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marciaownsmylife · 5 years ago

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purly hc - “what could go wrong”

curly sneaks ponyboy out to a concert that he is not supposed to be at

•ponyboy is stupid in love exhibit A

•the entire town was buzzing for spring break because there was a rock concert being held at the drive-in

•concerts didn’t happen often in tulsa and when they did they were usually some boring old people music the parents went to

•so just about every teen in tulsa had a ticket or knew someone or was gonna sneak in

•except ya boi ponyboy

•darry said no, and ponyboy begged for weeks and weeks but darry was not budging in the slightest

•soda was going tho, but he didn’t have school and he could pay for his own ticket

•practically everyone in the gang was going, except for darry and ponyboy

•pony was so upset over this, he had been sulking anytime anyone mentioned it, and it’s all everyone talked about, so that was a lot

•even dallas has gotten johnny a ticket, darry wasn’t too keen on that but it wasn’t his place to judge

•curly however was not only certain that he was going, this bitch had a whole ass plan to get on the stage

•and pony was apart of this plan

•so it came quite a shock to him when he tried to explain what pony had to do, that ponyboy told him he wasn’t going

•”what tf do u mean you’re not going?! how am i supposed to become tulsa’s next rockstar if ur not there????”

•pony was already in a bad mood because of the concert being mentioned so he wasn’t humouring curlys jokes (curly was dead serious tho, we been knew)

•but curly always got his way so he decided that he would just have to do a little more thinking than he was used to

•which was any sort of thinking in the first place

•curly suggested to pony that he’d just sneak out

•pony pointed out that he still didn’t have a ticket

•”leave that part to me, baby curtis, all you gotta do is be at your window”

•and so it was settled ponyboy was going

•but he made curly promise not to get on stage because if ponyboy was going he had to be careful not to run into any of the gang,

•darry had personally told them that there would be a cash reward for anyone who snitched on ponyboy, and this wasn’t just for the concert this was in general

•most of the gang didn’t really snitch that often but they all knew that the cash would be high if pony was caught at the concert

•curly was fine with it, as long as he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, whether that be sneaking pony out or getting up on stage, he was cool

•the night of the concert came and pony had gotten dressed with his pyjamas over his clothes and gotten into bed, he’d also made sure to be extra pissy that day so everyone knew he was pissed off because he ‘wasn’t going’

•which was pretty easy because being a brat was like his specialty with him being the youngest child and everything

•soda and steve has already left, so all pony had to do was wait until darry went to bed

•darry was a heavy sleeper, once he was down he wasn’t getting up until tomorrow

•but of course, he went to bed late tonight to make sure pony was asleep before him, or so he thought

•tap tap tap

•right on cue, that would be curly

•pony stripped off his pyjama layer until he was in his normal clothes and tugged on his shoes

•he opened his window, with as little squeaking as possible, to see curly with his signature grin

•”why ponybabes you look stunning,”

•”it’s the same thing i wore to school today,”

•”did i stutter,”

•they hurry to the drive-in because darry had made them late by going to bed later

•by the time they get there they missed the first song but it didn’t matter to them much, now at least all the flashing lights were already going and it would be harder for people to recognize them (more so ponyboy)

•pony had obviously forgotten his jacket because it’s what he does, so he grabs curlys because it’s fucking freezing

•after they had shown their tickets to the guy at the door, he had put X’s on their hands to show they were under 21 and shouldn’t be served at the bar

•curly wasn’t happy about this, he tried to convince the guy that he was 22, it didn’t work for a second

•they get in and decide to stay around the edges of the crowd to avoid people they knew

•pony was having the time of his life, the adrenaline of sneaking out and the excitement of being able the feel the guitar solo shake the ground was the best thing he had ever felt (bc he’s a virgin lol)

•curly was happy because pony was happy, he even managed to convince him to dance

•as the night went on the boys hadn’t seen anyone they knew, and they had even been to the bar to get water (to curlys disappointment), so they started getting closer to the middle

•curly really wanted to show ponyboy the pit before the show ended so they made their way there for the last couple songs

•this is where it gets tricky

•as another song started the singer instructed for people to get on eachothers shoulders

•curly thought this was a great idea

•and they had managed to sneak a beer each from the bar in the end so ponyboy wasn’t really at his best thinking capacity

•so pony got on curlys shoulders and it was all going fine until he looked to his right and saw johnny about three feet away from him on dally’s shoulders

•johnny didn’t see him yet so pony still had a chance, tugged on curlys hair to get his attention and motioned for him to let him down

•curly did so straight away because he thought pony was about to fall, when pony was down he pointed out johnny and dallas to curly, they were still pretty close to them

•they pushed through the crowd and we able to get away

•until pony bashed straight into his brother soda

•pony thought they were done for, his whole life was gonna be spent locked up in his room because darry was never gonna let him out again

•but he didn’t have long to contemplate his doom, before soda hurled on the ground next to him, and pony quickly put together that sodapop was absolutely shitfaced drunk, he probably didn’t even recognize ponyboy

•pony wanted to help him, but he knew if soda was here steve wasn’t far behind and he didn’t want to push his luck so he left his poor brother heaving up his dinner on the ground

•he raced after curly to catch up with him

•once they had evaded the gang they made a stop a the port-i-loos and decided they would leave now before the last song so ponyboy would be home in bed before soda stumbled in, ponyboy wasnt so sure that soda was even coming home that night but they had to be sure they weren’t caught

•two-bit finally made his appearance when they were on their way out, he was also on his way out but it wasn’t his decision

•he was getting dragged out by security for being too drunk. two had a surprisingly good memory so if he saw them he would remember it, no matter how drunk he was

•curly had spotted him just before two-bit looked their way, he was going to see them either way, so the only chance they had was to make sure he wouldn’t recognize them

•so curly did what any rational tipsy teenager would do, he shoved ponyboy up against a wall and started making out with him, covering ponyboy from view in the process

•it took ponyboy by almost complete surprise, almost because curly was a sucker for spontaneous kisses, pony just wasn’t expecting him to be so rough but then again curly had to make it look like it was some random broad he was with

•it worked, but pony and curly had forgotten all about two-bit by the time they were done, and two-bit was long gone by then

•they got back to pony’s house and snuck him through the window without waking darry and they kissed goodbye and that was that

•it like 5am when they got back and pony had to get up for school 2 hours later and he was not feeling it fam, let me tell you, this boy had never felt to tired in his 14 years of life

•darry was suspicious but pony had the perfect excuse that he didn’t sleep well because soda wasn’t there and he got a nightmare so he was covered on that front

•school however he had no choice but to go or darry would have known, it wasn’t too bad since most of the school were either taking the day off or in the same boat as him since they were all at the concert too

•the teachers knew what was up too so they didn’t really bother much that day

•he was walking home with johnny, he was honestly surprised johnny went to school today until johnny told him that he wasn’t actually at school

•he just showed up to talk to ponyboy after

•now ponyboy was like (nervous laugh) hehehehe whaaaattt ???

•johnny doesn’t fuck around, he gets to the point

•”so like are you and curly a thing??”

•ponyboy is just kinda like ‘deny until you die’

•”what? no, i don’t even know him, like, curly who???”

•spoiler it doesn’t work

•turns out johnny and dallas had seen them in the pit, they were gonna say hi after the song but curly and pony had sketched before then

•pony was like “shit when are you gonna cash in to darry and snitch on me then,”

•he had accepted his fate

•”nah man i’m not gonna do that, and it took me all morning to convince dal not to either,”

•pony’s like tf?? why not?? because if he’s being honest if he were johnny he’d be cashing in as soon as he could

•but what ponyboy didn’t know was that before he saw johnny and dallas, curly had.

•but not in the pit, behind the bar

•they had been making out

•so curly had this information that johnny had assumed he told pony about but clearly he hadn’t

•by now pony caught on to the fact that johnny thought he knew something so he played along

•they switched the subject after that, but johnny hadn’t forgotten that pony still hadn’t answered his previous question about him and curly, he decided to leave it for now

•soda had stayed at steve’s the night before and when ponyboy got home, darry was too busy lecturing soda on his drinking that night to even notice ponyboy practically passing out as soon as he got in the door

•but in the end, curly and pony counted this as a win

anotherrr purly hc because i love these boysss, my online school started back from easter break today so there might not be any more hc too soon :(((

but i have 2 more ideas lined up, one for jally and one for johnnyboy

i also kinda want to do a point of view from jally of this night at the concert idk we’ll see

#purly hc #purly #ponyboy hc #ponyboy x curly #ponyboy curtis #ponyboy #curly #curly shepard #jally #johnny cade #dallas #dally winston #the outsiders hc #the outsiders #darry curtis #sodapop curtis #steve randle #two bit mathews

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thegeminisage · 5 years ago

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hey liz i've been thinking a lot about story structure lately and i wanted your take on how you decide what structure your stories will have? i know there's that "you have to do what your story needs and tells you to do" thing but these bitches dont ever tell me anything they just multiply so. thoughts? - bma

(as an aside, i don't know whether involving medium would change many things but it may be worth considering. mainly i think medium is just a matter of arrangement and that the story would be for most intents and purposes the same no matter how you choose to tell it. i guess you could argue that structure is arrangement in itself and intrinsically tied to medium but i sort of feel like it is secondary arrangement, if at all? like if you consider time as an element to outline -- the time IN the story (how things happen to your characters) is not necessarily the time you’re telling the story IN (how you are telling your reader that things are happening) aka internal chronology doesnt equal your work’s pacing? or should it??? does this make sense? i dont think so. i am sorry.) - bma :|

NOOO dont be sorry ur making total sense

i think there’s 3 thots to unpack here (medium, structure, & chronology) & i’m gonna start with medium bc it’s easier. im also putting it behind a cut bc it’s gonna get just stupidly long and rambly. i’m sorry in advance if it’s not helpful to you, i have a lot to say for someone who has never taken even one single class on writing and as a result doesn’t know jack shit (there’s a tl;dr at the end dont worry)

about MEDIUM:

so like ok i’m just some goof-off with a HS degree who writes fanfiction but In My Very Super Qualified Personal Opinion, i don’t think that most of the time medium is intrinsically tied to STRUCTURE of the main storytelling arc...i think the art of storytelling itself is distinct from the medium you choose to tell the story IN. this post puts it better than i ever could but basically for me, i feel like the story itself is sort of the raw, malleable concept, and the medium you choose to tell it in is how you convey the information??

like in a book, you can say “she forgot her keys” and in a film you have to show her smacking her forehead, heading back into the house, and swiping her keeps off the counter. you can’t TELL in film, you have to show. similarly i regret every day i cannot perfectly describe a facial expression with words when i see it so clearly in my head. for audio-only podcasts that are dialogue heavy out of necessity you have different limitations than you would for, say, animated music videos with no dialogue at all. games allow for more interactivity and exploration while sacrificing accessibility, tv shows allow for more length while sacrificing, uh, a big hollywood budget...medium affects the kind of story you can reasonably tell which is why some stories are better suited to one medium than another. i think trying things in other mediums is a good way to stretch your storytelling muscles but with enough skill nearly any story could be told in any medium. i think when trying to decide on a medium you just gotta weigh the pros & cons and what you feel comfortable with/what you think would be most effective/what would evoke the strongest reaction

re: structure:

firstly “do what the story tells u to do” is a little silly like...the story isn’t sentient. come on. that’s like “i can only write when the writing gods inspire me” there are no writing gods! inspire yourself! it’s all in our weird messed up brains! ok anyway.

this is, again, just how i do things, and i am 700% self-taught so take it with a grain of salt, but when i sit down and start blocking out a story from scratch i don’t...actually consider the big structure at all! sorry if that’s not helpful to you. i like to make a list of everything i want to happen, and then put it together in a few different orders to see what looks best. and when i’m finished, whatever i have just like...IS the structure i go with, with perhaps minor tinkering to make it flow more smoothly. (i think this might be in the same spirit as “do what the story tells you” with less bullshit and more Agency Of The Writer.)

for long and more complex projects, i actually usually have several lists - one list of stuff that is, for example, the Action Plot (the kingdom has been cursed, i’m tracking down my serial killer sister to bring her to justice, i’m running from djinn who wanna kill my dad, i’m trying to bring my dead not-boyfriend back to life). then i have another list for Character A & Character B’s romance or whatever. and maybe a even another one for solo character development (magicphobic prince learns to love magic, former werewolf hunter figures out his family is a cult, half-demon learns to embrace his own nature). and as many lists as we need for however many Main Characters and or Plots/Sideplots

how i order the lists: individually first. don’t mix them together to start with. when deciding the order of an individual list i like to, for example in a romance arc, use escalating intimacy. “A and B have dinner together” is naturally gonna go way sooner than “A and B kiss” or “A and B talk about A’s angsty backstory” because that’s more satisfying. draw it out, good/important stuff last, dangle that carrot so we have a reason to keep reading! for singular character development, it’s basically a straightforward point A to point B...if i want my guy to start hating magic with everything he is and end up being very comfortable with it, i have to put “reluctantly uses magic to save his own life” WAYYY before “casually using magic to light torches and reheat his cold stew.”

the tricky part for me is when i’m done with these lists and then i need to mix them together To Pace My Whole Story. (this is usually why i wind up with a rainbow colored spreadsheet.) i don’t like to put too many things too close together because then the pace feels uneven. even if my Action Plot is only a thinly veiled excuse for romance and character development, i still don’t want to focus on a romance for 30,000 words and then go “and oh yeah in case you forgot Serial Killing Sister is still coming for your asses.” the more sideplots and major character arcs you’re juggling the harder it is to get an even distribution, which is my main concern always

and like, generally, whatever i have when i’m finished...is my structure. (sorry.)

i don’t know much about the classic 3-act or anything like that, but i usually can divide them up into 3-5 big arcs based on story turning points. sometimes i take a scene out of one arc and put it in another because it fits better and i like for my shit to be organized, but usually by the time i’m finished with all that, that’s what the final story is mostly gonna look like. (there have been a few exceptions when i realized i needed extra scenes/changes while i was MID-DRAFT and let me tell you that murders me EVERY time. it happened on the merlin fic i’m currently posting and that was like my own personal hell.)

this is also where thots about chronology come in:

i think time CAN be an element of this if you WANT it to be, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. if you want it to be, i would consider it just another “list” like character development or the romance arc.

i usually plot without considering Time very much...to me, it’s all down to the events you want to show, and however much time it takes is the byproduct. if you want to show something from a character’s chilhood but then tell the bulk of it when they’re adults, that’s one thing. if you want to show a scene from their childhood, teenhood, young adulthood, etc, that’s a different kind of pacing?? i usually do it this way so i can regard time like wordcount: it takes as long as it takes. 3 days or 3 years, a 1.5k drabble or a 100k epic...overall, my LARGEST CONCERN is that even distribution. in the same way that i don’t want one chapter to be 30,000 words when the rest are 10,000 words, i personally am not a fan of huge timeskips offscreen

(because this where i think someone’s own internal chronology DOES matter...this is just a personal preference, as a reader i have a hard time really comprehending, say, a year timeskip or a 10yr timeskip when all i did was turn one page. like, a year is such a long time. i can’t even begin to describe how different i am now to how i was a year ago. it’s the same for character development. time IS development and as a writer i’m not really comfortable having that take place offscreen - for main characters, at least. it’s just too jarring. a little prologue with something happening 10 or 20 years ago is usually fine, but for the most part, i’m not a fan. ...i can do one chapter per year a lot easier than i can do two chapters in childhood and the other 8 in adulthood. of course you can play with this a LOT with nonlinear storytelling, which is a whole other very cool thing, and someone skilled in their work can keep me sucked in no matter what, but imo if you don’t want to risk throwing your reader out of your work it’s better to keep things steady)

HOWEVER sometimes time IS an element u wanna consider outside of just making sure your shit is evenly distributed...if your heart is moved to tell a story in a specific timeframe, over a year, or from solstice to solstice (this was almost the timeline for my merlin fic and then i changed it), for the first six months of a friendship, or even a huge journey in the span of a single day (toby fox had a lot of success with this one lol).

i think it can help to choose a start and end point for your chronology the same way you do for character development (prince goes from hating magic to being ok with it, story takes place from ages 8 to 25, or from new year’s eve 2038 to 2039, whatever) - that way you can keep your distribution even, if that’s a thing you want to do...even if you have a lot of skips you can still note what happens offscreen to make it work better in your head? like, if you just make it another List, another column on your spreadsheet, when you’re in the early stages of organizing you can be conscious of it and make sure it’s playing into the story the way you want it to

anyway these r my thots im SOOOO SORRY this is so long lmao. brain machine broke today which is why i had to ramble more to explain myself. the tl;dr in case ur brain is melting out of ur ears & u didn’t sign up for an essay:

imo medium is totally distinct from storytelling tho ofc some stories are better suited to some mediums

structure? i don’t know her. i plot w/o regard to structure and then if it looks funny i mush it into a more structurally sound shape

my main concern when structuring anything, including time, is an even distribution of Events and a steady rate of escalation

structure to me is just what i have when i’m finished plotting. i’m sorry one day i’m gonna take a writing class

internal chronology matters to me personally because i have a little bit of time blindness but maybe not to everyone, i know many very successful stories where they disregarded that entirely to no ill effect

writer’s block isn’t real! everyone just needs more rainbow spreadsheets

thank u for asking I HOPE i didn’t make you regret it too badly lmao and that at least a little of it was helpful!!

#personal #liz loves writing #liz answers asks #brit marling anon #i couldn't figure out how to answer u without walking u thru my entire process #so that's what i did and that's why it's so long. very sorry.#im gonna set this up to reblog itself at the time u sent ur ask so that ur sure to see it!!#edit: there was SUPPOSED to be a cut on this but tumblr put it in the ASK?? i can't seem to fix it. rip

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ramblian · 5 years ago

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Jericho Thoughts

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhh

okay so. i’m rewatching jericho. i first watched it sometime around 8th-9th grade, I think maybe somewhere in the first half of 2014. I basically remembered this: the main character was the black sheep of the family, he came back to town, and atomic bombs destroyed most of the US, and the show was about the town dealing with the aftermath. the guy from continuum and one ep of flashpoint played a character i liked named dale (eric knudsen) who liked a popular girl who ended up befriending him, and the asking-for-flowers flashpoint ep guy was the responsible brother. Someone used to be a teacher. The main character looked like Skeet Ulrich, but i didn’t know who that was, just the name.

turns out the main character WAS Skeet Ulrich, and 2 characters (heather and emily) used to be teachers, and i apparently forgot almost all of the major characters. I’ve been rewatching it with the knowledge of which characters die, so that’s good. the show is really good, and it’s really intense. I’m almost done, and it’s tough to keep watching both because it’s so intense and because i know a character i like is about to die tragically.

watching this show makes me so TENSE. i think it really got bad when goetz showed up and i knew bonnie’s death was coming up. i’ve been watching the same episode for like an hour and i started 6 minutes in from another viewing. i don’t know why i’m so stressed. well actually i do it’s because things in this show are AWFUL but i know that no one dies after bonnie.

i also really like that the plot is very much what drives the show. romantic relationships somewhat matter (eric/april/mary, dale/skylar, and stanley/mimi in particular get screentime, while jake’s relationships with emily and heather are there and meaningful but not something that drives the story or gets a lot of attention. dale and eric’s relationships have also been less important in season 2) but they are regularly sidelined while the character deal with the latest crisis. characters have backstories that aren’t always super expanded on, like johnston’s chaotic neutral dad or stanley and bonnie’s parents, because they don’t have a meaningful impact on the plot- how mimi grew up isn’t going to change how the Greens deal with food shortages.

also, i love that it’s a post-apocalyptic show where there’s a lot of fighting and lawlessness and not once have they used rape as a plot device. the closest it ever came to being mentioned was when maggie, a survivor pretending to be military to get towns’ supplies, said that ‘out there, men only want women for one thing’ and that’s IT. i respect that so much. way too many shows and books and movies are like ‘things are bad... and we can only express that through rape’ but this show never does

also the grey morality is very well done in season 1 (the bad guys are clearer in season 2). characters fight and do shitty things because everyone is just trying to survive. Constantino was wrong to start a war with Jericho, but i also understand where he was coming from. Ravenwood ransacked New Bern and left them with almost nothing, and Jericho never bothered to warn them. There were some people considering not honoring the deal to repay the windmills in food. New Bern was on the brink of destruction and Constantino tried to get the resources for survival where he could, by force. The thing with the refugees too. There isn’t really enough food for everyone, and it’s true that Jericho’s been getting a lot of refugees when it’s barely managing to sustain its own population. Some of the refugees have been stealing from them, and sometimes you have to make tricky decisions to survive. But the refugees are also probably going to die if they get sent away, and understandably they cannot accept that. they’ve been stealing food to prepare for this possibility, and they are willing to be violent to secure their place because jericho is much better off than just about anywhere else and they don’t want to die. Roger gets in a fight with Gray and accidentally shoots him, but then actively chooses to hold him at gunpoint and refuse him medical help unless he guarantees the safety of the other refugees. That’s obviously awful- but he’s also trying to protect the lives of the 50 innocent people he brought here. In the end, the refugees get to stay because some Jericho residents volunteer to share their rations, but Roger does not because he obviously committed a terrible crime. He’s not a bad person, but of course he can’t just be forgiven and integrated back into Jericho like nothing happened, and he accepts that and leaves with only a gun from Jake to protect himself because at least the others and emily will be safe.

also that emily and roger’s relationship wasn’t made meaningless in order to further her relationship with jake even despite their history as high school sweethearts.

oh god i just watched the scene where stanley’s talking to bonnie in the morgue and it’s so well done and i’m just in bed crying- not sobbing or anything, but plenty of tears. i don’t know what the last show to make me cry like this was; i’ve been watching so much youtube that i haven’t been watching a lot of hard hitting shows lately i guess. Barry was extremely Fucked Up, that might have made me cry, but it might not have- it had me fucked up for weeks, but i don’t know if i cried.

anyway the scene with stanley and bonnie in the morgue is so good. Stanley talking to her like she’s still alive the way they always did for their parents, and talking to her sign language bc that’s her language. Telling her to say hi to their parents. Letting her know that mimi is still alive, that she succeeded in protecting her, and thanking her for it. Still joking around a little even though he’s obviously heartbroken and just being so genuine with her. Neither of them deserved this.

wow can’t believe heather is a fuckin bootlicker, knowing that the government is extremely corrupt and that she and beck are destroying new bern and choosing to continue to work for that government.

oh beck just has to be some sort of a stupid son of a bitch. absolute goddamn buffoon. siding with the govt, arresting jake in the shadiest way possible in the middle of a crowd, choosing to torture jake (which if he knew a goddamn thing like hawkins did he would know was ineffective), and then thinking that after everything this town and those rangers have done to protect themselves and their loved ones that it was just going to work out for him like the others aren’t going to come for jake immediately and efficiently. i liked beck well enough before but any fondness or respect for him is fucking absolutely gone.

at least eric is really getting to show off his leadership skills now. johnston’s dead, jake’s been arrested/kidnapped, hawkins is busy with other shit. eric’s always one of the second-in-commands but this is one of the few times he’s just plain in command.

“your friends have escalated this to a level i will not tolerate” right but you dragging jake to a fuckin blacksite to torture him was fine???? YOU ESCALATED THIS YOU DUMB STUPID SON OF A BITCH. you have really been given so many chances this season to not serve an evil government and try to protect these people and you’ve failed almost every time, huh? he’d also have to be some sort of an idiot to think that a clearly faked note with jake’s signature saying ‘this bad’ would stop anyone. god i haven’t escalated to hating someone this much so quickly in a long fuckin time.

love how beck is leveraging the entire town of jericho and choosing to oppress them in order to get the rangers to turn themselves in <3 i love punishing innocent people to use them against others just like goetz did last episode <3 what a good guy

i dont know why there are so many beck fics on ao3 because this man fucking sucks. like, can you imagine refusing a whole town food, power, and lights as a bargaining chip, blaming someone else (”don’t forget, you caused this”) and then still thinking you have the moral high ground? incredible mental gymnastics when will beck be in the olympics

heather: your actions are so blatantly terrible that i am just now beginning to consider not defending you to everyone. take responsibility for what you do

beck: hmm. no. my choices are jake’s fault

i know beck is probably going to ‘redeem’ himself by the end of the episode but i don’t fuckin care. too late for him now he can’t just say ‘oops’ and pretend he hasn’t done all of this shit. wild how his actions are now literally being compared to those of nazis during wwii and people still like this guy.

hey do you think beck is an idiot asshole or just pretending to be one for fun

commanding officer: go ahead and destroy everything in the area

beck: 🤔 is killing all those people wrong?

oof rip eric sure is rough when you have to ally with the guy who tortured you and killed your dad to protect ur city but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. also where the hell has dale been? i’ll let it go bc the show isn’t consistent on when he shows up and is a major part of town but in universe it sure is fuckin weird, and you know beck would have dragged him in for questioning too

oh wow beck finally decided to actually try thinking critically and addressing the obvious evidence about cheyenne’s corruption. that makes up for everything and i can stan now /s

‘i’m no longer taking orders from the cheyenne government. i believe it’s corrupt at its core. its actions are criminal’ oh so like everyone’s been telling you this whole time? the actions like the ones you’ve taken, not even at anyone’s command? idiot.

lmao i’m not as opposed to constantino’s methods as the show thinks i’m supposed to be. a revolution against a corrupt, oppressive government is not peaceful. it cannot be. the only good fascist is a dead one.

#jericho #jericho spoilers #in case this shows up in the tags and someone sees it or smthn

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lichlover · 7 years ago

Note

shit shit ok prompts. like. id say feeblemind lup bc!!!! im very excited for it!!! but if you want fluffy ones either. lupcretia with the whole "elves are cats" thing or the ipre with cool socks? (the latter being bc. im wearing socks with bees on them and was like "oh shit this is adeline's lup!!!" so. lup with cool socks is now an Image in my Brain)

happy birthday, love!!! this is on ao3, by the way.

Intuition, Lucretia thinks, is like a dangling participle.

It’s when the sentence is perfectly capitalized and punctuated but doesn’t read as fluidly as it should. It’s when everything looks right, but something is wrong—wrenchingly, glaringly wrong, even though there’s not a word you can think of to describe it. It’s the kind of thing that drives English majors and novelists to the brink of madness. She should know. (She’s been both.)

The last time she’d told someone as such, they’d been incredulous. “That’s a metaphor practically asking to be broken,” they’d said. “Besides, sometimes you just know shit is bad, and it looks bad, and it’s just all bad. The world isn’t always trying to catch you off guard, okay? I’d say that’s a pretty paranoid way of looking at things.”

“It’s a simile,” was all Lucretia had said.

They’d waved her off, laughing.

Lucretia doesn’t feel much like laughing now.

The journey back is, for lack of any better phrasing, absolute hell. Barry offers to take them through the rift—it’ll be faster, he says; easier, and he wants to get them to a safe place as soon as possible—but the instant reality rips itself apart in front of them, Lup digs her nails into Taako’s arm and screams. It’s shrill and deafening and utterly terrified. It’s the worst thing Lucretia’s ever heard.

So they take the Starblaster. Lup refuses to let go of Taako’s arm. Her eyes dart from person to person, evaluating each of them with a sharp, unforgiving stare. When Kravitz goes to sit next to Taako, her ears pull flat against her head and she bares her fangs at him, growling low and deep in her throat. He backs off in a hurry, and Taako swallows hard and tells her that he’s fine, Lulu, for gods’ sake, you know him. She doesn’t seem to care.

Everyone gives them a wide berth after that.

Barry calls them up to the bridge after a heavy ten minutes of silence, and they oblige him because there can’t possibly be anything worse than silence. Davenport is there, of course—he’s perfectly capable of setting the ship to autopilot, as Lucretia and the others well know, but he’s looked a little haunted ever since they departed and they’d all known no amount of convincing would get him to leave the helm. Lucretia sees the hollowness in his eyes and has to choke back something welling up in her throat; whether it’s an apology or a full-on breakdown, she can’t tell. She won’t make him relive something she herself has tried very hard to forget.

“Feeblemind,” says Merle, as soon as the door hisses shut behind them.

None of them had wanted to say it.

Lucretia’s familiar, of course. She’s familiar with too many spells; knows them just well enough to recognize their effects without knowing much else. She’d watched the clever glint drain from Lup’s eyes and figured straightaway, and she’s sure the others had done the same. Perhaps that’s why no one had said anything. Because they’d all known, and knowing was so much worse than saying it aloud.

Feeblemind. The body is left intact (right) but the mind is shattered (wrong, wrong, wrong).

“You can cure it,” Barry says. “You can end it, with—with Greater Restoration, right?”

Merle looks tired. They’re all tired, but he wears it plainly on his face, and always has. “I can do it, but it calls for diamond dust, and this shit gets specific. Gems’ve gotta be at least a hundred GP, and for a full guarantee that this is gonna work, they’ve gotta be cultivated. Specially grown, y’know? This is a delicate spell, and if anything goes wrong, if this gets fucked up—”

“You’re not gonna fuck it up,” says Magnus, and he sounds angry. They’re all angry, Lucretia thinks. Angry and tired—and it almost feels like the old days again. “This is too important.”

“Obviously. So it’s… it’s gonna be a coupla days.”

Barry releases a small, choked noise into his hand. Davenport doesn’t look back from the helm, but he says, “Then we’ll all make her as c-comfortable as we can in the time we have. This isn’t rocket science, people. It—it’ll be over soon.”

There is really nothing worse than silence, but that’s what hangs over their heads for a few agonizing seconds before Angus speaks. He’s sitting at a console, looking thoroughly shaken and, like so many of the adults are, trying his best to hold it together. Lucretia, who’s been holding her expression steadfast since liftoff, can relate.

“This is my fault,” he says, almost quietly enough to be inaudible. “I’m sorry.”

The bridge erupts.

“It’s not your fault, Ango—”

“—nobody thinks that—”

“It’s on me,” says Barry, dropping his hand from his face. “I should’ve had my eye on her.”

Kravitz shakes his head. “Necromancers are tricky bastards. I know that, I should’ve taken extra precautions. Besides, I’ve actually hunted them down before, so if anyone’s to blame—”

“You’re all being selfish,” Lucretia says.

They all look at her but she doesn’t back down, because she’s spent a century with them and their judgment and at this point, she couldn’t possibly care less. “You’re being selfish,” she repeats, and she can hear her voice shaking. “Acting like all of this is your cross to bear. It’s no one’s fault, alright? Something shitty happened, we’re dealing with the consequences like adults. This isn’t the time to be arguing over who gets to be the martyr.”

Nothing but silence can follow an outburst like that, and silence is the last thing Lucretia needs. So she turns on her heel and leaves. She doesn’t stalk or stride or hold her head high because she knows she’s right—in fact, she doesn’t know it in the least.

She doesn’t really know anything anymore.

The first day is a different kind of hell, one built out of frozen dinners and overcrowded guest bedrooms and Barry and Kravitz’s shouting match over who goes with Merle; or, more importantly, who stays.

Lucretia doesn’t catch all of it, but it’s impossible not to hear.

“—so what happens if I leave and she gets worse?”

“You’re talking like we’re not all capable people, you have to know that—”

“I’m her husband, gods dammit!”

It only quiets down after Taako stands up, storms to the other end of the house, and gives them both an earful because you fucking idiots, you’re scaring her, figure out what the hell you’re doing or shut the fuck up. Not fifteen minutes later, they both emerge into the living room and announce stiffly that Kravitz is going with Merle, and Barry is staying behind, and thank you all for being so patient, but they’re just a little shaken up and they only want the best for Lup. All of them do.

Lucretia sits in an armchair too big for her in a space more domestic than she’s used to. This is the third time she’s been to Barry and Lup’s house, and the first time she’s been there with company. It’s a shockingly innocuous property. The garden out front is well-kept and blooming with all sorts of unusual flora, and every room is enormous and airy and spilling over with natural light. (Every room, of course, save for the necromancy lab, which Barry has informed her she’s not allowed to see for plausible deniability.)

He’d shown her the floorplan back when the house was a couple of blueprints and a far-fetched ambition in the aftermath of Story and Song. “Gotta have lotsa light, lotsa space,” he’d told her. “Means the world to her. Uh, especially now.”

It’s beautiful—the sort of house Lucretia had imagined having all to herself a century ago, back when her endgame had been a novel published under her name. She looks at its lofty ceilings now and thinks it would be far too lonely for her taste.

Somehow Lup’s presence makes it even lonelier. She’s taken up residence on the couch, curled into a shallow corner, pupils thin and ears at attention as she surveys the room around her. Everything that moves or raises its voice above a whisper incurs her suspicion, and when Magnus accidentally ventures too close, her lips curl back in a snarl. Lucretia notes how as soon as he steps back, she looks to Taako with concern written starkly across her face. It makes sense, to an extent. Protection has to be one of the oldest instincts in existence. The fact that it survives, even when the rest of her personality is ripped apart, is harshly appropriate.

The rest of her is vacant. Where life and warmth once brimmed in Lup, there’s just—nothing. Lucretia catches herself staring once or twice, sucked into the hollows of Lup’s eyes, and has to tear herself away. It’s wrong. It’s worse than wrong—it’s like someone’s violated a law of the universe and gloated about it.

It doesn’t matter that pieces of the necromancer are rotting in that field.

Lup is gone, and they’re struggling to get her back.

On the second day, Barry collapses.

They all count themselves lucky that Lup doesn’t see it. Magnus carries him to one of the downstairs bedrooms and says he’s going to go and get some fuel for everyone, which Lucretia hopes means coffee, because they’d all drained the supply on the first day. He leaves, and Barry is across the house, and Angus is with Carey and Killian, which they’d all decided on without having to put it to a vote. They don’t know where Davenport is and they figure for now, he wants to keep it that way.

So that leaves Lucretia with Taako and Lup, except Lup isn’t herself, which leaves Lucretia with Taako.

She’s been trying not to think about it.

It only takes a couple agonizing minutes for one of them to break the quiet. “You should check on Barold,” Taako says, and he says it a little more aggressively than he needs to, but it’s also the most he’s spoken to Lucretia in a year and so she’ll take it without complaining.

“He’s fine,” she says. “He hasn’t slept in two days. I don’t want to wake him up.”

Taako rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t dispute her. He has his fingers threaded through Lup’s, and Lucretia watches as his knuckles whiten ever so slightly.

“Why are you here?”

“She’s my friend.”

He scoffs. “That all? What about your—your arrangement, or whatever?”

“The arrangement,” says Lucretia, coldly, “is none of your business. And I’m really not in the mood to be judged for my adult decisions.”

It’s one of the only things that had survived from the Century—an understanding, an open relationship. An arrangement. They’d talked about it after Legato, after Lucretia was so sure everything was about to take a turn for the worse, and agreed because it was too easy to be worth breaking any hearts over.

She’d wondered if Taako was privy to it, and now she knows.

He’s silent for a moment longer, and then he says, “She doesn’t deserve you.” It’s not meant to sting or catch her off guard, Lucretia knows—for Taako, it’s simple and solid as any other fact.

And she’s not going to dispute him.

“Lup deserves to be happy.”

“Now there’s something we can both fuckin’ agree on.” He sighs and tips his head to rest it against Lup’s, and she nuzzles into his loose curtain of hair, closing her eyes in an unexpected display of peace. Lucretia is sure she sees Taako’s eyes shimmer, but then he blinks and clears his throat and the moment is gone.

She doesn’t get to see him very often, which he would say is entirely on purpose. They’d sealed a single, likeminded pact between them to get along for the sake of Angus’s birthday, but Angus’s birthday is over now—it’s been over for what seems like fifty years. And here they are, getting along by virtue of necessity. It feels right.

Lup’s stomach rumbles, and Taako sits up and curses under his breath. “She hasn’t eaten since… shit,” he mumbles, and Lucretia knows he’s talking to himself, but the fact that he’s willing to do so with her sitting right there is something, at least. “I’ll get a meal going, see if I can get her to eat… uh, Lu, c’mon, we’re goin’ to the kitchen.”

He stands, but Lup doesn’t follow. She remains stubbornly seated, looking up at Taako with those horrible, blank eyes, and looks a little like he’s personally offended her.

“Lup,” he says. “C’mon.”

This time he tugs a little insistently on her hand, and her ears pull back again as she releases a low whine from the back of her throat. Taako drops his grasp, sucks in a shaky breath, and pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s a pressure cooker of exasperation, Lucretia thinks, to use a metaphor he would approve of. He also has thick, dark circles under his eyes and a familiar twitch to his mouth that she knows is the harbinger of a full-on breakdown.

“Fuck—Lup, please—”

“Go make the food,” says Lucretia. Lup’s ears twitch towards her, and she looks over without any of the feral hostility they’ve all gotten used to. “I’ll watch her.”

Taako stares her down. She knows he wants the next words out of his mouth to be why should I let you, but she also knows he’s too exhausted to push back. Instead, he holds out a finger like it’s an arcane focus and says, “If you—if you pull any shit—”

“I won’t—”

“—I swear to gods I’ll make you wish we never saved your ass.” He drops the finger and turns back to Lup. “I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”

There’s no response, of course. Taako sighs and heads to the kitchen, although not without a pointed glance over his shoulder. Lucretia doesn’t bother returning it in kind.

That leaves her with Lup, except Lup isn’t herself, so—

A faucet turns on down the hall, followed by the sound of a cabinet slamming heatedly shut. Taako cooks when he’s stressed. He has the manic energy Lucretia’s never been able to muster, the impulse to do something and then the compulsion to actually do it. They share inattention and nothing else. She has a book in her lap, a small fiction she’s been struggling to get through between running the Bureau of Benevolence and the persistent desire to sleep the rest of her life away, and for the last several minutes she’s been thumbing over the pages and wearing her skin raw. It focuses her. (Granted, for what, she’s not entirely sure.)

A hand lays over hers, and Lucretia almost jumps out of her skin. Lup’s eyes catch hers, still dim, still hollowed out like two black holes where stars used to reside. It’s too easy to slip into celestial metaphors to describe her.

She doesn’t say anything—mutism is one of the symptoms, as they’ve started to refer to them, like this is a stubborn virus or some other affliction. But she folds her fingers gently through Lucretia’s and pulls, tipping her head towards the couch, and the empty space where Taako had taken up residence next to her.

“Oh,” says Lucretia, because she can’t think to say anything else. “Oh, you want me to…?”

Lup doesn’t understand her—another symptom—but she continues to press her stare. What else can Lucretia do but oblige? She slides the book carefully off her lap and joins Lup on the couch, folding her legs underneath her. As soon as she gets situated, like Lup can sense it, she nudges gently at Lucretia’s shoulder and leans in.

(And they’re back on the Starblaster, and Lup’s fingers snag gently in Lucretia’s curls as they sit against each other under the dim glow of the stars. Any moment now she’ll ask a question in her low, resonant voice, and Lucretia will crack a self-indulgent smile and respond, and say something that would embarrass her for cycles to come if not for the fact that they keep no secrets from each other.)

Instead Lucretia freezes. Lup doesn’t seem to notice. She doesn’t close her eyes, but her ears stoop to a gentle incline and her breathing evens from its short, choppy exhales. It reminds Lucretia of honey-gold mornings and sun-warmed skin between tangled sheets, and it’s wrong; she knows this, even though something about it feels numbingly right. She shouldn’t be wanting Lup’s hand curled lightly in her lap, or her weight against Lucretia’s chest.

She shouldn’t be wanting it and yet she wants so much. She wants Lup back and right now, this is the closest she’s going to get.

The clamor from the kitchen fades into white noise. Lup rests in the curve of her shoulder, and for once Lucretia doesn’t ache with the need to flex her fingers and fold them into her palm, or thumb over the pages of her book. She lets the world phase just slightly out of focus because she, like everyone, is more exhausted than she realizes. They hadn’t given her something to do in the aftermath. She’d become a sentinel of her own accord.

It’s appropriate, she decides, for her inclination; protecting the ones she loves for better or for worse.

Lup is warm. She’s always been warm, like magic is constantly running hot through her veins, and even in this state Lucretia can feel the power thrumming faintly beneath her skin. It’s a vibration; a distinctly choppy hum. There is both a power and a fragility to it that together is unlike anything Lucretia’s ever heard.

The reason she’s never heard anything like it is, of course, because it’s not actually arcane power that Lucretia can feel through the fabric of her blouse.

It’s a purr—a soft, oscillating rumble that spills from Lup’s throat and radiates outward in tiny vibrations. Where they land, goosebumps scatter across Lucretia’s skin, and cautiously she tips her head to verify the sound. As she does, Lup’s eyelashes flutter, and the purring—because that’s what it is, without question—jumps noticeably in volume. She leans toward the crook of Lucretia’s neck on what looks like instinct, like the same gravity that seems to hold them in orbit around each other is at work once again.

The same gravity that nestles in Lucretia’s gut and aches like it’s been a century. A day and a half is nothing compared to a hundred years but right now, it feels entirely as if the two are the same.

So she tucks her head over Lup’s and listens to her purr. There’d been an occurrence over the course of the mission—only once, because to Lup and Taako intimacy was sacrosanct. But she’d been curled up against the headboard, Lup lounging across her lap, and gently massaging an ear. And just like that, like a switch had been flipped, Lup started purring. She’d realized it after a moment or two and propped herself up with an embarrassed grimace, face distinctly pinker than it should have been. “Hey, Luce,” she’d said. “I’d appreciate it if you, uh, kept that to yourself. It’s kind of a…”

“An elf thing?” Lucretia had guessed.

She’d been right, as it turned out; a little-known racial quirk that elves liked to keep under wraps. Lucretia respected her wishes, and after that night, she didn’t hear it again. Apparently it had been long enough that she’d forgotten about it altogether.

She remembers two things, now:

Elves purr when they’re content, or

they purr when they’re distressed.

Lucretia looks down at Lup and can’t even begin to fathom which of the latter it would be.

She abandons that train of thought and reaches up to smooth a hand over Lup’s hair. Lup doesn’t protest, so Lucretia lets her fingers slide through the loose strands and gently massage her scalp. The purring gets louder. It’s a completely involuntary thing—she’s sure of it—but there’s a small, selfish part of her that thinks, she knows it’s me. This is for me. Lup doesn’t understand the nuances of her relationship with Lucretia or what they’ve been through together, but she feels safe. Safe with Lucretia. Safe enough to purr.

Taako is so quiet that Lucretia doesn’t even realize he’s there until he slouches into the armchair where she had been. She jumps, and Lup’s ear flicks attentively, but the purring’s tempo doesn’t break.

“Food’s cooking,” is all he says. There’s a bitter edge to his tone that she thinks, for once, isn’t directed at her.

Lucretia’s eyes fix on the ring fitted perfectly to Taako’s finger. It’s a cluster of bright pink tourmaline encased in transmuted silver, brilliant enough to catch the light and throw it in prisms across the room.

“I’ll get up,” she says.

He waves a dismissive hand. “You’re chill. Lup’s comfortable, so—so just stay where you are.”

“You don’t—”

“Lucretia,” he says, “I don’t give a flying fuck what I’m—about how I feel right now, and neither should you. This ain’t about me.”

The pointed look that tangles in Lup’s eyelashes tells Lucretia everything else she needs to know.

She doesn’t try to argue further. For one, it’s an argument she’s not going to win, and for the other—for once—she hasn’t the faintest idea what they would be arguing about. So she starts to card her fingers through Lup’s hair again, and Lup continues to purr, and Taako stares vacantly in the direction of the kitchen as if there’s something he’s forgotten.

That night, Kravitz and Merle portal in through the front yard. Lucretia and Barry are there to greet them, and the latter’s shirt is stained and his hair is sticking up in sleep-thick spikes, but right then he looks more awake than ever.

Diamond dust glitters in the valleys of Merle’s palm as he lays his hand on Lup. The air thickens with the scent of ozone. Taako’s fingers are laced tightly through hers once more, and he doesn’t say anything, but she can see his shoulders shaking.

The effect is instantaneous.

“Well, shit,” says Lup, when the light returns to her eyes. She sees Taako sitting next to her first and pulls him into her arms, and just like that, the room heaves a sigh of relief. Barry takes her face in her hands and kisses her hard, and Magnus barges past and sweeps them all into a hug, ignoring Taako and Merle’s harmonious complaining. Kravitz manages an awkward pat until he, too, is pulled headfirst into the embrace.

Lucretia stands in the doorway. The world is quiet and dark outside and the neighbors’ well-kept lawns glimmer with a late rainfall.

She leaves.

Or she tries to, at least, because she only gets as far as the porch before the door swings open behind her and light from the hallway spills around her feet. “ ’Cretia,” Lup says. “Where’re you going?”

A best of silence, and the door closes of its own accord. It’s just them, now, standing in the dim glow of the porch light with the faint buzz of crickets in the distance.

“I missed you,” says Lucretia.

Lup steps forward and takes her gently by the shoulders. “I missed you too. So why don’t you stick around? Taako’s making dinner.”

“I can’t.”

She sighs. “If you think they’ll be weird—”

Lucretia shakes her head. “It’s not them, it’s me.”

She knows Lup won’t argue with that. Instead she drums her fingers against Lucretia’s sleeves and says, “You were there the whole time, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Lup leans forward and presses her lips lightly to Lucretia’s, and despite herself, Lucretia leans in. She really has missed Lup—missed this—the way she has to rock forward on her tiptoes to reach her and the way Lup smiles against her mouth and the way she feels nothing else, except the ebb and pull of the kiss itself. They might have spent an eternity standing there on the porch, half-drowned in golden light and shivering slightly in the chill. Lucretia knows she wouldn’t mind.

But all the best things must come to an end, and Lup pulls away with a small, dazed grin.

“My girl,” she murmurs. “Missed you like crazy. You really won’t stay, huh?”

“I can’t,” is all Lucretia says.

“Okay.” She hops off the porch and sits on the stoop, then pats the concrete next to her. “Sit with me for a little bit, then. Tell me about what I missed.”

Lucretia does. She sits down and doesn’t bother sugarcoating it, because she knows Lup will hate that even more than not knowing. So she unflinchingly recounts the seconds after Lup fell and how Taako and Barry’s spells had ripped the necromancer apart. She tells Lup about the way she’d screamed at the sight of the rift and how she’d bared her teeth at anyone other than Taako who’d come close. She recites bits and pieces of Barry and Kravitz’s argument.

Lup listens without comment. When Lucretia stops—whether it’s just to stop or to take a breath, she isn’t sure—she says, “I’ve got these… impressions. Like vague memories, emotions… it’s like everything’s blurred.” She grins ruefully. “Kinda hard to make acute observations when your intelligence takes a fuckin’ swan dive, huh?”

Lucretia doesn’t respond at first, and Lup notices. “Everything okay?”

“What’s wrong with you?” says Lucretia.

The crickets seem deafeningly loud just then, filling up the space with their incessant chirping and almost overpowering what she says next. “You weren’t yourself, and it was fucking terrifying. And it didn’t even make any sense, because one minute you were growling at everyone, and the next you were—”

Her sentence hangs like a woman off a precipice. “You were… it doesn’t matter. You just—you’re cracking jokes and kissing me and acting like none of this happened, and it did happen, and it scared the life out of all of us, and I don’t know how you can be so—so chill about all of it when a spell literally destroyed your mind.”

“Oh,” Lup says. That’s it. Lucretia’s just started to kick herself for being stupid, for reprimanding Lup just minutes after she’s come back to herself because she doesn’t deserve that, gods dammit, when she says, “Y’know what? That’s fair.”

Lucretia blinks. “Um—um, yeah. Yeah, it is.”

She leans back on the heels of her hands, gazing up at the edge of the overhang and beyond that, the brilliant spread of stars. “I’m not gonna lie, Luce. I feel like shit. But when you fix somebody, they’re supposed to be fixed, right? No exceptions. No side effects. You forgive and forget and you—whoops, sorry, babe,” she says, because she catches Lucretia’s flinch, because of course she does. “Bad choice of words. But my point is that it shouldn’t be this hard to suck it up and move on.”

“Lup?”

“Yeah, hon.”

“It’s been five minutes.”

Lup chuckles and releases a long sigh. “Sure has.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. Somewhere behind the house, a carriage trundles by, accompanied by a couple raised voices and someone’s airy laughter. As the voices fade away, Lup says, “It coulda hit any one of you.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yeah, it is,” she says, and doesn’t snap, even though her voice gets noticeably sharper. “There’s a scenario out there where the spell hits you, instead. Or Taako. Or Barry, or Angus… I could go on and on, and that, right there?” Lup’s finger jabs at an invisible spot in the air. “That’s the point. The fact that the spell hit me and not anybody else. I’m happy to take the hit—hell, I’m thrilled if it means no one else has to go through that.”

There’s no way Lucretia can counter that without compromising her beliefs. “You’re a good person,” she says. It’s not a hollow sentiment, but it does sound like one.

“I’m pissed off is what I am,” says Lup, but she puts a hand on Lucretia’s thigh and squeezes.

“I’ll get over it,” she murmurs. “Always do.”

They spend another few seconds in silence, although the way they pass, it could have been measured in eternities. Lup’s thumb presses absentminded circles into the side of Lucretia’s knee.

“Barry passed out,” she says suddenly; affectionately. “Dumbass. He always likes to say he’ll sleep when he’s dead, and since he’s a lich already that doesn’t mean jack, so…”

Lup falls silent for a few moments more, and then she says, “When did you last get some sleep?”

Lucretia thinks. She hadn’t so much as closed her eyes on the Starblaster, and the night before she’d gotten about five hours on the tail end of an enormous amount of paperwork. Suddenly the leaden weight in her limbs makes a lot more sense. “It’s been awhile.”

“Then you’re a dumbass, too,” says Lup.

Fair assessment.

Their intimacy from earlier in the day sticks sharp and clear in Lucretia’s mind. She’s been wrestling with how to bring it up, like there’s any way she can casually discuss the mechanics of want under Feeblemind, and it occurs to her then that the best way to mention it is just to mention it. So she takes a soft breath and says, “You purred.”

Lup’s ear twitches as she glances over. “I what?”

“You purred,” Lucretia repeats. “When we were… um, you seemed like you wanted me, uh… near you, so I went to sit with you, and you purred. And I felt like I should, uh. Say something? So. There it is. You purred.”

It’s in a note somewhere in her journals, that elves’ pupils expand just so when they’re taking in new information. Lup’s eyes look like two small moons. “Oh,” she says, a little more meaningfully than people usually say such things. “Well, I, uh… I’m comfortable with you. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Lucretia supposes it does.

“Yeah,” she admits. “I guess so.”

“Well, there you have it.” Lup’s tone is flippant, but the tips of her ears are a rosy pink. She tucks an arm around Lucretia’s shoulders and pulls her close, and Lucretia gratefully relents to the pull. It’s like giving in to fifty years of fear and uncertainty and memories she still can’t keep herself from reliving, but because she’s in Lup’s arms, none of it matters anymore. It’s over, she thinks. It’s not okay but it’s over.

Lucretia’s intuition tells her that any moment now, someone is going to come to the door to check on the two of them. The sacrament of their moment will be broken, and the agony and trauma of the past few days will come flooding back in.

It’s like a dangling participle—paranoid, inevitable.

But they’ve weathered much worse together.

#helloyoubeautifulsoul #ask #the adventure zone #taz balance #lupcretia #fic #mine #we out here doing a hit on the best girls!!!

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hinasho · 3 years ago

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im struggling to picture what my ideal ending for the starks might be

sansa as lady of winterfell/queen in the north feels great. she’s come a long way, she’s always indulged in like propriety, the court, and things of that nature, and she’s a good leader.

arya i think should be smthg similar to her master of whispers. she’d play a more active role than varys did tho and would do a lot of the snooping and infiltrating herself, and then as she gets older recruit other people into her work (think: leliana from the game dragon age). the sailing west of westeros is cute on the surface but that child-like arya has been gone for several seasons now so it doesn’t feel as fulfilling. master of whispers!arya for the north i think is great.

i have no idea what a good end for bran is tho. maybe a mystical advisor?? but tbh i’ve never really vibed with mysticism/spirituality/religion playing a role in politics (see: melisandre), so i don’t think i’d want bran to be on the council, but mmmmmm i really don’t know. maybe as just the Wise Old Sage they ask for advice from time to time. i also feel like his presence would erase the need for master of whispers!arya so he gotta go somehow. other than that, i just straight dont know bro.

jon jon jon hes so weird. king in the north was nice on the surface but also frustrating to see. maybe a good ending for him would be part of the north’s version of a kings(queens)guard??? oohh no wait maybe he’d be good as the north’s version of the hand of the queen! that way he has a lot of agency (bc god knows he hates following orders) while also not being like overly in charge of things (bc jon also hates being a leader dude pls pick one). HOTK/Q would be a good ending for him maybe.

it’s difficult to decide which roles in the new independent north the starks (or anyone tbh) would fit bc???? we just never learn how their politics are going to work. all we learn is that sansa is QOTN but we don’t learn the system they’re going to use or really anything of the sort. so along with struggling to find good ends for the characters, i also have no idea what kinda world theyd actually end in. very tricky.

#got lb #lexi watches a show

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survivorniue · 8 years ago

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Ep. 7: “This Whole Loyal Thing is so New” - Dan (Pt. 2)

KEVIN

Okay... So we're setting (or trying to set) the plan to boot Van in action. Van is cool and all but in the words of Thirdpersonica, Van is playing for Van. Like Forrest told me, Van probably won't go to rocks for anyone unless she has some sort of protection first, because she wouldn't do that for Kait. Also, I want to vote out Van because, um, who the fuck takes out Kait. Like that's not okay. Like Van has taken out two of my faves (Kait and Forrest) and if we let her continue on her warpath this is gonna be an ugly game. We definitely have Amanda Nicky and I voting for Van, Amanda said she could pull in Dan. So that leaves the fifth vote. Ideally, that fifth vote is Sam and/or Pat. I'd rather have Sam because she's iconic and Pat...well he at least has a nice personality! I'm just worried word will get back to Van because for all I know John has an idol and from what Van told me those two are relatively close. Close enough to play an idol on the other? Uh, please no.

VAN

So this vote can either be SUPER messy and bad or it could be yet another near unanimous vote. I haven't decided what I want to do yet. So it appears Forrest isn't on the jury which is WHEW because I know I burned that bridge. Life here on NewNiue has been pretty chill so far. Now, I love Ned and Sam to death. Like, I seriously do. But I'm aware of how strong they are in challenges. And I love Ned and Sam and they're super likable people. And I want to play with them for as long as I can. BUT, Ned just told me a little something that just made a WEE bit nervous. So just between us, the 5 iloa people want us to stick together. I don't want you sam or I to be a target, so timing is everything on when we make a move WELL NED, AIN'T THAT A LITTLE SCARY FOR THE LONE MITI PERSON WORKING WITH YOU GUYS. As of right now, we have 5 old Iloa and 4 old Miti. Now, in a perfect world where I felt like I'd be perceived as a good player, I'd be okay with continuing forward with Ned/Sam into a F3. But, alas, I'm pretty sure I look like a floater and a not-so-great challenge performer. (i'd like to think people like me but who knows :/) If I wanna try and win this game, I gotta make a bit more of an effort to get the numbers on my side. But I also don't want to make a move too soon either because there's still plenty of time left in the game. Plenty of time for people to make a move against me, and if I burn Ned/Sam too much too soon, then I won't have them to watch my back. I just don't know if now's the right time to try and flip one of the old Iloa's to old Miti to try and take out someone on the other side. This round, we only need 1 person to flip to old Miti to take out an Iloa. Next round, if we vote out an old Miti (say, Nikki), then I only have Kevin and Amanda left from old Miti, and we'd need to flip 2 people to avoid a tie. AGH I'M CONFLICTED I'm gonna spend a bit of time looking for the idol too maybe that'd be helpful so I know I can play around with it to get someone I wanna save out of a tricky situation. All I know that for this round, at the very least, I wanna keep Kevin in the game since we work well together. Ned/Sam would be tragic and I'd probably lose a jury vote, but I would move on and hope for the best. Everyone else would be sad but not as bad. ok i have a paper to write hopefully people hit me up more on skype soon because i'm a little nervous wreck in this game lmao

NICKY

Me about tonight's tribal council: https://67.media.tumblr.com/c2dff8563548f38f7dda18cf09bc8b8b/tumblr_nfx5dfFXm51rl4dslo1_500.gif

KEVIN

SCREAMING MY ASS OFF SOME ILOA BITCHES ARE THROWING MY NAME AROUND LIKE FIRST OF ALL WHO THE FUCK SECOND OF ALL WHY???? (also nicky too like leave us alone!!!!) and also van like said he doesn't want it to be me so if that's true now asking ppl to vote for van is um...slightly messier god i hate myself

KEVIN

Okay so...maybe voting against Van isn't the best course of action or even possible... I don't know if it's too late, because Ned's words might have gotten to Van and now we're ultra screwed, but we might have a chance. Van is telling me that she thinks Iloa is sticking together, so what other option is there? This could all be a charade or something though... Me when I was the person to bring up Van's name and now it looks like (unless I'm being played) she's trying to keep us in the game... We agreed to vote out Pat I'm.........

KEVIN

Let the records show that I. LOVE. SAMANTHA. Oh my god this feminist icon is one of my favorite people ever!!! She's flipping with Dan to save me oh my goodness!!! What did I do to deserve such an angel? Nothing but God has smiled and blessed me and I am grateful. Now we're voting Ned and I'm probably gonna have to leave Van in the dark bc things changed so suddenly (they did technically) but oh my god

NED

I've really gotten to know almost everyone on this tribe, so the vote was going to be hard regardless. All the old Iloa members are voting Kevin, and all the old Miti members are voting Pat. It seems that this is still very much a game defined by tribal lines, despite the most recent results. I talked to Van about where her head is, and she said that she would not vote for Kevin, because he's her closest Miti ally. This is where the tricky part comes in: I can stick with Iloa and vote out my ally's ally who could help me down the road, or I can flip and vote out Pat, but risk my safety for the early merge. It's 4 versus 4, with me in the middle- and I don't know what to do.

PATRICK

youtube

AMANDA

THis vote is INSANEEEE okay so originally we were voting out Van, then Kevin wanted to vote Pat but i love Pat so i was iffy, then we said we were gonna vote for Ned. If it goes as planned, me Kevin Dan Sam Nicky and i think Van are voting Ned out. I think Pat is voting Van, idk about everyone else though. This vote was crazy and stressed me out like waiting for the votes of the freaking presidential election lmfao OH ALSO me Dan and Sam made a f3 so thats cute

VAN

i literally made a video confessional to try and handle the current situation for this game but it won't load which is honestly a good summary of how this day of mine is going like what's happened today? 1. laptop started fucking up so I spent the entire day in the library writing a paper like it's a miracle that it's somewhat cooperating with me rn 2. had a stomach ache from hell thanks dining hall 3. got nominated in a BB game I'm playing in right now that's nice 4. Donald Trump has a very real chance of becoming the next President of the United States rn 5. The vote is either going to Kevin or to Ned. There's only 10 minutes until tribal. I think Dan is gonna flip to vote out Ned. The only way to keep Ned in the game is to vote Kevin through a tie. Not only did I promise Kevin that I'm never voting him out, but I also promised the same to Ned. Ned is probably so fucked. I feel so bad for him. We had a call today and I really really like the guy, even though I know he's a threat. I could always just vote Pat (like we originally intended to do) and it ends with Ned going home but I don't have to vote him out. But it'll make me look like an untrustworthy weenie. But honestly at this point I deserve it for playing both sides during the swap and during this merge so far. If this vote goes the way I think it's about to go then that's that. I'll probably see you in the jury next Ned lmao

#thisisneweh #confessionals

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