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longitudinalwaveme · 4 years ago

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Random Flash Rogue Headcanons

Ideas that pop up a lot in my fanfics and fanart:

-Mick Rory was a farm kid.

-Roscoe Neyle Dillon is the son of Reginald Norton Dillon, a well-to-do banker, and Rosa Nicole Dillon, his rather pliant, weak-willed wife. Reginald held his son to punishingly high standards and was quick to criticize, berate, and threaten his son when he failed to live up to them. Rosa never intervened.

-Roscoe grew up in North Ridge, a suburb of Central City. He is on the autism spectrum, but grew up before it was widely recognized. He was constantly bullied by his peers and was disliked by most of his teachers because of his odd behavior. He had a number of special interests but the most prominent was, of course, tops.

-Roscoe is one of only three Rogues to attend high school and one of only two to have attended college. Lisa and Hartley also both graduated from high school, and Hartley also went to college. Roscoe studied (possibly has a degree in) physics.

-Roscoe’s parents currently live in Bridgeville.

-Mark (Marco) Mardon is the son of Patricia (Paloma) and Matthew (Matias) Mardon, and the younger brother of Clyde (Claudio) Mardon. His parents immigrated from Guatemala when he was a month and a half old and Clyde was about a year old. Both parents were college-educated, which made the process simpler than it otherwise would have been, and the family initially settled in Dunhurst, a suburb of Central City. However, they were never accepted there, and they eventually left the town after persistent harassment from the Clan of the Fiery Cross.

-They resettled in Bridgeville, and Matias and Paloma went to great pains to hide the fact that they were immigrants, Americanizing their names and refusing to let their sons speak Spanish outside of the home. Patricia became the head of the local library, and Matthew took a job as a teacher of geography at the local high school. The family eventually settled fairly comfortably in the middle class.

-Clyde was only 11 months older than Mark, so they were always in the same year at school. He was handsome, intelligent, popular, and athletic. Mark, by contrast, was painfully average. He couldn’t live up to the standard set up by his parents’ golden child, and eventually, he stopped trying, knowing that he would never measure up. He and Clyde were very close, but their relationship was often strained by the fact that Mark was so often compared unfavorably to Clyde.

-Mark dropped out of high school at 16 and ran away, eventually drifting into petty theft due to his lack of direction. Clyde, meanwhile, graduated high school early and earned a degree in meteorology. He started work on the Weather Wand when he was still in college, but didn’t finish it until he was 23. He died not long after of congenital heart failure, and then his shiftless younger brother strolled in and took the wand for himself.

-Samuel Joseph Scudder was born to Percival and Martha Scudder. Unfortunately, Percival contracted cancer a few months before Sam was born and died when his son was only 7 months old, leaving his wife with dozens of medical bills. The Scudders had never been particularly well-off, so Martha was forced to move into an apartment complex on Baker Street, colloquially known as Skid Row, where she would raise her young son.

-Martha was a talented seamstress, so much so that she was eventually hired by the Rathaways. While this provided steady work, the Rathaways were extremely demanding employers, and so Martha wasn’t able to be at home with her son as much as she would’ve liked.

-Young Sam loved cowboy movies and superhero comics. He was especially fond of the JSA and gathered a collection of JSA comics that he still owns (currently, he hides them in the Mirror Realm so the other Rogues won’t find out about them). He was also a boy scout and eventually became an Eagle Scout. He was highly intelligent and generally did well in school, and he was close friends with Jennifer Conners, who lived in the same apartment complex he did. When they entered high school, the two started dating, and even fantasized about getting married.

-Unfortunately, life on Baker Street was less than ideal. Sam was embarrassed by the shabby state of his clothes and possessions, had to watch as his mother tried to figure out how to pay their bills, and was surrounded by violence. Fights were common in the apartment complex where Sam lived, and, when he was 15 years old, he and Jennifer bore witness to Jennifer’s father being brutally shot as they came home from school. Both were traumatized. Jennifer began a years-long struggle with PTSD, and Sam’s anxiety levels went through the roof. Not wanting to burden his mother and knowing that they didn’t have enough money for therapy, Sam turned to cigarettes, and then alcohol, in the hopes of relieving his anxiety. As he spiraled into addiction, he got mixed up with the school’s party crowd, and dropped out at 17. He drifted into a life of crime and was sent to prison at age 19 for robbing a convenience store. In this prison, he would mostly break his alcohol addiction, but his smoking habit only got worse. More importantly, however, while serving his sentence for this crime, he would discover the Mirror Realm.

-Sam loves his mother, but he avoids her because he knows his actions disappoint and worry her. His ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Conners, though continually struggling with PTSD, managed to graduate from both high school and college, and currently works as a school counselor. Sam avoids her, too, but still holds a bit of a candle for her.

-Mrs. McCulloch’s first name is Eva. She is devoutly Catholic, and, as a result, Evan is also devoutly Catholic (albeit a very confused Catholic). He goes to Mass at least once a week, believes priests are basically infallible, and will threaten to kill you if you so much as look at a nun funny. He goes to Confession at least once a month and would probably go more often if each session didn’t last three hours.

-Giovanni Giuseppi (James Jesse) is the son of Helen and Alessandro Giuseppi, both of whom are the children of Italian immigrants. He has a very, very, very large extended family, most of whom are in the circus with his parents. Many of them speak Italian; while James isn’t fluent in the language, he can understand it quite well and speak it well enough to get by. The whole family is very emotionally demonstrative and physically affectionate, which is part of why James has no concept of personal space. His relatives include his Zia Catalina (who runs an Italian restaurant), his Nonna Gianna, his Nonno Antonio, his Nonno Aberto, his Nonna Lucrezia, his Zio Luca, his Aunt Stella, his Zio Angelo, his Zia Loretta, his Zia Lucia, his Zio Armani, his Aunt Karen, his Zia Bianca, his Zio Rocco, his Zio Romeo, his Aunt Olivia, his Zia Etta, his Zio Dante, his Uncle Fred, his Aunt Susan, his Uncle Harold, his Aunt Lydia, his cousins Bobby and Susie and Maria and Carly and Matthew and Frank and Julia and Freddie and Joseph and Lucy, and his cousins’ kids, Angela and Charlie and Stefano and Gian and Marsha and Rose and Kaitlyn and Steve. He’s not entirely sure how he’s related to most of them. James’ family is all technically Catholic, mainly because they’re all Italian, but only about half of them are practicing Catholics.

-James invented the airwalker shoes when he was 13 years old.

-There was a very large age gap between Leonard and Lisa’s parents when they got married. This is because Larry/Lewis Snart was a 40-year-old creeper who got a 15-year-old girl pregnant. Shirley married him because she had nowhere else to go; her parents kicked her out when she got pregnant. She dropped out of high school soon after, and, after several years of abuse, she ran away, leaving Len and Lisa alone with Larry/Lewis.

-Len is about 5 years older than Lisa; he dropped out of high school at 14 so that he could support her and left home at 18. He continued to send money to her after he left, even after she became a professional figure skater.

-Lisa’s teenaged years were one long nightmare. She was a beautiful young woman, but because of her background, her mother’s reputation as a loose woman, and her father constantly calling her nasty names, she was demonized by the “nice, proper” people of her neighborhood as a temptress, someone who would lead their sons astray. (This in spite of the fact that they were often the ones making advances on her.) Her father also became increasingly abusive towards her, as Leonard had left the home and, as she got older, Lisa started to remind him of his wife. In response, she threw herself into her figure skating and tried to shut the rest of the world out. By the time she was 16, she was already one of the most talented skaters in the Midwest, and when she was 17, she left her father’s house and moved in with another girl on her skating team for the rest of high school. She graduated with a B+ average and was promptly snapped up by a professional figure skating team. Lisa had managed to escape-at least physically. Her teenaged years left her convinced that her beauty was something dangerous; something evil, and it took Roscoe over a year to break down her defenses when they met. However, once he did, she fell deeply in love. Finally, she had found someone who would never abandon her.

-Roscoe, for his part, was equally in love. After years of being seen as a socially awkward weirdo, he had found someone who thought he was sophisticated and intelligent; someone who didn’t laugh at his tops and who didn’t seem bothered by his quirks. It was intoxicating.

-Geraldine is 20 years younger than Hartley; she was born to replace him as the heir to the Rathaway fortune.

-Hartley’s parents were in their thirties when he was born. Both of them came from long-established “old money” families; their marriage was more the result of a business deal between Hartley’s grandparents than any sort of romantic relationship. Prior to her marriage, Rachel was a Kane. Her uncle was the father of Jacob Kane (father to Kathy Kane) and Martha Wayne (nee Kane), making her the first cousin of Bruce Wayne’s mother. Red hair runs in the Kane family, and she passed it on to both of her children.

-Similarly, Hartley’s paternal grandmother was originally a Queen before marrying into the Rathaway family. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg: Hartley’s at least a distant relative of most of the wealthiest people in the DCU.

-Geraldine is on the autism spectrum; she’s able to mask her symptoms well enough that her parents haven’t decided to pull the “let’s fix her with expensive surgeries” trick that they used when Hartley was born deaf.

-Hartley’s parents engaged him to a girl named Kathryn Kendell, the heir to a fast food corporation, when he was 18; nothing came of it because he got himself disowned before the marriage could actually happen.

-Hartley’s parents are intensely controlling and basically make all the decisions in their children’s lives without actually asking them for their opinions.

-Len Snart is prone to ulcers.

-Albert and Rita Desmond have an infant son named Alan. He likes to chew on his father’s Philosopher’s Stone. Alvin adores his “astral nephew” and kept showing up at Albert’s house uninvited to see him. Eventually Albert got tired of Alvin breaking in and put him on their baby-sitting list. Rita is less than thrilled by this but is at least pleased that Alan keeps Alvin from trying to ruin Albert’s life.

-George Harkness has two half-brothers: an older brother named Tom Harkness, the son of Agnes and Ian Harkness, and a much younger brother named Walter Wiggins, the 12-year-old son of W.W. Wiggins and his wife. (All these characters are canonical, but it’s never actually been officially stated that this is the case.)

-Jai West idolizes Jay Garrick and plans to take up his costume someday.

-Josh Jackam-Mardon’s weather-controlling abilities are directly tied to his mood. When he’s happy, it’s sunny and he makes rainbows. If he’s cold, the temperature will increase. If he’s hot, the temperature will drop and it might even start snowing. If he’s sad, it rains. If he throws a temper tantrum, it creates a thunderstorm-and if he’s really upset, a tornado will form.

-When Barry Allen was 13, he paid the admission fee that was required in order to meet the members of the JSA for both himself and a 9-year-old Sam Scudder. It’s one of both men’s fondest memories, and neither realizes that the other was the boy who met the JSA with him on that day.

-Axel Walker is the son of Alan Walker and Alice Strickland. His father is a used car salesman who left his wife for Axel’s stepmother, Barbie, when Axel was 7 years old. Axel does not like Barbie and isn’t particularly happy with his father, either. Axel’s mother is Jewish. As such, so is Axel (although Axel doesn’t practice his faith much, if at all.) He can read a bit of Hebrew and speak a bit of Yiddish.

-Eobard Thawne is convinced that he is an expert in 21st-century technology. The result: “This is a historical device called a toaster. It served as a primitive form of climate control!”

-Abra Kadabra, by contrast, spends most of his time in the 21st century baffled by the devices used by these primitive savages. What sort of communication device doesn’t send a perfect three-dimensional copy of your body to the person you’re talking to? What kind of food-preparation device takes twenty minutes to cook a meal? Why don’t their hygiene devices instantly clean their bodies of dirt and odors instead of requiring water that’s never a comfortable temperature? HOW DO YOU OPERATE THIS ‘REMOTE CONTROL’? This makes him a very annoying house guest.

-Mick Rory is an accomplished cook, home repairman, and knitter.

-Albert Desmond is often so lost in thought that he puts his keys in the refrigerator.

-All of the Rogues are more scared of Iris Allen than they are of Barry. And with good reason.

-Owen Mercer is good friends with Joan Garrick.

-Sam is developing the early stages of emphysema but refuses to admit it because it would mean having to try to kick his smoking habit.

-Mick Rory’s body is covered by third-degree burns, and his voice is unnaturally raspy because of all the smoke inhalation he’s undergone over the years.

-Mark Mardon is a horrible klutz. If he can trip over something, he will end up doing it. This is part of why he likes being able to fly so much.

-Len Snart and Sam Scudder are huge fans of Central and Keystone City’s sports teams. Linda Park-West is among the few who can rival their civic pride in this regard. Evan and Digger are both big fans of rugby and cricket. Hartley is solely a baseball fan; the other Rogues don’t much care about sports unless betting is involved.

-Mark Mardon watches the weather channel solely so he can make sure that the reporter’s predictions are wrong.

-Digger loves the great outdoors and can hike for hours.

-Mark Mardon is terrible at cards but gambles constantly anyway. He’s lost more money than he’s ever stolen trying to win bets. James, by contrast, is a master cardsharp.

-Sam and Roscoe spend more money on clothes (and more time in the shower) than the rest of the male Rogues combined.

-Dexter Miles knows the birthdays of everyone in the Twin Cities. No one knows how he knows this, he just does. When it’s a Rogue’s birthday, the museum opens a exhibit exclusively about them for a few days. The Rogues don’t know this is intentional and it’s really starting to freak them out.

-When the Rogues found out that the Flash Museum hires people to dress up as them and teach young visitors about science, Sam Scudder waited for a day when the museum’s ‘Mirror Master’ called in sick and showed up in his place. All the visitors to the museum that day were agreed that he was the best “Mirror Master” the museum had ever had.

-James once went to the Flash Museum in full costume and stood right by one of the statues of him. He even posed in exactly the same way. He was immediately informed by a patron that he was much too blonde to be the real Trickster. James found the whole experience very amusing.

-Roscoe insists that all the statues of him at the Flash Museum make him look fat. Lisa thinks that’s ridiculous and says that they’re almost as handsome as the genuine article. Len agrees that the statues make Roscoe look fat and thinks it’s hilarious.

-All three of the Flashes have, of course, been to the Flash Museum while in costume. Like James, they are often told that they don’t look anything like the real Flashes. Barry and Jay are baffled by this; Wally thinks it’s funny.

-Mick Rory donated his chili recipe to the Flash Museum’s diner. It’s one of the more popular dishes amongst people who love spicy food.

-Wally is trying to convince his wife to get the kids a pet cheetah. “Come on, honey! It’ll be good for the twins to have a pet who can keep up with them!”

#headcanon #flash comics #flash rogues #dc comics #fanfic #long post

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demivampirew · 4 years ago

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Kalentine’s Day

Henry x Plus-Size Reader

You can find more of my writings in the Masterlist

This was a request from @born2stronger : “what about if Henry meets reader through Instagram (we all know sometimes he checks on the comments) so reader gets his attention and he messages her.” I hope you like it. 😊

Triggers: Fat- shaming; talking about the lost of a pet; feeling of nostalgia.

Tag list: @lunedelorient @henrythickcavill @wolvesandhoundshowltogether @mary-ann84 @desperate-and-broken @peakygroupie @summersong69 @ivvitm1109 @madbaddic7ed @iloveyouyen @the-soot-sprite @hell1129-blog

"Happy Valentine's day everyone! For all of my fellow single pringles out there, you don't have to be in a relationship to enjoy today, it's about Love. Enjoy seeing others in Love, love your friends, your family, and especially yourself. #Kal #ValentinesDay #BestDogEver #KalentinesDay"

Henry wrote and posted the picture of Kal laying on the bed with a rose on his Instagram account.

Nostalgia hit him hard later that day. He wasn't in a rush to get back on the dating game, especially not after a recent disappointment with a lady, but he missed celebrating that day with a woman he would care about. He starting to imaging how that day would've been if there was someone special in his life: he'd had made breakfast for her to eat on the bed; he'd taken a stroll down the park after that, to enjoy the beautiful morning. They'd have had lunch in someplace fancy, then watch a movie and he'd prepare her favourite dish for dinner and he'd finish the day by making her feel unique. Every woman in his life was unique on his eyes, for best or for worst. That thought made him sigh deeply for what he decided to check some comments on his post. Cheeking comments on his photos was his guilty pleasure. He loved the nice comments and would laugh out loud whenever there were thirsty comments; some were a bit distasteful, others were cute and there were others that were so odd that made him chuckled.

As he was scrolling through comments, one caught up his attention. "@(your username) "KalentinesDay" you cracked me up, Mr Cavill! But I'd like to differ with the BestDogEver one; I love Kal, he's awesome, but my dog is...was the best. I lost him two days ago and I felt like my world crushed for I've had him since I was a kid. Being there holding his paw as the doctor put him down due to disease was the worst thing I've ever experienced. Sorry for ruining the mood, but thank you for the post, it lighted up my day! Have a nice KalentinesDay, Sir." He felt so bad for that person, so he entered her profile and hit the message option. "Hi Y/N. I saw your comment and I just wanted to say how sorry I'm that you lost your beloved companion. I've had Kal for a few years and I cannot even bear the thought of losing him, so I cannot imagine how must feel to lose your pal who's been there most of your life. Be strong. I'm sending you virtual hugs and lots of love. I hope you get better soon." After sending her the message, he checked her account for he saw a recent post with a picture of a lovely dog. It wasn't a mixed breed. It was a rescued dog. She talked so fondly of him, remembering the first day she met him and a few adventures they lived together. The stories warmed Henry's heart yet saddened him, knowing that his light had extinguished. There were a lot of pictures of her dog on her account and pictures of books and movies. Funny enough, most of the books she talked about were some of his favourites and the ones that he hadn't read, he took screen captures so he wouldn't forget to check them out. One of the movies she posted about was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and he had to see her thoughts on it. She agreed that the whole Martha plot was absurd, but the thing that bothered her the most, and in her opinion ruined the movie a little bit, was the fact that Doomsday was on the final trailer, for the movie would have been higher rated from her if she'd already known that he was going to show up. Yet, she disagreed with all the hate and the thought that the movie was bad: "It could've been better? Sure, Was it horrible? Absolutely not," "If it is too dark for you, don't watch it, period. Mr Snyder understands the soul of DC Comics. Dc is not lighthearted, accept that and move on" she wrote. Henry was too tempted to like the post and reply, but he decided that it was best not to do it. She didn't have many pictures of her, but he found one from two years ago. In the picture, she was standing to a bride and she hugging her. She had a pink dress on. Henry looked at her cute smile and was stunned by her beauty. In the caption of the photo, she wrote " Ignore my ugly fat ass... focus on my beautiful sister who just got married to her Charming Prince! Congrats, babe! Love you a lot and wish you a lifetime of nothing but happiness! ♥" Henry liked the picture and went straight to the comment section and wrote "You look gorgeous. I hope their love story is a good one and lives on." and press send. He was so caught by her, that without even noticing it, he went through every single post on her account, like all the photos she was in and same with pictures of books, movies and albums he liked.

He was having dinner with Kal when he noticed that he had a reply on IG. When he opened, he saw it was from the girl with the mesmerizing smile. "I think I should call the police, I have a stalker, 👀 😂" she wrote. "Thank you so much for the mood busting. It means a lot. He brought a lot of light to my life and it's hard to have to say goodbye." she confessed, "but instead of lying in bed crying, I'm going to use that energy to give love to another animal in need, that's what my baby would have wanted, I know it in my heart." she finished. Henry didn't wait for a second to answer her, even if that meant that his food would get cold. "Absolutely! Any animal would be lucky to have you as their momma." he assured, "Sorry for that, I didn't mean to be a creep. I swear I'm nice. I'm Superman" he joked. After a few moments, the girl messaged him again "Superman killed Zod, so...👀😜 ". "Low shot. Also, Zod was a villain" he went on with the conversation. " How do you know that I'm not a villain?" she joked, "Because villains don't love puppies" he grinned like an idiot in love as he pressed send. "Cruella did, though, 👀 😂" she said; "Touché. But I'm sure you're not a villain, you are too cute for that" he explained. "That'd be the perfect cover for a conquer the world masterplan, don't you think? To have everyone trust me and love me for me to be easier to control them?🤔" "Alright, you convinced me. You're the evilest villain in history. So, I should fly to wherever you are and get you." he playfully told her. "And I didn't want to sound creepy 😂. My apologies if my humour seems creepy," he apologized. "I think your humour is genius and I find it cute, no creepy," she pointed out. "Cute enough to meet me in person? 👀" he asked. "Absolutely," she accepted his invitation. "When are you free?" she questioned. Henry looked at the clock, it was 7:30 pm. "I'm free right now if you can." Henry offered, "Do you live in London?". "From the last couple of years, yes. I moved with my mom after my parents got divorced. She's was born here... I mean, yes, I live in London, sorry for the unnecessary information," she requested his forgiveness. "There's no need to apologize. I like getting to know more about you." he explained " Do you want to go to Mark's Club restaurant? It's a nice and quiet place where we can have a nice conversation" he proposed "I think I can get a last-minute reservation since I'm a member of the club." he informed her. "Sure, I'm going to get ready. Tell me if you get the reservations or we can go anywhere else, I'm sure there are plenty of nice places to eat where there are tables available 😊" she said. "Great, I'm calling them right now!" Henry exclaimed excitedly and went into his phone contact list and press the dial button. He was lucky enough that the manager was a Superman fan and was quite fond of him, so he agreed to reserve a table for him in the busiest night of the year for restaurants. He shared the information to her and went to change as well. He put a white sweater and a nice pair of black pants on and black shoes. A grey blazer was his coat of choice.

He asked for her address to pick her up, but she opted for meeting at the club and he accepted because he understood that maybe she felt unsafe by giving her living information to a stranger. He couldn't lie that this gave him enough time to leave Kal with his friend Ben.

He waited for her inside the restaurant for there were paparazzi outside the place. Mark's Club was an exclusive place where many celebrities choose to eat in, especially in such occasions like Valentine's day - Guy Ritchie and his wife choose that place to spend the night and so did David and Victoria Beckham. Both couples came to greet him as soon as they saw him. His table was about to be ready and she wasn't there yet. He checked for messages on his IG but there were none. Has she stood him up? That'd have broken his heart; no because someone rejected him, but because she did it. He thought that he was losing his mind: being afraid that a girl he met that day on the internet might have played a prank on him and make him believe that she was interested in him.

When he saw that it was 10 pm, he decided that it was better to inform the host of the club that he wouldn't need a table after all. He was about to get up when behind him a female voice called his name. He turned around and stood, speechless. A beautiful woman on a red dress was standing in front of him, showing that glorious smile that captivated him ours ago on his phone.

- I'm so sorry I'm so late.- you apologized profusely - It took me ages to find a cab and then I've spent literally thirty minutes outside trying to get in because paparazzi were being annoying and would get in the way for me to get in.-she explained. - No worries!- he assured her- Honestly, I was a bit afraid that I've had been stood up.-he confessed, styling his hair backwards with his hand. - Absolutely not! I don't particularly enjoy pranks. Especially not in niece people like you.- she smiled and his legs were shaking.

At that moment the waiter approached you to let you know your table was ready. Henry said "Ladies first" indicating you to go first into the table area. The place was elegant. Henry waited behind your chair and as you sat in, he pulled it close to the table. He sat in front of you, grinning like the devil. That charming smile took your breath away.

Every word that came out of your mouth amazed him for your charisma and intelligence. You were not only funny, smart, confident but also beyond beautiful. He knew that wasn't love at first sight, but he could see himself falling deeply in love with you.

Halfway through the dinner, Henry finally noticed that lots of costumers were watching them. He found that odd since he was a regular there and there were plenty of celebrities on that place that night -some way more famous than him.

- I apologized if you feel uncomfortable with people watching us. Usually, they barely look at me. They know I'm an actor, but these fancy folks don't care much for Superheroes.- he explained. You looked at him with a smirk. - They're not looking at you, they are looking at me.- you pointed out. - Are you famous?- he asked confused and you chuckled because he meant it and it wasn't sarcasm. - Yes, I'm Ashley Graham.- you joked and his expression showed ignorance; he didn't know who she was.- She's a model.- you explained and he laughed apologizing for his lack of knowledge on current pop culture. He was beyond cute.- No, I'm not famous. They're looking at me because I'm "fat"; I'm a plus-size woman and they probably can't understand why are you having dinner with me.- you said and smiled- In another point of my life this would have hurt. It did for a long time. Whenever I'd be in a date with a thin man, people would look at us as if they were thinking out loud that he was too good for me, that he could do so much better than a fat girl. Thankfully I'm no longer in a place in which I'd blame myself for their judgement. I'm who I am and I'm ok with that. They can look all they want, they don't mean anything to me.-you shrugged- But, I need to know if that bothers you. I won't judge you if you are not into me. Maybe I'm confusing things, but the fact that you made a last-minute appointment for dinner on this day is because you have some kind of interest on me and I do for you too. I'm in for getting to know each other and maybe be something if we feel it later on. But if that's the case, if I got things wrong and you are not interested in my, just tell me. It's ok and we can be just friends if you want. All I ask from you is not to waste my time. Don't get me to grow feelings for you if you have no intention in returned them.- you requested. Henry went silent for a moment. Then he put his hand on top of yours, grabbed it and kissed it. He grinned and replied, "You got it right, gorgeous."

The dinner continued with you two laughing, drinking fine wine and having delicious desserts. You tried to grab the check but he took it so fast that you barely saw it. "I'll pay next time. That's the condition for me going out again with you" you indicated firmly and he agreed.

As you were about to leave, he noticed you didn't have a coat. "I was so hurried that I forgot to grab one" you explained and he immediately took off his and gave it to you, despite you telling him that you were ok, and helped you to put it on. He held your hand to walk outside, not caring if paparazzi took photos of you and he called a cab for you. It was easier for famous people to get a ride, you noticed. He drove you to your place and walk you to the door. He was much taller than you, so he leaned in to kiss your cheek and kissed your hand as well. Henry promised to call you the next day and walked towards the car. You reminded him of his coat and he asked you to keep it safe for him until next time you saw him. With a big smile, he got in the car and after you entered your place, you heard the cab left.

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x plus-size reader #henry cavill one shot #demivampirew

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eleutheramina · 4 years ago

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5D’s positivity!

As someone who likes and thinks a lot about 5D’s (1-64) and recently rewatched the series, I realized I have a tendency to get pretty frustrated/negative about how some things turned out at the end, especially in the latter half of the Dark Signer arc (which I may make another post about), so wanted to take some time to think about things I genuinely appreciated!

(For the most part) doesn’t completely drop/forget the non-Signer supporting characters from the beginning arc! I always thought it was funny how Himuro/Yanagi went from Yusei’s prison buddies to Rua and Ruka’s babysitters and it’s a nice subtle way to demonstrate how Yusei’s really someone who connects people together. Of course Tenpei probably could have been more of a character than he is, but

Also appreciate how Rally-tachi get a little more development in the DS arc--being the first to react to Yusei being King, for instance, and even getting to save his D-Wheel (even if it’s largely also comic relief) . It’s nice to see people caring about Yusei and trying to go out of their way to help/support him rather than Yusei just going out of his way to help others

I really really like the exchange Blitz has with Yusei in episode 37 when Yusei’s like like “sorry for causing y’all trouble ^^’ ” after they help get his D-Wheel and Blitz like “lol dude we’re your friends it’s ok you can rely on us” because I think it really shows that as much as Yusei believes in bonds/cares for his friends, he doesn’t always let them care for him. (Also similar to how Yusei helps fix Rua/Ruka’s duel disks but then leaves them so that he doesn’t cause them trouble.) Also clearly Yusei surrounds himself with supportive people which is gr8 (another reason why it really sucks that Rally-tachi are basically written out later--oops sorry this is supposed to be a positive post)

Carly’s character in general is pretty awesome. Maybe I just have low expectations for female characters in YGO, but even I think it’s pretty great that even though she’s obviously primarily introduced as a catalyst for Jack’s development, she’s also allowed her own character arc (which I think parallels Jack’s nicely), her own highs and lows, and her own motivations that are distinct from other characters. She even has some interactions--however minimal--with characters that have nothing to do with Jack (shocking!!!). Like I think it’s easy to forget that Carly actually met and talked with Yusei before she met Jack (not that that relationship is important, but still)!

She’s also an active character whose actions actually advance the plot (she’s the one who seeks out Jack at the hospital, she’s the one who decides to infiltrate the Arcadia Movement). Honestly, in 5D’s, especially in the DS arc, a lot of times the plot kind of just happens to our main characters (the antagonists do more of the plot-moving), and it’s refreshing to see a character’s actions actually moving the plot forward.

She and her thoughts/emotions are given a decent amount of dignity. When she dies and becomes a Dark Signer, obviously it’s important because wow now our rival character has something to be angsty about/motivate him, but also we get to see how she reacted to becoming a Dark Signer (poorly) and how she eventually became swayed to continue in the role.

I feel like all too commonly female characters become centered around another male character and you can argue that Carly’s character is basically about Jack at a certain point. But honestly, Jack’s character (his motivation and development) in the DS arc is, if not just as centered, at least centered a comparable amount around Carly, so it’s nice that at least they’re balanced in this way.

Overall, I could totally imagine, given the purpose of Carly in the overall narrative, that the writers could have had her be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or have her simply get Stuffed in the Fridge, but they didn’t, and I’m grateful for that.

Also, Scoopshipping <3

Jack’s arc (even if rushed) and it’s relationship to the theme of 5D’s in general! If ultimately 5D’s is primarily about the importance of bonds (to the point that it’s the name of the first OP, and the reasoning behind Yusei’s multiple victories), I think the egotistical Jack learning to care about one person (romantically or not, although obviously they decided to go romantically) first is probably the best way they could have developed his character to support the overarching theme.

I like how the penultimate episode of the FC arc is about the Lonely King, Jack Atlas, and the penultimate episode of the DS arc revisits that King with Jack’s speech to Godwin. Honestly, I adore that speech in general--especially Jack’s line about how he’s not the King anymore, since it’s something he’s said before throughout the arc but more offhandedly.

I also appreciate how Yusei has pretty much no role in Jack’s arc after he beats him. Not that I don’t think he could’ve played an interesting role, but given the surplus of characters relying on Yusei in the series, I think it’s nice that Yusei literally has no idea about anything Jack goes through in the DS arc. Jack vs Carly is the only Dark Signer duel Yusei is not present for because he’s stuck in the rainbow pit.

Also, Scoopshipping <3

Rua’s arc (already talked about here)

They let Yusei lose!! (or basically lose--though tbh I’m pretty fine with his FC arc wins because they were all pretty necessary/plot-relevant and Yusei is always the underdog anyway) Also I think they at least tried to show with Kiryu the downsides of Yusei’s mentality about bonds and how his self-sacrificial nature can be bad sometimes. Having Kiryu hate Yusei’s guts because of what’s essentially a misunderstanding of an officer’s pat on the back is pretty dumb, but I do think there was potential in showing the darker side of Yusei’s loyalty to Kiryu as the latter became more and more toxic.

Speaking of Yusei, I really like the scene in episode 47 when Yusei’s like “yeah, after we beat the Dark Signers, everyone’s coming back!!” and Jack/Ushio are like “wtf you don’t know that’s true ??” and Rua’s like “stop Yusei’s sad too :(” I think it’s one of the more interesting moments of the whole group interacting with one another where you can see them playing off each other especially since clearly the situation is stressful and upsetting. It seems like Yusei feels like he needs to step up as a leader to boost morale but also still feels uncertain and doubtful, and it could have been even more interesting if Yusei had been allowed to be wrong about this, even just a little bit.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Ushio’s character development and the erosion of the prejudice that is a fixture of his character during the Fortune Cup. It’s also nice how it’s ultimately Martha and Takuya who help show him another side of Satellite, rather than Yusei. Ushio’s dynamic with Rua and disbelief about the Spirit World is also pretty fun to watch.

Little moments of continuity like Jack remembering Godwin’s metal arm in episode 62 and incorrectly guessing that he’s the 5th Signer like the rest of us thought, or Ushio recognizing Saiga in episode 45 since they briefly interacted before.

#yugioh 5d's #yusei fudo #jack atlas #carly nagisa #tetsu ushio #rally #blitz #kinda #jin himuro #tenzen yanagi #all this time never realized yanagi had a first name

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jupitermelichios · 4 years ago

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Snyder Cut: spoiler free post-mortem

First things first, the only film I have ever just panned with absolutely no attempt at balance was Suicide Squad, and while I do enjoy SS more (in a delirious ‘I can’t believe this is actually happening’ way) than I enjoyed this, I’m also not going to pretend that this isn’t a better put together movie than SS. Whatever else you can say about him, Snyder is a better director than Ayer will ever be, and his editors are leagues better than the two different trailer houses that cut SS.

But this movie is too long. Not ‘four hours is too long for a movie’, i have watched and enjoyed four hour directors cuts before, this movie is too long for what it is. It’s not just four hours, it feels like it. At least. I haven’t done any editting since I was 18 and genuinely and sincerely think I could remove an hour from this movie and audiences wouldn’t even notice. An actual trained experienced editor could proably get it down to two and a half total without losing a single plot beat.

The Good

Cyborg gets a lot more room to breathe, and his magic maguffin powers feel a lot more earned.

Bruce and Alfred’s relationship is weird and unlike any other version of them, but I mostly enjoyed it, and I definitely enjoyed it more than I did in the original cut.

My questions were mostly “why is this happening” and not “what is happening”, which is definitely an improvement over the original.

Jason Momoa is just really great in any role where he’s allowed to not be generic grittyman, Gal Gadot is good, Henry Caville is... well he’s here, so good for him. Gotta get that bread. (I don’t think Henry Caville is a bad actor, I do think he’s incapable of rising above the dirctor or source material).

My favourite Justice League member has a cameo, and it’s tonally very weird but I dug it.

The didn’t make Henry Caville shave his chest hair, which actually may have been a rights issue with MI, but I still appreciate it.

The designs for the messenger dude (I’m sure he has a name, but the New Gods aren’t my area) and the parademons are both really good.

Flash Naruto-runs at the end. That’s not much, but it is pretty good.

The Bad

At one point the process of Lois Lane having to put down a cup of coffee for a minute so she can open the door of a coffee-shop with her hands full is in slow-mo. That adds nothing except padding the run-time, and it’s also not even the worse use of slow-mo because so much of this movie is slowed down.

There’s also a lot of shots that are just held a beat or two too long, which normally would be a minor problem but when it’s repeated over a movie that already feels padded it really starts to stand out every time it happens.

There’s two subplots added in this cut that aren’t (from memory) in the original. One is an entirely pointless recurring bit about Bruce trying to get a new design of plane to fly. It’s not special in any way that we are actually told, or even really shown, it’s just a plane. It adds nothing.

The other is an extra layer to the Apokolyptian stuff that gets several minutes of set up and is then just dropped with no ceremony or even acknoledgment. It’s just gone from the movie at around the three hour mark and never reoccurs, and to honest ‘if the bad guy destroys the world a second bad guy will come and destroy the world ever harder’ wasn’t much a subplot to begin with.

Despite this very clearly being Cyborg’s story, and his added screen time, he’s still not the main character, Bruce is.

I didn’t particularly like most of the jokes Wheadon gave Flash, but at least they were something. Without them... He’s mildly creepy to someone who I assume is supposed to be Iris West but who never speaks or gets named. Other than that he’s just... here? It doesn’t help that whatever you think of him as a performer, Ezra Miller is not and never claimed to be a comic actor, so most of the jokes left in just don’t land at all.

Everyone who says this movie treats it’s female characters better than the original needs to up their standards. It removes the incredibly tired tripping into cleavage moment, but otherwise... Iris doesn’t even get a name, Lois barely qualifies as a sexy lamp (replacing her with Beppo the super-monkey would change nothing substansive about her interactions with anyone and would honestly be more comics accurate), Martha Kent is identical, and Wonder Woman is barely changed except the one scene of her drinking Whiskey with Bruce is replaced with one of her drinking tea with Alfred, and also she now just says “Kal-El” over and over whenever he’s on screen like a reverse pokemon. While I generally think tests like the Bechdel and the Mako Mori are short-sighted, it is worth noting that this movie passes none of them. Not one. The Dead or Alive movie passes the Bechdel test, and this movie doesn’t. Removing one bad joke does not a feminist movie make.

The Ugly

The lack of colour is so pronounced it’s almost comical. Recolouring superman’s costume was a choice I don’t like, but it was an artistic choice. Removing all colour and light from a fight scene already taking place in a dark room makes it just incomprehensible. It’s startling just how much better the two fight scenes which take place outdoors in sunlight are, and 90% of that is just that you can easily distinguish between the characters. (It would have been even easier wthout the beige colour grade, but I’m not expecting miracles here).

#snyder cut #justice league

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connan-l · 4 years ago

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Flower Person

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationship: Maria Campanella/Iméon

Summary: Iméon wasn’t the kind of person to care about flowers and she never liked receiving these as gifts, but could she really refuses it when a pretty blond woman she doesn’t know show up on her doorstep with a bouquet of lilies? [Femslash February 2021 Day 24: Lily]

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Link on Archive of Our Own

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Notes: So, I admit I actually tend to headcanon Iméon as being nonbinary/trans masc, which wouldn’t really fit a femslash event, but well as far we know in FataMoru canon she still identifies as a woman. Another headcanon of mine is that Iméon does remember her past life even after being reincarnated (which is what happens in the short story ‘Tír na nÓg’), and I wrote the fic with that in mind. Also I know Iméon likely just goes by ‘Noémi’ in the modern era, but… weh, I’m too used to refer to her as ‘Iméon’ lol.

This takes place after Reincarnation so spoilers for all the games, and there are also brief references to the short story ‘Girl Hunt Girl.’ (If you don’t know about it, it’s just a very short post-Reincarnation story where Iméon meets Ceren in Paris by saving her from a conman.) And warning for slight drinking/alcohol, I guess.

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Iméon had never been a flower person.

It wasn’t like she hated them or anything, but she couldn’t really unsderstand what people found so captivating or pretty about these plants. They smelled nice, sometimes, she supposed — but that was the extent of the qualities she’d gave them.

She had told as much to Michel once when they stopped by a flower shop so he could buy a few roses for his wife — the fact this guy ended up getting married was still mind-boggling to her even months after she’d learned that fact — and he laughed, saying he used to think the same ‘back then’ but that now he couldn’t help but love them. He hadn’t explained to her how this change of heart happened, but Iméon could guess pretty easily it was also a courtesy of Giselle.

In any case, that was also why people never offered her flowers as gifts, either — the only time she could remember this happened was when she was maybe eight or so and her grandma had given her a bouquet of hydrangeas. Iméon had never been able to tell the absentminded sweet old lady that she couldn’t care less about those flecks of blue-purplish petals and she’d unfortunately had to keep them in her room against her will until they withered.

Tonight, however, would mark the second time of flower-offering she’d received in her life, because the first thing she saw upon opening the door after it rang twice was a huge bouquet of lilies, followed by a turf of messy, short blond hair and a pair of clear green eyes that popped out just barely above the white bell-shaped plants.

“So, okay, here’s the thing,” her visitor started, trying to speak clearly in spite of the enormous gift in her arms that was camouflaging almost all of her upper body. “That’s kind of a long story, but bear with me. There’s this dude where I work — a client — who sort of got a crush on me. Not, like, the creepy kind, but still pretty annoying. He hit on me a few times, and despite me trying to fucking tell him subtly, ‘Hey, dude, not interested, let it go,’ he brought me this tonight upon seeing me. I thought at first about throwing it away in the trash cause flowers are not my thing, you see? But then my boss — I mean Giselle, you know her too, right? — threw a damn fit, ‘bout how it wasn’t nice for him and those were such beautiful flowers or something, so I was like ‘then take them cause I don’t want this’ but she refused cause Michel is allergic to lilies or something and — who the fuck even is allergenic to goddamn lilies? Anyway, after that I—”

Iméon blinked incredulously, trying to makes sense of why there was a short irritated blond woman with a thick Italian accent she didn’t know in front of her who kept rambling on and on at her at eight in the evening. She seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t recall why — where had she seen her before?

“—asked my stupid childhood friend cause of course she’s the kind of gal who’s into flowers and stuff, except I forgot she was in Amsterdam to introduce her creepy boyfriend to her parents, but as a result the only person left was fucking Jacopo and I sure as hell wasn’t going to show up to this dumbass’ door to give him some lilies — and then it hit me; ‘Oh, there’s this chick who’s friends with Michel and Ceren and doesn’t live far away, so why not check her out!’ And so here I am.” She finally stopped and breathed in deeply. “So. Yeah. Want some lilies?”

The names of Michel and Ceren awakened Iméon’s memories and she realized it was, indeed, because of these two that this woman was familiar to her. More than a year ago, she had met Ceren by coincidence and helped her out of some trouble and since then they’d become good friends, and she managed to meet Michel again a few months later. Seeing her old friend from a past life neither of them should remember had been quite a shock — though a pleasant one — but discovering that somehow he’d gotten married to a bubbly lady and now lived in the same building as the goddamn little witch who’d messed around with them had been quite confusing. And to top it off, apparently Michel also knew Ceren because she herself was friends with said little witch. Fate really was a funny thing.

In any case, about three weeks ago she’d briefly gotten introduced to this woman by Giselle, but it had been a five minutes meeting so the encounter had quickly left her mind. If she recalled her name was… Martha? Marianne…? Mar—

“Oh, Maria,” she suddenly said out loud, snapping her fingers, and the woman frowned at her.

“What?”

“Your name. It’s Maria. Right?”

“Wait, you only now remembered who I was?”

“Yep.”

“Maria is like, the less forgettable name in the world? How did you do to forget that?”

“Sorry. I’m just not good with names. And faces. And people.”

A big silence propagated between the two of them, and then Iméon cleared her throat.

“You know… if you wanted to ask me out on a date, you could’ve just… said that. Or ask Michel my number or something.”

Maria arched an eyebrow at her, looking genuinely surprised. “What? Wait, no, that wasn’t… it’s not what it’s about.”

“No?”

“If I wanted to ask you out, I’d just do that. I’m not the kind of person to make excuse or beat around the bush.”

Iméon literally knew nothing about this woman, but somehow she could believe that.

“Oh. Okay. So it’s… really just about the lilies.”

“Yeah.” Maria marked a pause. “It did sounds less weird in my head when I thought about coming here. But I’m just, uh… a bit desperate to get rid of these.”

Iméon hummed thoughtfully and crossed her arms. Desperate was indeed quite an apt descriptor — her hair was all disheveled, her clothes unkempt and she appeared out of breath, as if she had run left and right for a long time to try to get someone who’d agree to take in the huge bouquet.

Iméon wasn’t a flower person, but… she didn’t mind accepting a few lilies for this one time.

“All right. I’ll take it,” she conceded, and Maria seemed so relieved to hear that it was almost comical.

Iméon gathered the flowers into her arms, the soft perfume tickling her nostrils and the petals brushing her cheeks, and then she turned around towards Maria once again. She was clearly about to leave and go down the stairs, but somehow Iméon felt a tinge of pity for her to have to yet again hurry to go home, so she grasped her wrist.

“Hey, no need to rush out of here. I was just about to eat something, so… Wanna have dinner with me?”

“What? Really?”

Iméon flashed her a smile. “Sure. I mean, you’re a friend of Michel, so I’d feel bad to just let you go home like that.”

Maria stared at her in silence for a while, as if hesitating, then returned her smile. “Oh well. Not like I had anything else to do anyway.”

And so the both of them stepped into the small two-room apartment together — the inside was a mess, to be honest, with various clothes and papers laying around, but Iméon didn’t care in the least and neither did Maria apparently as she threw herself on the couch without eve asking. Iméon somehow managed to install the lilies in an empty jar on the table, then tranquilly started to prepare their meal. The dinner only consisted of a quick reheat from yesterday’s leftovers and Iméon had always been far from being a super good cook, but it didn’t matter much as the room quickly got filled with cheerful chats and laughters. They talked about their common friends and then their jobs and movies and Maria’s home country, and while Iméon wouldn’t reveal too much about herself and was careful to keep her walls up even once they added a few beers in the mix, she had to admit she felt quite comfortable with this woman whom she couldn’t even remember the name a few hours prior.

Maria was a fun and easygoing person to talk to and despite her crude words and rough attitude she had a smile as bright as the sun, and it just felt nice to be around her.

“So you’ve only moved in here recently?” Maria asked.

“I don’t like to stay in a same place for too long. That’s just not in my blood. I travel a lot too, went to a bunch of different countries…”

“Hmm. I get that. I traveled around quite a bit too before coming to Paris.” She sighed, then stared vacantly at her beer. “I wonder if I should try going moving somewhere else again. I mean, I like it here, but…”

Maria fell silent, suddenly looking surprisingly melancholic. But in a way, Iméon felt she could understand that. She herself had spent most of her life jumping from a place to another ever since her parents kicked her out of the family house, and she liked living that way, but occasionally she wondered if it wouldn’t be best to find somewhere to truly settle in and call home. Maybe she envied Michel’s stable life a little bit for having this, or Ceren’s airheadness for never even questioning what the future might held in for her.

In that sense, she got the feeling Maria was more similar to her because of that. Weird, given she’d basically been a stranger to her only a few hours ago.

As Iméon was still lost in her thought, Maria abruptly rose up from her chair, almost knocking over the lilies from the table. “Oh, wow, fuck! I didn’t realize it had so damn gotten so late! I should go now.”

Iméon looked at the clock, and it was indeed already past three AM. She also had not noticed the time flee at all.

“You sure you don’t want to spend the night here?” Iméon asked while Maria hurriedly put on her coat. “I mean, we did drink quite a bit, and there’s no metro at this time…”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll call a taxi or something. Ugh, and tomorrow I have to work… I’m going to be a fucking mess and Giselle’s gonna have my head.”

“Giselle?” Iméon repeated, because she didn’t know Michel’s wife all that well but somehow she couldn’t picture her as the kind of employer who’d got angry at anyone.

“Yeah, she seems all cute and sweet like that, but she’s actually fucking scary and ultra perfectionist at work. Don’t let her fool you.”

“Huh… I’ll remember that.”

Maria grabbed her last beer and gobbled up all that was left of it in one shot, before quickly heading towards the door. She stopped her pace on the doorstep, however, and turned around towards Iméon.

“Thanks for tonight,” she said, smirking. “It was fun. Let’s do this again.”

“Sure. No problem.”

Maria stared at her, seemed to hesitate, then finally leaned forward and kissed her. It was a pretty brief kiss, lips only brushing against each other, but Iméon still hadn’t really expected it and she blinked back at her when she pulled back.

“I thought the bouquet wasn’t an excuse?”

“It wasn’t,” Maria argued. “That was just as thanks for the meal. Now, I really have to go, so see ya!”

She waved at her with a smug smirk, as if she was quite proud of herself for what she had just done, and then disappeared in the stairs. Iméon still felt pretty confused, but she was much too tired to try to think more about it.

So she got back inside her place, locked the door, and found herself face to face alone with the big bouquet of lilies.

For a brief second, she felt kind of bad for the guy who’d bought it for Maria in the first place, and it was kind of annoying she’d have to keep that bouquet until it wither away like her grandmother’s hydrangeas, but…

If it meant she’d get to have a fun evening dinner and a kiss from a hot Italian woman, maybe it had been worth it.

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harmonytre · 4 years ago

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Comic Plans

Current Projects:

Prismtale (Mondays): An Undertale AU involving NPCs and multiverse travelling. Multi-chapter comic and ongoing.

Mistbreak (Tuesdays): A Steven Universe AU with about 5 pages left of the comic. Then it will become an ask/drabble/design blog.

Flicker of a Neon Soul (Wednesdays): An Undertale AU where monsters have colored soul traits and humans have white soul traits. 10+ chaptered comic with many plans and plot.

Taffy and Steven (Thursdays): A Steven Universe where Steven and his gem are split into different people and Taffy is a wholesome boyo. One page left of the comic, then will become an ask/edit blog with occasional comics.

Future Fandom Projects:

Pokemon Nuzlocke Comics: Multiple regions and an overarching plot. I need to finish playing and writing the first arc before starting the comic. (long term)

Who I Am: A Pokemon comic where James from Team Rocket is a were-pokemon. I need to rewrite it first. About 7 to 8 chapters. (medium length)

Other Undertale AUs: Certain AUs will be revealed in Prismtale and turn into side blogs, and others will be one time comics. (varies)

Future Original Projects:

(One of these I want to make extremely interactive. Like the audience makes choices for the characters.)

Phantulfurs: A comic about teens with powers to see creatures no one else can. I’ve rewritten the first chapter multiple times, but I need to really write it out before starting the comic. About ten arcs. (long term)

Skryculars: A sequel to the above story. (medium length)

The Journeyers: A multi-book series with my cousin. About ten books. Involves animals, powers, and romance. Won’t give information beyond that. (long term)

Unnamed Animated Series: Still need to design the two main characters, but they’ll travel through many worlds from my dream world. (long term youtube series)

Unnamed Wings Story: Decided many many characters for a high school story with wings. Lots of diversity and LGBTQ. Problem is I don’t like writing high school stories and have no plot. ;^; (medium? short?)

Unnamed Long Term Comic: A story about a space girl with wings, a nonbinary person that can shapeshift and communicate with animals, twins with water and plant powers, and an angsty wholesome skeleton bean. No plot yet. (long term)

Short Term (below the cut, any catch your interest?)

(keep in mind many of these I wrote the descriptions for years ago or based off of dreams.)

“Orphan Dog” and “Martha’s Pack” An orphan finds out she can talk to dogs and realizes they are the key to finding her missing parents. (Wrote when I was 8, rewrote partially when I was 13. So very cheezy. Would be even cheezier if I didn’t rewrite it, but still drew quality serious art XD.)

“The Agency” A girl named Jill has secrets. Major secrets. For one, she can turn into any animal at will including extinct, Fantasy, or hybrids. Don’t forget that she can also turn invisible and do telepathy. (Not to mention she runs an entire secret animal spy community…) When her best friend and spy ally, Izabella the opossum, goes missing, she must find what it means to be a true friend and showing that it’s what’s inside that counts. (Actually liked this one too. Even if it’s also cheezy.)

1. “Moos” A boy is adopted by cows and is granted the power to understand animals and turn into a cow.

2. “Moos: Vile Meat” Hoover is back and he must defeat the evil Haystack, a human entrapping calfs in little domes for eternity.

3. “Moos: Cold Cuts” Hoover finds a new ally, one who creates...snow?

4. “Moos: Wakey Wakey Eggs and Bakey” Haystack is back and Hoover and his friends must defeat him before he turns all pigs into stone. (Cheezy series?)

“Extraordinaries” Emma, her friend, Millie, her brother, Clark, and her dog, Charlie, have to travel to a faraway land to save Emma’s mother, who has been poisoned. Along the way Emma and the team must find how to deal with their newfound powers of Imagination. (This one was also pretty good! A story from Nanowrimo a few years ago.)

“The Hummingbird Did It” A hummingbird turns a lazy boy into a dog. The boy must venture across country to find the cure. (Was kinda boring and just me having fun with google maps lol.)

“Sunshine and Rainbows” A girl is taken to another world by rainbow dust and must find her way back to Earth. (Can’t actually remember this one.)

“Nature’s Lifeforce” A boy and girl are given the power to turn into any woodland creature and talk to trees. (Also can’t remember, but sounds cool.)

“Ravens” A girl named Hannah, a boy named Billy, a boy named Cameron, a girl named Lyla, and a boy named Clark, among other students, have their wishes come true. This creates a problem as Cameron becomes a dog, Lyla becomes a cat and Hannah and Billy become ravens. They fix the problem for everyone except Hannah and Billy, but embark on an adventure to find the scientist who can help them. (Based on a dream, I think.)

“Dragon wings” Hiccup and Toothless accidentally sit down someplace weird. They switch bodies and Toothless claims to have heard someone press a button. (ASDFGHJKL WHAT?! HTTYD short story)

“Melody Dreambubble” A weird new pony arrives in Ponyville. Twilight is curious to find that she has no Cutie Mark, was raised by wolves, and bears mysterious powers. (My Little Pony, kinda self insert, short story)

“Eyes of Gold/The Tower” A Fan Fiction based on The Ever Afters series and two stories rolled into one. Rory finds that her two best friends have been poisoned by a new dragon species/As Rory is about to enter a tower to save Chase a random girl shows up out of nowhere and has a weird habit of annoying Adelaide. (Was my first ever self insert? And based on a book series unlike the rest? Cool! Oh I even wrote ten whole pages! Neat. Featuring a girl chasing a dragon with a bedpan!)

“Roadkill” A man purposely runs over a deer on a freeway. The deer’s best friend curses the man, later to regret it because he has to undo the curse himself. (Lol, this was interesting.)

“Melissa and Steven Started a Food Fight” A completely random book that takes the characters through an adventure of explosions, unicorns, and talking squirrels. (Used a random prompt generator. Very random. And funny.)

“Before it’s Gone” A snooty teen crashes in her car and finds a surprise when she wakes up. (Oh yeah, another old story. She turned into a dog and none of the other dogs believed her.)

“The Unicorn Killer” A short story about poachers and Julia. (Yep. Short story.)

1. “Feathers of Gold” A logical young bird griffin, Gabriel, wants to find a way to stop to war between bird and lion in his land, Genetica.

2. “Scales of Emerald” A shy young dragon, Emmie, tries to keep her land, Reptilia, from destruction.

3. “Hair of Crystal” A brave young unicorn, Crystal, tries to find a way to join together the leaders of the land of Equinsta.

4. “Flames of Ruby” A vain young phoenix, Flaxter, tries to capture the eyes of girls. Taken place in the land of Flamia.

5. “Gems Unite” Gabriel, Emmie, Crystal, and Flaxter find out they are The Gems, the only ones who can save their world, Animagicia, from the beings, called Humurns, that are trying to destroy it. They must come together and find who they truly are. (Might have fun with this series. I’ve always loved mythical animals.)

“The Distance from Sam” An 8 year-old St. Bernard named Barry, a 3 year-old Golden Retriever named Mick, and a 1 year-old Sheltie named Sandy set off to return to their owner Sam, after being kidnapped and sent across country. (Kinda like Homeward Bound. Came in mind when I saw these three dogs alone by a street, no humans around.)

“The Skilled” Andy and Ashley(both fifteen) and their eight year-old siblings, twins Alex and Alexa, gain powers from the sewers. All: understand animals and fly, Andy: talk to toys, Ashley: speak to plants, Alex and Alexa: psychic powers. “I used to think my toys would come to life when I was gone. I guess I was right.”-Andy. Based on a dream. (Too many “A” names, oof. Also, toy Story much?)

“The Moon’s Eye” A teenage girl named April gets trapped under a snow drift and wakes up to be a wolf. A nearby wolf pack needs her aid and calls her The Mooneye, a changeling. (Cool. Cool.)

“Unusual Forces of Omnipotence” A woman and her horse are supposedly crushed by a U.F.O. When Tanaya wakes up she finds out she has super strong senses and can run as fast as her horse. Pluto the alien knows he’s going to be in trouble if his planet finds out he crash landed and accidentally gave a human the powers of her horse. He tries to fix it. Told from Tanaya, Sunray (the horse), and Pluto’s point of view. Based on a dream. (Sounds interesting! Title came from before I knew UFO was an acronym lol.)

“The Lawn” Unknown to humans, a yard full of statues come alive at night. There is an elk, two bears, four buffalo, a wolf, an eagle, three horses, a small boy, a moose, a bighorn sheep, and a rabbit. (Based on a real lawn I’d see on the way to school.)

“Dragon Eyes” Max has an ordinary life, until his family, him, and his three friends, Alice, Peter, and Samuel, are transported to another world. His parents are then kidnapped and they have to fight against an evil Mother Nature. Based on a dream. (Interesting. The dream was freaky.)

“Sweet Treat” Emily’s dad works at a candy factory, and one day she visits him and realizes his work is not all it seems… Based on a dream. (What? I don’t remember what was different about his work???)

“The Flight of the Supernatural” Randy thinks he is mostly a normal kid. Sure, he and his dad live inside a mountain, and sure, some flying species of human killed his mother, that doesn’t mean he can’t live normal life homeschooling and watching TV. But unfortunately, Randy’s life turns around when he finds out he can fly. Is his father telling the truth? Did his own species kill his mother? Based on a dream. (Actually REALLY loved this story.)

“Whispering Willow” A girl named Willow helps 20 wolf cubs escape a pet store and then is recruited by a zoo. Pretty soon all of the animals know her as Whisper. Based on a dream. (Cool. another animal whisperer.)

“The Invasion of Our Minds” Little black aliens invade Earth and only one person can stop them: Julia. Based on a dream. (Oh RIGHT! Yeah I remember that.)

“The Marble Island(Possibly a short story?)” Julia goes on a trip to a new marble island only to find the owner turns people into stone figurines. Based on a dream. (Links to the previous story, I think.)

“Have some candy!” Violet, an expert on strange occurrences, needs to help a group of people who mysteriously turned into animals after attempting to grab candy bars from a bin in a local store. Based on a dream. (More animal transformation.)

“The Guide to Mythical Creatures I Made Up” A guide to everything from the Mystic Melody to the Gollan. (I don’t remember either of their designs! :P )

“Trying to Get Back to Mom” Michael and Annabelle meet new friends, while they frantically try to reunite with their mother. (Don’t remember.)

“Surprise of the Future” Pearl travels to the future and has to fight her now-evil brother in his stone mansion. (Not Pearl from SU. Based on a dream.)

“All for You” A man has to overcome many obstacles, such as mermaids, yellow smoke wolves, and magic maps, to save the world and his girl. (Oh yeah, this was a cool one. Based on a song, but I can’t remember which one.)

“The Stranger at the Door” Keith and Amber have lived with their grandmother for many years, but now they live alone and nobody knows. Then a strange girl arrives at the door. She claims they will have to leave town within 2 hours or risk being stuck in a quarantine zone. There will be traffic jams and other hindrances, so it's best to leave right now without taking anything with you. Unsure about everything, including this strange girl, the teenage boy disagrees to the proposal, if all this turns out to be true, this choice will seem foolish. His younger sister does agree. But what if this strange girl can't be trusted. Or what if all this is an elaborate trap. How could an ordinary teenage girl and boy end up in a situation like this. Time to find out. (Oh, a quarantine story? How long ago was this? 2017 I think.)

“The Beginning of the Hybrid Brothers” A backstory that shines a light on how Ralph the Rat-Man and Dr. Discord came to be evil. (YES, MY TWO VILLAINS NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT BUT ARE STILL DEAR TO MY HEART HNNNNNNNG.)

“Unnamed but same as the blank” A girl named, _____, lives in a family of nine. She and her mother are the only ones who aren’t “Morhumals”, or people who can turn into one animal. After the twins mess-up and send a “Morhumals” hunter after them, it is up to ___ and her sister, ____ to rescue them.

“Song of the Siren” ____ is back after her fourteenth birthday. She finally has received her animal and must follow her family to the mythed Siren hideout.

#story #comic #HarmonyTRE #comic plan

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gothamstreetcat · 5 years ago

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It's five in the morning and I can't sleep...

So, perhaps about a year ago I was talking to a friend of mine and we were discussing the wedding between Bruce and Selina. She said something along the lines of how she didn't like that much of Bruce’s happiness was being placed squarely on Selina’s shoulders in the idea of “what about his other family?” What about about Alfred and all the other kids? Don't they make him happy too? Yet, there was something Camren Bicondova once said about “you can be happy and then you can be truly happy,” so I wanted to talk about that for a minute.

I do believe Alfred and the rest of the Bat-Family make him happy. Hell, Alfred has seen him through his worst and the kids have seen him through questionably his best. People think Bruce would be nothing without his money? A myth, because the stone-cold truth is that Bruce would be nothing without his family, and I'm going to be really honest with you guys here. Sometimes that is truly not enough for some people.

I’m deeply sorry for getting personal here, but in order to explain I’m going to use my dad as an example.

I was not enough for my dad, and it’s something I don’t think I learned until after he passed away. It’s something I still struggle with years later and it’s something I suspect I’ll struggle with indefinitely. He had a wife he once loved, and when she unfortunately passed away he never loved again.

You know how we look at our favorite ships and think it’s such a great love story? I actually belive my parents were a great love story. A real one, even as I’m sure a lot people say that for their own parents. Yet, my dad had a rough past and didn’t always make the best choices and probably wasn’t even the best person, and my mother (isn't it funny how her name is actually, Martha?) really changed him and he turned his life around because he loved her. My mom was never in the best health and her body was often falling apart, yet my dad was always there for her. He did a lot of drugs in his days and wasn’t close with his family or his son. There were even a few people who didn’t imagine he’d live past thirty.

Because of Martha (and yes, I’m starting sentences with ‘but’ and ‘because.’ This is my post and my story so I’ll tell it how I want to) my dad cleaned up his act, reconnected with his mom and dad (Martha would not have married him otherwise), and got a little closer with his son. I know for a fact my dad was a totally different person (in many way, some not so much) back then, then how I knew him. In my years he never ever took any pictures, he was so angry at everyone and never really happy. Yet, in pictures with Martha he’s smiling in every fucking one of them and you’d swear he was a totally different person. My mom even gave him a card one with a picture of her, kiss marks all over the envelope and told him even though he wasn’t much for pictures, she wanted him to have one of her because she loved him.

However, when Martha died, my dad was never the same. I believe I partly understand why. He never really told me what happened, and he would actually never talk about their life together with me, but people and family have told me stories. Knowing my dad, he was never really an emotional type of person. He never showed me sadness or distress. Mostly anger or laughter (because he had a pretty good sense of humor). Yet, whenever he would talk about Martha to his co-workers, he would get emotional. He still told people he was a widow, and he wore his wedding band, and Martha’s toe ring until the day he died. He never got rid of anything that woman had he could still hold onto, and he even once had a neighbor tell him he’d never love again (and it was true). His mom even asked him at one point if he was okay with that, and he replied: “I had Martha, and for however long we had it was enough.”

Here’s the thing about my dad and I, and the tragedy we’ve come to share. When my dad died we were alone and he had a heart attack. When it was my mother, it was just he and her and it hadn’t been the first time. My dad knew exactly what to do and it somehow still wasn’t enough to save her. Again, my dad is not someone who usually shows emotion, but when my grandmother told me the story, my dad was completely vulnerable the second after it happened. He called her and cried, saying she was gone. When it was my turn I gave my dad breath as he had done for his wife and yet it still wasn’t enough to save him; and I say all these things because I imagine it is how Bruce felt when he lost his parents. He who had little friends but parents instead who made up his whole world. To watch them be killed in a situation where he was helpless, only able to live every day after wondering and wishing he’d done something more. Knowing his face was the last face his father saw before passing away.

Another thing I would like add for Bruce is that seeing his parents die most likely isn’t something he forgets. It isn’t something he stops thinking about, or stops seeing in his head like a movie. Every night, and I’m sure there isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn't think about that day in the alley. Bruce didn’t just lose his parents, he lost his day and his night. He lost being tucked in (I literally fucking miss being tucked in and feeling safe), lost Sunday drives and morning pancakes made by his mother. It’s no secret how part of him died that night or how he locked the rest of his heart away.

I talk about being lonely. I talk about living alone and everyone just assumes I should get a roommate or have a friend pop by. Yet, what I really miss is being in a familiar place I lived in with my father and knowing he was in the other room if I needed something or got bored. We never talked much, would fight more then talk I would say, and lots of times he was more interested in watching tv then paying attention to me (he tried some, but at that point it was just too late). Yet, he was still always there. His presence, and sometimes I’d wake up early to see him off for work, or I’d stay up to see him when he got home. However, deep down I still wasn’t enough for him. I didn’t seem to make him happy, he didn’t open up to me, I don’t even think he wanted to fight so much after his stoke just a year before he passed away. And I’m not sure at what point I realized this, but I do believe my dad was really hurting after Martha passed, I don’t believe he ever got over it and sometimes that’s life. Pain doesn’t always make you stronger and you don’t always learn from it, Sometimes, you just hurt. You hurt and you hurt and you hurt until you die.

Speaking from my own loss, I care about my family to some degree. I don’t ever wanna say I would trade them for my dad, but I would rather have my dad. Even as awful as he could be, I would want to go to him if I had a problem or if I needed help because I knew that was acceptable. I want my dad to give me rides again because I hate driving and one time he made the car go up on the wheels and he was right, it was cool. Even as awful as he could be, and as much as I was suffering, he did make life better.

So, what I’m trying to say in all this nonsense is that Selina is Bruce’s Martha (isn’t that funny?). She makes him really happy and she’s who he can imagine spending an endless amount of lifetimes with because everyone deserves love. She helps him open up and be human again, and who fuels him with real joy that comes naturally. Dick Grayson even once told him he was different in a good way and a lot happier with Selina in his life.

I’ll never forget reading my first comic, and Alfred, who knew of Selina’s life but only saw the good she was doing. Telling her: “I’ve mended many broken bones over the years but there is one thing I would have the slightest clue how to mend. A broken heart.” To me, that says it all. Bruce is more because of Selina. She helps shape him to be whole and perhaps everything stops hurting a little less. And I don’t think people should be shamed because sometimes they need a little extra help or they need someone to help them get by. We are human and we feel things and those things should not be denied nor erased.

I don’t know what it’s like to experience that type of love of even come close. I don’t know if people are to be fated together or if things just happen. Perhaps, I shouldn’t even be talking at all. But I do believe Bruce and Selina are one in the same, and I understand where he’s coming from thinking Selina could make him completely happy. To be by his side in a way he only imagined but could never comprehend for himself. To have a love and share a life as one such as his own parents.

I really don’t know how to end this so I’m just gonna re-quote Miss Bicondova because I’m a hot mess:

“you can be happy and then you can be truly happy,”

#personal personal personal #I scream daddy issues #I should also add that Bruce Wayne doesn't take care of his kids #they take care of him #batcat #bruce wayne #Selina kyle

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thesalemsaga · 4 years ago

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𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻 - 𝗯𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀.

there was a twinge of pain erupting from her lower back as she awoke.

falling asleep on your desk is hardly the wise option, although one glance at the sea of papers she laid in, and you might even understand it. and if you knew the drive of seren armsend, it is that the girl with the sunny hair never gave up until all of her fuel was burnt out.

for six cold hours, she slept with her head rested against her arms, which were now growing so numb she felt that the blood had frozen and failed to rush through. her first waking breaths were startled, the panic that settles when you awake in a strange location, outside of the comforts of your bed and your blankets.

her head rose, tired eyes seeing smudged words in black ink and her fingers coated ebony and red from the energy she put into writing these letters last night. in the end, she couldn’t finish them, and everything hurt. she would do a useless job if she were to try again.

in her wake, her orange hair fell from the grips of a pin and fell down her back, tickling her skin which had grown cold over the night. her teeth shattered, breath trembled, and so she quickly moved to find a sense of warmth. it took a moment to notice the sun pouring through the windows, hiding behind dark curtains which seren threw open with all her might.

her heart was palpitating, like it does when a special day has arrived, one which you’ve been awaiting for quite a long time. her thoughts moving slow, barely awake, seren didn’t realize what it was until she went over to her desk once more and saw something which was not there before.

a card, and a wooden butterfly.

a knock came from the door, and after a few seconds of silence, it opened. her father stepped in, the respected headmaster who also held a gift box in his hands. his smile, rarely seen, was instantaneous when he spotted his daughter looking so curiously at him.

“ hardly how i expected to see the birthday girl today. ”

he carried himself over, limping with his cane in hand, and stood in front of his daughter. over the years, she had grown slightly taller than him. and especially after what she saw and fronted given her adventure, he felt as if she was fifty feet tall. he could see it in her posture, her eyes. yet sweet seren remained sweet, sugar-sweet.

“ sorry, i just woke up ”, seren mumbled through a sleepy hazy, gathering her thoughts to realize she was turning nineteen today. nineteen years on this earth and it felt like she had mentally aged five years since she returned from beyond the walls. “ did you get anything from mom? ”.

“ actually, this is from her. ”

the woman who has been absent from seren’s life for many years often still had time to send her a gift but it didn’t come with every birthday. it was no wonder seren thought her father was kidding as he handed her the wrapped gift and told her to go get dressed.

as he moved towards the door, seren’s curiosity peaked. “ she said she would be in india this month. or at least, that’s what i was told from . . . the letter. ” notes from mrs. armsend were rare, and seren kept an entire collection within an old shoe box she keeps under her bed. the february letter was her most recent one, a clear white envelope stacked with others in yellow and brown.

“ i’m not sure. still, she had time to send you a gift. oh, mine is on the kitchen table. hurry up and get dressed or you’ll be late! ”.

“ l-late for what? ”.

the response never came, seren was left in her room, clutching the wrapped present, turning it in her hands and shaking it to hear a rattle, for clues of what it could be. it didn’t dawn on her that she could open it, it was her birthday after all.

she went to her bed, sitting on the edge and with a wavering sigh, ripped the present open. usually she would take her time, it would drive her father mad, but given how difficult it is to wrap presents, she didn’t want to make a mess.

what was revealed from the box was a gift seren wasn’t quite expecting. usually her mother would sent trinkets, small things to remind the girl that her mother was always thinking of her. last year it was a pair of tap-dancing shoes, seren’s old tap dancing shoes from when she was a kid.

this year, it was a sweater. and it smelled nice.

‘ it’s washed, don’t worry. thought it would fit you, ’ read her mother’s note.

knitted with beige wool and smelling like her mother’s flower garden. seren felt as if it was the first proper gift she had gotten in a long time and that is not to insult her mother’s tastes. it was the first gift that one could say meant a lot to a girl who hasn’t seen her mother in over seven years.

she held the sweater to her chest, almost as if to grasp and hold the woman she misses dearly. she missed her by an inch when she was beyond the walls, they were a week apart from meeting, but salem’s downfall called and seren couldn’t stay for too long.

seren’s eyes, blue and curious, moved to the desk where she had first seen the clues related to her birthday. the wooden butterfly, carved carefully as if the artist molded it with the hands of a god. and she knew alexander rather well, he was not one to do something half-assed.

a blue monarch, painted blue and thin to the point where you might not even recognize it to be a mere illustration of the animal. jewels glued into the wings, glinting under sunlight and bringing a smile to seren’s lips. she was yet to open up the letter, figuring she would collect them through the day and open them when she’s tucked back into bed.

it was only through looking at that butterfly that seren realized what she was late for.

and like a burst in the wind, she threw on casual clothes along with her mother’s sweater, braiding her hair quickly on her way down the stairs and apologised quickly to the maids for getting in their way. “ dad, you could’ve woken me up sooner! or like, had martha come wake me up with a bucket of cold water! ”, she whined.

“ sorry, love! but i was quite distracted myself. don’t forget your gift! ”.

as the headmaster, he had a lot of things to do and seren tried to star clear from his path. she quickly swung back and took the gift box, it wasn’t that big but it didn’t matter, but it was heavy, it left her confused at first, to the point where she turned to her father to ask him what was inside. but one glance at the time and she made haste out of the room.

the walls of valhalla weren’t bleak this time around. a tuesday morning in the midst of mid-term vacation, she wasn’t expecting to see any students. most would’ve taken the train down to the capital and spent time with their family. some may have even paid a fortune to be flown out beyond the walls, which, believe it or not, were actually being deconstructed.

seren squealed slightly as she slid, just barely missing the turn to head up the stairs to the cafeteria. she hated being late, tying it in with being disorganized and messy and she liked to think of herself as anything but that. she couldn’t be late for a birthday celebration, especially knowing who would be there.

she burst through the cafeteria louder than she was expecting, gaining some attentions of students who looked over their shoulders and shook their heads with distaste yet the girl carried on walking. until her table was visible in the corner, just by the exit, near to the tall glass windows.

a pair of excited eyes stared back at her. perseus’s eyes. met with romeo’s excited cheer as he stood up and ran towards her for a hug, which she fully accepted. only, the impact was a little worse than she was expecting.

“ happy birthday, girlie! look at that braid-- do you need help finishing it? ”.

seren chuckled softly, pulling back from the warm hug, “ i’ll do it, don’t worry. and thank you. hardly feels like i’m turning old today. ”

“ have you cried yet? ”, perseus asked, gaining a minor head tilt from the redhead. “ no? oh, just me, then. i don’t know, i normally get emotional when it’s my birthday. it’s either due to pure sadness or gratitude. ”

evangelos grunted beside him, dressed rather gloomily for such a pleasant spring day. “ from now on, it’ll be of gratitude. no use being sad when we have an entire world out there to explore ”, he pointed out, bringing his arm under the table and then putting something on top for seren to see, a gift box. “ gifts out, gentlemen. ”

seren sat in between alexander and romeo. alexander was rather quiet today, more quiet than usual. she didn’t hear a peep from him until she nudged him slightly and smiled at his curious, innocent eyes. “ happy birthday, freckles. i hope my gift is being taken care of ”, he uttered.

and seren thought back to the blue butterfly and beamed gently. it was in her room, on her desk, perched in between her pencil case and her portraits. three portraits; of herself and her sister, of herself and her mother, and of herself and these gaggle of idiots.

“ you bet it is. ”

the table, previously barren and rid of any rubbish, found itself covered in a sea of colored wrapping papers, so many colors it made seren’s eyes hurt but not as much as the gifts which were brought forward, some so beautiful that choking back the tears was proven harder than facing salem.

and as the commemorations went on around her, the birthday girl merely observed her treasures in silence.

seren gazed lovingly at the glass rose, watching the flow of stunning lights filtering through it like fairies dancing from within, and if she was not careful, she could fall into a hypnotic trance. it reminded her so faintly of her snow globe from her early childhood, a fragment of a memory revived in a glass rose given to her by someone she never took for a romantic, even if his name would suggest otherwise.

navy eyes fell onto the gift beside it, perseus’s creation. a caricature, a rather comic one, too. seren pinched her lips together and smiled sadly. although the image of her sister never ceased in her mind, nothing beat seeing her in a physical sense, even if it was the size of a figurine. yet what mattered was the love that was invoked out of her, overflowing. her sister’s magical hair and eyes, chasing a butterfly in a field.

to avoid crying, seren then stared at a gift of an absent member. or at least he said he would meet them at the town square later. levi’s love of the hunt and liking to the crafts of man led to the gift seren wasn’t expecting, but loved regardless. concealed in a glass case, a frozen dagger, quite literally wrapped in layers of ice and fog that gave it an almost clear appearance. an ancient craft, a rare, cultural gift. seren smiled, though, wondering what might’ve caused levi’s love of knives so much.

in her arms, she held kailen’s present, wondering where the boy was at the same time. an album, composed of pictures they’d gathered over the months, from the adventure all the way to now, to just yesterday, where they had some fun at the beach. she would open the album and gloss often the dozen pages. so many memories, many which she kept close to her heart. kailen’s paternal instincts breezed with this gift, leaving seren feeling safe.

and the final gift, a bow. a simple, wooden box around the size of her small hands but it contained the most stunning gift of all; music. evan had sharp ears, knowing a song which would bring seren peace, and threw it into a music box, and when she opened, revealed engravings onto the wood of the lid, and as she spun the wheel and let the song play, she would think of those blue memories from their adventures, up until now.

seren felt delicate fingers through her hair, sensing a bow being tied to her braid by kailen’s hands. “ we hope you like it. took a while to choose each gift but the result was good, by the looks of things ”, was he referring to how seren was struggling to keep the tears at bay?

she sniffled, chuckling sweetly. “ they’re perfect. it’s just . . . the first time i’ve felt happy on my birthday. and it’s thanks to you idiots ”.

“ we’re not idiots! we just care a lot about you ”, perseus squeaked, reaching over and flicking her chin playfully. “ cheer up, pinkie. you still have to deal with us idiots till the end of the day. it’ll be magical, we promise. ”

with that, seren smiled. they didn’t even realize it, that every moment with them was magical. and that she was happy so long as she had them.

she owed the blue memories to these silly boys. these silly, but special boys.

#bonus chapter !

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saiilorstars · 5 years ago

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The Beginning of Everything

Fandom: Doctor Who

Pairing: Female OC x 10th Doctor

(OC Renata’s Face claim: Marjorie de Sousa) (Gabby’s face claim: Victoria Moroles)

// Story Masterlist //

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DISCLAIMER: This chapter’s plotline is from Doctor Who’s comic stories. Most of the dialogue is directly written from the comic. The plot is NOT mine.

Ch. 16: Between the Lies There is Truth

Chapter Summary: The Doctor takes Renata to a quaint town so they can have a talk about Renata’s past. Meanwhile, Donna and Gabby make their own trip to see an old friend.

Unlike Renata who preferred to go out and eat when she spilled a centuries-old secret, the Doctor chose to talk with Donna in the console room. He doubted Renata would be coming back anytime soon. Gabby was probably off in her own room too. It was just going to be him and Donna for the rest of the 'night'.

And starting to talk wasn't that hard, least not the part of how he and Martha ended up in 1913; the Family who was chasing him; the Chameleon arch; hiding amongst humans for 3 months. But then he got to the part where he'd met Renata. That's where it got harder.

Donna could tell it was too. He'd shifted away from her, his sentences became more like fragments with a few stutters here and there. "When did talking about Renata make you this nervous?" she ultimately asked just before he got to the part where he, as John Smith, was going in search of Renata in the nearby town with Matron Joan.

"I don't know!" he defensively said. "This wasn't me!"

"It kinda was," Donna made a face that pretty much told him he was being dramatic. "You sought her out, went looking for her in the town...all cos you wanted to see her."

"That's not true!"

"Yeah? Then what happened afterwards? Did you find her?"

"You know what, I think this story is done!"

"Oh no, spaceman!" Donna latched onto his arm before he would take off on her. "You started the story, now you finish it!" And by the hook she had on his arm, there was no getting out of it.

With a sigh, the Doctor answered in a very quiet tone, "Yes, I did. And she wasn't happy about it! Nearly shut the door in my face!"

Donna let go of his arm but only to laugh.

"It wasn't funny! She practically threw me out so I had to go looking for her in the town where there were no doors!" The Doctor then went on to explain how he'd been responsible for knocking poor Renata out in the town.

Donna may have laughed again and told him that definitely sounded like him. The dynamic between the two Time Lords may in fact be like that. The Doctor was very discouraged to continue, but Donna promised him she'd take him serious and listen from now on. So, he went on.

He told her about the journal John Smith had created, full with his actual memories. He told her about the dance he'd invited Renata to (and how she'd been practically forced to go along with it thanks to Matron Joan), the Family chasing after them, and finally the decision John had to make to save them all. Of course the ending was what got Donna.

She was completely serious then. "Doctor, you mean to tell me you fell in love with Renata?" her eyes were wide and blinking fast.

The Doctor, for his part, was fervently shaking his head. "I-I didn't - John Smith did! He fell in love with her, not me!"

Donna's eyes narrowed on the stammering Time Lord. "Then why are you so defensive about it?"

"I-I'm not!"

Donna raised one eyebrow at him.

"...am I?" the Doctor took a moment to think about things. He looked away from Donna but even when he tried to think about 1913, his mind refused. Each time he thought about it, he remembered everything he did. From the moment he met Renata to the last moment they shared.

But thankfully he had Donna to point out things for him. And she did.

"Doctor, you sought her out-"

"-he did, not me-"

"-you sketched her-"

"-lots of people do that-"

"-you asked her out on a date-"

"-well, I-"

"-and then you kissed her right before you saved the world," Donna finished with a very big smile, though there was a trace of amusement on it. "The 'go big or go home' thing took a whole other level with you. Kind of romantic, in your own alien way."

"Donna," the way the Doctor said her name was more like a plead than anything else. "I didn't...I did more harm than good, okay? And John Smith just going out there and falling in love with her was the worst mistake he ever did."

Donna folded her arms with purpose. "Doctor," she moved up to him with a hard look in her eyes, "Look me in the eyes and tell me that again. Tell me that you mean it."

The Doctor wanted to look away but he just couldn't. And it was frustrating! "I don't know! "You know what? It doesn't even matter! This isn't why I told you the story - it was to show you how I already screwed up, okay? That's what I always do - I screw up."

Donna's face softened once she realized the real point of the story. "You're guilty. You don't ask Renata questions that you want to because you're guilty about what happened in 1913. Whether it's about the deaths or her heart - hearts - you feel guilty."

The Doctor's shoulders slumped as his head hung. "With what face - what audacity - would I go and pry about her past? I can't, Donna. I just can't."

Donna rested a comforting hand on his arm. He wasn't alone in these crazy thoughts and she wanted him to know that. "I get that, I really do, but I also think you are entitled to some answers if she is living in your TARDIS."

"I stole her," he said with a sour smile. "I literally kidnapped her."

"But she still stayed, out of her own accord. She lives here because she wants to, Doctor."

The Doctor had wanted to believe that for a long time too, but there was always an inkling of doubt gnawing in the corner of his mind. Renata was so different from him, the polar opposite actually. Maybe one day she'd grow tired of the way their trips went or even himself and she'd...leave.

"Why don't you let the night pass and then tomorrow you and Renata can go out somewhere, just the two of you," Donna suggested after a few minutes of silence. "Gabby and I can take it easy here while you're out." Just as the Doctor shook his head, Donna added, "You know you want some answers, don't play stupid. Do what I'm suggesting and you'll get some answers."

"What if I push her too much?" there was a clear fear in the Doctor's eyes that made Donna sympathize with him. "And then she wants to leave?"

"She won't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because Renata is fair. If you deserve answers, then she'll give them to you." Donna seemed very sure of what she was saying. It almost let the Doctor to believe it too.

Truth was, he was still scared.

~0~

Renata hadn't slept that well. She'd tossed and turned in her bed, hoping that the world would take pity on her and let her sleep just for a few hours. This was one of the days she actually needed sleep and of course it happened on the day she'd royally screwed up. Just when she'd finally clambered onto some sleepy trance...someone knocked on her door.

That's all the sleep I'm getting, she concluded with a tired yawn. She got up from bed and sleepily walked to the door.

Of course the Doctor stood on the other side. Of course.

"Yeah?" she yawned and brought a hand up to her mouth in an attempt to cover it up.

The Doctor could tell she was incredibly tired. He'd waited as patiently as possible for a few hours of sleep to pass by before gathering courage to come up Renata's door. It didn't look like the waiting had been for anything since it was obvious she hadn't slept at all.

"Uh, I...morning?" As he said that, his expression showed even he was confused. Why would he say that? That's not what he wanted to say at all.

Renata pulled a hand over her hair. "Morning."

"We, um - well, I'd like to...have a word with you," the Doctor finally got it in one go, but now he had to anxiously waiting for Renata's reaction.

She looked nervous but not surprised. "Umm...let me just...let me get changed, okay? I'll meet you in the console room in a bit."

"Sounds good," he nodded. She quickly looked away from him and closed the door. Yeah, she definitely was avoiding him.

Inside her bedroom, Renata was beginning to panic all over again.

She went all over the room looking for something to wear, but the truth was she was making time to think of a good reason to tell the Doctor why she knew the name he had never spoken to her. After about fifteen minutes, Renata finally found the will to get dressed and leave her room. She came out in a button-up, three-quarter sleeve green blouse tucked under a long cream-colored skirt. She pressed down her long hair then took a deep breath before she started for the console room.

Of course the Doctor was nervously waiting for her there. Soon as he saw her coming in, he straightened his body but he might have shifted a few times as she came up to him.

"Where's Donna and Gabriella?" she asked first since, on her way to the room, she hadn't heard a noise. It was almost as if it was just them two again.

"They, uh...Donna asked to be dropped off at home for now," the Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. The request had come at a perfect moment since he wanted to talk with Renata and could do without the questions Gabby kept throwing his way. The girl was curious about Renata's behavior and she wanted answers.

"And Gabriella?" Renata feared for the young girl's attitude towards travelling now. After how she treated Gabby, Renata thought sje might want to leave now before things got worse.

"She's off with Donna. She's never been to England, actually," the Doctor offered Renata a small smile.

"I need to apologize to her," Renata sighed. "I am a terrible teacher."

"She was fine, honestly. You don't need to worry about her."

Renata nodded, but she didn't look very convinced. "So...where are we going, then?"

"Umm, I thought somewhere nice and calm might be good. I know you prefer that."

Renata's eyebrows raised together. "What did you have in mind?"

The Doctor just smiled. He preferred to show her.

~0~

He does listen, Renata concluded when the Doctor led her out of the TARDIS into a quaint town in France. It was far from the nearby city - which so happened to be Paris - but close for Renata to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. As soon as she'd stepped out of the TARDIS, Renata was greeted with a peacefulness that she hadn't had in quite a while.

Not to mention the air smelled sweet. Somewhere, there was a bakery she was sure.

"1923 Sceux," the Doctor walked beside her along the short sidewalk. "Nice town, perfect for visitors just wanting to...talk." The smile on his face was soft and well-intentioned but it was still nerve-wracking for Renata. "And best of all, it is always nice and quiet here."

Renata raised her eyebrows in content. "I'm impressed. You do listen to me sometimes."

"I always listen. Sometimes you just happen to say things I disagree with."

"You mean like checking the environment before you leave the TARDIS?"

"Ah yes, that would be a big one. There's a sense of excitement when you go into the unknown."

"Not really," Renata shook her head, though there was a light smile on her face when she looked away. "Sometimes you can get into real trouble, which I'm sure you've already done before."

"Maybe so."

The Doctor led her towards a small shop on the edge of the street. Renata instantly knew this was the place responsible for the sweet smell in the air. Renata chose to sit in one of the tables outside the shop. She actually really loved the scenery and wanted to soak it up as much as she could.

"Do you like crepes?" the Doctor asked after taking a seat across the table. "They have really good crepes here."

"I've never had one," Renata made a face at the dessert.

The Doctor's mouth fell open in shock. "What!? You've never had a crepe before? How!?"

"Because it's a dessert and far too sweet for my liking," she raised one hand to wave. "I remember Joan liking them but they always had too many things in it."

"Oh, you have no idea what you're missing out on, Renata. You should have one."

"I'm curious, do either one of us have money to pay for what we want to eat here?"

There was a smug look on the Doctor's face when he reached into one of the inside pockets of his coat. He showed her (or rather waved) a couple bills in his hands. "I knew you would ask," he then said because he never carried money otherwise.

"Ah, so you really do know me," Renata looked away in embarrassment.

"Well, bits and pieces of what you tell me. But...I know there's more. You're 756, how could there not be, right?" Renata's face expressed a guilt the Doctor picked up on fast. "Oh I didn't mean you're obligated or anything, I just...I mean…"

"It's alright, Doctor," Renata cut into his panic moment. She knew he meant well - he always did. "You have questions and...I owe you some answers." It's just she didn't exactly want to give them. "Go ahead, ask away." Truth was...she was scared. She'd kept this lie going longer than she thought she'd be capable of and now telling him scared her even more. He would be angry with her, so angry. It would be a natural reaction but it was a reaction that, lately, had been keeping her up at night when she desperately wanted to sleep.

"I'm not going to pry into your past lives but...there are some things that just don't make sense," the Doctor admitted. "Specifically things around you and me. Like...how do you know so much about me?"

"Everyone knew who you were back on Gallifrey," Renata started with the technicalities of honesty. "You...did a lot of things that earned you a reputation."

"Yeah, but...certain...things about myself are things that only someone who actually knew me would know."

"Like?"

"Let's start with the fact you seemed to know, straightaway, that my inventions don't usually work. How would you know that?"

"I…" Renata knew she didn't have the right answer to that she didn't want to give away her real identity.

The Doctor waited a decent amount of time before he started coming up with his own ideas...that he shared out loud. "I mean, there's also the facts that you didn't want me around back in 1913 and it wasn't due to what I did to Gallifrey," - and just as Renata opened her mouth to retort, the Doctor added - "You told me that. You didn't even care what I did. That means you had something else against me." And the fact he still didn't know what it was, irked him. She had no reason to despise him like that if it wasn't for what he did in the war. He tried, often times, to convince himself that it really was the reason why she hated him in the beginning. But in the end, he knew that was a lie. There was something else about him that made her despise him and he wanted to know why. "And then there's the name…" his eyes seemed to bore into Renata's, making the Time Lady lose air suddenly. "A name that you shouldn't know. A name that only I, in this present world now, would ever know. Zuriah. How do you know that name?"

Renata swallowed hard. This was it. The pivotal moment that would change everything between them if she dared to answer with the truth. It was her chance to come clean; a chance to finally rid herself of the guilt she carried.

But it was also the moment she had feared for so long. Her stomach churned at the thought of his reaction, his fury. He would surely think she'd been playing him, making fun of him. All the things he told her so far about himself, some of them included things of Zuriah…

Tell him Renata.

Tell him right now!

Renata opened her mouth, bit it was incredibly dry.

Tell him and get it over with!

Do it!

Do i-

"I'm…" Renata swallowed hard, feeling something sharp at the end of her mouth. "I...knew her."

~0~

"How did you get us in here so easily?" Gabby quietly asked Donna despite being alone in an office...of UNIT. Without much struggle, Donna had gotten them into the UNIT headquarters. The place was high-tech and secure, which only led Gabby to be even more confused how they pretty much just walked in like nothing.

"Oh, we recently had a run-in with UNIT," Donna leaned against the desk behind her. "You know the ATMOS car incident?"

Gabby's eyes widened as she remembered the catastrophic event. "Yeah. Those were done by the aliens, huh?"

"Oh yeah," Donna folded her arms. "Big time. Well, the reason the Doctor and Renata even knew about it was because an old friend called them."

"An old friend? You mean, someone they know works in UNIT?" Gabby asked just a second before the office door opened.

Dr. Martha Jones walked in with a smile indicating her surprise to see Donna back. "I thought they were kidding when they said Donna Noble was requesting to see me…"

Donna smiled back at the woman. "I never kid."

"It's nice to see you again," Martha chuckled and hugged the woman. "What's it been for you? I hope not years. I'd be terribly offended."

"Nah, just 2 months."

"Good." Martha pulled away and turned her head in Gabby's direction. The young girl had been studying Martha since she'd walked in. "And this is…?"

"New companion - Renata's companion, actually," Donna gestured to Gabby who started to silently wave.

"Renata's companion?" Martha caught the words fast. Her eyes were wide, clearly stunned, but a smile slowly started making its way across Martha's face. She almost laughed even. "Really?"

"Yeah," Donna nodded then looked at Gabby. "Well, c'mon, talk! You can definitely talk!"

Gabby was well aware she was being weird again, but something about meeting a previous companion of the Doctor's and Renata's made her incredibly nervous. Donna told her they were visiting an old friend but...this woman seemed way put together. She was a doctor at UNIT. It was a bit intimidating. It meant that Renata and the Doctor made friends with important people.

"I'm Martha Jones," Martha took initiative and held out a hand to shake Gabby's.

"G-Gabby Gonzalez," the girl shook hands with Martha, but it was done in a trembling manner. "S-sorry. I-I'm sort of new and…"

"It's all still a wonder, huh?" Martha laughed, totally understanding it. She figured she must have worn Gabby's stunned face for at least the first two adventures she had with the Doctor. "Totally natural. But I'm really glad to know that Renata took on a companion. I never thought she would! You must be one hell of a girl to make her do that."

Gabby blushed. "I-I didn't think so, but..."

"You are," Martha told her again. She then moved around her desk to take a seat. "And I never thought you'd come visit me. Are Renata and the Doctor alright?" she asked in a tone that made Gabby wonder if something bad happened even before she arrived to the TARDIS. She looked at Donna and saw that the ginger had also gone a bit grim.

"They're moving on from Jenny," Donna assured Martha, "But now they're sort of having problems between them."

"Oh Donna, you have no idea how long that's been going on," Martha sighed. She presumed that Donna still didn't know about their past, so Martha would keep out the fact that Renata and the Doctor had been having problems before any of them were even born. "I assume neither of them know that you're here?"

"Yeah," nodded Donna. "I told the Doctor I was just visiting home while he and Renata went off somewhere else. Gabby hadn't seen England so the Doctor never asked."

"They're off together, then?" Martha raised an eyebrow, a hint of a smile trying to spread across her face.

"Not in that sense," Donna gradually took a seat across and prompted Gabby to do the same. "Although now I'm starting to sense that type of vibe from them. I mean, I had before too but I didn't know whether to believe it or not."

"Alright, so to what do I owe this visit?"

"Honestly, we want to know more about Renata but...that Time Lady doesn't really talk, does she?"

Now Martha scrunched her face. "Yeah, not really. Took me a whole year to crack her shell but even then it was a struggle. Still is."

"We're not being nosy, we just want to know why Renata is the way she is," Donna said then glanced at Gabby. The girl would never say it so straight-forwards but she was thinking the same thing as Donna.

"It doesn't make sense," Gabby ultimately added. "There were some...things that happened to us on my first trip and...when I tried talking to Renata about them, specifically the things concerning her, she snapped. It was like I trespassed into a different world...one where I didn't belong."

Martha figured Gabby must have prodded (accidentally) into Renata's love life and elicited the wrath of the terrified, love-stricken Renata. God knew that was a side of Renata no one should have to deal with. "I'm sure Renata feels terrible about that," Martha said first. "And if she hasn't apologized then I'm sure she will in a matter of time."

"It's okay," Gabby sighed. "I don't want to anger Renata by saying the wrong words. She's my teacher but...I'd like to see her as a friend too."

"And we're in luck," Donna mused with a smirk on her face as she gestured to Martha, "Because Dr. Jones here is Renata's only friend up to date; she's the only one Renata actually confides in. Don't know how you got her to do that."

Martha playfully rolled her eyes. "It's not a big deal."

"Yeah, because you already have what we want."

"Listen, Renata is a...complicated woman. She's sort of like the Doctor: she has so many secrets because she's so old."

"She's 756," Donna remembered from her breakfast with Renata.

"She's 756!?" Gabby repeated in shock. "But she doesn't look like she'd be!" Anyone would say that Renata looked like a woman in her early thirties. Everything about her screamed elegance and classiness.

"The Doctor's 902," Martha said just to see Gabby's stunned reaction again. It was rather fun being on the other side of the conversation, especially since Gabby was much younger than her and Donna. "They're the type of aliens that don't show signs of age...except in the eyes. If you look closely into their eyes, you can see just how ancient they are."

"I...I never thought to do that," Gabby scrunched her face. "What kind of aliens are they? I've asked Renata but all she says is that she's a Time Lady. What's that even mean?"

"They're from a planet called Gallifrey, but they don't really like to talk about it," Martha explained, figuring she could help Renata by making Gabby avoid that topic altogether. "Their planet is gone. That subject is truly raw for them so...don't bring that up unless they do."

"Got it," Gabby dutifully said as if she were taking notes. And maybe she was...in her mind.

"They never really talk," Donna sighed. "I mean, I just got the Doctor to tell me about 1913 with Renata. You were there, huh, Martha? When that happened?" Martha solemnly nodded. "The Doctor's still very guilty about that, you know. It's why he allows Renata to keep her entire life bottled away from him."

"Well, Donna, she's not obligated to tell the Doctor anything about herself," Martha felt the need to point out.

"No," agreed Donna. "But there are some things that she should say. And I think she should probably start with why she hated the Doctor from the gecko. It was 1913 and Renata slammed the door in his face when he hadn't done anything to her." And the more Donna watched Martha uncomfortably shift in her chair, the more she suspected Martha knew a lot more about that incident than the poor Doctor did.

~ 0 ~

The Doctor was stunned; beyond stunned actually. Renata had just admitted to knowing the one person he had loved the most in his lives. "You...you knew Zuriah?"

Renata absolutely hated herself right now, despised herself. How could she have told him that type of lie!? When had her mind come up with that incredibly stupid answer!? She had the chance to come clean and she blew it.

Like always, she blew it.

"Y-yes…" she brought a hand to her warm forehead.

"What - and you never said!? Even when I told you her name!?" there was that hint of anger Renata feared. She could only imagine his reaction if she'd told him the straight truth.

"I-I panicked," she said. That wasn't a total lie. "You...you know how Zuriah was...what you and her...what you...were…"

"She told you," the Doctor stated, getting his confirmation from her lowered gaze. "She told you about us? How...I am very confused here. Zuriah never told anyone about us. She was embarrassed of us-"

"-no," Renata cut in sharply. She may be a liar and a terrible person but she would not allow him to ever think that about her. "She wasn't embarrassed of you. She was just aware that the relationship was a dangerous one. But she was never embarrassed of you."

The Doctor still didn't seem very convinced. "I just...I don't understand...how did you two…"

"We worked for foundations," Renata said, thinking it was the easiest (and logical) reason to give. If she was going to go with the lie then she might as well make it work. "She led her own foundation. Our paths ultimately crossed."

"And how did you two get so close enough that she would tell you about us?"

"We just clicked. I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't think it would be important."

"It is," the Doctor nearly snapped. "Do you realize I have never met anyone else who knew about Zuriah? After things ended between us, it was like she disappeared. She made herself disappear."

"She regenerated," Renata bit her lip. If anything, this lie would at least allow her to divulge information that wouldn't give her up but would give some clarifications on things like these. "She regenerated a bit before she graduated. You can imagine that, after the way you two ended, she wouldn't want you to see her anymore."

"So her regeneration came as a blessing then," the Doctor shook his head with a sour smile on his face. "Right. Because I was always a nuisance."

"Don't say that," she scolded, but it just irritated him even more.

"I was! I loved Zuriah so much that I was willing to leave everything behind just for her. I asked her to run away with me, to get out of Gallifrey where it wouldn't matter if we were together...and you know what she said, right?" the sourness that covered the Doctor's face was so uncharacteristic of him, it pained Renata.

The blonde Time Lady gave a small nod of her head. Her face was guilt-ridden, but the Doctor didn't notice due to his own feelings. "She said no…" she whispered her answer.

"Yeah," the Doctor nodded. "Because, I guess, in the end...we were too different. She was a proper, high-class woman and I was just too...me."

"You were high class too," Renata pointed out.

"But I didn't act like one."

"Doctor-"

"-and I guess no matter how hard I tried making Zuriah live her best life, she just wasn't all the way convinced. And you know that. She had to have told you…"

Renata chewed on her lower lip until she felt the oozy blood on her tongue. "Doctor, just stop! If there is anything you need to be sure of is that Zuriah loved you so much! She was a scared, naive girl that should have said 'yes' but...her circumstances..." Renata couldn't say more, she just couldn't. If she started going into full details on why she had to say no to his proposition all those centuries ago, she would definitely break down. "Doctor, you have to believe me when I tell you that Zuriah loved you so much. You were always the love of her life."

~ 0 ~

"You know why Renata hated the Doctor so much, don't you?" Donna asked Martha. The UNIT employee nodded her head.

"I am so confused," Gabby admitted quietly. "I-I just got on board and suddenly there's so many secrets and backstories I-I don't know what to think or say."

"Gabby," Martha gave the young girl a kind smile, "I'm not going to lie, having Renata as your teacher is going to be a bit...complicated. She's a reclusive woman but it's not because she doesn't like you. She's just been a cautious woman all her lives that...it's become a part of her personality."

"Lives?" Gabby picked up on first. "And what do you mean she's been cautious?"

"Yeah, I'd like that explanation too actually," Donna pointed.

"It's those secrets," Martha told them both. "Renata's had them all her lives. She's learned to be cautious at a young age and she's just gotten used to it now."

"What kind of secrets could she have?" Gabby asked.

"She's 756," Martha reminded. "Her secrets may not be as dangerous as the Doctor's - because he's traveled so much - but Renata's secrets are very powerful too. They could hurt some...people...very badly."

"What - so she just carries them around like a burden?" Gabby frowned. "But that's...that's insane! She can't tell anyone!?"

Martha shook her head. "I'm afraid she chooses not to."

"But you know?"

Martha then nodded. "But I'm not the person that would alleviate those burdens."

"It's the Doctor," Donna deduced quickly. "I knew there was something going on between those two."

"Donna," Martha tilted her head, but the ginger shook her head.

"No! This just confirms one thing you know?"

Martha dreaded what Donna might come up with.

"Renata has feelings for the Doctor, doesn't she?"

Gabby's eyes were wide as could be. Was Donna really right!? She looked to Martha to see any indication of the answer…

~ 0 ~

"I never understood why Zuriah said no to me." There was a type of distance on the Doctor's face as he spoke. He was remembering the pure anger on Zuriah's face when she turned down his offer to run away. There were lots of tears in her eyes and her screams could have echoed in the building. "I mean, on some level I knew that I was, inherently, asking her to leave her family for me but...I thought she would say yes, because she loved me and...we wanted to be together above all."

Renata blinked fast to get rid of tears in her eyes. She remembered it too. The images had stayed so clear despite the centuries that passed by. She would never forget that night - it'd been the worst moment of her lives. "Family is important, Doctor. It was to her. But you know what? She loved you the most, she did it for you."

"For me?" the Doctor scoffed so harsh that Renata flinched in her seat. "She said 'no' to me...for me?"

There was one secret that she just couldn't bring herself to say, the very one that was the core reason she declined his proposition, but that one was just too painful. "I know it's terrible but trust me. Besides, there were more things in the play. If she had said yes, she would've broken an innocent man's hearts."

"But she broke mine instead," the Doctor said quietly. "She chose everything above me. But I can't fault her, can I? Because that would make me selfish. But sometimes...sometimes I think…" he sighed, "How would things have turned out if she had come with me? I would have...showed her the world. Anything she wanted, I would have given it to her. I would've told her each and every day how much I loved her. And who knows, maybe she would still be alive right now."

Renata's face softened. She couldn't help it now; her tears rolled down her cheeks. It was too late now to say the truth. She'd dug her own hole and now she would die in it. Still, her feelings pushed her to do one more thing.

She got up from her chair and moved to the Doctor's. She didn't pull up another seat but instead wrapped her arms around him for a tight hug. It was a surprise for the Doctor but he accepted it nonetheless. She always had such nice, soft, warm hugs. He'd be mad to turn one down.

~ 0 ~

"I cannot confirm nor deny that," Martha cleared her throat and pushed her desk chair forwards.

"Oh please," scoffed Donna. "You're Renata's best friend. She had to have told you that."

"Donna, it's not my secret to tell-"

"-yeah, but I know it now," Donna said with a straight-forwards face. "It makes sense. And I suppose it would make sense that doesn't want to outright tell the Doctor things about her life if it included her marriage and whatnot."

"Okay, hold on," Gabby spoke up and for the first time since they'd arrived at UNIT, she spoke not out of nervousness. "We're no one to pry into that possible love story. We only came here to figure out why Renata acted so reclusive and we got that, Donna. She just has a lot of secrets and, even though I wish we could help her...we can't force her. Least now we know to be a bit more understanding."

Martha slowly smiled at the girl. "You're going to do wonders for my Ren." Gabby took the compliment with a beam. "Would you ladies like to grab a cup of coffee before you head back?"

Gabby exchanged a glance with Donna then both nodded.

"Lead the way, Dr. Jones!"

~ 0 ~

When the Doctor and Renata finally returned for Donna and Gabby, the two women were back in Donna's home as if they'd never went in search of Martha.

"Oh, it smells kind of nice," Donna sniffed the air in the console room. "Like chocolatey…"

Renata raised a white box in her hands. "French crepe. I thought maybe you and Gabriella might like one. I tried one myself and I had to admit it was rather nice."

"Told you," the Doctor flashed her a smug smile from across the console. She rolled her eyes and looked at Donna again.

"So you two are fine, then?" the ginger asked the two aliens while slowly taking the box from Renata.

"Yeah," the Doctor was the one to answer. He gave Renata a smile that she returned. "Did us some good to be alone and talk."

Renata only wished she could have done more...but she was a full-blown coward. And one day, she was sure, it would come back to bite her. Still, it did seem to do some good talking. Least the Doctor didn't look at her with suspicion anymore. Of course now he felt free to mention Zuriah more often so that would be fun later on.

"Enjoy the crepe," the Doctor told Donna and Gabby. "They're the finest, if I say so myself."

"You probably do," Donna playfully rolled her eyes. "C'mon Gabby, let's have us a sweet snack!" She headed for the hallways, but just as Gabby was about to follow, Renata called her aside.

Needless to say Gabby was more than nervous as Renata brought her into the first door the hallway would give. "Look, I'm so sorry!" the girl blurted as soon as Renata closed the door behind her. "I shouldn't have asked so many questions about yourself! I'm really sorry! But please don't bring me back to Earth!"

"Oh Gabriella, I would never," Renata sighed. She was so responsible for screwing Gabby up so badly. "I'm the one who needs to apologize. I should have never yelled at you like that, much less threatened you like that. You should know that...that I have a very hard time getting along with people. I-I'm not that good at socializing. I don't get human social queues very well due to a lack of travelling."

"Oh," Gabby blinked. She'd learned from Martha that Renata did indeed have difficulty making friends, but she wasn't expecting Renata to confess that herself. The way Martha put it, Gabby shouldn't be expecting anything from Renata in terms of conversations.

"And you should know one more thing," Renata drew in a deep breath before confessing, "Everything I said back in the gallery - all the information I told you about the art work - wasn't coming from me. I sort of...read the Doctor's mind to know the information."

"Come again?" Gabby tilted her head. "You can read minds?"

"Not 'read minds' per say, but...we can sort of telepathically communicate and see into each other's minds. The Doctor, of course, knows all about that gallery since he was the one who visited it all the time, not me. He was the one who knew about the artwork and he...he let me see into his mind in order to make you believe that I knew the artwork." Renata sighed and awkwardly folded her arms over her chest. She was even shifting on her feet which truly surprised Gabby, because up until now she hadn't seen Renata be nervous. "The truth is, Gabriella, I can't be a teacher to you because I don't know anything. I haven't traveled much - in fact I only started a couple months ago. The Doctor should be your teacher. You should be his companion. I'm not apt for that job. I'm sorry." She couldn't face Gabby out of sheer embarrassment. Admitting you were useless wasn't something easy to do, but Renata felt she should at least do one good thing today and if it wasn't towards the Doctor then Gabby should be next.

"That's not true," Gabby's response drew Renata's gaze again. The girl didn't look very disappointed, or upset, by Renata's words. "You're wonderful. And, yeah you might not know everything but...no one does."

"The Doctor does," Renata smiled. "He'd be a great teacher."

"Okay," shrugged Gabby. "Then he could be our teacher, but I want to be your companion."

"Why?" there was an honest confusion in Renata's tone, and expression, that motivated Gabby to explain it thoroughly so that Renata wouldn't have a doubt in her mind.

"Because you're classy, you're proper and, you're an alien that still acts like...well, a human. I mean, you remind me of my Mom. You give stability and in a place like this-" Gabby gestured to the TARDIS, "-where everyday is danger and unpredictability, I really need someone to bring home back to me. And I don't mean home as my actual home on Earth but... you teaching me that my home can be anywhere. Because home isn't just where you live, it's where you feel nice and warm and...happy. And you give that to the Doctor and Donna. Plus, you see things differently than the Doctor. You're more...elegant, and you act in a way that makes me want to follow. I don't want to be you, but I'd like to be a better version of myself and I'd like my teacher to be you."

Gabby actually brought tears to Renata's eyes. "Oh Gabby," Renata pulled her into a tight hug, the action startling since Martha had warned Gabby that Renata also wasn't the touchy-type. "Thank you so much."

"Uh, no, thank you," Gabby patted Renata's back. These aliens were so strange. When they pulled apart, Gabby only had one more thing to say. "So, about what the alien said about your song…what did it mean it would end sooner?"

"I'm not sure-"

"-I think you do. Are we ever going to tell the Doctor about it?"

"No," Renata said without even a moment of thought. "I don't want him to know."

"But it sounds really important and...well, isn't that sort of a prediction about your...death? 'Your song will end sooner'. That's got to mean that you'll die earlier?"

"Gabby, it doesn't matter," Renata tried to be casual about it. "Because guess what? Even if I do die, my people are the type that when you die you just change faces and it's a done deal. I would just get a new body and move on. So we need to move on too." She offered a big smile as she headed for the door. "Now go and have that crepe with Donna. It's truly delicious. Couldn't get rid of the Doctor's smug face after I told him that. Go on."

Gabby nodded and walked out, but she wasn't able to let go of that topic like Renata wanted her to. Without even realizing, Renata had given Gabby one powerful reason not to let go. Renata had called her 'Gabby' instead of her full name. Renata vowed that she would never use nicknames in place of a person's name. She had to be nervous. She had to be scared. And why shouldn't Renata be scared?

Death was coming for her and earlier than previously thought.

#10th doctor #doctor who #ocapp #ocappreciation #dw imagines #10th doctor imagines #doctor who imagines #10th doctor imagine #doctor who fic #doctor who fanfics #10th doctor fanfics #10th doctor fics #tenth doctor fics #tenth doctor imagines #donna noble #gabby gonzalez #oc: Renata Cartwright #fic: the beginning of everything #noblecrescentedit

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g0dblessthefandom · 5 years ago

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Favorite Female Characters

Tagged by @mini-oddity. I’m too excited about this, y’all. Rules: List ten of your favorite female characters in different fandoms and then tag ten people.

(I’m just going to be a blanket **SPOILER ALERT** for every show here, I’ll tag it just in case, but be forewarned.)

1. Xena (Xena: Warrior Princess) I got to meet Lucy in 2018, and it was basically the highlight of my life. Xena was such a HUGE influence on me as a kid, and I don’t think I ever got over the impact she made on me. Her bravery, her love for Gabrielle, her intelligence, she’s the whole package and spent almost every episode kicking dudes in the face, which is like, the dream. I think that she was very clearly a queer character also made a huge difference for me, because even though baby Frankie didn’t know it, she was gay as hell. Seeing the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle play out and that ‘love that dare not speak it’s name’ was kind of a revelation for me, even though I wouldn’t realize it for a while.

2. Martha Jones (Doctor Who)

I think there was something so special about Martha Jones that most people didn’t see (youknowwhy.gif). She was more than just that girl who was pining away for the Doctor. She saved the world at one point just because she was willing to put everything on the line, and in some small ways it was for him, but in larger ways it was for herself. In the end she walked away because she knew that she deserved better, and she was right. She was just in general such an awesome character, and I hope that I can be more like her one day.

3. Dana Scully (The X-Files)

Scully was the skeptic, but also, weirdly the believer because she was pretty serious about her faith. I remember having so many feelings about Scully and not really being able to explain them (it was the queerness, Lil’ Frankie), but in general beyond just being gorgeous she was so smart, and so good at dealing with Mulder’s BS. She would take things in stride as well, and made the most of the circumstances that left her in a worse situation than before. She was a scientist first, and so when she was elbow deep in a carcass, giving everyone answers that they didn’t know they wanted, she was in her element. I know that people are aware of the Scully effect, and I think that it’s just a testament to how much of an impact this character had on popular culture. I just loved her resolve, and every time she had a terrific storyline, I cheered.

4. Captain Kathryn Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager)

I clearly have a thing for no nonsense red heads, so maybe there’s a type here, but also, Kathryn Janeway was an amazing character. I think if she’d been a man she would have gone down as one of the greatest Starfleet Captains of all time, but alas, sexism is a thing, and we’re in the 21st century, not the 25th. Janeway had the absolute worst situation that a captain could ask for, and she made it work somehow. In the end, she gave everything to make sure that her crew (both Maquis and Starfleet) could get home safely, and that’s what a good captain does. I first talked about this in 2007, so, yeah, you know that I mean it. Captain Janeway had to navigate a world without Starfleet, and in her own way manage to build a crew and keep a ship going through the most desperate of conditions, and I think she did an amazing job. (It’s also just a coincidence that my favorite episode is ‘Year of Hell’ where she gets to run around in a standard issue Starfleet tanktop and shoot people)

5. Santana Lopez (Glee)

If you follow my blog, it will come to no surprise to you that I flipping love Santana Lopez. Played by Naya Rivera, she’s one half of my Forever OTP: Brittana. And Santana on her own is a fantastic character. She comes out to her grandmother, and faces shame, and struggles with some life choices that she was once sure about. She goes from being this grade A butthole who’s dealing with her own problems, to caring about those people who are the closest to her, and in a way, finding her own family. It’s a really beautiful journey, and when it was given the time that it deserved on Glee, I think that the show was better for it. Of course, her being so talented didn’t hurt either.

6. Dr. Joan Watson (Elementary)

I’m the kind of her that will pretty much appreciate a genderbent anything. When I heard that a new show was coming out about Sherlock Holmes and they were changing Watson to a woman, I was pretty excited. When I learned that it would be the love of my life Lucy Liu, I was ecstatic! Watson is very much the chocolate to Sherlock’s peanut butter, but their relationship is so good and so real that it’s just the icing on the cake (mixing a lot of food metaphors, so bear with me). She’s a scientist (doctor/surgeon) like Scully, but she’s changed careers and now she works as a sober companion (at least at the beginning of the season). Of course, the reason that she and Sherlock get along so well is because Watson is smart. Super smart. Sometimes smarter than Sherlock, and he readily admits as such. She was her own woman and she made Watson into someone who was on par with Sherlock, and a force to be reckoned with in her own right. And, of course, they were best friends.

7. Carol Susan Jane Danvers (Captain Marvel)

I was a big fan of CM before the movie came out, so I’ll mostly talk about the comics, but Captain Marvel in every incarnation is a terrific character. I first read Civil War II with her and Tony Stark going at it, and I couldn’t help but appreciate the passion that she brought to the table. Carol Danvers is the kind of character who, right or wrong, just does what she’s going to do, and you know that her heart in the right place. In the comics, she has a relationship with Rhodey, and that makes for some interesting drama. She’s the kind of person who punches first, asks questions later, and it’s that kind of himbo energy that makes me love her. She goes all in, and god help you if you get in her way.

8. Eleanor Shellstrop and Tahani Al-Jamil (The Good Place) Is a twofer cheating? Probably. Do I care that much? Nah, son. For the record, I do ship Cheleanor, but I love these two together in every single imaginable way. They both have their own baggage, and come from less than ideal backgrounds (Eleanor generally, and Tahani because of her family life), but they have learned and grown so much over the last four seasons and I can’t wait to see how things turn out for them. They’re also such good friends, so I really appreciate their relationship with each other. Neither really had friends in their “real” lives. (Even though Tahani pretended to) The fact that they have each other, and really care for each other, just makes both of them so much better in my opinion. I was rewatching the first season and during the episode where they both confess their feelings to Chidi, Eleanor says that she’s going to make sure that they don’t become like to women feuding over a guy, and they proceed to spend a terrific day together. That’s female friendship right there! I love this show in general, it’s definitely my favorite on TV right now, and I’m so glad that it’s on!

9. Zoe Washburne (Firefly) I have shipped exactly three het ships in my entire life: Rick and Evie O’Connell, Eleanor and Chidi and Zoe and Wash. I dunno, it was something about their relationship that just moved me. She loved him, and she didn’t care who knew it, and they just had this terribly healthy relationship, and it was stupendous. Sans Wash, though, Zoe is an amazing character. She’s smart, she’s strong, she’s loyal, and she’s played by Gina Torres, who only seems to get more and more attractive as the years go on? Like, I’m not trying to be that person because Gina brings so much to to the table, she’s so talented and clearly intelligent and passionate, but she’s also super duper hot? Like, in the year of our lord 2020? It’s wild. She was also on the Black Lady Sketch Show and she was hilarious, so there’s that. She can do it all! Okay, but back to Zoe, I just love her character, and her relationship with the other folks on the ship. It was something awesome to see.

10. Sister Night/Angela Abar (Watchmen TV Series) This is kind of a new addition, but I hope that doesn’t make you think any less of this amazing character. Regina King knocked my socks off in the best way imaginable, and I’m just so enthralled and obsessed with this character, I don’t even know what to do with myself. She has such AGENCY and she’s a woman who makes her own decisions and is in charge of her whole life. Dr. Manhattan fell in love with her because despite everything she put everything on the line for him, and you’ve got to appreciate that amount of determination. Of course, I love that she spent most of the show kicking racists in the head, so you know, I’ve got a type, clearly.

Throwing out a special shout out to: Kelly and Yorkie (Black Mirror), Alex Danvers (Supergirl), Eve and Villanelle (Killing Eve), The Doctor/13 (Doctor Who), Lt. Uhura, and the thousands of other amazing, bad ass female characters that I didn’t mention.

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So, that’s it. To continue this I’d like to tag @leigh-kelly @chuckleshan @daborgh @battybookworm @lesbeauregarded @ambirrdy-brittana @yourstreetserenade @itcameuponamidnightqueer @vikingstad1 @stephanie-beatriz @skywalkerchick1138 @mayqueen517+ anyone who wants to do this!

#female characters #fandom #xena #martha jones #captain janeway #scully #angela abar #zoe washburne #eleanor shellstrop #tahani al jamil #captain marvel #joan watson #santana lopez #i just realized that most of these are from tv #which is pretty cool!

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maddie-grove · 5 years ago

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The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2019

My main takeaways from the past year’s reading:

Sometimes you think something is happening because of magic, but then it turns out to have a non-magical explanation so weird that you find yourself saying, “You know what? I wish faeries or God were responsible for this. I’d honestly feel less disturbed.”

Stop bathing and changing your clothes and shaving for three years, three months, and three days. You’ll find out who your real friends are. I promise you that.

I want more books about bisexual ladies!!! Give them to me!!!

Anyway...

20. The Prodigal Duke by Theresa Romain (2017)

Childhood sweethearts Poppy Hayworth and Leo Billingsley were separated when his older brother, a duke, sent him away to make his fortune. Years later, the duke is dead, a financially successful Leo has come back to England to take his place, and Poppy has become a rope dancer at Vauxhall Gardens after a life-shattering event. New sparks are flying between them, but is love possible when so much else has changed? Leo and Poppy are believable and charming as old friends, Romain makes great use of obscure historical details from the oft-depicted Regency period, and I loved Leo’s difficult but caring elderly uncle.

19. Simple Jess by Pamela Morsi (1996)

Althea Winsloe, a young widow in 1900s Arkansas, has no interest in remarrying, but almost everyone in her small Ozarks community is pressuring her to remarry, and she still needs someone to help farm her land. Enter Jesse Best, a strong young man with cognitive disabilities who’s happy to take on the work. As he makes improvements to her farm and bonds with her three-year-old son, Althea gets to know him better and starts to see him in a new light. This earthy romance could’ve been a disaster, but instead it illustrates how people with disabilities are often...uh...simplified and de-sexualized in a way that denies them autonomy. Morsi has a similarly nuanced take on Althea and Jesse’s community, which is claustrophobic and supportive all at once.

18. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli (2018)

Outspoken and insecure, bisexual high school senior Leah Burke is having a tough year. Her friend group is in turmoil, her single mom is seriously dating someone, and she’s caught between a sweet boy she’s not sure about and a pretty, perfect straight girl who couldn’t possibly be into her...right??? The sequel to the very cute Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Leah on the Offbeat pulls a The Godfather: Part II with its messy protagonist, sweetly surprising romance, and masterful comic set piece involving the Atlanta American Girl Doll restaurant.

17. Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper (2006)

Kidnapped from her home in eighteenth-century Ghana, fifteen-year-old Amari is sold into slavery and winds up on a South Carolina plantation, where she faces terrible cruelty but finds friends in an enslaved cook, her little son, and eventually a sulky white indentured servant around her age. When their master escalates his already-atrocious behavior, the three young people flee south to the Spanish Fort Mose in search of freedom. Draper’s complicated characters, vivid descriptions, and deft handling of heavy subjects makes for top-notch historical YA fiction.

16. A Prince on Paper by Alyssa Cole (2019)

After her controlling politician father was jailed for poisoning a bunch of people in their small, prosperous African country, Nya Jerami gained unprecedented freedom but also became the subject of vicious gossip. Johan von Braustein, the hard-partying stepson of a European monarch, wants to help her, partly because he sympathizes and partly because he has a crush, but she thinks he’s too frivolous and horny (if wildly attractive). After an embarrassing misunderstanding compels them to enter a fake engagement, though, she begins to wonder if there’s more to him. I’m not a huge fan of contemporary romance, but this novel has the perfect combination of heartfelt emotion, delicious melodrama, and adorable fluff.

15. One Perfect Rose by Mary Jo Putney (1997)

Stephen, the Duke of Ashburton, has always done the proper and responsible thing, but that all changes when he learns that he’s terminally ill. Wandering the countryside in the guise of an ordinary gentleman, he ends up joining an acting troupe and falling in love with Rosalind, the sensible adopted daughter of the two lead actors. Like another Regency romance on this list, this novel celebrates love in many forms: there’s the love story between Stephen and Rosalind, yes, but there’s also Rosalind’s loving relationship with her adopted family, the new bonds she forms with her long-lost blood relatives, the way her two families embrace the increasingly frightened Stephen, and the healing rifts between Stephen and his well-meaning but distant siblings. Stephen’s reconciliation with his mortality is also moving.

14. My One and Only Duke by Grace Burrowes (2018)

Facing a death sentence in Newgate, footman-turned-prosperous banker Quinton Wentworth decides to do one last good thing: marry Jane McGowan, a poor pregnant widow, so she and the baby will be financially set. Then he receives a pardon and a dukedom at the literal last minute, meaning that he and Jane have a more permanent arrangement than either intended. I fell in love with the kind-but-difficult protagonists almost at once, and with Burrowes’s gorgeous prose even faster.

13. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell (2013)

It’s 1986, and comics-loving, post-punk-listening, half-Korean Park and bright, weird, constantly bullied Eleanor are just trying to get through high school in their rough Omaha neighborhood. He’s only grudgingly willing to let her share his bus seat at first, but this barely civil acquaintance slowly thaws into friendship and blossoms into love. Far from being the whimsical eighties-nostalgia-fest I expected, this is a bittersweet love story about two isolated young people who find love, belonging, and a chance for self-expression with each other in an often-hostile environment (a small miracle pre-Internet).

12. Shrill by Lindy West (2016)

In this memoir, Lindy West talks about the difficulties of being a fat woman, the thankless task of being vocally less-than-enthused about rape jokes, the joys of moving past self-doubt, and the very real possibility that Little John from Disney’s Robin Hood was played by “bear actor” Baloo, among other subjects. I was having a hard time during my last semester of law school this past spring, and this book’s giddy humor and inspiring messages really helped me in my hour of need.

11. Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood by Karina Longworth (2018)

In 1925, very young businessman Howard Hughes breezed into Hollywood with nothing but tons of family wealth, a soon-to-be-divorced wife, and a simple dream: make movies about fast planes and big bosoms. He got increasingly weird and reactionary over the next thirty years, then retired from public life. More a history of 1920s-1950s Hollywood than a biography, this book has the same sharp writing and in-depth film analysis that makes me love Longworth’s podcast You Must Remember This.

10. The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan (1966)

In Civil-War-era Virginia, iron-willed Martha Farnsworth and her nervous younger sister try to run their nearly empty girls’ boarding school within earshot of a battlefield. When one girl finds Union soldier John McBurney injured in the woods, she brings him back to the house, where he exploits every conflict and secret among the eight girls and women (five students, two sisters, and one enslaved cook). Charming and manipulative, he nevertheless finds himself in over his head. Cullinan makes great use of the eight POVs and the deliciously claustrophobic setting; it’s fascinating to watch the power dynamics and allegiances shift from scene to scene.

9. A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian (2018)

Reserved tavern keeper Sam Fox wants to help out his brother’s sweetheart by finding and destroying a nude portrait she once sat for; disgraced gentleman Hartley Sedgwick isn’t sure what he wants after having his life ruined twice over, but he happened to inherit his house from the man who commissioned the painting...plus he’s not exactly reluctant to assist kind, handsome Sam in his quest. I wrote about this heart-melting romance two times last year; suffice it to say that it’s not only one of the best Regencies I’ve ever read, but also possibly the best romance I’ve ever read about the creation of a found family.

8. Frog Music by Emma Donoghue (2014)

Blanche Beunon, a French-born burlesque dancer in 1876 San Francisco, has a lot going on: her mooching boyfriend has turned on her, her sick baby is missing, and her cross-dressing, frog-hunting friend Jenny Bonnet was just shot dead right next to her. In the middle of a heat wave, a smallpox epidemic, and a little bit of mob violence, she must locate her son and solve Jenny’s murder. This is a glorious work of historical fiction; you can see, hear, smell, and feel the chaotic world of 1870s San Francisco, plus Blanche’s character arc is amazing.

7. The Patrick Melrose novels (Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and At Last) by Edward St. Aubyn (1992, 1992, 1994, 2005, and 2012, respectively)

Born to an embittered English aristocrat and an idealistic American heiress, Patrick Melrose lives through his father’s sadistic abuse and his mother’s willful blindness (Never Mind), does a truly staggering amount of drugs in early adulthood (Bad News), and makes a good-faith effort at leading a normal life (Some Hope). Years later, the life he’s built with his wife and two sons is threatened by his alcoholism and reemerging resentment of his mother (Mother’s Milk), but there may be a chance to salvage something (At Last). Despite the suffering and cruelty on display, these novels were the farthest thing from a dismaying experience, thanks to the sharp characterization, grim humor, and great sense of setting. Also, I love little Robert Melrose, an anxious eldest child after my own heart.

6. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (1974)

In 1550s England, no-nonsense Kate Sutton is exiled to the Perilous Gard, a remote castle occupied by suspicious characters, including the lord’s guilt-ridden younger brother Christopher. Troubled by the holes she sees in the story of the tragedy that haunts him, she does some problem-solving and ends up in a world of weird shit. Cleverly plotted, deliciously spooky, and featuring an all-time-great heroine, this book was an absolute treat. The beautiful Richard Cuffari illustrations in my edition didn’t hurt, either.

5. An Unconditional Freedom by Alyssa Cole (2019)

Daniel Cumberland, a free black man from New England traumatized from being sold into slavery, and Janeta Sanchez, a mixed-race Cuban-Floridian lady from a white Confederate family, have been sent on a mission to the Deep South by the Loyal League, a pro-Union spy organization. Initially hostile to everyone (but particularly to somewhat naive Janeta), Daniel warms to his colleague, but will her secrets, his shattered faith in justice, and the various dangers they face prevent them from falling in love? Nah. Alyssa Cole’s historical romances deliver both on the history and the romance, and this is one of her strongest entries.

4. The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite (2019)

Heartbroken by the death of her father and the marriage of her ex-girlfriend, Lucy Muchelney decides she needs a change of scenery and takes a live-in position translating a French astronomy text for Catherine St. Day, the recently widowed Countess of Moth. Catherine, used to putting her interests on hold for an uncaring spouse, is intrigued by this awkward, independent lady. I’ve read f/f romances before, but this sparkling Regency was the first to really blow me away with its fun banter, neat historical details, and perfect sexual tension.

3. The Wager by Donna Jo Napoli (2010)

After losing his entire fortune to a tidal wave, Sicilian nineteen-year-old Don Giovanni de la Fortuna sinks into poverty and near-starvation. Then Devil makes him an offer: all the money he wants for as long as he lives if he doesn’t bathe, cut his hair, shave, or change his clothes for three years, three months, and three days. This fairy-tale retelling is an extraordinarily moving fable about someone who learns to acknowledge his own suffering, recognize it in others, and extend compassion to all.

2. Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (2013)

In this collection, Russell weaves strange tales of silkworm-women hybrids in Japan, seagulls who collect objects from the past and future, and, yes, vampires in the lemon grove. She also posits the very important question: “What if most (but not all) U.S. presidents were reincarnated as horses in the same stable and had a lot of drama going on?” My favorite stories were “Proving Up” (about a nineteenth-century Nebraska boy who encounters death and horror on the prairie), “The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis” (about a disadvantaged high school student who discovers an effigy of the even more hapless boy he tormented), and “The Barn at the End of the Term” (the horse-president story).

1. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (2016)

Lib Wright, an Englishwoman who has floundered since her days working for Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, is hired to observe Anna O’Donnell, an eleven-year-old Irish girl famous for not eating for four straight months. With a jaundiced attitude towards the Irish and Catholicism, Lib is confident that she’ll quickly expose Anna as a fraud, but she finds herself liking the girl and getting increasingly drawn into the disturbing mystery of her fast. Like The Perilous Gard, this novel masterfully plays with the possibility of the supernatural, then introduces a technically mundane explanation that’s somehow much more eerie. Donoghue balances the horror and waste that surrounds Anna, though, with the clear, bright prose and the moving relationship that develops between her and Lib, who grows beyond her narrow-mindedness and emotional numbness. I stayed up half the night to finish this novel, which cemented Emma Donoghue’s status as my new favorite author.

#books #reading #top twenty

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ty-talks-comics · 5 years ago

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Best of DC: Week of November 27th, 2019

Best of this Week: Batman: Creature of the Night Book Four - Kurt Busiek, John Paul Leon and Todd Klein

Kurt Busiek is amazing at humanizing and retelling the stories of our favorite heroes.

He managed to do so during his tenure on The Avengers and even more so on his breathtaking Superman: Secret Identity. He delves into the mindsets of characters and creates an emotional attachment between them and the reader that draws you into their individual struggles and his work on Creature of the Night is no different. He manages to juxtapose the story of Batman from the perspective of a fan of Batman in the "real world" and despite the long wait, it proves more than worth it.

Batman: Creature of the Night follows the life of Bruce Wainwright, inheritor of the Wainwright family fortune and company after their murder by a home invader. Throughout the series we see him deal with his family's death by doing his best to live up to their ideal, making the City of Boston better through philanthropic pursuits and smart business decisions. Though, he has a dark side to him, believing that he's managed to conjure an actual Batman-like protector for the city and believes it to be his stillborn brother, Tommy.

The last book saw Bruce obsessed with the origin of The Batman, how he was able to solve crime and how his company was succeeding because of the various arrests and takedowns, finding out that "Batman" had been the cause of everything. He had gone after Bruce's business opponents, exposed their wrongdoings and essentially cheated their way to the top. This sends Bruce on an unfortunate Spiral, thinking that all of Boston was corrupt and that maybe the other business people and Bruce's own allies might have had something to do with their deaths.

This issue begins with a splash page of a page from Batman; specifically where Thomas and Martha are killed by Joe Chill. It's also taken extreme damage likely from the Batman entity that Bruce believes to exist. This shows just much Wainwright's own parents deaths has affected him and his mindset. We also get a few shots of Bruce's messy office. John Paul Leon makes sure to draw the readers attention to just how much Bruce's life is beginning to spin out of control. His floor is full of trash, booze and even a bra from who knows and Bruce himself is found by his assistant Robin, passed out among the mess.

In his stupor, he asks her about coffee before flinging himself off of the roof, turning into the Bat entity himself. Robin isn't surprised and we learn that she's known about Bruce's supposed abilities since the first time she and Mr. Jepson, one of Bruce's employees (his Alfred so to speak), saw him transform two years prior. If I remember right, the moment when Bruce was on the roof was when he found out about what Tommy had done and it's implied that Bruce was up there alone the whole time.

Unfortunately, Jepson suffers a heart attack after seeing his boy like that and is admitted to a hospital in and out over the next few months or years. Jepson's failing health leads Bruce to continue winding down, violently stopping crime while knowing that it's not actually doing anything better. At the same time, Robin is tasked with taking care of him by Mr. Jepson as she's been with them both for a very long time, Bruce even played her way through college. When Bruce goes to jail over a bar room brawl that left the other guy hospitalized, Robin bails him out.

These scenes are grim and paint Bruce at almost his lowest, drinking in some decent looking bar and getting angry at even the smallest of slights. A man bumps him and Bruce decides to make a big thing of it, so they take the fight outside and Bruce gets his ass kicked while being watched by a small crowd. As it goes on, the Bat entity, or at least what we perceive as the Bat Entity from Bruce’s perspective, emerges and begins to absolutely wreck the other man. Leon uses minimal, flat colors for the entire issue and these pages are some of the more dynamic of them. Leon makes Bruce look animalistic and his eyes are colored red, signaling the change and after his arrest, he’s unshaven and looks like a mess.

Bruce and Robin’s relationship together serves as the main crux of the book with her watching him as he goes down his dark path and doing her best to get him back on track. Bruce, however, is still caught up in his parents murder and the continued injustices that Boston is home to every night. Both of them are fighting losing battles and growing darker with each passing day. Their relationship reaches a particular low after a still drunk Bruce plants an unwanted kiss on her after she picks him up from jail. This is particularly horrible because of their aforementioned history together. She tells him that he needs to see a therapist or help of some kind.

Initially, he thinks that he might disagree, but says yes and explains what he’s been going through to his doctor. It seems like a very cathartic moment for him, getting everything off of his chest and eventually being prescribed antidepressants. For a while, he returns nearly to his normal self. Jepson and Robin are happy for him, but we learn later on that he feels like the antidepressants make him feel sludgy and confused. He feels like he needs to wean himself off of it for a little while, having had fear that they would break his connection to Tommy or kill him.

Bruce immediately begins to become more paranoid, asking why someone would want to kill Tommy. He starts to believe in some grand conspiracy to ruin him and his family and he decides to go to a private room in his company’s offices. Leon colors this scene with a light cool blue, giving off the feeling of Bruce’s cold “logic”, though the reader can likely also interpret this as Bruce turning inward to himself. He’s lonely and with only Tommy to really talk to, he’s not exactly the most reliable of narrators. He truly believes that everything that’s happened to him, including Jepson’s sickness, has been part of a carefully orchestrated plot to plunge Boston into darkness.

In an amazing reference to when Dick Grayson first discovers the Batcave, Robin opens the door to find Bruce alone in the room. Framed against his immensely large connection board, Bruce kind of looks like a crazy person. He berates her for not respecting his privacy and asks what could possibly be so important for her to find him before she informs him of Jepson’s passing. What was initially small paranoia morphs into FULL conspiracy paranoia with Bruce being absurdly sure that someone is targeting him for getting close to the real culprits behind his parents death. Robin tries to comfort him, but he tells her that she needs to run for a little while and she calls him delusional and pleads with him to get help.

Unable to handle the truth, Bruce flies away and later has a hallucination of Batman’s greatest villains surrounding him, telling him to take the pills. Joker, Catwoman, Two Face, Penguin and Riddler surround and taunt him. Leon makes sure to draw them as normal, potentially actually being there, but as Bruce’s mental state continues to unravel, they begin to deform and swirl into a mass of laughter and color/ As they begin to overwhelm his senses, Bruce tosses his antidepressants off the roof of the building as the background is colored a bright white - a clearing of the head in a way.

Bruce returns to his board and begins to connect the dots, trying to find out who benefits the most from the deaths of his parents. He notes local politicians and other people he couldn’t hurt as Batman and then has an epiphany. He goes to confront Detective Gordon Hoover, the man who had been in charge of Bruce’s and various other related cases before his retirement. He destroys one of Gordon’s walls when confronting him and soon after, Robin arrives and checks on the detective. He tells her that Bruce has gone insane and that all of this was coincidence at best before telling her where he went.

Concerned with his continuingly deteriorating state of mind, Robin ventures to Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo, a place very near and dear to Bruce as his family had a huge stake in it when Bruce was a child. He’s absolutely destroyed the entrance way and is in the Bat exhibit when Robin finds him having a complete mental breakdown. Leon absolutely smashes the art in this sequence, portraying Batman as fighting back against his enemies. They swirl around him in the same mass as earlier (with Ra’s al Ghul thrown into the mix for whatever reason) and Bruce says that he has to tear Boston down to make it better.

Robin, having had enough and sensing that Bruce might do something he’ll regret, asks him if that’s something that Batman from the comics would do. This manages to snap Bruce out long enough for Robin to reach him. She asks him who he’s talking to, who he’s fighting against and Bruce struggles to answer, seeing Batman’s Rogues gallery slowly swept away by the mass of bats around them before disappearing himself. Much later, we pick back up with Bruce who’s dating the girl he met in college way back in Book Two. He’s back on his medication with a modified dosage and Robin is doing well too. He realizes that there was no conspiracy and that he’d been holding on to his pain, causing him to almost have a psychotic break… though he still maintains one really important familial relationship.

Though the gap between Books Three and Four were absurdly long, the quality of the story was well worth the wait. Kurt Busiek doesn’t write as much as he used to, but with this book, he shows that he hasn’t lost a single step along the way. This was an amazingly character driven story that kept me interested throughout. John Paul Leon’s art was a big part of that as well with just how beautiful it was. Together, they managed to craft an underrated masterpiece. I loved the story of obsession and inspiration and how Batman can influence just about anyone. Bruce Wainwright turned out to be a really interesting character, both because he was very much inspired by Batman so much so that he modeled his life after him and because of his mental illness.

I can only hope that this book succeeded well enough that Busiek and Leon come back for another book together or Busiek does a third of these with Wonder Woman as the hero inspiration. Overall, high recommend.

#dc comics #dc #batman #creature of the night #bruce wainwright #kurt busiek #john paul leon #comics

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kylorengarbagedump · 6 years ago

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Little Bird: Chapter 12

Read on AO3. Part 11 here. Part 13 here. Summary: Who knew that Commander Ren had pretty handwriting? Well, *I* sure didn't!

Words: 2800

Warnings: Handmaid’s Tale AU

Characters: Kylo Ren x Handmaid!Reader

A/N: HI! Surprising you again with another chapter! I really enjoyed this one--it's a bit more ruminate-y than most, but I just really needed for all of this development to happen, so I'm sorrynotsorry. I'm proud of Reader for building a backbone in a horribly oppressive society. I hope you are too.

Thanks again for everyone who is still sticking around for these updates! I love you so much now and forever!

When the door closed behind your Commander, breath leaked from your lungs in a long, satisfied sigh. Your cunt still tingled from the stretch of his cock, your pulse like a drum that beat from your core to your throat. A slow smile spread across your face, your eyes lulled shut. It wasn’t about the Ceremony--which had been as typical as one could expect--but the physical longing that pulled him toward you, the gentle, appearing-accidental brush of his thumb across your clit, the meeting of Ren’s stare before he left the room, a smirk on his face that you swore was meant only for you.

It was about hope. It was about promise. Or whatever combination of those two things you could pretend to enjoy.

Johana shifted underneath you, jolting the tranquility from your chest. She hadn’t yet let you go.

“Ms. Johana,” you said, “if you need me to go…”

“No, no,” she said, squeezing your hands. “Of course not. We should go through this together, right?”

“Uh, of course.”

She reached behind her and nudged you to ease up your hips. You did, and she stuffed a pillow under your backside. “There you go.”

Her kindness had been a source of nausea for you since you’d noticed it, but in this setting, it was even more bile-inspiring. Whatever she was high on, you hadn’t had any part of it. Really, what you wanted was to sprawl on the bed for the next several minutes and review another replay of your mid-morning rendezvous with the Commander--after all, this was the only current source of joy in your life. This was something made much more difficult when his Wife was busy preening in the aftermath of seeing him trying to impregnate you.

How had this become your life, again? Ah, right--a fascist insurrection that had uprooted any buds of life you’d dared to have and replaced them with rotten fungus. And here Johana was, frolicking in the fungus like a meadow.

“Ms. Johana,” you said, “I really appreciate your, um, kindness, but…”

“But what?”

You sighed. “Did you ever want something different?” You paused, but she was silent. “Out of life, I mean.”

Johana snorted. “Something different out of life?” She shifted again, staring into the ceiling. “What more is there to want?

You had a difficult time believing that watching her husband fuck another woman in her lap was part of her childhood dream. “I guess I’m not sure.”

“God has gifted me with a beautiful house,” she said, “and the dedication of the Marthas. Financial abundance. A husband who loves me.” Her voice was dry, empty. “I couldn’t have prayed for more.”

“That makes sense.” A torrent of pity washed over you. You might have felt guilt, if your sanity hadn’t been dependent on your duplicity.

Johana looked at you. “You wanted something different?” Her question didn’t seem accusatory--it was almost in admiration of your audacity.

You met her eyes. It was the most human she had seemed since you’d become Ofkylo. “I don’t know,” you replied. Talking about this with a Wife was only slightly more deadly than treading through a field of landmines. “I guess I always imagined myself with someone who loved me, too.”

“Oh.” Johana’s fingers wove through yours. “You don’t feel loved in this home?”

Laughter rumbled under your skin, daring to rupture to the surface--but your face remained still. You’d seen a surprising amount of vulnerability from Johana. “Well, Ms. Johana…” The end of the sentence hung on your tongue, and you spat it out. “Do you?”

“Of course I do,” she replied quickly. She squeezed your hands. “Of course I do. I’m…” Her gaze wandered. “The Commander…”

A lump formed in your throat. You swallowed. “Has he ever told you that he loves you?”

Johana’s stare searched the room in silence. The skin of your clasped hands slickened, and she cleared her throat, sniffling. Her cheek glistened. “Are you done, now?”

She threw her hands away from yours, rolling out from under you. You plopped on the bed and watched as she stood, wiping her hands on her dress in disgust. Sighing, you yanked the pillow from under your hips and tossed it to the head of the frame. Johana had moved to the mirror next to her wardrobe, smoothing out fabric on her skirt and tucking away errant wisps of hair. A piece of your heart twinged. There was a distant portion of you that didn’t just pity her, but wanted to help her. To watch her recede into the drowning of her own loneliness was almost too much to bear--particularly because you knew exactly how it felt. The both of you empty, stranded, together.

Gathering yourself, you stood. “Johana, I’m sorry--”

“Go.” She paused, the tension in her shoulders softened. “Please.”

You nodded, and took off toward your room.

Back in the closet-turned-living-quarters, you shut the door behind you, the breath you’d apparently been holding rushing from your lungs. This day had been too much. The vision of Johana’s glistening eyes was emblazoned in your memory.

You wanted to rip off your wimple and collapse onto the bed--but before you did, saw a folded piece of paper waiting on your sheets. Dread and excitement flashed through you. There was only one person you suspected of leaving it. Swallowing for what was probably the 50th time today (though previous instances more pleasant than this one), you snatched the paper from your bed--it was blank, no name written on it--but as you unfolded it, there was no mistaking it was meant for you. Written in swift, pretty cursive were the words Tonight at the garden.

Your heart dropped. Of course, you’d be going.

“Tonight” indicated affer curfew--the few hours between then and the Ceremony dragged like feet through glass. During the time between, you admired the Commander’s handwriting; the cold rigidity of his exterior seemed at odds with the brief but beautiful words on the paper. The top of the “t” curled back onto itself, the letters thickening where the pen swiped and turned. There was an artistry to it, something learned or inherent. The thought of the Commander studying calligraphy, especially before Gilead, seemed almost comical. But the reality of this note betrayed something about him you’d never considered. You tucked the note into your dress.

The cotton air of summer hadn’t cooled by the time you snuck into the garden. A film of sweat inspired the baby hair at the nape of your neck to frizz and loop in the heat, and you smoothed it with your palm. You weren’t sure where he might have wanted to meet, so you sunk onto a bench, thinking of note you’d hidden. You imagined his large, strong hands, how they’d dwarf the ink pen, the calm focus of his face as he inscribed--maybe a lock of hair had come loose, dangled over his forehead.

Footsteps broke you from your thoughts, and you spotted him crossing the stone path to your bench, dressed in slacks and a suit jacket, the top buttons open on his crisp, white shirt. His was sight already fixated on you. Between him and the temperature, you were concerned about the capability of your body to remain in a solid state. What was the melting point for human flesh?

As Ren approached you, his face remained stoic--you wondered what went on his head, what he’d been thinking while he penned the note, what thoughts had skipped through his brain that made him pull the paper in the first place. He stopped, considering you on the bench, and then sat next to you, closer than you anticipated. You could have moved your arm and brushed against him, inched over and pressed your hips to his. He leaned forward, his eyes trailing from your feet, up your legs, as if he was peering through the layers of your oppression, remembering the smoothness of your skin in the water. His silence next was almost as unbearable as his nearness.

You cleared your throat, thighs squeezing together. “You seem to be seeing me a lot.”

He said nothing, words darting inside of his head that he declined to speak. His reticence reminded you of Johana, earlier--the things she’d wanted to say, wanted to think, but denied herself the ability. In that way, at least, they were similar, but you realized that you could count yourself in that group, too. There were hundreds of thousands of self-censored thoughts that had passed through your brain since the coup--a number that grew exponentially larger with each day. Perhaps Ren, too, had the same burgeoning issue. Perhaps, despite being your Commander, he suffered in ways you couldn’t know. You wondered what his life had been like before Gilead, too. You wondered if he had loved Johana--as she so desperately seemed to need.

“How did you end up married to Johana?” you asked, searching for his eyes.

Ren blinked. “Why?”

A question for a question. “Was your marriage always like this?”

He met your gaze and glanced away again, now focused on the garden. The racing of his mind seemed to slow. “Her husband, a Commander himself, died,” he said. “In the revolution. Our lead Commander was… concerned. About my lack of attachment. So we wed.”

“Concerned?” You were emboldened by his unexpected honesty--and hungry for more.

A tiny smirk crossed Ren’s lips. “Concerned. “ He seemed as if he had finished, for a moment, and then continued. “The Commanders cannot be childless.”

“Oh.”

The marriage had been to produce children, and like so many other Wives, Johana hadn’t been capable. The memories of her hands winding around yours, her hardened, stoic eyes, the hidden desperation in her voice--they flashed through your body like a strange heat, left a hole in your stomach. You imagined her in her room, now, asleep. Alone.

“Did you ever want to marry her?”

“No.”

You frowned. Perhaps you’d assumed a Commander would be more than eager to take up a Wife to fulfill his duty--especially one as pretty as Johana. When she wasn’t scowling, anyway. Maybe it was the thought of marrying someone’s widow. Maybe the other Commander was someone Ren knew. Maybe the high ranks of Gilead were just as miserable for different reasons.

“Why?” you asked.

Ren’s brow twitched. “Why?”

“Why didn’t you want to marry her?”

He turned away, staring out across the acreage of his yard. His breath was slow, controlled; his hands were gripping each other pale.

You shifted in your seat. “Did you ever want to marry anyone?”

“Enough.”

Perhaps that had been too personal. You sat back, a hard corner of the note in your dress scraping against you in reminder. Clearing your throat, you pulled it out, unfolding it for him in your palm.

“This is your handwriting?”

He glanced between you and the paper, the tension in his back softening. “It is.”

“It’s beautiful.” The words brought a glow to your face--complimenting him seemed so intimate.

“I practiced calligraphy,” he murmured, fighting a smirk. “As a child.”

“Really?” you said. “I’d love to see more of it.”

There was a pause. Ren was considering you, considering the paper. Frowning, he plucked it from your grasp and folded it in his jacket pocket. “You shouldn’t have this.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t wrong. You crumpled, and your head tilted toward the sky.

It had been awhile since you’d gazed at the stars, truly gazed at them, and the existential glory of it rushed back to you with warm familiarity. There was something about locking eyes with the sky and understanding your finiteness in such liberating terms. It was not like a depressing nihilism--nothing matters, why bother--but far more humbling. In comparison to the vastness of the universe, the billions of stars, the trillions of possibilities contained within the endless expansion of everything and nothing, Gilead’s shield of religion was farcical. There was no God that would demand women be confined to reproductive slavery, not when there was so, so much more to existence than the color of your dress.

Johana’s question--You wanted something different?--floated through your mind.

“Do you ever wonder what’s up there?” you asked. “I used to wonder all the time. When I was little.”

Ren turned, scrutinizing you, gaze busy with some emotion too cloudy to discern. You watched him, breath short, the weight of him pressing the air from you.

“I did,” he said. “I do.”

You found yourself wanting to say more--I had dreams before this, I had plans, I had a life, I was alive--and, staring into his eyes, saw yourself there, in all of the loneliness and regret and confusion and fury. The both of you empty, stranded, together.

In a gasp of air your mouths were connected, one of his hands gripping the small of your back, the other cupping your cheek, every bit of him large and firm. Your lids fluttered in bliss, and you pulled yourself to his body, enveloping yourself in his frame, disappearing under his touch. Ren groaned, his hand sneaking from your back to slide up your side--first a thumb, and then his palm, squeezing and caressing your breast. In a whimper, your head craned back, and his lips travelled your neck, and then returned, his other hand guiding you to his mouth. Your cunt screamed for him, from him, the scream growing louder when both his hands kneaded your breasts--you were certain he was reliving the memory of your nude body in the tub, hoping to pull your flesh into the present.

You imagined throwing your leg over his hips, hiking up your dress, somehow pulling aside your underwear--how would you do that? As a matter of fact, why were you kissing in the garden, now? What if Johana saw? Johana, who had lost her husband; Johana, without love, Johana, holding your hands and hiding tears. She married him and he didn’t want to marry her, and here he was, groping your body, straining like everyone against the shackles he’d put on himself. All for Gilead, every bit of it for a system that served no one.

You pushed your hands into his shoulders, prying him from you, dizzy from your heaving lungs. Mind spinning, you examined him, examined the dark ache in his eyes--and felt a rising knot of fury. Ren had power. You didn’t.

“Do you even believe in Gilead?” Your words were becoming more dangerous by the day--but now, he didn’t seem fazed.

“Of course.”

“Then why are you out here with me?”

Ren’s brow drew back, his head tilting. He couldn’t meet your gaze. “I don’t know.”

Lips pursing, you leaned back, and caught a glimpse of the sky again, the moon hiding in the thick, cream-colored belt of stars. You wondered who was out there. You wondered if they wondered, too.

“I don’t want to be here.”

He sniffed, dismissive. “I want you here.”

You bristled. He, the creator and arbiter of your hell, wanted you here. It wasn’t to fulfill his duty--that much was clear. But was it for sex? Or something else? And if it was only for sex, why were you so accepting of it, when the vastness of your possibilities were reflected in the sky? If Gilead was truly as meaningless as you and he both knew it to be, how could you sit there and kiss him--and not demand more? It was not enough to survive on duplicity alone.

“Why do you want me here?”

At your question, he tensed, staring at you, and then he reached for you, tugging you against his body. Growling, you pushed him off again.

“Answer the question, or don’t kiss me.”

He seemed torn between irritation and restraint. “Watch yourself, little bird.”

Ren’s body was stiff, his eyes betraying hidden concern. You hung there for a moment, lungs stopped, waiting for an answer. Waiting him to acknowledge that some, or any part of him recognized your humanity. Waiting him to say that when he had looked at you, he had seen himself there, too. Waiting for him to expose the part of himself you’d seen scrawled onto the piece of paper in his pocket. But expected silence was all you received.

The both of you empty. Stranded. Together.

“Goodnight, Commander.” You stood, peeling him from you, and headed back to the house. He didn’t stop you.

You were getting out of this hell. With or without him.

#kylo ren smut #kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo ren #kylo trash #handmaid au #little bird #look at me actually trying to write lmao #I posted this on AO3 like two weeks ago sorry!!!!!!

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willidleaway · 5 years ago

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Doctor Who, series 12, episodes 1 and 2

In short: I love two-parters and I’m glad Spyfall was a two-parter. The conclusion wasn’t entirely satisfying, parts of this felt like a retread of old favourite story elements (including from The Curse of Fatal Death—seriously!), and I think there was a bit of disjointness between the two parts, but this is still a very good start to series 12, and I’m 90% sure I’m not saying that just because he’s back.

In slightly less short, still without spoilers:

—Positives: good tension throughout part 1, including the cliffhanger (hangar?); loved seeing historical characters tag along and interact in part 2, in one of the better attempts of Chibnall!Who at being educational; strong performances all around from heroes and villains.

—Negatives: part 2 has me fearing for a regression from some of the positive aspects of series 11; the villains weren't really fleshed out enough, especially in their motivation.

Verdict: Go watch Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death. It’s quite funny.

Oh, you mean about this two-parter? It’s good. Could have been great, though—almost should have been with its set pieces—and it didn’t strike me as great.

In less short, with spoilers:

OK, so I don’t even have much to say about part 1 because it really is all setup. We’ve got weird higher-dimensional ghosty things, they’re attacking spies all around the world and swapping their DNA out with something else, except they either won’t or can’t attack Yas and send her instead to some weird alternate dimension. Yas and Ryan go off to find out that Google are involved [0] in some sinister fashion because their CEO is totally in league with the aliens and is himself 7% alien, but it turns out the real mastermind is ... the Master! Dun dun dun. Very much the Dark Water reveal, right down to the gender swap.

So at the end of part 1, the situation is that the Doctor is in the same realm that Yas had ended up in, and her companions are in a crashing plane. So how is this all resolved?

Well, the second one is easy. It’s a time travel show. Do the Blink gambit! [1] Just go back in time after everything’s done, plant some signs and a recording on the plane, and they can land completely unscathed! In Essex! (I’d say ‘unscathed/Essex: pick one’, but obviously Graham feels differently.)

This is fine, but ultimately the companions don’t ... do much from there? It’s the series 3 finale thing again where they’ve got to go off-grid, except in series 3 where Martha is planting the seeds for, well, that conclusion. But she’s at least got some kind of agency in the story. Here, Graham and Yas and Ryan are ... chased? I mean, it did give us Graham laser-tap-dancing his way out of those situations, and I will be forever happy that that was a thing that happened, but overall they had so little to do other than have villainous speeches and antics spouted at them. Frankly, from a purely logistical point of view, it would have made very little difference if the Doctor had just picked them up on the plane before it crashed, because of course the Doctor had sorted everything out about the Silver Lady and the Kasaavins and all.

So I found that fairly unfortunate, especially given Yas and Ryan’s crucial actions (and their rather excellent performances) in part 1.

Resolving the Doctor’s cliffhanger seems a little trickier, and it leads to some of the disjointness I was talking about at the start between parts 1 and 2. In part 1 we’re led to believe that these pointy-hat white ghosts [2] are alien spies spying on Earth’s spies today. Here it turns out that, no, actually, they’re also spying on the Who’s Who of Earth computing and telecommunications.

This includes Ada Lovelace [3]—why she was also known as Ada Gordon is baffling to me given she was Lord Byron’s legitimate daughter and it’s not like Gordon was Byron’s surname (not blaming the show, just baffled at the apparent historical fact)—and later Noor Inayat Khan, the pacifist SOE hero with expertise in wireless telegraphy. It was really good to learn about them and their contributions, however briefly (although I have mixed feelings about the episode avoiding discussing Noor’s ultimate fate).

Thankfully they also get more to do than the companions—Ada hijacks a gun and fights off the Master while he’s distracted, while Noor hides Ada and the Doctor from Nazis and later feeds information to the Nazis to trap the Master. They then both go out and track down the Master’s TARDIS (although given his hubris it turns out to be not so difficult). That’s way more than laser-tap-dancing and being rather ineffectual otherwise!

My main gripe is how the Doctor wipes both their memories at the end—it’s not like the Doctor’s wiped the memories of Dickens or Shakespeare or even Queen Elizabeth! Anti-STEM discrimination, this is.

But overall I very much liked the Doctor in this power trio of women, although I think Ada got the short end of the stick out of the three of them. I suppose it may have been difficult because her abilities are relatively abstract—computer science is a bit more difficult to get across on screen compared to telegraphy and disinformation, so she has to make do with a gun instead.

So: strong companions in part 1 (although not so much in part 2), strong Doctor and historical figures in part 2. All fine and dandy. But let’s talk about the villains, because of course that’s the meat of the story.

OK, first off: that’s Lenny Henry?! God he’s unrecognisable. Goatee suits him, though. He looks sharp.

Daniel Barton, though, seems not so sharp, and not terribly interesting either. First off, he has all the information in the world yet can’t seem to be bothered to run a face recognition routine on Yas and Ryan when they’re undercover in his office as journalists. (Maybe he’s wilfully ignoring it. Maybe he just wants attention.) Then it turns out he’s 7% non-human, which is intriguing at the start but gets rather casually dismissed towards the end of part 2 as just him test-driving the DNA replacement idea.

But the real trouble was that I never found it terribly clear why Barton would have been interested in joining forces with the aliens to wipe out humanity. Did he just find the idea of using seven billion humans as data centres really appealing? Maybe, but what’s the use of all that data? Barton is most powerful as the head of basically Google, and all his data becomes utterly useless without the civilisation that actually needs it, surely.

Oh, then there are the Kasaavins themselves.

At first, their basic plan seems like it’s to wipe out Earth’s intelligence network, which makes sense as a step in an invasion. But then it turns out the ultimate point of their invasion is all about ... computers? And disk space, basically???

Why did they attach themselves to people like Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and Steve Jobs? Was it to influence the evolution of computing in ways that made today’s computer architectures more vulnerable to ... whatever it is the Kasaavins later do through the Silver Lady and all of our modern devices? Sure, Ada Lovelace’s notes on computing engines were prescient and unquestionably influenced her spiritual successors like Turing, but I would personally have said more in the abstract. You'd definitely want to go after people like Woz, doing design on microcomputers much closer to our modern laptops and phones. I guess they figured it couldn’t hurt, anyway.

What exactly were they going to do with all that disk space? Why don’t they have their own massive storage devices? Why do they need to overwrite human DNA? Can’t they just build more DNA?

I dunno, maybe I’m overthinking it. I thought they were building towards a Matrix-style thing where all of human civilisation was going to just be someone’s cloud computing instance—but no, it’s hard drive space. It seemed a bit weak.

I think the Kasaavins suffered mostly for being in the same story as the newest incarnation of the Master.

The good thing about the Master, at least, is that he needs little motivation. He’s just mad. If he wants to wipe out all of humanity and the Kasaavins needing storage space happens to mean there may be a common interest there, the Master can just do that. That’s how the Master works.

He cuts an imposing figure at the start, I suppose—maniacal slick sort of fellow, shades of Simm’s incarnation in series 3 but still his own thing. But the way he works in this episode is just ... goofy. I mean, really? He just keeps tracking the Doctor through time? Can’t be bothered to keep tabs on whether someone’s trying to sabotage his master plan?

And then there’s the way the whole situation with the Nazis gets resolved.

I really thought he was going to go ‘seventy-seven years ... in a sodding twentieth century ...’, à la Jonathan Pryce’s excellent Master from Steven Moffat’s Comic Relief special. You know, the one from all the way back in 1999 where for the first half-ish, the Doctor and Master basically try to outwit each other through increasingly ridiculous time-travel hijinks, ending up with the Master having to crawl out a sewer for over nine hundred years.

Totally unlike this story, where the second half-ish involves the Doctor and Master trying to outwit each other through time-travel hijinks, and the Master ends up having to crawl out of his predicament for almost eight decades.

I’m not sure that’s a complaint, myself, frankly. For one thing, of course, when a show has gone on for over half a century, it’s difficult to avoid new stories running into old ones. But for another thing, saying something feels right out of a Comic Relief special isn’t necessarily a, erm, fatal flaw for Doctor Who. I prefer it when Doctor Who isn’t taking itself too seriously, just seriously enough.

Still, when you look at the big picture and look at all the retreads, I can’t help but think we’re heading back into the worst excesses of past new!Who.

For all its faults, I really enjoyed series 11 for how the narrative focus returned to the companions after much of the Moffat era’s obsession with ridiculously overpowered characters—Clara as the impossible girl, the Doctor as the Hybrid, the Doctor as literally where we get the word ‘doctor’, and so forth.

Well, now we’ve got the Master back and he’s gone and destroyed Gallifrey (negating the big winning moment of the 50th anniversary special, to boot) and it’s all because of some mysterious lie and it involves the Timeless Child that was mentioned for a hot five seconds last series??? It smacks of past new!Who arcs, especially under Moffat—and at least in my eyes those arcs have never gone terribly well. Those arcs have come at the expense of good companion characterisation as well, so overall it has me a bit concerned about series 12.

Sure, all these aspects of pre-series 11 Who returning to the show—the Daleks last year, and now the Master—maybe makes the show feel more like itself, much like how having a functional rebel force that’s not just confined to a single light freighter makes a Star Wars film feel more like Star Wars. I just worry that it’s a instinctive reaction against some of the mixed reactions to series 11, and that ultimately it’ll be an overreaction.

Good start, though, this two-parter. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be the best story that series 12 gets.

Footnotes:

[0: Sure, they’re called Vor in the episodes, but first off they’re clearly meant to be Google, and second off it’s very awkward talking about ‘Vor’ being everywhere on the Internet and on everyone’s devices ... so for the purposes of this write-up I’m going to call them Google.]

[1: I know that in Blink, the Doctor and Martha are trapped in the past and have to plant the message in DVDs to get someone to get them out of trouble. But you know what I mean. Timey-wimey out-of-order rescue plan.

Maybe I ought to call it the Arrival gambit, after the excellent film from a few years back.]

[2: Makes them sound like alien Klansmen, doesn’t it?]

[3: What’s the opposite of née for the purposes of distinguishing maiden and married names in time travel stories? I guess mariée is as good as any ...]

#(Doctor Who series 12 spoilers!)

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