquainted with Atanasie Radošević and Aurora Tesfaye, uncle and mother of Anatole’s cousin Milenko. 

So when she met him at University, which she had begun in Prakra, just as he had done, the surname called to her immediately. Discovering they would course the exact same program, even if they had different aspirations and goals, another pleasant surprise. It would be nice to have someone to know, as Medea liked making friends.

What a friend she had made of him and Leonore, who shared housing with them. Anatole was one of those people who had the energy of a handsome stranger one shared enlightening conversation with, yet then never saw again. Debonair and hopeful, he was passionate and inspiring, a devoted friend and nothing if not extraordinary. He had his shortcomings, like everyone, but that wasn’t the way one measured their friends. 

Seasons came and time passed. They both studied and apprenticed in Balkovia for six months, and then they moved on into Vesuvia, Leonore following them, to their surprise. They laughed and hurt, they fell in love with their own people, they held each other, and Medea and Anatole drafted their plans for the future. It would be a great future, they were sure of it. Anatole’s self-introductory speech for the Vesuvian Court was a gem, Medea believed it so. They liked to fantasise about one day becoming Consul and Head of Staff, with all the things they thought they could help with, working together for the people of their City. 

No matter the crashes and reality checks, the hardships or how many times Medea had seen Anatole stand up to the Count and the new Courtiers, they held hands through it and continued onwards: The World and it’s calling of completion met its perfect match in Anatole’s Ace of Swords coloured Strength.

Then the Plague came and Anatole died, and Medea was left with all their plans, and no one to implement them with. 

After his death, things only got worse. She could tell something was going on with the Consul, but she wasn’t close enough to him to know what. She was somewhat closer to Councilwoman Cassiopeia, but she didn’t seem to know what was going on with her cousin either. The Courtiers hadn’t done anything of value for the City in three years, and all that Valerius ever seemed to do was to keep it afloat. The Court was destroyed, and with the Countess as lost as they all were, Medea didn’t know where they would end.

When she heard the Countess had found a new advisor she was thrilled. Fresh air was what the Court needed, and by the first weeks of this advisor around the Countess, it was clear they were doing her good, even if she had heard the advisor had had a rocky introduction with the Court. It seemed like it, because she knew from first hand experience that the Consul had come in furious to his office, refusing to speak to anyone, except to Cassiopeia, whom Medea was sure forced him to speak rather than him wilfully giving her any information.

He had only said something about something in poor taste, and how had he let the Countess know he would not tolerate it, but he didn’t say anything else. 

Her turn to meet the advisor came the next morning. It happened by accident, when she was delivering some documents to the Council of Vesuvia. Meet was a lax word for it, ‘seeing’ him, was much more appropiate: with his light golden blond hair, and bespoke clothes. The same unmistakable black eyes and the scar across the bridge of his nose. The same stride, the same height, the same face, the same looks. 

Her friend, her own dearest Aelius Anatole had walked into the Consul’s office seeking for an explanation about the way he had been received in Court. From there on, the morning was mayhem, absolute mayhem, and only now that Medea was sitting alone she could finally process it. 

“Anatole” had introduced himself fully, his name the right name, but the Consul wouldn’t hear it, immediately throwing himself at the throat of the “second-rate witch” for daring to use that name. Anatole continued to insist that was his name. The more the argument extended, it was clear to everyone involved that that was Anatole, even to the headstrong Consul — his panicked eyes gave him away.

Medea knew her friend, her friend had always had a presence, even if he wasn’t always aware of it. He still had it, he still stood in the same way the Consul did, he still turned his eyebrows in the same way, and the way he spoke. 

What he spoke of, too. 

The breaking point came when the Consul grabbed him from the shoulders, demanding to know what he wanted from him. Then, Medea saw him do something he hadn’t done in years: she heard the Consul speak Balkovian in public. Medea’s grasp with the language was enough to know he asked two things, two crucial things, that anyone who wasn’t Anatole couldn’t answer. 

Anatole answered the first one, something about a sword’s name, in his perfectly native Balkovian, looking pale and sickly-greenish. Cassiopeia tried to interject, but the Consul wouldn’t listen to anyone. Then the Consul asked his second question, something about ‘what was the tree’, or ‘what was the name of the tree’, and nothing else. Medea wasn’t sure. 

Anatole replied both of the questions: His first reply being ‘grapevine’, followed by a choked up ‘cult of Dionysus’; the second reply was ‘a beech tree’, looking like he was about to vomit after the words left his mouth. 

“Valeriy?” He said, as the Consul looked at him in horror, still holding him by the shoulders. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

Anatole did pass out, and the Consul, blushing cherry red as he realised the whole scene had been in front of half the Court office at his care, yelled at them to know what the hell were they doing, if not call for someone to take this boy to a bed. After it, the Consul stormed off, Cassiopeia power-walking behind him as she demanded an explanation from her cousin, an explanation the Consul refused to give, waving dismissively at her.

“Don’t you wave like that at me, Valeriy, unlike you, I know my own damn nephew when I see him.”

“Don’t call me that here.”

“Valeriy Radošević, I will call you however I damn please! Come back here!”

Medea didn’t stay to watch the rest. The Court was in unrest, it was so much that it had stirred the four other weirdos into watching and making the oddest commentary for anyone to hear. Medea didn’t need an in with them to know they knew something they all didn’t, and simply thought of the Court Staff too inconsequential for them to spare them half a thought.  

As if possessed by a thunderbolt, Medea stood up from where she was sitting as she ruminated. She needed answers, and she needed to talk about this to someone. She had an idea: if anyone she was close enough knew a considerable amount of death and ghosts, it was Amparo Cassano, but first she needed to talk to Leonore. They had supported each other in these 4 years Anatole had been dead, or presumed as much. Anything she did, it would be with Leonore. 

As she turned around after grabbing her coat, Leonore was calling her name. 

“Sabine is waiting for us at our place, they wanted to ask some questions first so I ran here. Octavia is trying to find Amparo, or anyone really. There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Good,” she said, as she grabbed his arm and began walking out of the Palace, “so do I, but not here. The Courtiers are around, and they cannot be trusted.”

[bosspigeon]

hurts like hope

Pairing: M!Detective/Mason Word Count: 3100 Summary: Detective Juniper Fenn tries to figure out just what the limit on his incorrigible hope is, and when he’ll finally be able to stomp it out.

Hello I Am Here With More Self-Indulgent Character Study Nonsense. For $8000 a month, I Will Stop.

CW for vague descriptions/references to sex

Nothing has ever hurt Juni like hope has.

He wouldn’t call himself an optimist by any means. He’d probably settle on “optimistic pessimist” if pressed, which means always expecting the worst, because at least then he’s either right or pleasantly surprised.

But in spite of that philosophy, there’s a stupid, naive part of him that won’t die, no matter how much it’s beaten down—his dumb, desperate hope.

He hoped doing the best he could in school, never getting into trouble, never arguing with Mum or making her feel guilty for leaving him behind would show her he was good enough to acknowledge in more than impersonal letters and distracted phone calls on major occasions.

He was always disappointed.

He hoped working a job he didn’t care about, that didn’t suit someone as soft-hearted and anxious as he was, would make him feel closer to the memory of his father, would make him feel like he was doing something good enough to make people care about him like they did Dad.

Disappointed again.

He hoped letting Bobby walk all over him, use him, and placate him with saccharine-sweet murmurs of “Oh, angel, you’re so good to me” would make him see Juni as more than just a convenience, a doormat and a stepping stone to bigger, better things that would always matter more than Juni’s ever mattered to anyone.

The repetition got exhausting, after a while.

When he meets Mason, he thinks he’s given up on hoping. At that point, he just wants something for himself. He wants to be selfish. He wants to be wanted, even if it’s just for a tumble or two. Even if it’s just because his stupid, special blood suddenly means he’s catnip for supernaturals. Even if it doesn’t mean anything.

I’m doing this for me, he tells himself when Mason’s touching him for the first time, when strong, calloused hands are dancing up his sides, and he tries to shrink away, suck in his gut, and Mason squeezes with a pleased little growl that makes Juni whimper. I’m doing something for me, for once in my fucking life.

The lights are off. They crashed through the door without turning anything on, but Juni knows Mason can see him just fine anyway, and he wants to squirm, wants to hide, but Mason distracts him with a very thorough kiss, his touches gentle until Juni responds positively, his sharp eyes picking him apart, like figuring out what the detective likes is the only assignment that’s ever mattered.

And then Mason calls him stunning, and he’s done for.

He’s sure that’ll be it. One and done, and Mason will forget all about the messy, bumbling detective now that he’s whet his appetite. It hurts to think about, it hurts to hope, so he doesn’t.

(That’s a lie. He does. He always does, because he’s stupid.)

He tries to bury the hope like he’s done before, but it’s no use. Every time Mason sits as close to him as possible without physically touching him, every time he gives him one of those long, smoky looks, every time he puts out a cigarette when Juni asks or just doesn’t light one at all, every time he touches Juni with a gentleness that feels almost reverent, like Juni is something worth treating carefully, it fights back harder, hopes louder. In just a few months, the vampire’s got Detective Juniper Fenn’s fragile little heart on a string, and he doesn’t seem to know it.

If he did, would he even care?

Juni gets his answer before long.

He’s only seen me naked.

He told himself he wouldn’t hope. He wasn’t hoping. He knows better. He should know better.

But he hoped, and it hurt, and it’s exactly what he deserves, isn’t it? Once bitten, twice shy, and all that, but Juni’s been bitten so many times, and he never shies enough for it to matter. He walks right on into the hurt with open arms, like a moth to a flame, to a fucking bug zapper, and just licks his wounds until the next flame comes along to reduce him to ash all over again.

When will he learn?

If nothing else, he’s resilient. It’s one of the few things he’s got going for him. He knows how to roll with the punches and pretend everything’s fine, because he’s been doing it since he was old enough to know crying for his Mum wouldn’t do anything but give him a headache. So he runs out of Haley’s in tears—she’s known him since school, so she knows he’s a crybaby and won’t tell a soul—but at least he knows how to calm himself down before he walks into the station. He plasters on a smile, cracks a few jokes, and everything’s fine and dandy.

And then Juni’s fucking ceiling explodes and his room floods, because nothing can go right in his life. At least it wasn’t some supernatural attack this time, he supposes. Small mercies.

Of course, it’s got to be Mason who greets him, when he’s soaked to the skin and covered in plaster, and still recovering from seeing Mr. Yu naked.

And Mason apologizes.

The hope he thought had finally, finally died the slow, painful death it deserved springs back to life in his chest like one of those inflatable clown punching bags. He wants to be annoyed, because an apology doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot if you don’t even know why you’re apologizing, and it feels more like Mason’s blaming Juni for having feelings (stupid, stupid feelings) rather than actually taking accountability for causing hurt, but he’s an idiot, so of course he reaches out, takes Mason’s hand, and asks the dumbest question he’s asked in his life. And he still has to Google literally every odd sound his car makes, because the poor thing is held together with duct tape and dreams at this point.

“What does this mean for us?”

And he’s blown off again, and when the hope shrivels up this time, he wants to grind it into the dirt with his heel, salt the earth so nothing grows there again, because really, when is he going to fucking learn? He wonders how Mum just turns off her feelings, and if that sort of thing can be taught. He wonders if she’d make the time to teach him, now that she’s “trying.”

He wonders if Dad was as much of a raw nerve of a person as he is, but it’s not as if he can ask anyone about it.

"You two… One of you is going to have to make the big leap, and he has no idea how."

Felix has never been shy about needling Juni about his ridiculous and obvious whatever-it-is with Mason (calling it a crush seems as childish as it is reductive, since he doubts it can be called a crush anymore once you’ve, uh, had sex) but this time it comes out... Softer. Gentler. Definitely annoyed, groaned out with a hearty eye roll, as if the two of them are personally responsible for all of Felix’s woes, but still... kind. Kinder than he expected, and that is enough to throw him off for Felix to leave him behind before he can even shake him and ask him what the hell that’s supposed to even mean.

No idea how?

Mason’s confusion when he apologized strikes a new chord, suddenly. Mason doesn’t know how he fucked up, just that he did. In a normal circumstance, with a normal guy, Juni would assume he was just being a dick. Of course he didn’t do anything he saw as wrong, he’d just be apologizing to get back into Juni’s good graces—and also his pants. It was certainly Bobby’s MO.

But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? And Mason’s not a normal guy.

Juni doesn’t want to think about what he saw in the mirror at the carnival, but if he were any good at not thinking about things that upset him, he wouldn’t be in this mess. He squeezes his eyes closed and shakes his head, trying to clear it of the splashes of red, of the screaming, and he swallows until he can calm himself down.

At least he can distract himself with drumming up signatures for the blood drive. He thinks he can. But Mason is there, and he’s distracting, aloof and unamused and annoyingly gorgeous, and Juniper Fenn never professed to be a terribly strong man. There’s a gut-deep urge that draws him to the vampire, an itch under Juni’s skin to get close, poke at that sneering facade and see the softer bits underneath.

Juni’s seen so many of those softer bits, far more than he thought he could ever get when he tumbled into bed with Mason for the first time. He honestly expected to be ignored entirely once he gave him what he was after in the first place, but instead he was given little fragments of something more, and sentimental idiot he is, he’s been hoarding them and trying to cobble together something from the scraps he’s been given. So he drifts closer, pulled helplessly into Mason’s orbit, and he doesn’t even know what to say, so he just laughs awkwardly and needles Mason about not helping.

Which… works, somehow?

It doesn’t exactly go where he’s expecting it to go, conversation-wise, and he’s left reeling with Mason’s stark, shameless honesty. There’s something that warms him, knowing that the vampire seems to, if nothing else, respect him, in his own way? That anyone, much less someone as difficult to impress as Mason, thinks he’s good enough? Not just good enough, but ‘better than pretty much anyone’ he knows? Juni’s known Mason long enough at this point to understand some things about him, and one of the most obvious is how loyal he is. Loyalty is everything to Mason, and he’s fiercely protective of those that have earned it. 

Juni’s fingers are slack enough with surprise that Mason can take the board from him and wander off to frighten the general populace into signing up for the blood drive, and Juni is left with his heart fluttering in a very damning way.

Don’t be an idiot, he tells himself fiercely, shaking his head as if that will rid himself of the pointlessly painful affliction he’s tried for years to shrug off. Just because he likes you as a person doesn’t mean he wants anything else with you.

Whatever weirdness still lingers between the two of them, Unit Bravo’s company makes what would have been a really boring, lonely task actually pretty fun, between Felix dancing around and chatting happily at any citizen of Wayhaven drawn into his orbit, Adam and Nate working together like a well-oiled machine to collect and transfer signatures, and Mason looking genuinely confused whenever someone is brave enough to weather his thunderous expression for the chance to chat with him, however briefly.

It’s nice to be with them all, and their comfortable rapport and playful banter makes it surprisingly easy for Juni to brush his confusing feelings aside and just be, for a while. At least until the banter halts sharply, and every eye is looking over his shoulder. “Hello, angel.”

Juni closes his eyes and stiffens, jaw clenching as a shudder ripples through him. No, no, no, not him. Not today.

Juni's relationship with Bobby was never terribly comfortable, but he’s always been something of a boiling frog cautionary tale. Bobby is not the sort of person who ever turns off the persona. He was rarely ever just Bobby, and Juni knows that hasn't really changed. While they dated, even when they were dumb kids, Juni was always stuck in the shadow cast by someone so desperate to stand in a spotlight they stepped on everyone they claimed to love in order to feel even a shred of that artificial warmth. Juni supposes he wasn’t much different, only the artificial warmth he craved came from Bobby.

He has no idea why Bobby is still so hung up on him. Juni always got the feeling he was never more than the road of least resistance  to Bobby. He was easy. Low-maintenance. Didn’t kick up a fuss over being talked over and ignored, because not only was he used to that sort of thing, he was just so grateful to be anyone’s anything, he’d let the man get away with murder just to keep that illusion of happiness.

“What the hell did you just call him?” Mason snarls, stalking to Juni’s side. Juni’s trying to keep calm, trying not to turn into a complete disaster of a person under the sudden stress, but his fluttering awareness of the vampire is crashing into his shrieking fear of confrontation and turning into a messy cocktail that he knows all four vampires can sense. Vaguely, and a little frantically, he wonders if he just smells like anxiety all the time, if anxiety has a smell. It probably does.

“I… always call him that.”

He does, always has, and back when Juni was blindly obsessed with everything he pretended Bobby was, he convinced himself it was cute. Looking back, it always felt sleazy and fake, but Juni’s a master of nothing more than he’s a master of ignoring his own discomfort.

“Not anymore you don’t.” Mason takes another step forward, and for a moment Juni’s terrified he’s going to start a goddamned brawl in the middle of the square. There’s a mean little part of him that wouldn’t completely hate that, but thankfully that’s outweighed by the sensible part that knows he’d be the one stuck dealing with the aftermath. He’s reaching out to try and stop Mason from escalating things further when Adam, thankfully, intercedes.

And then Mason returns to Juni’s side, and a strong arm slips around his waist and hauls him close. His heartbeat goes crazy, and he can only be grateful that none of Unit Bravo are telepathic, because he’s sure his brain is making godawful dial-up noises. It’s a struggle to maintain politeness, but he does his best. Bobby, at least, seems to realize now is not a good time to try and pick at Juni’s defenses, with four government agents backing him up, one of whom has a possessive arm looped pointedly around him.

"Just because he's being polite, doesn't mean he wants you here.” Well, Mason’s greatest skill is reading people, and he’s probably figured out that Juni’s go-to defense mechanism is to pretend everything is fine and dandy and smile, smile, smile no matter what. Still, his protectiveness (if that’s what it is?) makes Juni’s stomach squirm. Mason’s almost baring his teeth at Bobby, who hopefully will not notice that his canines are a bit sharper than a normal human’s should be. “So piss off.”

Thankfully, Bobby is the sort of person who doesn’t like to start fights he’s not sure he can win, so he leaves with, of course, a sleazy parting shot that makes Juni shudder. He really, really hopes Bobby doesn’t find him when he’s alone. He’s got enough mental stress on his plate at the moment, thank you very much, Bobert.

He tries not to make a sad little noise when Adam ushers them back to work, which means Mason pulls away from him, but he’s not sure how successful he is, given the long look he gets from those smoky grey eyes. He throws himself into the work of cleanup to avoid anymore uncomfortable conversations, because he thinks he’s exceeded his quota for the day.

Of course, he thinks that, but he never knows when to quit, and he winds up sidling up to Mason again, fueled, once again, by hope.

He wants to smack himself with a rolled-up newspaper.

What’s the definition of madness, again? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? He wonders if Mum still has his old therapist on retainer. He bets she’d have a field day with whatever the hell he’s doing now. She’d probably be able to retire with the royalties from a paper picking apart his myriad neuroses and subtle self-destructive tendencies. Maybe he should ring her. Someone deserves to profit from his ridiculous inability to take a bloody hint, and it’s certainly not going to be him.

But, God, Mason’s hands are on him, tugging him in, and he’s helpless under that stormy stare, he had not a chance in hell to resist, not when Mason is being soft, and open, and what the hell does any of this mean?

Juni sometimes wishes he’d resisted when Mason first started teasing him, turned him down, tried to keep things professional and friendly rather than stumbling all over himself at the first sign of interest. He wouldn’t mind at all if Mason just wanted to be friends, because at least then he could still be close, still bask in the steadfast loyalty and companionship of a man who would take a bullet for any one of his team—his family—and Juni could keep his heart intact. But he knows without a doubt he never stood a chance. So he sinks into the attention, leaning into it like a flower towards the sun, bares his soft throat and softer heart and hopes against hope he won’t be torn open and left to bleed.

It’s never gone well for him before, but optimistic pessimism and all that. He’ll either get exactly what he expects and deal with the painful consequences like he always has, plastering on a smile until he can go cry alone and listen to sad music to remember how to face the world again, or the battered, bruised hope that won’t fucking die will finally, finally be rewarded.

Mason’s smile when Juni pitifully asks “That’s it?” leaves him breathless and dizzy in a way just a smile has no right to, but it’s so warm, so open and sweet, it blindsides Juni when he’s already weak. He’s completely helpless. Absolutely done for. Nate’s disapproval is hardly a blip on the embarrassment radar, because Juni is floating.

And, as if Mason isn’t satisfied with just completely rendering him a puddle, he hops off the table with a quick peck on the cheek and saunters off to clean up, leaving Juni’s scrambled thoughts to chase themselves around in a circle. It was just a chaste little kiss. It shouldn’t even mean anything.

Of course, to Juni, it means everything.

For once, just once, without mentally whacking himself with a broom, Juni tentatively allows himself to hope.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Diary of the Writing Raven

Part 3 of the 1000+ follower milestone! A continuation of Raven lore (check out part 1 and part 2 for more context)!

Today, we will peak into the raven’s diary. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. The bulk of the entries are hidden under the cut--because a bird has to keep their secrets under lock and key!

***Warning: Spoilers for the main story campaign, particularly chapter 3 and chapter 4!***

Day 1

I am here. At Night Raven College.

There is a strange man. He calls himself my Uncle. He says that he is so very, very kind...and that he will give me a nest, a place to call home.

Uncle has given me this diary with which to record my thoughts. I will put it to good use.

I am thankful.

Day 32:

Uncle says I cannot stay in the attic writing.

He says I cannot stay in my cage forever.

Uncle says I must go out into the world.

He says it often.

I am scared.

Day 45

Uncle has given me robes.

He smeared things on my face.

There will be a ceremony of sorts, and I must attend.

...I am still scared.

Day 46

The ceremony is over.

I got lost on the way to the Mirror Chamber.

A weirdo chased me.

But...a nice person helped. Then he guided me to the ceremony.

He had very pretty eyes.

His name is Mon-sure Schemer? Mister Jade Leech. I hope I can see him again.

Day 49

I am so fortunate! I have stumbled upon Mister Jade again--this time in the hallway.

There was another Mister Jade with him. His name is actually Mister Floyd. They are brothers--twins, in fact! Eel mermen, too.

They look alike, but their personalities are quite different. It is a curious thing.

Mister Floyd is a little scary. He talks funny, and he is moody--but he promises he does not bite. He has taken to calling me “Black Pearly”.

They say they work at this “Mostro Lounge”, and that I should visit.

I am excited!

P.S. Mister Jade says I do not need to call them misters. I will be doing that!

Day 50

The Mostro Lounge is lovely! It has these glowing jellyfish lights, and seashell decorations. There is cool jazz, and a calming underwater ambiance.

Jade seats me and gives me recommendations. I don’t know what a lot of things on the menu are--Uncle has been feeding me mostly grain and small scraps of meat, trying to get me accustomed to human food.

Jade brings me a thing called Flounder’s Blue. He says it will be easier to hold down than solid food.

Flounder’s Blue comes in a short and stout glass. The liquid itself is actually yellow, with streaks of a blue drip swiped on the inside of the glass, and a blue...circle (?) stuck in, protruding out like a fin.

It tastes...sugary. I do not yet have the words in my vocabulary to properly describe it.

Jade tells me the circle is a “wafer”, the blue is a “syrup”, and the liquid is a “pineapple and cherry juice”.

I am learning many new things today.

Jade is so smart!

Day 54

I almost flopped at giving a presentation to Professor Trein’s class.

Floyd says it’s because I talk strangely, that I stutter and pause too much.

“Why can the Black Pearly write so much, but talk so little?” he asks. “You should tell Jade to tutor you, he’s pretty good with words!”

I have to agree with him. Jade taught me many new words in the Mostro Lounge before. I was embarrassed, but I asked him for help.

He was happy to oblige.

We will meet a few times each week to work on my speaking skills.

Day 59

I tripped and fell in P.E.--I am still no good at running.

Jade was sweet and helped patch me up.

I cried a little.

Okay, a lot.

He stayed with me until I stopped.

Day 71

I have gotten into the habit of visiting the Mostro Lounge every weekend.

The owner, Azul, is friends with the twins. He lets me sit at a table in the corner to do my work and practice speaking.

Jade sits with me and exchanges words.

He has me read stories I have penned aloud.

Sometimes he puts a plate of snacks or a drink in front of me and asks me to taste them, then describe the flavor to him. Other times, he points to people or things in the lounge and asks me to give my thoughts.

Once, he pointed at himself. I told him that he was very patient, that he was someone I trusted.

“Fufu. That is good to hear,” he says.

I also told him that his smile was beautiful.

Day 75

Today, I saw Jade’s true form.

We were swimming today in P.E., but I had to sit out. Ravens cannot swim.

Floyd and Jade were eager to get into the water. Their skin turns blue, and they sprout fins and long eel tails.

...I am not entirely certain why they lack clothing though? It must not be customary for merfolk.

They are having fun in the water.

I am glad.

Day 83

An angry Savanaclaw student came to me in the hallway after Alchemy.

He started to say something about the Leeches and deals, but Floyd told him to stop bothering me. In that moment...Floyd looked like a monster, all teeth and sharp edges.

Jade pulled me away and invited me to go hiking with him.

It sounds fun, but I am concerned about the Savanaclaw student.

Jade says to not fret.

So I listen.

Day 84

There is so much to see in the mountains!

Trees! Streams of water! Rocks! Dirt! Animals! Plants! The sky!

I want to experience everything at once. I am so excitable that I trip over my own two feet a few times--but it’s okay. Jade is always there to help me up.

His favorite thing about nature is mushrooms. He tells me all about them, and the places they like to hide.

I like listening to him talk. His voice is so deep and melodious--and his eyes sparkle when he is excited.

It’s very cute.

Day 86

Jade shows me the mushrooms he is cultivating, and his terrariums.

They are fascinating--each mushroom has its own personality, and each terrarium is like a miniature world.

A thought has wormed its way into my head as of late:

I wonder what it would be like to be a part of his world.

Day 90

It rained.

I shared an umbrella with Jade.

It was a little strange to be squished right next to him.

My heart would not stop pounding, and my cheeks were on fire.

Day 112

The days are growing colder, and shorter.

I wish that time did not fly so fast.

I want to spend more of it with Jade.

I need to return the jacket he lent me.

Day 120

Uncle is worried.

He says I spend too much time with “morally dubious” people.

He questions my ability to judge character.

He does not believe me when I tell him that Jade is a good person.

Uncle warns me to be careful.

I am being careful.

Day 132

Winter has set in.

Jade is kind enough to provide blankets and warm beverages for our study sessions.

At this point, I do not have many issues speaking, but...I do not want to stop. I want to learn more and more. I want to learn more about him.

I enjoy being by his side.

I hope he feels the same.

Day 139

We said our good-byes for the holiday break.

Uncle is taking me with him to a tropical island, and Jade is staying in Octavinelle.

I tell him I will miss him, even if it is just for a few weeks. He looks a bit sad, but he sends me off with a head pat and a smile.

Uncle offers to order me a tropical drink as we board the cruise ship. He tells me not to think of Leeches--those vile, blood-suckers, he calls them.

I say no thank you, but I dream of Flounder’s Blue.

Day 153

The new year has come.

It feels nice to be back on campus, to see Jade again.

We exchanged stories.

Not much happened on my end--I mostly sat indoors and wrote what I could to pass the time. Uncle was often up late into the night, partying and sipping on pina coladas.

Jade says that he helped a few friends and stopped a snake from tearing apart Scarabia. He even shows me a video.

How heroic of him!

I know that I can always count on Jade.

Day 166

I went shopping with Jade.

Floyd was in one of his infamous moods, and Azul is busy with school work--and Jade could not possibly restock ingredients for the Mostro Lounge all by himself.

It was quite busy in town--it made me nervous. I’ve never done well in big crowds of strangers.

Jade said I could hold his hand, if that made me feel any better.

It did.

And it reminded me of the day we first met.

Day 170

I’m still thinking about holding his hand.

Whenever I do, my heart quickens and my forehead begins to bead with sweat.

What is wrong with me?

Have I fallen ill?

Day 185

The students speak excitedly about this holiday known as “Valentime’s Day.” It is a time when you give gifts to the people you care for a lot. A common one is a sweet known as chocolate.

Jade laughed when I told him about it. He said it is actually “Valentine’s Day”, not “Valentime’s Day”. Silly me!

I asked him how many valentines he was expecting.

“None. Oh, woe is me. I appear to be rather unpopular among my peers, fufu.”

How could someone as amazing as him not get any valentines? It boggles my mind.

Day 186

I’ve decided.

I will give him a valentine.

Day 193

I’ve stopped writing stories and devoted most of my free time to researching recipes and designing chocolates.

I think he will like little mushroom-shaped ones. I’ll need to test the flavors out to see what works the best.

I hope the chocolates will bring a smile to his face.

I like his smiles.

Day 195

Oh no, diary.

I’ve realized.

I think I like him.

Day 197

The chocolates came out so well!

I’ve wrapped them up in a box and secured it with blue ribbon. There is an old nursery rhyme...

If you love me, love me true,

Send me a ribbon, a ribbon of blue.

Even if I cannot say those accursed three words...I hope that my feelings are able to come across. The curse cannot punish me for that, yes?

Day 198

I was a fool. I have been tricked. I was being used.

I heard them. I heard everything.

In the Mostro Lounge today...the octopus was speaking to them, the twins with the pretty eyes.

“This is not like you. You are working too slow,” the octopus said to the man I considered my friend.

“I apologize. She was...putting up much resistance. It can be rather difficult to form a connection with such a jittery bird.”

“That is your job,” the octopus sighed. “We need the raven on our side when we approach the headmaster about expanding the Mostro Lounge.”

I understand now--I understand it very well.

Those smiles, that kindness--they were smoke and mirrors.

To begin with, I was always destined to be a prop in someone else’s story. A convenience. Something to be used, then discarded once I am no longer useful.

I have overstepped my boundaries as a storyteller. I...should have remained on the sidelines, where I belong.

I...I know what I must do. I will not allow myself to be tricked a third time. Not by that old storyteller, and not by a slimy eel.

I will steel myself. I will build a wall—and none shall scale it. I will lock myself in a tower, or perhaps even a bird cage, and throw away the key.

To the man with the pretty eyes and the charming smile, farewell.

I’m glad that this raven was, at the very least, able to be a useful footnote in the pages of your story.

Day 201

He feeds me pretty lies and sweet nothings, day in and day out.

He tells me everything I want to hear--that it is a misunderstanding, a mistake. That things are different now. That he cares.

Uncle was right. Leeches are vile blood suckers.

Day 210

I reject his advances every chance I get.

I know they are all with ill intent to begin with.

Even so...no matter what I say or do, he always manages to get the upper hand in the conversation, the interaction.

I hate him.

I hate Jade Leech.

I hate how he is able to take my words away and render me speechless. Words are my only strength, my power as a storyteller. Without them, I am vulnerable. 

I don’t want to be the same weak and naive little bird I once was.

Day 213

It is unfair.

Maybe I am too kind, or too weak, or too gullible, but...I want to believe him.

I must put such thoughts behind me and move on.

Day 226

Uncle tells me that someone has sent a letter and a small package.

Into the trash the package goes--right where it belongs.

But the letter--that, I cannot bring myself to throw away.

It bears his handwriting, the very same gentle curves and slopes that taught me new words and phrases many an evening.

It is silly of me to be this sentimental--and over an eel, of all creatures!

So I stow the letter, unopened, in a drawer. It will remain there as a permanent reminder of my follies.

It is better this way.

I cannot be hurt.

I will not be used.

The curse will not kill me.

I can write stories, forever and ever.

This is...for the best. Isn’t it?

[tfw-no-tennis]

animorphssss.....2!

ok one L abt reading the series on my ereader is that the flipbook illustrations arent there ;_; those were my favvvvv

anyways I love animorphs still

I feel like I'll end up repeating myself a lot during these little liveblogs lmao but mannnn it’s so good. its so hardcore. like I know that that’s the whole Thing but I still get shocked by some of the stuff that happens 

like a big theme in the series centers around the morality of killing your enemies - and it’s so all over the place bc in book 6 you have jake boiling a bunch of yeerks alive, which is kinda gnarly if you think abt it, but the alternative would be to leave them there and let them infest people soo...? and that’s basically the point, that there are never any easy choices in war 

also I went on the animorphs wiki to look at trivia bc I love doing that and I cant BELIEVE (some of) the books were reissued in 2011 and they changed/removed some of the references to be more ‘modern’ omfg....talk about erasing 90s culture smh 

likeeee I was born in 97 so I didn't exactly grow up in the 90s and therefore some of the references go over my head but its so charming and fun to have them there! and it makes sense given that the books are SET in the 90s

I don't remember ever being confused by any of the references as a kid (tho for sure a lot of them went over my head), but then again I read the books in like 2008 sooo

also some of the stuff that they change - like changing ‘recorded w/a vcr’ to ‘recorded w/the TV’ or ‘floppy disc’ to ‘flash drive’ may make more sense to modern audiences, but doesn't make sense in the context of the story still being set in the 90s

tho it is funny that the books use the phrase ‘hook up’ to mean ‘meet up’ a lot bc that is a phrase that definitely has a different meaning nowadays

alsooooo as it turns out I'm p sure I only read a couple of the spinoffs - the hork-bajir chronicles and the ellimist chronicles (which was confusing lmao), bc my library didn’t have the others :( 2007/2008 woes....

but now I get to read the spinoffs woooooooo so I read the first megamorphs and the andalite chronicles 

I'm reading them in the chronological order (I think?) which is good bc part of the problem was that I read the ellimist book at a completely weird time and it confused me more lmao

megamorphs 1 basically felt like a regular animorphs book except longer, but the plot didn't feel like it needed all that extra page space tbh? even so it was an entertaining adventure

and rachel having amnesia was great, amnesia is one of my fav tropes lmao. and it was a lot of fun here, though a bit underutilized 

another favorite trope of mine is time travel, so I'm gonna have a really fun time here w/that

as for the andalite chronicles, I really enjoyed that one. I thought it was a well done story about the horrors of war (which is a theme animorphs does excellently), kind of similar to the overarching story of the whole series, but fit into one book without feeling rushed

the way the story starts out with elfangor wanting to be a hero, not understanding what that entails, to the end where he IS going to be a hero, and he knows now that this is a burden rather than a reward 

the horror elements are also really strong, with the taxxon morph being horrifying of course

and mannnn I loved that we got to see more of the taxxons as a species, and see that not all taxxons submitted to the yeerks - which breaks the previous theme of ‘all the taxxons are evil just because’ 

this book also establishes that the taxxons gave themselves over to the yeerks due to their constant hunger being unbearable, so it isn’t just that they’re evil for fun 

animorphs does such an excellent job showing that each ‘side’ of a war will have good and bad (or at least sympathetic and unsympathetic) people 

also loren was awesome, what a cool character. though I didn't realize she was literally like 13 until the very end of the book, holy shit. that's crazy. i thought she was 16 at the youngest....geez. her throwing a rock at visser 3 is even more iconic knowing she's a middle schooler at the time

and chapman was here! I'm assuming this must be the same chapman as the assistant principal controller... I thought it was a little strange to put chapman in that role, bc in this book he was a huge asshole basically the entire time, but in the previous (’future’) book it was revealed that he became a controller willingly only to spare his daughter, which is pretty far from this book where he’s actively trying to sell humanity out to the yeerks...people change I guess? (also he got his memory erased so I guess there's that)

alloran was a really interesting character. horrors of war again - we hear from his old buddy that he used to be a fun, witty guy, but war changed him into somebody who would do horrible things 

and him becoming a controller was horrifying, obviously, but I like that alloran wasn't portrayed as some perfect, holy guy in order to make it all the more tragic when he got infested. its already fucked up enough as it is, and making him flawed was a lot more meaningful 

and him wanting to flush all the yeerks out into space....oooooof the (later) parallels hurt 

plus the fact that elfangor refusing to commit genocide against the helpless yeerks (even though they’re the enemy) directly contributing to alloran becoming a controller.....oof. I love that it shows that even making the morally correct decisions during war can lead to awful things happening, but not in a way that endorses evil actions - the story isn’t saying that elfangor should have killed the yeerks, it’s saying that there are no good choices in war 

arbron being trapped as a taxxon was fucked up. but also really intriguing, especially how he found purpose and led a free taxxon uprising. I don't remember if we hear from him/the free taxxons again but I hope so

also the plot twist of tobias being elfangors SON...bruh. I do remember that despite not having read this book so it must come up in the main story later but my memory of that is vauge so I’m excited to see how that plays out. it’s always gonna be hilarious to me that ax is technically tobias’s uncle 

and then the ellimist drops in and wacks up the time stream even more. classic. I love the crazy time travel stuff in animorphs

omfg and the bits where elfangor is a human tech guy and talked about his friends bill and steve LMAOOOOO

also the scene where elfangor drives the yellow mustang while blasting '(I cant get no) satisfaction’ by the rolling stones was one of the most iconic things I've ever read

basically I loved all the angles of war fucking people up. from loren’s dad, to alloran, to elfangor himself learning about the true horrors of war...v well done imo

ok back to the main series - so my pick for the most fucked up scene SO FAR (in my own personal opinion) - the scene where they're in the jungle and rachel passes out in bear morph and a bunch of rainforest ants start EATING HER ALIVE and like crawling into her ears and mouth and HGGGGGG that was genuinely so fucking disturbing

its a good thing that the time travel made it so rachel couldn't remember that bc that was fuuuuucked

another contender is a scene we don't actually see - erek having his capacity for violence instated and then slaughtering a ton of human and hork-bajir controllers 

like damn, you know its fucked up when its too fucked up for ANIMORPHS to even ‘show.’ this is a series that doesn't pull punches but evidentially that would've been Too Much to actually portray (understandably). also i feel like seeing the aftermath/everyone’s reactions had more of an impact than describing erek killing a bunch of people would have

also I forgot that marco Literally Fucking Dies during that scene and that's why he doesn't get to see the slaughter. wow

and then in the very next book JAKE dies too. jesus

oh it was also so sad and fucked up when marco’s dad told him that he and his wife used to fight sometimes, but then all of a sudden they stopped fighting, and their relationship was basically entirely peaceful and perfect - and this is how marco knows exactly when his mom was made into a controller, bc of course a yeerk wouldn't care enough to get into petty arguments like that....ooooof

Okay and book 15 really got me...that was fucking heavy man. Geeeez. Everything w/Marco and his mom is so fucked uppppp

Like he literally has to deal with so much awful traumatizing shit. The scene where he pretends to be a controller and is face to face w/visser one and THAT HIS MOM but he can’t even do anything, and he just sees the evil in her eyes and thinks about how there’s no way she had been controlled by a yeerk that long before bc he’s never seen her look like that...that was so fucking sad.

Plus Marcos mom now thinking that Marco is a controller...aughh...and then later Marco knows he can’t even think-speak to her bc he’ll just talk about everything he’s wanted to talk about to his mom this whole time... ;_;

And the parts where Marcos humor slips and the utter rage he feels towards the situation comes through...man

Plus everything about him being understandably afraid of sharks after being nearly torn in half by one back during their first dolphin adventure

Augh oh and jake telling Marco that everyone can tell something is up bc Marco isn’t joking around and talking about how insane their plan is like usual, so Marco fakes it sand does all that even tho he’s terrified and conflicted...aughhhh

Ok and the last scene where Marco is thinking about a future where he and his parents can talk plainly about how awful and traumatizing everything is, and then eventually they’ll feel okay enough to joke about it, bc Marcos mom is the one who taught him to look at the funny side of life...Oh The Pain

There were a lot of great fucked up individual lines in this book too. I’m just so sad about these poor middle schoolers jfc

Also I do distinctly remember the scene where they collapse the shark tank at Ocean World or w/e, it was weird af reading it bc I remembered none of the rest of the book but got weird deja vu reading that scene and remembering having read it like 13+ years ago

if it’s not clear by now I have a pretty terrible memory for media which is honestly good bc then I can reread things and it’s like new

Also jake...man...I said it previously but I was kinda eh about jake when I first read these bc he’s kinda the ‘basic’ character, but now I find his story much more interesting

His conflict over being leader is really good. KAA does a fantastic job capturing the pressure he’s under bc he was chosen by his friends to be the leader, so he REALLY can’t back out, and he doesn’t necessarily feel up to it, but feels he has no choice in the matter...

And constantly having to make really difficult decisions that could get his friends killed...geez. It’s so much pressure. And he talks about wanting to go back to being a normal kid when this is all over, and it kinda strikes me as him being in denial - like, there’s no way things can ever be ‘normal’ again, but that’s his way of coping.

Especially with Tom and all that. That conflict is so compelling...jake having to play all these different roles - as leader, as a son/student, as a regular brother to Tom - he’s constantly having to act a certain way and rarely gets to be Himself

It’s actually kinda relatable in a way - that feeling of being In Charge, but in a somewhat abstract and informal way, so you feel like regular old you, but you have to carefully regulate how you act bc the people around you expect a certain standard of behavior from you...

And all the morally grey situations they’re put in are fucked up, but especially for jake who has the final say on what they do, even when knowing it could lead to his friends being killed or made into controllers

Like in the book with the cannibal yeerk guy - there’s basically no good choices there. Jake lets the cannibal live, and (at first) implies that it’s for the best that he’s cannibalizing other yeerks and therefore helping get rid of some yeerks - except that he kills their hosts too

but the alternative would be to directly kill another human being who isn't actively fighting/resisting you, which is a fucked up thing for a middle schooler to have to do 

And the conflict between jake and Cassie is really excellent bc jake has to make these awful decisions, and Cassie is the type of person who can’t stand that sort of thing, so it gets left up to jake a lot, but then she’s upset with jake for doing something awful, even while knowing that there were no better options

like, her asking jake to kill the cannibal guy for her was really fucked up, but also entirely understandable for cassie as a character to ask. it was an emotionally charged situation, and cassie is an emotional person. she’s also somebody who like to Act, to do concrete good, and getting rid of an Evil Bad Guy in front of her would be a definite action

But Cassie is a great source of morality to the group - most of them are pretty jaded, but Cassie is able to hope in a way none of the rest are. It creates a really compelling dynamic between jake and Cassie that I kinda dismissed when I was like 10 or w/e

Also the scene where jake as a fly gets crushed and starts dying? Seriously fucked. And then after when he’s nearly breaking down in the airport and Cassie comforts him...that was a really good scene. Cassie is so good  

And the continuity is so excellent - I love how in book 17, Cassie (and jake to an extent) doesn’t really weigh in on the moral debate abt the oatmeal bc she’s still shaken up by asking jake to murder a guy for her, and then (presumably) going ahead and lighting his house on fire when jake doesn’t kill him

And augh jake and Marco have such a good and interesting dynamic - the entire group kinda pushes each other into their respective ‘roles’ in the group, but for a few books that’s really true for jake and marco

I don't remember what book it was but at some point marco (I think) mentions that jake understands what marco is dealing with w/his mom being a controller bc of tom, but that they don’t talk about it bc they ‘don't talk about stuff like that’ or something and I'm just like noooo talk to each other :( 

but at this point jake feels like he can’t really express doubt and fear and stuff like that bc he’s the Leader and they look to him to be strong (which is ironically very similar to how rachel feels), and marco feels like he can’t be serious bc he’s the funny guy. 

Basically I love all the different dynamics in the group. How Cassie and Rachel are such opposites but are best friends and get along well, while Marco and Cassie are more directly opposed - as jake says, Marco is ruthless, and Cassie definitely isn’t. Rachel and Marco are also pretty different which is interesting, bc they have a lot in common, and actually agree on a lot (even if they disagree out loud) but their commonalities combined with their circumstances make them react very differently to the same situations

I also love seeing the differences between characters from each other’s POV - like, p much all the characters think that Rachel is completely fearless, but when the book is from her POV, we get to see that that isn’t true at all - she feels plenty of fear, but she recognizes that her role in the group is to be the fearless one, so she pushes aside her fear to fit into that role (which inadvertently pushes her more and more into that ‘fearless warrior’ box - something that happens to all the characters more and more as the story goes on, like jake as ‘the leader’ and Marco as ‘the jokester’).

Also I loooove the grey morality of literally everything. Like the book where ax discovers an andalite traitor - not a controller, just an andalite who betrayed them to the yeerks. This leads to the deaths of like a hundred other andalites, and that whole scene you really just feel for ax, bc he feels so awful about everyone else dying while he escapes, yet he’s also so grateful to be alive, which he in turn feels bad about...

And ax’s conflict about being torn between his home w/his fellow andalites and his new home on earth w/his friends is great

And oh man I fucking love book 19. Any of the books where it goes more into the yeerks and their side of things are so good, just like the book where jake was made into a controller.

And book 19, where we meet a sympathetic yeerk, comes right after 18, where we meet an andalite traitor - again, I love how we clearly see that no one side is completely good or completely bad

So yeah book 19 fucking slapped. That shit was so compelling. I love how Cassie made a bunch of foolish decisions based on naïve hope, but it worked out!! Things aren’t always bleak and awful!

Except there were plenty bleak and awful parts of this book. It had a great balance of moods tbh, even though a lot of the situations were extremely contrived lmao. I love the stuff that aftran says, which is basically what I was thinking when I started my reread - being a yeerk fucking sucks, you’re literally a blind slug but also completely and fully sentient, on the same level as humans and andalites - and as afran pointed out this book, the yeerks are born as parasites, just as humans are born as predators - why is it okay for the humans to kill countless animals to eat, but not for the yeerks to enslave races to act as hosts? Well, the situation isn’t totally comparable, which Cassie and Marco both point out when aftran makes that comparison - the yeerks are enslaving sentient species, and cows and chickens are not the same as the humans and hork-bajir (though the story understandably doesn’t fall too deeply into the ‘who deserves what right/animal sentience’ rabbit hole).

And I like that aftran points out that the yeerks basically have 2 options currently - stay helpless and blind in a yeerk pool, or enslave a host. It’s interesting to hear that a lot of yeerks don’t like doing this but see it as the only options, as opposed to complete sensory deprivation. It makes me wonder if there are yeerks who are so staunchly against it that they elect to stay as pool-bound slugs forever

Also maybe it’s the shounen anime fan in me but I don’t even care that much that Cassie’s entire plan was completely off the rails and hinged on only the slightest chance of success - with failure being much more likely and completely catastrophic, with the animorphs and their loved ones all being wiped out, vs success being unlikely and also achieving...a moral victory? Peace between two enemy combatants in a huge war? nothing all that concrete...anyways it was a bunch of good-faith horrible decisions on Cassie’s part, but I don’t even care? I love stories where hope and love save the day against all odds, especially when they’re wielded like weapons by a character and make everything end nicely

This is especially true here bc animorphs is generally a series that leans very far away from that type of thing, so when it does happen, it feels like a victory. Plus the David trilogy is next so we kinda need a happy ending while we can

also bc I compared animorphs to hxh last time, I now have to compare it to the other series I've (partially) liveblogged, transformers mtmte.

this is gonna be more abstract and brief but basically. mtmte is all about after the war, and everyone has so much trauma and everything just sucks, so they all go on a space cruise and work on themselves. basically.

but the series does a lot of exploration of how war fucks people up - same as animorphs, tho animorphs spans the beginning of the war (for the main characters at least) until the end, whereas mtmte starts when the war ends.

but the point is. both series do an excellent job showcasing the wide range of reactions people have to being put in unthinkable situations during wartime. all the major characters in mtmte go through arcs where they heal/change from the war, some more subtle than others

basically the animorphs needs to go on a wacky space cruise adventure with a bunch of other fucked up people and figure their shit out, mtmte style

ok this is wicked long already so I’m gonna end it here. also I feel like I should start the next liveblog w/the david triology bc I’m for sure gonna have a lot to say abt that

[lady-divine-writes]

Good Omens - I Was Given Four Rules to Follow ... I Broke Every One: Chapter 1/3 (Rated PG13)

Summary: When Warlock Dowling is summoned to the old South Downs cottage of Aziraphale and Crowley to help clean out their attic, presumably after their deaths, he is given four rules to follow.

... He breaks every single one.

Notes: For @silver-colour

Written for the @tricketyboo2020 prompt "Creepypasta format story (like a found footage or witness statement kind of thing)" by silver-colour. It is a mild reworking of an older fanfic of mine, but that goes tongue in cheek with the ending of this story sort of. XD I would put this between Spooky Level 2 and 3, with 3 being "major and minor character death, disturbing images or concepts, major dark themes, major violence, etc." But there's only minor mentions of blood/body horror. But the whole undead thing is a trigger for some people and I lean into that imagery a bit. I wanted this to be a sort of leveled up Goosebumps tale. Tl;dr proceed with caution <3

Chapter 1

 I am going to die.

I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.

I have to keep repeating it because I have to come to grips with it.

I am going to die.

Not in sixty years.

More like sixty minutes.

Oh, Amanda. I am sorry.

If you ever hear this … I never meant for this to happen.

My name is Warlock Dowling and I am 34 years-old. Devoted son and husband, I’ve spent over a decade working towards achieving my dream of following in my father’s footsteps and entering politics one day.

It’s a dream I don’t think I’ll be seeing through to the end.

I am telling you this because after reading what I’ve just read … and hearing what I’ve just heard … I am not certain I’m going to make it through the night.

I broke the rules.

There were four. Only four. And I broke them.

I didn’t break them by accident. I absolutely did it on purpose. I’m not suicidal or anything, but you only live once - am I right?

For the record, I don’t regret a single thing.

…

That’s not entirely true.

I’ll regret dying before morning if that’s the way things play out.

Today happens to be October 31st - Halloween night. I’d been tasked with clearing out the attic above a cottage in The South Downs which once belonged to a pair of old family friends. Technically, they were ex-employees of my parents from back when I was young, but I thought of them as surrogates. They practically raised me, educated me, taught me everything I know about coping in this cruel, pathetic world.

I held them in the highest regard.

They were the only people in my life who treated me as if I could become more than what I had been born into, that fate had something else in store for me. Because of them, I met the best friends a boy could ever have.

I will forever be grateful for that.

Cleaning out this attic was the least I could do to repay them, but to be honest, I don’t know who summoned me here. I assumed it was the executor of their estate, but now I’m not so sure. Looking over the letter in my hands, there is no legible signature. And the gold embossed emblem at the top that I took for granted as belonging to some upscale legal firm is, on closer inspection, gibberish - a mess of fleur-de-lis underscored by Latin words that roughly translate to “the cows shall rise”.

Ludicrous, right?

How did I miss that?

But more ludicrous - and confusing - are the rules.

I had been given rules about cleaning this attic.

The first rule on the list was to touch only what I could see. Under no circumstances was I to open any of the boxes or chests.

So, naturally, I opened every single one.

The second rule was not to put anything on. Fine by me. The only clothes up here are old lady outfits and a pair of white satin shoes.

But …

There was an awesome vintage leather jacket hanging on a dressmaker’s dummy in the corner and … well … it had my name written all over it! I had to try it on, see if it fit.

And it does.

Rule number three - keep to my torch. Don’t light any candles.

Nuh-uh! It’s Halloween! And torches are lame. So on the candles went. Jeez, there are a lot of them. Enough to burn down the whole place if I’m not careful. It actually seems like they’ve multiplied since I’ve been up here.

I won’t lie - it’s unsettling.

But according to the list, rule number four is the most important:

Don’t read any books I find. And definitely not out loud.

The first thing I saw when I entered the attic was a stack of leather-bound books. I scoffed at the sight of them, piled up to my chin, right inside the entryway. Isn’t that a bit like putting a huge bowl of candy front and center on your dining room table in the middle of dinner with a huge sign saying, “Do not eat?” If the most important rule about going into the attic is, “Don’t read anything!” why not put all the books on a high shelf?

Or the moon?

I’m not a book lover. I read hundreds of pages a day for work. I definitely don’t do it for fun. So this shouldn’t have been a hard one for me to follow.

But they looked like diaries.

And diaries hold secrets.

That made them a different matter all together.

I couldn’t resist.

But once I opened the top one, I knew I’d made a mistake.

These weren’t just any diaries.

They were the diaries of my two friends - Aziraphale and Crowley.

There had always been something odd about those two. I didn’t believe for a second that they were a proper nanny or gardener, not even when I was a young, impressionable child. But they were funny - a distraction from the dull as dishwater life of an attache’s son.

Yes, I was a spoiled little rich kid with everything I could ever ask for handed to me and, on top of that, diplomatic immunity.

Woe was me.

I realize how much of a douche whining about that makes me sound.

My life was still dull.

I was still lonely.

I never knew for sure what happened to them after they left us. I made assumptions - erroneous assumptions. I thought they lived happily ever after at least.

Now I know … that wasn’t the case.

I’m recording this in the hopes that someone will find it, so that you might know the true story of what happened to them …

… and why you might not be hearing from me again.

***

The Diary of Aziraphale Fell - Reluctant Widower

January 14th-

“Please, sir,” the decrepit woman hissed, but not unkindly. She came about her speech impediment by a mixture of symptoms - her thick accent coupled with her indeterminable old age caused her to talk that way. “Please, reconsider this decision.”

I glared at her regardless. I knew my eyes were bloodshot; my hair a mass of tangled, wayward strands; my lips quivered from constant, unrelenting crying.

“You said you had it!” I screamed, bypassing her arguments. “You said you would sell it to me! Wh---why else would I come here!?”

“You need to understand,” the woman implored, opening her hands in a pleading gesture. She fixed me with one clear blue eye, the other eye clouded – a useless, milky white lump of tissue bulging inside its socket, “what you ask for … it is unnatural.”

“But your granddaughter said it was a done deal!” I persisted, shooting a steely glare at the simpering young woman who ducked behind her grandmother to hide from my volatile stare. I wasn’t about to leave without the item I came for. At this point, I was willing to tear the place apart and everything inside - including the two of them - to get it.

They must have sensed that.

Even as the woman continued to defy me, she looked slightly more afraid than she had a minute ago.

“My granddaughter is foolish!” The woman directed the comment over her shoulder to the girl cowering there. “But she means well. We need the money. She was thinking with her head and not her heart.”

“I can pay you twice what you’re asking!” I reached into my back pocket for my wallet. “Three times! I’ll give you whatever you want!”

The girl, intrigued by my proposal, peeked over her grandmother’s shoulder, but the woman turned and barked sharply at her in a language I could not understand.

That was when I began to think I might be in danger.

I’d spent my entire life studying languages, so hearing one I didn’t comprehend, not even an inch, sent a shiver down my spine.

“Mr. Fell …” The old woman reached out, I presumed to comfort me, and took my shaking hand in hers “… your husband is dead. And I am more sorry than I can ever express at your loss. You carry your love for him like a beacon. I see it in your eyes. It shines from every part of you. With him gone, it is up to you to carry it. It will never fade as long as you remember him.”

Those were, without a doubt, the kindest words anyone had said to me since my husband passed. I crumbled, new tears falling hot down my cheeks. But regardless of her sympathy, sincere though it might be, I refused to relent.

I refused!

“I don’t want to remember him!” I whimpered, my anger renewed at the sound of my voice fracturing. “I want him here with me! I need you to help me bring him back!”

The woman sighed in pity but shook her head.

“The effects of life are varied, Mr. Fell. Our fate … it changes every day, with every choice that we make. But the effects of death should remain permanent.”

I flinched at that word as if she’d struck me across the face.

Permanent.

Crowley dead … my husband gone … and nothing for me to look forward to in life but emptiness. We’d had every moment of our lives planned together.

One arsehole drunk driver later and now I was alone.

I literally had no one.

I had lost contact with my mum early in life, never knew my father, didn’t have children of my own. My boss and mentor was an abusive prick who tormented me throughout the span of my career until I found a way out from under his thumb.

Until Crowley helped me discover a life where I didn’t need the man’s guidance or control.

But now I was going to lose him!? The only one who had stuck by me, who defended me, loved me through thick and thin!?

No! That was beyond cruel! And I wasn’t going to roll over and accept it!

I let the sorrow within me curdle, turn sour as I yanked my hand out of the old woman’s grasp.

“Your granddaughter said there are other methods of getting what I want!” I snarled. “Dangerous methods. Methods that might require payment in sacrifice … even blood. And not necessarily my blood. Innocent blood, if you catch my meaning.”

Both women gasped.

Despite the conversation at hand, I smiled.

Good, I thought. We were finally all on the same page.

Up until a few days ago, I never considered violence to be the answer to anything. But I had since come to a crossroads where an exception had made itself clear.

I was prepared to annihilate my humanity to get my husband back.

The old woman snapped her head over her shoulder, scolding her granddaughter in a harsh, guttural voice. The girl, who had started to brave coming out of hiding, shrank down once again.

“Be reasonable,” the woman begged, “please, and think about what you are saying. What you are willing to do.”

“No,” I said, my calm more potent than my anger … or so my husband used to say. “The time for me being reasonable is over. I will get what I want, no matter what the cost. The question is whether or not you will be the one to give it to me.”

The woman looked down at her gnarled hands and sighed a long, exhausted sigh. “Alright, Mr. Fell. I will sell the potion to you at the promised price.”

I stared at her for a moment in shock. I was relieved, of course. I hadn’t thought I would get this far. It frightened me how much I had begun looking forward to throttling her with my bare hands, imagined her neck snapping within my grasp, effortlessly like a twig.

That couldn’t be me though. I wasn’t that kind of person. It was this place - this shop and all of its trinkets, their age and professed magical abilities amplifying my grief, turning every rational thought I had into rage.

I had to get out of here and fast before I did something I might regret.

I opened my wallet with the onset of happier tears and thumbed through the bills, pulling out extra for the joy of getting what I wanted. I handed the money over, but the woman refused to touch it. She waved it away, her granddaughter popping up long enough to grab the money and then scurry off again. The woman reached into the folds of her skirts and retrieved a leather pouch that hung from a thin belt around her waist. From it she fished out a tiny blue bottle with a cork stopper sealing the mouth. She gave it a long, troubled look, then handed it to me.

For the first time, her hand trembled.

“Pour the contents of this bottle into your husband’s mouth, Mr. Fell,” she instructed, “and your husband will return.”

I held the bottle up to the dim candlelight of the musty Soho shop. The blue glass glimmered, a thick liquid inside swaying back and forth, shimmering like sun-tossed sparkles across a dark, foreboding sea.

“There are some rules that go along with that potion,” the woman said, her voice weeding into my head, summoning me back from my momentary trance, “and a few warnings you must heed as well.”

I sighed. I had hoped it would be a simple matter of giving my husband the liquid and living happily ever after, but I knew in my heart that nothing was ever that simple.

“Okay,” I said, slipping the bottle carefully into my pocket and patting over it twice to ensure its safety. “Tell me. What are the rules?”

“First of all, you will give that to your husband, but what will come back …” she paused, swallowed hard “… will not entirely be your husband.”

I nodded. I had expected her to say something along those lines, like a scene straight from an old time-y horror movie.

The woman locked both eyes, one clear and one clouded, on my face as I waited for her to finish her speech, eager to go back home and get on with my life. She realized, with regret, that I had every intention of going through with this, and took on the heavy burden of allowing this to continue.

“Be there to look into his eyes when he wakes,” she said.

I hadn’t dreamed of leaving his side, but since the woman made such a point of it, I asked, “Why?”

“He is being reborn, in a sense. And like other simple-minded creatures, he will imprint on the first person he sees.” She took my hands and squeezed them. “That person needs to be you!”

My gulp was audible, the weight of her words and of my plan suddenly settling within me. They pressed in on me, like that moment when the police came to my door. Their words – “Mr. Fell? I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but … it’s about your husband …” had turned me inside out, left my heart out in the cold.

I felt that cold now.

“Once the potion absorbs into his tissues, it will restart his heart,” she continued. “Then the potion will replicate. It will begin to take the place of his blood. It will make him calm, easier for you to control.”

I nodded again. I wanted to say something, assure the woman that I understood, but she didn’t pause long enough for me to speak. It wouldn’t have mattered. I saw the trepidation in her one, clear eye. I had no clue what to say to make this better.

“It will be a slow process, and you must learn to be a patient man!” She raised her voice, letting go of one hand to waggle an emphatic finger in front of my face. “You will be teaching him, raising him as you would a child. Remember, even if only a small portion of his soul returns, that soul belongs to your husband, and you must love him or this will not work!”

The woman stepped back, out of breath from her outburst, and her granddaughter (whom I had forgotten about) returned, pushing forward an ornate but dusty antique chair to catch her in. I held the woman’s arms gently and helped her into it, feeling strangely protective. The woman sat and waved us both off, not wanting us to make a fuss when she still had more to say.

“But most importantly,” she labored on, barely missing a beat in her speech, “do not let him taste blood.” I knelt down so that she didn’t feel the need to yell for her words to reach me. “He cannot eat meat, but most of all, don’t let him bite you or lick your wounds. Or anyone else’s – human or animal.”

“Will … will I become a zombie? If he does bite me?”

I’m not quite sure why the word ‘zombie’ leapt to my mind. In every interaction I had had with the woman’s granddaughter before tonight, she had been so careful not to use that term. She used other, more romantic euphemisms such as ‘bring back to the land of the living’, ‘re-associate with life’, and the most used - ‘rebirth’. But that’s what he would be, right? When we moved past the flowery vernacular and got right down to it? This potion I had pocketed would turn my husband into the walking dead, - a simple-minded creature that was once deposed from this Earth.

And that meant ‘zombie’.

As if I had nothing more pressing at hand, I suddenly recalled the Walking Dead marathon Crowley had convinced me to watch (against my better judgement). Crowley thought the show was hilarious, but I could barely make it to the middle of the first season. I had started watching with my hands over my eyes, then with my arm locked around Crowley’s, anxiously smacking his shoulder, and finally with most of my body lying over his lap and my face buried in his shirt.

It wasn’t just the gore in the show that skewered me, made me nauseous, unable to breathe. It was the fear and the pain those characters felt, being chased by a relentless enemy that needed no rest, constantly running into people they couldn’t trust, people who were so out for themselves they no longer believed in the sanctity of life, with nowhere to hide, nowhere safe at all, even behind thick, concrete and metal walls.

Watching your loved ones get turned into soulless monsters - still there, but everything about them that you had once loved out of reach.

And this ‘illness’ or whatever these people had - it spared no one. Even children had become zombies. And in the game that was survival for the remaining uninfected, children had become pawns.

Everything about it seemed so horrendous.

And while I suffered through my existential crisis, Crowley laughed at my antics.

I fought not to smile at the sound of his teasing voice.

“Uh … a little squeamish there, are you, angel?”

Angel.

From the first day we met, that’s what he called me.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to hear him call me that again!

The old woman chuckled, bringing me reluctantly back from my daydream. “No. Not in this case. That’s not the nature of this spell. No, blood will give him back his memories.”

I looked at the woman, bug-eyed, and shook my head. “I … I don’t …”

“It will ignite his brain. He will begin to feel. In many ways, he will become more the man you married than in any other.”

“Wha---?“ I stuttered, baffled as to how that could be a bad thing. If drinking blood could make Crowley more Crowley, I’d set up an IV drip the minute I got home! I would serve him cups of blood with every meal! I’d make donating blood a requirement for entrance into my bookshop! (That one would definitely kill two birds with one stone. In fact, I might consider doing that anyhow.) “And why wouldn’t I want that again?” I asked, trying not to sound like turning my husband into a blood-sipping fiend was the greatest idea in known history.

The old woman smiled, but it wasn’t fond. It was shrewd, as if she could read every one of my thoughts.

And she didn’t approve.

“Once he has his memories back, he will start to crave it. Soon, drinking blood won’t be enough for him. It won’t work as well. It won’t keep the memories as fresh. He will have to go further, do more. He will become a killer.”

My face must have gone as green as I felt because the woman laughed again, this time with a touch of wickedness. A killer? My Crowley? My sweet, kind, compassionate Crowley?

Okay, maybe I was going too far with the endearments. He’d been a bit of a bastard, after all. Which was why I could picture Crowley becoming a full-fledged bad boy. With that leather jacket he wore like a second skin and his gleaming classic car, he’d been well on his way.

But a killer? No.

Then again, I was willing to become one myself a second ago, so maybe I wasn’t in the best position to judge.

“You are playing with the laws of nature, Mr. Fell,” she said, patting me on the cheek. “You are responsible not only for your own life, but for the lives of those around you.” The woman leaned in close, those eyes – one alive, one dead - more menacing than when I had walked into the shop; her face no longer that of a frail old woman but of a powerful witch.

This time, it was my turn to feel afraid.

“So don’t fuck it up.”

[popculturebuffet]

Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Restrospective: The Raider of the Copper Hill! “You Got Rich Son”

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to my retrospective of the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck! It’s been far too long, almost three months since we last checked in with Scrooge and frankly I feel i’ve been spacing these entries out too much for this one and for the retrospectives that aren’t paid for in general. So expect at least one McDuck adventure a month till I finish, possibly two when I can swing it like this month. 

Now i’m done beating myself up, when we last left off a younger more naive, more optimistic and less experienced Scooge took up a career as a cowboy for  Cattle Baron, gained his first sidekick in the form of his Horse Hortense, and took out some cattle thieves with the help of Teddy Fucking Roosevelt. 

This chapter marks the end of the story’s first act. The first act is about a younger and far nicer Scrooge: still onrey and still a cheapskate, but still a good kid and far more outwardly friendly and welcoming, a far cry from the bitter untrusting man we come to know. This chapter is one of the reasons why, as Scrooge learns a hard lesson about wealth and success, the sacrifices one needs to make for family and about sticking your hand in a lightbulb while it’s plugged in. So join me under the cut as Scrooge meets another valuable mentor, one of his greatest enemies, and about 50 feet of barbed wire. 

We begin with the end of Scrooge’s time as a ranch hand and cowpunch. With homesteaders moving in and dividing up the land, Murdo simply dosen’t have the space for cattle baroning anymore and has to let Scrooge go and head back to texas. We do get a great bit of Scrooge wrapped in barbed wire, having gone to cut some down so Murdo could move the herd out. 

So with his Job done and parting on good terms with his old boss, Scrooge sets up his own homestead on some land near the Anaconda Silver Mine, trying to make it as a prospector, starting on the path that would eventually lead him to riches.. in about a decade and a half.

 So Scrooge bemoans his rotten luck over Dinner with a stranger, Marcus Daly owner of said mine... who just.. randomly sat down to have dinner with a 17 year old. 

Marcus belays his own woes: While Scrooge has failed at what he tried to do, having gotten into both steamboating and cattle punching too late to go anywhere with either, Daly has a silver mine that’s full of copper: decent amoutns of it but still not what his investors wanted. 

Both however find their fortunes reverse in an instant in the weirdest way possible. The light goes out at their table and Scrooge tries to adjust it only to electcute himself. To his shock...

He finds out it’s running on electricty, which is starting to become widespread.. and requires vast amounts of copper wiring. Scrooge is back in the game but finds trouble getting equipment as the local seller naturally is a jackass who jacks up the price. Scrooge instead sells the gold teeth his dad gave him to the nearest gentleman after talking him into it. . And i’ts not even the weirdest transaction i’ve seen this week. 

For the record those weird things are the guy on the left’s skinflakes, his power is to make naked golems of himself out of his dandruff and skin flakes and what have you, while the guy on the right is paying for a mutant with a star for a head. So yeah a scottish cowboy selling his ancestor’s dentures to pay for mining gear is refelshingly tame after all of this. 

So we get the comic equivleant of a montage as Scrooge starts his work at prospecting, making a portable homesteader shack as a miner owns any land he lives on, and moving around to try and find it, but he runs into a problem: with his last two careers he had mentors to help him learn what to do: Pothole taught him riverboating and Murdo helped him learn to ride the trails. Here he has no one and while you can self teach a lot of things prospecting isn’t one of them. 

He end sup finding one though as a rich gentleman asking about the mine happens to wander by: Howard D. Rockerduck. If that names sounds familiar it should as he’s indeed the father of exactly who your thinking of and we meet a young 10 or so year old john who asks him to stop dealing with a grubby workman. We also find out whose responsible for him turning out ot be such a piece of work as his mother’s response to his father telling him “I used to be a grubby workman is well... word’s cant’ do this amount of classist bulslhit justice. 

Seriously his unnamed wife is so odious it hurts. And how the fuck did an honest, kind man like Howard end up with this bitch? It’ sbaffled me every time i’ve read this: did he marry for money? is he a gold digger? go down gold dig get down? Is she just THAT good in bed? Did he just make a horrible mistake one night? Did she lie to him about who she was? Was she replaced by a skrull? I have questions no duck comic has properly explained.. and if they have please tell me.  Also it does tickle me we’re getting a bit with a duck named howard though sadly he wears a top hat instead of a nice little bowler. And if you don’t know who howard the duck is.. shame on you. And if you’ve seen the movie.. my deepest sympathies. 

While Howard laments wanting to horsewhip his son, this was a century ago with change mind you standards were different and also John sucks. Howard crticizes Scrooge’s techqniue after introducing himself, and Scrooge and him get into a bit of a tizzy, with Howard offering to teach him for two cents.. but the hostility quickly desolves hours later as Scrooge realizes Howard was right and he’d been doing things completely wrong and the thrill of hard honest work again has washed away any ego driven competiviness. 

I”ll get more into Howard in a second but he does eventually strike copper, and while the vein is full it’s also thin. But Howard has one final trick and takes Scroogey for an ore test. I tried to find more on this but just found a lot of ways to do it yourself and what not. I”m now really intrigued how they did this and found the content of minerals. I know it’s a dull subject but i’m curious how they did it with the technology of the time. Did they just use acids like I found? If so how’d they get them? I do say this is one of the great qualities of Rosa’s works: he makes you want to learn more about history. I looked up more about TR after the last chapter and now I want to know how the hell metallurgy worked in the late 1800′s. 

We then get an intresting interacton as Scrooge.. warmly greets the townsfolk and vice versa.. yes the same Scrooge who as an adult would be introduced proclaming...

Is warm, optimistic and wholeheartedly belieives...

As you can probably tell by Howard’s reaction and what Scrooge becomes.. this story’s all about shattering that notion and is the first of two to shatter the poor kid’s trust in people and make him into the bitter old sod we know. 

The sample comes back 55% positive... which leaves Howard rushing to get Scrooge to a court house. As it turns out there’s an old, very real for the time, mining law called the Law of Apex: whoever owns the land closest to where an ore vein is on the surface owns the whole thing... so legally Scrogoe owns the ENTIRE ANACONDA COPPER MINE, which at this point as detailed in the time skip has gone from struggling to utterly thriving and sucessful. Whoever owns the land at the time the Judge rules it gets the mine.. and Scrooge’s friends, who seconds ago were concerned about him being dragged into court.. are now all scrambling to take his fortune, something Howard dosen’t seem at all suprised about. 

But while this may be a kinder, more naive Scrooge McDuck, it’s still SCROOGE MCDUCK. His response is to cut a nearbye power wire and swing it tarzan style over to hortense and ride her back ahead of the mob... with the electric wire slapping her rear and causing her to go extra fast.. and also quit. So Scrooge stands alone but manages to take out some of the ruffians with his shack while John and the Judge rush to the site. As for Scrooge well... you want to see what a McDuck family beserker rage against an ENTIRE angry mob of opportunistic assholes look like? 

And this isn’t even the most badass thing Scrooge will do this series. Or even in the next few issues. That’s how awesome this series is: fighting an angry mob SOLO with simply his pure rage and whatever he can grab and throw. And he WINS. He’s exausted and passes out, falling out of the sky on his final opponent.. but he took out what was at the LEAST 50 men, and ONLY passed out because one of them threw dynamite in his out house.. and even THAT didn’t kill him or put him out, simply casuing him to land on said dynamite throwing idiot and wins. 

We find out Rockerduck actually was one of the mine’s owners but helped Scrooge anyway: he has more than enough money and all it’s going to do in the end is go to a greedy brat. Marcus Daly shows up and while he’ll get the law overturned eventually, he still has to shut down while that happens and finds the right officials to bribe. And this is the 1800s... you gotta go by train to do your bribes. You can’t just do that shit over email and hidden bank accounts. Daly offers him 10,000.. but given what Scrooge could earn even before he got his mine back, Scrooge turns it down. 

However this victory is bittersweet as Scrooge warmly greets his friends.. only for one to cuss him out and the other to tell him to get loss. We then get one of my faviorite exchanges in this story.

This whole Panel is a masterwork. The sheer INNOCENCE on Scrooge’s face, almost looking like Donald, desperately wondering what he did, when as Howard points out.. he did nothing wrong. He simply got successful and they resent him for it. 

This has been a hard paragraph for me to write as I want to tread carefully. People do have good reasons to scorn the rich or celebrtiies sometimes. Some rich people or those in the media are genuinely terrible. Jeff Bezos, Tucker Carlson, Mel Gibson, Louie CK, Joss Whedon and even someone as low on the totem pole as Doug Walker is odious. And of course we all can think of one odious example of rich bastard i’d rather not think of, especially when thinking of John D Rockerduck and what he’l lbecome as an adult that i’m not giving a pleasure of the name drop but came to mind. 

But even for good people becoming succesful puts up a barrier between you and other people: Fans of yours will admire you or write fanfic or what have about you without even knowing you, i’ve been on that side, and some people will hate you just because without valid reason, especially in this day and age. Success breeds resentment and even people you trusted and loved can sometimes turn on you. It’s the double eged sword of achieving your dreams: You get what you wanted but you often loose what you had. 

And it was no diffrent two centuries ago, with Scrooge’s friends only being friendly as long as it suited them, turning on him first to steal his chance at glory and then to scorn him for daring to achieve it. Some people.. are only there for you as long as your not above them. And sometimes you can be happy. Look at Tom Hanks, who has a lovely family and a long and storied career. Or Linkara, a youtuber who has been at this for over a decade, has tons of fans, a loving wife with her own succesful channel, and just recently got contacted by his childhood heroes. You CAN be happy and successful.. it’s just very hard to make it that far. 

One of the central points of life and times is that’s often not the case: You can get what you want but it comes at a cost. And it’s how you pay that price that will determine how happy you are. Another central point intertwined with it is it’s not the journey but the destination, and i’ts how Scrooge takes that journey that ultimately leads him where he ends up good and bad. And we get an all to telling all too foreboding hint in how he takes everyone he knew for at least a year turning on him overnight. 

When faced with his first real loss on this Journey that wasn’t material.. he dosen’t care. He has his money and riches and that’s enough. And as we’ll see that attitude will cost him greatly. Howard is irate for a moment, hoping he wasn’t wrong in trusting Scrooge.. and indeed, for now, turns out to have placed his faith in the right person as Scrooge gets a telegram: his family needs him. And while he could stay, turn his back on them, and earn MILLIONS.. he tells Howard  to tell the owner he’s taking the deal. For now when given the choice between his family and his fortune, SCrooge will choose them. Sadly.. that won’t hold true forever. 

With this being the end of his time in the story, as he has a still insufferable John buy him a horsewhip for horrific but darkly funny reasons, as John brags about how rich his father is not realizing he’s buying his own whupping tool, i’d like to touch on Howard D Rockerduck and how amazing he is. Rosa managed to pack a throughly interesting, throughly engaging character into only 8 pages. While Rockerduck DID show up earlier in of ducks dimes and destinys, he wasn’t really fleshed out or named and only showed up for one page so still 9 pages total. 

But in those we see a kind and noble man whose easily what Scrooge COULD have been, kind, noble, generous, hardworking and willing to give up money to help people. He’s a good man.. but even he’s seen the sacrifice Money brings. He’s clearly lost friends, lost a sense of peace, and married the wrong Woman, whose poisoned his children into a spoiled brat who will only grown into an even more spoield adult in both continuities.. if raised quite a bit earlier in the 2017 cartoon as he was made scrooge’s contemporary there rather than a child, but semeantics. Point is Howard hismelf isn’t wholly satisfied with his success.. and that’s what he and Scrooge will forever have in common, with Scrooge, likely as a result of meeting the Rockerducks, fearing an indadiquate inheritor and someone squandering what he worked hard for. Though his reasons for not taking up a wife as we’ll see eventually, if outside the main 12 part story but I intend to cover the subchapters in their own time, aren’t entirely motivated by avoiding goldigging but a broken hard and his own stubborness. 

For now though we bid Howard and america adue. Scrooge however for once ends an occupation with less bitterness. Unlike his last two ventures where he made it out with only enough to get to the next one here he made it out ahead: he now has a decent suit, likely bought for him by Howard given he hasn’t cashed the check yet, I know this as it’s a major plot point for next time, 10,000 dollars.. and experince. He may of not gotten all the money he was due on this venture, but he learned more valuable skills and he feels with a land like america, the next opportunity to earn some dough is just waiting for him to get back. And as the chapter ends he muses that maybe the country could use a symbol of this countries boundless opportunity...

Final Thoughts for the Raider of the Copper Hill:

This chapter is one of my favorites. It’s nicely paced, something Rosa himself admits was often a struggle as he had to cover years at a time, has a wonderful new mentor for Scrooge, and sets up a lot of the tragedy to come in the last act beautifully. It’s a nice closer for our first act, showing Scrooge has come out of his first trip to america wiser, more experinced and more hopeful, but at heart still the same kind and noble kid he left Glasgow as. The next act is about the change of that boy into a man, how he will finally find his fortune after some more adventures.. and how the last viestges of his kindess and optimisim towards others die at the hands of a certain fake scotish gentleman. 

Next Life And Times: As is tradition for this series act openers, Scrooge returns home.. and just in time to get his castle back, fight a duel and go to heaven and back. So an average McDuck tuesday then. 

If you liked this review follow for more. And if you liked it a lot join my patreon so I can keep making these and hit my stretch goals. Even at just the 2 dollar level you get access to my discord and your pick of shorts whenever I do a series of them and with Goofy and Donald’s birthdays being the next ones to be celebrated you can’t pick a better time. patreon.com/popculturebuffet See you at the next rainbow. 

[transgamerthoughts]

What I Found In The Leaves

Last August, as the lease to my apartment was about to end, the roof began to smolder until the place I lived was full of smoke. When all was settled and done, my apartment had no roof. My room was spared and most of my things were okay—this part of the story being set in late capitalism, I am required to assure you that the things I purchased were okay too—and I decided to leave New York City to return to New England with my family. One of the first things I did when I arrived was look at the sky and imagine I was up there. Falling or sailing or flying. It didn’t really matter. I wanted to touch a cloud, to feel the whipping wind.

I promise… this is leading to something. In the months since, in spite of comfort and proximity to my family… in spite of the arrival of my nephew into this world—a child I would climb a mountain and punch God for if I needed to—and in spite of a happy job… I have spiraled into depression. My solution was work and writing. To throw myself into my job and to, somewhat foolishly, take on the task of novelizing my favorite game: Skies of Arcadia. Because if you’ve read my work long enough, it always comes back to Arcadia. I am proud of that project but it sparked a yearning in me. To truly connect to the world I was writing. It lit a fire. Before we proceed, let me be clear that by depression I don’t mean the woes of pandemic living or some disaffection with the reality of entering my 30s. I mean a deep and painful darkness with all the implications therein. Regardless to say, my efforts to combat it drained me. To the point that I burnt myself out and with some prodding from my boss, took a vacation. Which I am currently on. This is not the first time this series of events has played out. I made a promise to myself when I started vacation: no writing. I am breaking it because I have found, yet again, a moment where I must desperately drain the wonder in my heart and attempt to explain to you that I think there are magical things in the world, and that I believe there is some type of magic in art—in that strange alchemic or shamanistic way—that transfers to us. This will be my second attempt to explain it, and to explain what it has to do with video games. (Forgive the indulgence of this introduction by the way; an editor would surely have cut it all but I need you to understand two things: I am in pain and there's a part of that pain which I think points to something important.) This is a story of ritual and tea. Of how my senses and imagination came together to send me on a journey around a fictional world, in search of heroes who both do and do not exist. As part of my love for Skies of Arcadia, I’ve become something of a paraphernalia collector. I bought an old light novel from ebay, I used my rudimentary Japanese skills to set up a warehouse dropbox so that two fan magazines could be sent there and then subsequently shipped to America, and I have drank tea based off the game. At the time, I wanted to collect the little tins the tea came in; they seemed excellent collector’s items. What I found with my first round of tea was art unto itself; balances of flavor and spice and blends that symbolized characters and connected me to them. These were crafted by a dedicated fan and fellow writer. I don’t have the time to sit and research all the ways in which tea is used in ritual. Because I am tired and older and depressed and writing a blog post that perhaps thirty people will read. Regardless, to my delight I found that the tea-maker had created blends based off the various moons that dot Arcadia’s skies. For those who do not know the game, which I assume is many of you: each nation of the world rests under a magical moon. There are six, with one—a Black Moon—theorized to have gone missing. Here was my opportunity for a journey.

I bought teas based on each moon, and one based on the world itself. I will post a separate collection of all my individual tastings and reviews later. The important thing is this: I had been given an amazing gift. With these teas, I had something of that digital world which was actual. When we play games, we hear them and see them. Perhaps with certain haptics we can feel them. But we do not smell them or taste them or literally consume them. Eight teas, eight chances to smell and taste that wonderful world. To touch the clouds. Quem quaeritis? This is a famous question asked by an angel to the three Marys visiting Christ's tomb: his mother the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, who is the sister of Lazarus—the man Christ brought back to life after his death. It means: “whom to do you seek?” I was journeying, one tea cup at a time, around Arcadia. From continent to continent, I tasted their spices and experienced hints of their values, their cultures as expressed through the tea. The question played in my mind: Quem quaeritis? Whom was I seeking? The answer is complicated. First, I was seeking something of myself. The part of me that understood magic and wonder. The part of me that believes in the soul and believes that art, in allowing the complex interaction of creators and characters with players, performs some type of soul-magic. It impresses upon us, real and actual changes. I was seeking that piece of me; that part of me that understood that each cup was a ritual that brought about a communion with a distant world. I was searching for the younger part of me that believed in wonderful things. 

I drank the teas in the order our heroes travel the world, and in doing so I was performing a sort of perseveration of their journey. I communed with some place distant and followed in their footsteps. Which answers another half of the question. Whom did I seek? I sought my heroes. I sought the adventurous Vyse and his dogged determinism, I sought the firecracker Aika and her swift rushes to action, and I sought Fina. The woman I wish I could be: feminine, slight, beautiful, kind, brave. Quem quaeritis? All of this sounds like nonsense and when I try to explain the nonsense, I feel a deep embarrassment. To care in the 21th century, particularly in America, is to be weak. To be publicly vulnerable is to make yourself a target. You must be hard and solid as a rock. You cannot believe in magic or else you are doomed. But here I was, chasing myself and my heroes one cup at a time. And I need you to know that it hurt to do that. 

I went to the corner store today to buy some energy drinks. When I got back home, my father asked: “did you find what you were looking for?” I told him “That’s a very complicated question.”

Let me explain. Let me do the thing that I feel I cannot do well anymore; let me do some game criticism. In the world of games, the entities we control exist as two things. They are actors; manipulatable bodies, guided by code and controller inputs, that we guide around as we see fit. In this way, players have extraordinary power. In some ways, it is a… fraught power. We can, as Soulja Boy did, leave Braid’s protagonist in a perpetual flux state: jumping and rewinding. Back and forth, forth and back. Eternal puppets for our amusement, avatars for our power fantasies. Sometimes, as in the case of a game like Skyrim, our controllable actors are little more than flesh suits But actors are, more than anything, just… avatars. Video game actors are also characters. Within their worlds, which are fictional, they have motivations and wants and desires and dreams. They want to live and grow and succeed. Cloud Strife wants to defeat Sephiroth and uncover the truth about himself, Joel wants to protect Ellie and survive in a cruel world. Arthur Morgan wants to find a calmer life and redemption for his sins. They are, as characters, people. But since they are also actors, we can deny them their hopes and dreams whenever we want. We can have Cloud while away his days gambling at the Gold Saucer and, if we want, we can force Arthur Morgan to murder to population of an entire town. The core truth of a player's relationship to the character is this: we decide if their dreams are fulfilled. I find that troubling and I will try to explain why. But first let’s be clear: I do not think the character in games are sentient entities. I outlined this relationship of players and characters in a GDC talk a few years ago, using highly rhetorical terms and my reward was the ridicule of countless gamers who questioned my sanity. Some made videos about my presentation. It was hell. To be a woman, perhaps especially a progressively minded trans-woman, in games is to know a very real hell. To this day, I cannot go a week without some type of horrid experience on the internet. Some judgment of my worth, some assumption about my competency, or in the worst cases some proclamation about my right to live. No doubt this is part of why I needed my vacation. But here is why I find the player/character/actor relationship troubling. It is not merely the abstract notion, the thought experiment that elicits fun but meaningless philosophical natter. The reason I find that relationship troubling or at least complicated is because for all of their fiction, the characters in games can give us real things. They can, through some type of power—a deep power found in the act of story-telling itself—impart aspects of themselves on us. For instance, they can teach us lessons which we then carry into the rest of our lives. My father, for reasons I can’t recall, once told me: “the meaning of life is to serve others.” Though he does not know it, that truism has been etched into my soul. It is a “thing” that my father has given me. But my father is not the only person who has etched something into my soul. Vyse, that dashing pirate, has etched many things into my soul. For instance: “impossible is just a word people use to make themselves feel better when they quit.” That is etched on my soul too. Just as much as anything my father has taught. So we come to the heart of it: what does it mean that Vyse can so alter my being and values, and that he can do it with the same strength and “realness” of my father? What does it mean for a character, who is also often an actor that I guide, to give me such a powerful gift? Because let us be clear: values are “real” things. When I tried to explain that I believe that certain things are actually true, for instance that looking at landscapes does mean that we are looking at something real…. I spent an afternoon with former Jeopardy! contestant Arthur Chu and a cohort of Twitteristas attacking my philosophical surety. So, again, fuck the internet… I digress.. Let’s explore: I believe in the realness of things because of the depth of the emotions those things make me feel, and I refuse to believe that life is just endorphins, hormones, and instinct. That music or games or anything else can make us weep for joy is proof-positive to me of the existence of a soul; of an ineffable thing that is “us.” Not necessarily all enduring but certainly extant. And if this thing exists, it can be acted upon. I know this because my father, with his truism, changed my soul. Changed the core of me. I know this because Vyse and the others did so as well.

I’ve written that games criticism is a kindness; that it seeks the good in art and attacks the banal explicitly because art is beautiful. I write today to suggest this: art is magical. It alters us, not metaphorically, but in the ways it can affect our souls. Which brings us back to character and actors. I control Vyse since he is an actor and I am a player; but he is a character with dreams and hopes and personality. And values. Wonderful values which he shared with me. So what does it mean now that I can send actors to their doom? What does it mean that I can control them utterly when I know for a fact that they can affect and change me? I do not have clean answers for this. Perhaps there are none. Perhaps all I have written is silliness, even as I beg you to please understand. Please. 

Understand the power of stories, understand it in the way that Tolkein did when he said: “Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else … may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.” Understand that I am telling you that the locked thing is your heart and soul, and that just as a lover or parent or mentor can open that thing… so can the people we meet in our fictional journeys. Vyse is not just the captain of a ship. He is my captain. That means something. Art is ritual and play is ritual. In creation, we place something of ourselves in another thing. In play, we allow ourselves to be transmuted and changed. This is magic, of a sort. I am left wanting however. I followed the path of my heroes in as literal a way as I could, pulling on new senses to understand the world they live in and touch their skies for a fleeting moment. But I cannot reach them; I am Tantalus in the mire. Ever reaching, ever chasing. For that moment I can be the person that my heroes trusted me to become. Note by musical note, word for written word, tea cup by tea cup, I am chasing my captain. When I went back to my apartment the day after the fire, I looked up at the spot where the roof used to be. All I could see was blue sky and I thought I might fall into it. Perhaps in superficial ways I have shared something with my heroes; I have tasted something they have, even though the tea is not actually from Arcadia. It was merely a conduit to my imagination, to the transformed parts of my souls. Yet, I did not find him and I could not find myself. Which is why it hurts, in spite of how wonderful it was. Quem quaeritis? He is not here. So I will keep sailing after him.

[moth-and-raven]

CHAPTER TEN ~NSFW warning~

“I could’ve saved us some time had I just followed my first instinct last night,” Julian jokes. But his voice is tight, and he jumps at every sound as we skirt the base of the cliff on which the palace sits.

“Stop saying that,” Portia says flatly. “This isn’t a woe-begotten self-sacrifice, it’s a necessary risk to get you off the hook.”

“I… right.”

“Besides, you should practice staying quiet. It’ll be so hard for you to keep your mouth shut for more than a few seconds at a time.” She winks at him to take the sting from her words.

“Who, me? I’m a paragon of stealth.”

Their banter fades into my concentration. I’ve been practicing my own skill on the walk, calling to mind everything I can remember about the invisibility spell Asra taught me: how to reshape the air around the object being hidden, how to account for differences in shadow and light, how to keep others away so their touch doesn’t reveal anything. I’ve never tried to maintain its effects for so long before, but if the gravity of this situation doesn’t inspire me, nothing will.

“— won’t you, Reyja?”

I startle. Portia’s looking at me expectantly, though Julian has his eyes on the cobblestones. “Sorry, what?”

“I said you’ll gag him if he won’t stop talking.”

Now I know why he’s blushing so deeply. My own cheeks flush, and Portia laughs.

“Oh, both of you are way too easy to tease.”

I’m not flustered by embarrassment, but rather the idea of how good he would look drooling around a ball gag. Not the kind of gagging she meant, I imagine, although based on some of her other comments, maybe she did. Like her interest in asking me about whatever it is Julian and I have, though, I’m strangely pleased that someone might think I’d enjoy that. My mind flashes back to the way Julian trembled under my touch at the shop, how obviously and unashamedly aroused he was to feel my hands roam his body, and again in the rush of passion as he rutted against me in Mazelinka’s bed. The memories only serve to draw more blood to my face.

But we make it across the rest of the market and through the wide streets of the aristocratic quarter without incident.

“Okay,” Portia says as we stop at the base of the long incline to the palace gates. “Ready, Reyja?”

I nod.

“Ilya?”

He risks a small glance at me, then nods too.

“Alright. They know both of us on sight so we shouldn’t even be stopped, but if we are, for the love of god…”

She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. We all know what will happen if this fails.

I take a deep breath and call up my magic, pulling in scraps of our surroundings and weaving them together to mask Julian from even the most determined viewer. He disappears piece by piece until I’m satisfied that he can’t be seen from any angle. I’m almost positive his breath catches as I circle him, checking my work, and I smile to myself at how well I can picture his blushing face.

But I can’t see it, and that’s the point. I just have to hope I can hold the illusion in place long enough.

A long, curved road leads us up to the gatehouse, our footsteps pounding in time with our hearts. One of the guards waves to Portia as we pass, and another nods at me. I can feel my breath in my throat… but they don’t bother us.

We reach the massive double doors leading into the main hall and wait for the intricate mechanisms inside — Portia told me in passing the first night I got here that the locks were Nadia’s invention — to open. A pair of servants bearing a load of colorful streamers nearly knocks into Julian; I hear his swallowed yelp in the instant they would’ve collided, and then they bustle away. I suppress the urge to reach for his hand.

The hallways buzz with activity — Portia wasn’t kidding about the Masquerade preparations being in full swing. We have to pause more than once for her to give directions or advice, or wait for a large decoration to pass. But eventually, I catch sight of the bejeweled tree barring the way to the library and the breath I’ve been holding since I constructed Julian’s disguise loosens in my chest.

Portia has the keys in her hand as we stop, and quickly opens the myriad locks. “Go,” she whispers after poking her head in to ensure we’ll be alone. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The heavy thunk of the door sees her off.

I felt Julian’s presence behind me when I stepped into the quiet, so I drop his glamour all at once. Part of me wasn’t expecting to make it; there were a lot of variables over which we had little to no control. I don’t want to have to try it again.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. It’s the first thing he’s said directly to me since we left the Raven.

“You’re welcome.”

He opens his mouth as if to say something else, but turns away down the first row of books instead, following an old habit. I thought I would have to take him to the alcove in which he used to work, but it seems he’ll get there on his own. I hope that’s a good sign: if just being in this room can jog his memory, this massive risk might’ve been worth it.

He rushes to his desk the moment he catches sight of it, like he’s greeting a long-lost friend. He laughs joyously before looking back over his shoulder to smile at me.

And just as quickly as it appeared, that smile falls away.

Portia interrupted before we could really talk about what happened last night. I’m grateful she was there to help, but a weight still hangs between us; his aura reveals just how nervous he is to be alone with me again. He breaks our fleeting eye contact to stare at the mess of ink and paper scattered over the desktop, evidence of the problem-solving both of us have done.

A moment passes. Then another, and another. Maybe I’m still holding my breath after all, because nothing moves but the dust motes in the light beaming from the windows.

“I’m sorry, Reyja.”

His voice is soft, but I hear it clearly. He’s apologized for so many things in the short time we’ve known each other. This one feels different.

He turns around fully and starts back in my direction, speaking as he walks. “I’m so sorry. For everything. I don’t know what I was thinking, rejecting you like that. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I did it anyway.” He pauses in front of me and sighs. “But I meant what I said at Mazelinka’s. To have something with you… that’s what I truly want.”

The world feels balanced on the point of a needle, like if I move or speak, it will shatter and take both of us with it.

“I hope I’ve made it clear that I find you, ah, very, very attractive. Because I do. Everything about you.” His gaze traces my features until he breaks off with a shy smile. “And by some miracle, I think you see something attractive in me too.”

Just something? No. Even with his flaws, he’s perfect.

"I want to spend all the time I have left with you, however long or short that may be. I want…” His voice drops to a whisper. “Oh, god, I want you. ”

A shudder tingles through my whole body. To hear him say it so directly, in a voice so laden with emotion, sets me afire. I can’t even find it in me to overthink the words.

“But what do you want? If I ruined this, I’ll accept that.” Julian grimaces. “If you can’t forgive me, or, rather, give me a second chance… well, that would be wise, I think. I know I have no right to ask it of you. And I still can’t promise you'll be safe, but I would give my life if it meant yours wouldn’t be in danger. I’m prepared to take that responsibility whether you, erm, whether you want me back or not.”

If only he knew I’d thought the same thing, long before our night under the starstrand. How many times did I tell myself I would do whatever it took to protect him, regardless of his feelings for me? And how determined was I to think the worst of him, just like he assumed that I wouldn’t care enough to stay, only to have it all proven wrong? The very fact that he’s asking if I want him back, because I already had him once, is more than I ever thought I’d get, and more than I ever thought I deserved.

No force can keep me from the man who told me otherwise.

I take the step he left for me and ball my fists in his shirt, pulling him down into a fierce, fiery kiss. My tongue finds his as he crumbles against me, breaking under the relief that swirls through us both. This is meant to be. We are meant to be. I’m enough of a pessimist to acknowledge that it may not last forever, but right now, right here, this moment was meant to happen. Julian whimpers and buries his fingers in my hair, pulling me closer. In return, I bring one hand to his jaw and adore the scratch of the stubble I find there.

It could be seconds or hours later, but eventually he breaks away. Not far, just enough to rest his forehead on mine, breathing heavily.

“Julian…”

His face lights up at the sound of my voice. “Oh, dearest Reyja.” He leans in to kiss me again. “I didn’t realize I could want so much, and find it all in one person. In you.”

“You say that like I didn’t find the same in you.”

He laughs. What a beautiful sound. “You flatter me, my darling. Oh, and I'm so grateful for it.”

My darling. Is that who I am now, his darling? His dearest? There’s nowhere I would rather be, no one I would rather be, than that. I hug him tightly, if only to prove to myself that this time, I’m not dreaming.

“I have something for you,” he says, close enough that I can feel his breath stir strands of my hair. “It’s already yours, but…”

I look up at him, cocking my head. “What is it?”

Reluctantly, he breaks our embrace and reaches into the pocket of his coat. “You left it at Mazelinka’s. I shouldn’t have taken it, but I… I saw it sitting there and—” He peeks at me from under his eyelashes. “I wanted to remember that night, in case it was the only one we had. I wanted to remember how beautiful you were, how lucky I was to have you, if only for a moment.”

The starstrand flower has darkened, shriveled into itself in curls of midnight blue. It’s delicate, its light faded, its stem hardening in the absence of its tree. But he holds it gently, and offers it like he’s giving me his very heart. His touch is so soft, so careful as he tucks it behind my ear again. I catch his hand against my cheek and lean into him, struck beyond words by the depth of the gesture. He lifts my face to his for another kiss; his lips are even softer.

“I wish I had something more fitting,” he murmurs.

"I think it’s perfect. You don’t have to show off for me."

“What do you mean?”

I kiss him once more. His flushed skin is like stone in sunlight, or maybe the sun itself: if I could, I would happily put him at the center of my world. “I mean that you’re enough on your own.”

The tips of his gloved fingers skate down my cheek to touch my lips. “But you deserve more.”

We make a strange mirror, he and I, both convinced that neither would like what we saw in the other and so trapped in that thought that we almost ruined everything. I won’t leave anything up for interpretation, or misinterpretation, this time.

“I don't want more. I want you,” I tell him. “As you are, right now. Innocent or guilty. I want to help you. I want to stand with you against whatever happens.”

“Whatever happens,” he echoes. “Oh, my darling, I was kidding myself in the most merciless way when I thought I would be able to leave you. It seems so strange, to be so certain that I want to wake up beside you again, feel your chest rise and fall against mine. I haven’t slept as soundly as I did with you for years. I can’t remember the last time I felt so…” He trails off, reaching for my hands to fold our fingers together. “So happy. You make me happy, Reyja. When I walked away, I figured I would never be happy again. But if that was the price I had to pay to keep you out of harm’s way…”

I can’t let him think that this is what I expect, that the actual price for being with me is constant anxiety over my safety. I love how willing he is to protect me, but I’m not helpless. “You don’t have to do that to yourself. I need you to know that I’ll be alright.”

I don’t think I’ve ever said that before and truly meant it.

“But—”

I shake my head. “I’m not going to let you tear yourself apart to keep me together, okay? Like I said, and will say every time you need me to, I just want you. We’ll look out for each other if it comes to that, but I don’t want us to start out so unbalanced.”

Julian squeezes my hand and sighs, pulling me closer to rest his cheek on the top of my head. “That’s a different sort of protection, isn’t it?” he asks quietly. “Protecting me from myself.”

“M’hm. Does that sound reasonable?”

He chuckles. “More than reasonable. It sounds… it sounds… Ha, do you know how rarely I’m at a loss for words? You do that to me, sweetheart. I know seven languages and not a speck of any one of them is coming to mind right now.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”

“I don’t, do I?”

Silence sparkles in the midafternoon sunlight. Julian wraps his arms around me and sways, in and out of shadow, dancing with me like we have nothing better to do. After a moment, he gestures towards the same armchair I curled up in several nights ago, crying myself to sleep with the idea that he would never want me. I take a savage sort of pleasure in proving my own memory wrong as he pulls me onto his lap and kisses up the side of my neck before burying his nose in my hair.

“That scent,” he murmurs. “Oh, it’s neither the time nor the place for confessions like this, but my god. I prided myself on my strength of will at Mazelinka’s and yet all I could think about as soon as I left you there on the pier was doing exactly this, holding you close and feeling your luscious body under my hands, and how much I— ah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say anything, erm, anything more. Not now, anyway.”

He shifts beneath me, his blush resurfacing with a vengeance. Not now.

I’ve never thought of myself as impulsive. In fact, I’m quite the opposite, so frozen with indecision that I rarely do anything at all, let alone anything rash. But if I’ve learned nothing else from Julian, I’ve come to see some value in action without thought. We wouldn’t be where we are without it. Of course, there’s much more value in thinking things through before dashing off into the night, but sometimes…

“We have time.” I slide off his lap and turn to face him, crawling back up so I’m straddling his thighs instead. He swallows hard, cheeks moving beyond pink into scarlet, and reaches out to steady me with his hands on my broad hips. I smile as I brace myself on the plush upholstery behind his head and trace the tendons in his neck, pausing to toy with the snaps at the collar of his uniform. “What were you going to say?”

“A-ahm. I was just, erm…”

“Go ahead, Julian.” I lean close, knowing he’ll feel my lips against his ear. My smile widens when he trembles and tightens his grip on me.

“Oh, you have no idea the things I want to do to you,” he groans. “And the things I want you to do to me! Darling, you’ll think me such a degenerate if I tell you what crosses my mind when I picture us.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Try me.”

He stares at me, his visible eye wide. Then, as if in slow motion, he cups the back of my head and draws me into a deep, sensuous kiss, parting my lips with his tongue, his breath crashing against mine the faster his lungs heave. He lets me pop the snaps of his jacket and run my fingers down his chest, leaving faint red lines in the wake of my nails; his skin takes so kindly to scratch-marks. In return, he slides one hand under my shirt, groaning with pleasure at the smoothness of my skin.

And then he stops.

“I-I shouldn’t—” he stutters, reluctant to busy his mouth with something other than kissing me. “You’ve never—”

That’s thoughtful of him, but being a virgin does not make me virginal. “Should I go first?”

He gasps, and for a heart-wrenching second I wonder if I went too far. But then he pulls me closer and I feel the shift of his growing erection beneath his trousers. I’ll take that as a yes.

“I keep thinking about you on your knees, shirtless, maybe more…” I say, tucking one of his errant curls behind his ear. “Looking at me like you’d do whatever I told you to.”

“Oh, I would!”

I shiver. Of course this isn’t entirely new territory, but I had wanted to know how familiar he was with things like this. More than I had any right to expect, it seems. Lucky me.

“And I’ve bound your hands behind your back—”

He moans.

“—and you’re gleaming with sweat, like we just finished having some fun.”

He kisses me again. I wonder if he would let me undo his pants.

“I love your smile. I bet it’s even cuter when I tell you how good you've been.”

“Reyja, I—!”

“Would you like that?”

“S-so— so much!”

Part of me floats out of my mind, watching from above as I, Reyja North, sit on a handsome man’s lap and tease him with sexual fantasies I’ve never given voice to before. The things I'm saying would’ve flustered me to even think about less than a week ago, but he’s so earnest, so eager… is this the kind of person I’ve been all along? Did it only take someone like him to reveal it? “Then I’ll tell you all the time.”

I’d love to touch him, stroke him, take his cock into my mouth and look up into his eyes as I make him weak-kneed with pleasure. That particular organ has always fascinated me; in the course of exploring my gender, I decided to wear a dildo under my clothes once. It felt nice, though not nice enough that I do it every day. But I love the way the real ones change so much, going from soft to hard and spilling so dramatically. I can’t deny that a piece of me will simply be happy to have a penis to play with regularly. I hope Julian doesn’t mind.

At the moment, I think he’s rather excited about it. He’s panting, open-mouthed, and thrusting against me almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Feeling bold, I take hold of a handful of his hair and tip his head back. He hisses between his teeth, a flash of ecstasy lighting up his face before his eye rolls and he shivers in delight.

“Will you be good for me, Julian?”

He meets my gaze for only a moment, his mouth fallen open. Between us, his cock jumps, and when I look down, thick milk-white cum is spilling from just below his belt through the fabric of his pants.

“No, no, no!" he groans, like he thinks he can stop it. “Oh no! Oh, I’m so sorry! I— You— I didn’t mean to—”

I didn’t know he was so near the edge. But even as I swallow my own apology, I realize that I’ve never seen anything so arousing. I made him do that, just by kissing him and giving him something to rub against. Just by saying a few words, I made him lose control of something many men pride themselves on maintaining. I would much, much rather he do this than strut around bragging about his stamina. He’s beautiful when he cums.

He’s still stammering as I silence him with my lips on his, but resists for only a moment before returning my embrace. What a rush of emotions he must be feeling right now. Whatever else, though, I’m not going to let him be embarrassed about this. At least not because of my reaction.

I pull away so both of us can see what happened. He looks at me trepidatiously, his blush turned a humiliated crimson though desire still sparks in the gray storm of his iris.

I answer his unasked question with a smile. “That was so hot.”

He wasn’t expecting that. “It… it was?”

I brush his bangs back and kiss him again.

He laughs, relieved but wild. “Oh, Reyja, I’m so happy you said that! I’ve, ah, I’ve gotten into trouble before, like this. Ahem. Truly, you’re one in a—”

With so many other things to think about, and activities to occupy me, I’ve forgotten where we are and what we’re supposed to be doing until now. For all I care, we’re the only two people left in Vesuvia. But everything comes crashing back at once when I hear a thump on the library door and, to my horror, the faint murmur of voices outside.

Fuck. Fuck.

Julian hears them a moment after I do and turns gray. I slide off of his lap and he pales even more as the full scope of the damage makes itself known: the creamy stain is very noticeable, smeared down the inside of one thigh. The look on his face says more than he ever could have in the handful of seconds we have to spare.

Because one of the voices in the hall belonged to Portia, but the other was Nadia. And she was asking to be let in.

—————

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[from-seas-to-skies]

hey Empress, may i please have Aizawa or Vlad King with heavy petting? thanks babe!

No, thank you! This is our first request for this blog, so let’s gooooooo

Reeducation / Aizawa x Reader ♕︎

warnings: spicy spicy

words: 702

(a/n): Just to clarify, reader is a teacher here, not a student >.>

-

Passion comes in many forms, whether it’s big or small, cloaked in fire or ice.

It’s not your fault you’ve always seen Aizawa in such a light; with a cool, stern demeanor like his, it’s hard not to. Though, you wouldn’t necessarily classify him as an ice prince, no, not by a long shot. He’s simply a quiet man, one that doesn’t stand for anyone’s bullshit.

Maybe that’s what pulled you towards him in the first place. A moth drawn to a dark gray flame, only to set it alight in a fiery new hue. Because, even if you won’t outright admit it, you have just as much of an effect on him as he does on you.

Maybe you’ve grown too sentimental. Whatever the cause, these heart clenching thoughts plague your mind whenever you’re thrown into the woes of passion. Fingers gripping the front of his shirt, mouth skirting along his scruffy jaw, you’re right where you want to be.

“Ah, shit,” Aizawa’s deep voice breathes. It soothes your frantic nerves, makes the butterflies in your stomach flutter. His hand is too broad, long fingers tapping the underside of your sex as his palm grinds into you. “I bet you want me to fuck you, eh?”

“I wouldn’t be getting too cocky if I were you,” you murmur, your teeth scraping his flesh. Like him, your own hand shamelessly brushes against his cock, fingers stroking the hardening tent in his pants.

Aizawa merely breathes out a laugh, his head knocking to the side as your lips descend his neck. “Now, who said anything about being cocky?”

“Mmhmm,” you hum, eyes falling shut as your hips unconsciously buck into his hand. You gasp at the spark of arousal racing up your spine, leaving your mind heavy and groggy. “Is this another one of your logical ruses?”

“That depends,” Aizawa grunts, his hand picking up speed, “are you gonna fall for it or not?”

“Stop acting like a fool,” you say, a smile threatening to tug at the corners of your lips. Moving upward, you plant your mouth on his; he tastes like coffee, but there’s an underlying note of something so incredibly sweet that you can’t get enough of. Before long, the both of you are licking at the insides of each other’s mouths, tongues slipping in a way that’s both messy and tantalizing.

Your heart thrums with pleasure whenever Aizawa presses you harder against the wall, his forearm propped by your head as he kisses you dumb. Alone like this, pressed against the wall of a lonely staff’s lounge, you’re nearly drifting away from reality, Aizawa’s sturdy body the only thing keeping you anchored. Anybody could walk in at any time, catch the two of you in such a promiscuous manner, but you don’t care. Not when Aizawa’s tongue is slithering down your throat, not when his hand is delivering so much delicious friction.

“Naughty thing,” Aizawa mutters, his voice rumbling deep in his chest and throat. “You won’t be happy until I bend you over my desk, huh?”

“Always so demanding,” you respond, lifting your hand from his shirt and skimming your thumb over his bottom lip. “What are you gonna do about it, sensei?”

“And here I was, already thinking you were taught proper manners. Maybe I am a fool.” You release a sound of displeasure as he removes his hand; abruptly, he clenches onto your wrists and lifts them with ease, pinning your hands above your head. “But I wonder,” he begins, slipping a strong thigh in between your legs, “if old dogs can be taught new tricks.”

“Don’t mock me.” A sharp breath escapes your throat as Aizawa begins to rock his thigh against your clothed sex.

“Mock you?” he teases, a playful lilt to his usually gruff tone. “No, I’m educating you. That’s what school is for, isn’t it?”

“You bastard – don’t play dirty like that.”

“Don’t treat Aizawa-sensei­­­ ­like that, you little brat. I think it’s about time some reeducates you, hmm?” Leaning in, he kisses you deeply, his intoxicating taste lathering your tongue, making your head dizzy. “First lesson,” he whispers, dropping your wrists and removing his thigh, “is to get on your knees.”