#this pose for this edit has been haunting me for months now
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barklikeagod · 11 days ago
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feel bad mentally. time to take it out on my oc
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your-local-grubdog · 2 years ago
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Pikmin Fandom Monthly: February 2023
Welcome to the first edition of Pikmin Fandom Monthly! This is just a little monthly series I'd like to do where on the first day of each month, I share neat fan projects from the pikmin fandom made in the previous month! For this I will be focusing on creative projects (so no analysis or theories, at least for now). For this first edition, all entries will be ones that I have found and enjoyed but in the future I hope to have some that were recommended to me as well! (Most of these entries are from Tumblr as a result, oops.) No images or snippets will be posted to these: all entries will be links to where the artists have posted the original work!
Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments about how to handle this series in the future and of what March 2023 works should be included in the next edition! Any creative pikmin fan work is welcome, so long as it was made during this March.
This will also be cross-posted to Pikmin Park!
With all that out of the way, here are our categories!
Multi-Page Fan Comics and Visual Ask Blogs
We only have one of these for this month, that being Pikmin x Weirdcore - a visual ask blog over on Tumblr! It's fairly surreal, but it's been a lot of fun thus far! Olimar, Louie, and the Koppaites have all crashed on PNF-404 (again) and have been separated (again). This time, however, it seems a beast that is other-worldly even to PNF-404 is after them now. Quick warning, the artist has stated that there will be violence, glitchy imagery, and body horror in this one!
Fan Art and One Page Comics
Aka the largest collection I've gathered this month!
Firstly is Professor Pikton by Buttery Cuties! A purple pikmin dressed up like Professor Layton to celebrate the upcoming games in both franchises, how cute!
Corromon drew this Olimin, which simply looks great! Poor Olimar certainly needs a hug, though.
Higgy also drew Olimar - two Olimars, in fact! The sketchy style and expressions are very pleasing to look at, and I adore his little boots.
Next up, Alph (rightfully) worries over Louie's eating habits in this short comic by Cirtus. The style closely resembles how the characters look in-game, which is a very nice cherry on top of how sweet and charming this two-panel comic is.
SparrowOvO drew this amazing art of a baby snagret sitting with a very spooked ice pikmin. I don't even know where to start with this one - the colors, lighting, texturing, and expressions are all just so good. This may easily be my favorite out of this month's fan art!
Zombunny drew three of our four new leaders with Oatchi! They're all so adorable, and this looks great (as for where our unnamed bald friend is, he is reportedly in jail for tax evasion, among other crimes. (For legal reasons, this is a joke.))
This next entry is apparently older art, but it wasn't posted until this February, so here's this really cool idea for a phosbat variant: the Beguiling Phosbat by vehemoth-phosbitch! This beautiful little beast can withstand sunlight and is based more so on the luna moth (and maybe the flying fox as well, but I may be wrong).
Louivi drew this gorgeous piece simply captioned as Smokey Progg. The colors, the textures, it's all so good an so very haunting. Perfect for the little horror that is the smokey progg in game!
And last but certainly not least is the only piece of fan art that didn't come from Tumblr: this beautiful art of all four of our new leaders hanging out, made by Porinu! They all look adorable, each with their own pose! I particularly like how our unnamed pink friend looks - she seems so curious and even innocent to a degree.
Fanfiction and Written Ask Blogs
Once again, I only have one piece for a category. This time, it is Safe in A Father's Embrace written by PiperRose90. This story may be very short, but it is also very sweet! Olimar must make sure that Louie and Alph will be okay for the night - they are practically his sons now, after all!
Other Works
Firstly is this amazing little sculpture of a pyroclasmic slooch by Tete's DIY! This video shows their process for making the little sculpture from start to finish - including how they made the "fire" really glow!
Creative Sushi did this wonderful little cosplay of the Hocotate Freight Ship! It looks fantastic, and all of the little details really show how much love and effort went into the creation of this cosplay.
Kevin Fagaragan animated this adorable concept for a pikmin 4 ending - don't worry, there's no spoilers! Just overwhelming cuteness as the pikmin hang out and dance with Oatchi.
And to wrap all of this up is yet another animation! In Wooden Turtle's Do Not Pet the Baby Snagrets, not even Olimar can resist how adorable these new additions to the pikmin planet are! But, ah, it seems that leads him into a bit of trouble...
Thanks for sticking around until the end! I hope I get to do more of this in the future, I really want to be able to show off what the fanbase can do! Please, give any and all of the artists featured here a follow - and feel free to suggest works to be featured next month! I'll see you on April 1st with the best of what March had to offer (with minimal fooling around... probably).
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madeofcc · 3 years ago
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Another Side : A new project by madeofcc
What if the most famous sims families had different lives ? Darker ones 

This halloween, I’ll be sharing a new short story I’m working on. This story will be the first of several that will all be focused on our most famous sims. I’ll play with different theme (most of them will be dark, mostly horror stories but I’ve also planned some funny ones) and try to keep it as short as I can so you won’t get lost.
First chapter will focused on the Goth family and you can already discover the synopsis right below !
“What happened to Bella Goth?!”
13 years after her disapearance, the question remains on everybody’s mind as Vlad Goth is releasing a new version of his best seller “Where’s Bella?” also becoming a new Simflix movie for this Halloween.
Meanwhile, Cass is finally going to be published but her editor finds out about her true identy and wants her to go on an investigation instead. Alex, on his side, still have weird intense nightmares 
 But what if it was something else ?
After years of running away, it is finally time for Cass and Alex to discover what happened to their mother 

Has Bella really been abducted ?
Coming on your dash this halloween
You can have a little sneak peek of what’s coming here but know that the story will be different . Consider this as the simflix trailer ;)
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hxseok-honee · 4 years ago
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atlas heart || part 25
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a/n : so sorry it took so long getting this update out !! i had a disgusting amount of work to do and i really was not doing anything else for a few days -- i really hope you like it!! pls lmk what you think about things now that jimin (and we) know everything! its gonna get,,,, i wanna say messy but messys not even enough to cover how messy its gonna get
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________________________________
Jimin can’t remember the last time he’d closed his eyes for more than a few minutes. Time goes by so fast these days that he’s partially convinced he’s been falling asleep and not realizing it. The hours between class and dinner every day are spent in the library, his headphones shoved into his ears haphazardly while he tunnel visions onto what’s been in the back of his mind since the beginning of the year.
Those spare hours had turned into days and days into weeks -- weekends where he doesn’t even glance at his phone, unaware of the growing concern of his friends. It’s almost May now, the chill of early spring having melted away around him without him realizing. His schoolwork stopped being a priority ages ago, and he knows his grades are really taking the hit for it. He vaguely remembers Namjoon confronting him one night some time ago -- a week? Two weeks ago? -- but he can’t for the life of him recall the contents of that conversation. Something about hating to play the ‘prefect card’, but having no choice. He doesn’t even know if he’s still on the quidditch team. It doesn’t matter -- nothing matters when seeing everything with the perspective he’s got now.
Practically buried in scrolls and books, Jimin could care less about the time and the fact that he’s very obviously breaking curfew right now -- the library’s been empty for hours now, and the light outside the window has well past faded into pitch black darkness. He had to hide from Pince around 10pm, barely managing to catch the click of the librarian’s heels through the music blasting in his headphones to keep him concentrated -- it’s a miracle that she hadn't caught him, really. He’d never be able to focus properly back in his room, not when he’s this close to putting the pieces together.
It’s there, right there, everything scattered in his brain. He knows it’s sitting right in front of him, he can feel himself trying to hyperfocus on anything that can blatantly tell him what he needs to know. Flipping through the pages of a book with one hand and shuffling through scrolls with his other, he glances down at a scrap of paper with his own handwriting, chicken-scratch on a ripped up piece of parchment for him to refer back to every few minutes. There, in black ink, the words ‘vampire’ and ‘veela’ are written and then, later, crossed out. There’s one below it -- ‘maledictus’ -- that remains uncrossed and haunts his every thought.
For the better half of the week, he’d spent his nights scouring the bookshelves for any text he could find on blood malediction -- there isn’t much to show for his efforts. Too rare a condition to have any extensive research done, he could barely manage to put together a few measly scrolls and one book with less than a full chapter on the subject. Sighing heavily, Jimin leans back in his chair, rubbing at his temples while he reconsiders the information for what feels like the hundredth time.
It fits the fact that she has a blood condition
 but it’s not right. There’s no mention of a potion or even of regularly experiencing sickness. Y/n is in the Hospital Wing like once a month. There wouldn’t be anything Pomfrey or Hoseok could do to help her if she was a maledictus

He considers that maybe those things are part of blood malediction and that there just isn’t enough documentation for him to verify it. But there’s something nagging at him, telling him this isn’t right. He thinks back over everything he knows, trying to pull up the major details that could help him finally get some sleep. Ignoring the fact that he very well could doze off, even with his loud ass music, he lets his eyes close so he can think. It takes a few minutes, but eventually he’s sitting up in his seat, eyes wide as he recalls something said to him almost months ago, forgotten amidst everything else on his mind.
“What’s the deal with your roommate, Tae?”
“Who, Stephen?”
“No, not fuckin’ Stephen -- Jungkook!”
“Well, how the hell was I supposed to know?”
“Because Stephen doesn’t look at me like I’m the bane of his existence.”
“Yeah
 I don’t know what you did to make Jeon Jungkook hate you, but it must have be serious--”
“Just tell me what you know about him, Tae.”
“I mean
 nothing crazy, really -- an only child, comes from old money. Probably as old as the Malfoys or the Potters. His family’s the purest of purebloods. And always Gryffindors, just like the Malfoys are always Slytherins. It’s kind of nuts, having a family history like that.”
Jimin stumbles out of his chair, already making his way down the aisles of bookshelves, almost crazed with concentration.
Purest of purebloods -- there’s not a single pureblood family that isn’t documented in a registry
 registry
 regis-- aha!
Turning down an aisle designated for family registries dating back centuries, he scans the shelves at a lightening speed, finally coming to a halt in front of a tome titled Gryffindor Legacies. Hauling it from the shelf, he doesn’t even bother returning to his table, taking a seat right there on the floor.
Flipping straight to the back to search for the family name, he locates it easily and heads to appropriate page. Searching the family tree down generations, it takes him several pages of flipping through Jungkook’s ancestors’ lives to finally get to his parents. They’re the most recent entry -- new editions of the book are printed with each new generation, the original, handwritten copy belonging to the respective families. It’s an inefficient system for sure, but Jimin’s not exactly complaining when he’s the one benefiting directly.
Scanning the page, from the birth of his mother -- Jeon Eunha -- to her school days, from her marriage to his father all the way to Jungkook’s birth. Jimin expects the next part to follow the same structure of his mother’s story, recounting his childhood, but it diverges from that almost immediately with some extra lines that he almost feels don’t exist in the original copy at the Jeon family residence.
Not long after the birth of their first and only child, they were met with circumstances leading to the adoption and care of another, the recently orphaned infant girl, Y/n Y/l/n. In her days at Hogwarts, young Eunha had become friends with a female Ravenclaw student, who had a noticeably sickly pallor about her at all times. She was to become her closest lifelong friend. The same night in which Y/l/n was to give birth to her first child, she and her husband met an untimely fate in the form of a violent animal attack in the backyard of their own home. The Jeon family were the first to arrive at the premises, deciding immediately to take in the infant child and raise her alongside their own son. Not much else is known about the girl, only that she and the Jeon heir were to become inseparable.
Jimin stares down at the page, unblinking. There’s a lot of information to process, but the things that stand out most to him are the fact that Y/n’s mother was also apparently afflicted with the same illness as Y/n, and --
‘Violent animal attack’? I knew the car accident thing was bullshit, but
 did her mom not even die in childbirth? Why would she not tell me
 there’s nothing suspicious about an animal atta--
Almost like his brain has started to short-circuit after the long nights and lack of sleep, Jimin’s thoughts are gone instantly, replaced by the mental image of a book sitting not a even a few aisles away, on a table littered with all of the information he’d ever needed in the first place. He’s completely incapable of registering anything around him as he races back to his table, his mind flipping incomprehensibly between the information in front of him and all of the pieces of his memories, details that make too much sense in this moment to match anything but this one conclusion.
Most Muggles, however, will die from the extent of their injuries
 all known instances of Muggle attacks have been portrayed in the media as ‘animal attacks’ so as to preserve the secrecy of the wizarding world

Given the extent of the available research and data, collected almost entirely from male subjects afflicted with lycanthropy, not much is known about the hereditary components related to a female werewolf. Therefore, it is unknown if a pregnant female werewolf's transformations would affect the ability to carry the pregnancy to term

Without any humans nearby to attack, or other animals to occupy it, the werewolf will attack itself out of frustration

“My mom died in childbirth and my dad
 just a
 just a freak accident you know, no one’s fault or anything
”
Because werewolves only pose a danger to humans, companionship with animals whilst transformed has been known to make the experience more bearable as the werewolf has no-one to harm and will be less willing to harm themselves

“You want to talk about forbidden, Jeon? Let’s talk about your illegal animagus status-”
The way one must imbibe it is very unique among potions, in that a goblet full of wolfsbane potion must be taken each day for a week preceding the full moon

“
you know how long it takes me to make a full set of vials for you. I barely have enough to make it last 3 days
”
The monthly transformation of a werewolf is extremely painful if untreated and is usually preceded and succeeded by a few days of pallor and ill health

“He was lowkey carrying her down the stairs
 she looked kinda sick actually
”
Throwing scrolls behind him without care as he searches for the one with the final detail, he pulls his phone out when he finds it -- a book listing all of the recorded moon cycles for over a century. Jamming his thumb down on the icon that’ll take him to his search engine and typing with blind panic, he finds himself yanking out his headphones by the cord with one sharp tug when the answer flashes back at it him on the screen, and he realizes that almost all of the pieces are in place.
The quidditch match against Slytherin -- it was the night before a full moon.
“No, no
 no, no, no, this can’t be right. This isn’t happening, this can’t be right, she can’t be--” Jimin remembers the text he’d sent to her almost 8 hours ago, sitting unanswered, and he moves without thinking. Slamming his hands down on either side of the moon cycle record, he flips frantically to the cycle for this current month, April of 1978. What he sees there has his heart dropping out of his chest.
“Next week? It’s next week? But that means she’d have to be feeling the effects of it this wee--” He’s cut off by the feeling of his phone buzzing in his pocket, and he reaches for it almost desperately. It’s Y/n, finally responding to his concerned texts with nothing more than a single line. His blood turns to ice when he reads it.
I’m fine, just feeling under the weather.
--
When Jimin bursts through the door of Dumbledore’s office just past 3am, the headmaster’s already seated at his desk, evidently waiting for him. He’s donning a light blue robe with a matching sleeping cap perched delicately on his head, suggesting to Jimin that he’d somehow woken up knowing he was soon to greet a guest. All of the panic invading Jimin’s body is masked just slightly by guilt, only now realizing how late it is and how intrusive he must seem in this moment.
“Mister Park, you certainly are out quite a bit past curfew, no?” Jimin stands in the doorway cradling all of the scrolls and books he’d been hoarding the last few weeks -- he can’t very well have left a huge pile of evidence back in the library. It would have taken no time at all for someone to look through it and see there were connections everywhere to lycanthropy, even if he himself had been blind to it for so long.
“... Park? Mister Park?” Jimin jumps, lifting his tired eyes to meet Dumbledore’s concerned ones. The man continues once he’s got Jimin’s attention. “Surely, you must need something from me, or you wouldn’t appear so
” He doesn’t finish his sentence. He doesn’t need to. Jimin’s aware of the state he’s in -- the dark rings under his eyes, his ruffled clothes and hair, the way he’s holding his books like he needs to protect them with his life. He looks unhinged. He feels unhinged.
Realizing he has absolutely no idea how to approach the subject of a potential werewolf at Hogwarts with the school’s very headmaster, Jimin decides to start by moving toward the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk.
Maybe I just need to sit down and take a deep breath. That should help--
He doesn’t even make it two steps before one of the many books he’s holding crashes to the floor between them, falling open to the page he’d stuck a pencil in to save his spot. The moon cycle for April of 1978 stares back up at him, and when he flicks his gaze up to peer at Dumbledore, he sees the headmaster’s expression has hardened with caution.
“Professor--”
“Have a seat, Mister Park.” Jimin’s heart lodges in his throat at Dumbledore’s tone, never having heard such a sharp edge to the kind man’s voice. He moves to the chair, setting the obnoxious amount of research haphazardly in his lap. His eyes will only go so far as the top of Dumbledore’s desk, unable to bring himself to meet the man’s eyes.
“Sir, I
 need to ask you something.” When he isn’t granted a response, he swallows hard, pushing forward. “If there were to be a student at Hogwarts with a
 peculiarity of sorts
 how would you go about dealing with that?”
“How would I deal with what, Mister Park?”
“That student.”
“I’m not quite sure I know what you mean.” Jimin lifts his eyes then, confused, but he’s met with a deliberately ignorant smile.
“Sir?” Dumbledore’s smile, albeit strained, only widens.
“I think you may be suffering from a lack of sleep, Mister Park. There are no students at Hogwarts with any peculiarities, as you call it.” Jimin stares suspiciously up at him, knowing Dumbledore can tell that Jimin doesn’t for a second believe that claim. Breaking eye contact, he glances down at his lap, trying to figure out how to keep this conversation going. Trying to figure out why he’s even here.
Jimin looks down at himself and the pile of incriminating evidence, cursing his idiocy when he realizes just how bad this situation must look. A student out of bed way past curfew, barging into the headmaster’s office holding weeks of research and making outrageous claims about a potentially dangerous student. And he’s a Ravenclaw no less.
Shit. He probably thought I was some nosy little fucker trying to expose her and get her expelled.
Knowing that he’s risking a lot by being straightforward, he takes a single deep breath and meets Dumbledore’s eyes, his own filled with determination.
“Sir, I know about Y/n Y/l/n, and I know you do, too. I need to know how to take care of her. I need to know how to help her. I need you to tell me what to do because, to be honest with you, I’m freaking out.” The way Dumbledore’s examining him as he speaks tells Jimin that he’s right, but more importantly, it tells Jimin that Dumbledore hadn’t been expecting him to want to help.
“That is a very serious accusation you’re making, Mister Park, especially in this political climate. Very serious.” Jimin doesn’t waver when he responds.
“I know, sir. That’s why you’re the only one I’ve made it to. Because I need your help. Because I know you can help.” Dumbledore narrows his eyes, peering at Jimin over the tops of his half-moon spectacles.
“Have you considered the fact that just you knowing this information at all has placed Miss Y/l/n in more danger than she’s already in?” As soon as the words leave Dumbledore’s mouth, Jimin’s heart is stopping in his chest. All the times that Hoseok and Jungkook had told him to mind his business come rushing back, and he feels himself becoming sick to his stomach. Of course it’s more dangerous for her now that he knows -- he’d been too selfish to even think it through, too nosy for his own good. He had done all this to try to understand her, to try to be a better friend who can help when she needs it, but it’s all bullshit. Everything he thought he had done for her sake had actually been for his. For him and his stupid curiosity.
Lifting his head as a thought comes to mind, Jimin doesn’t even think twice before speaking.
“Can you erase my memories?” The headmaster’s eyebrows fly to his hairline, his expression becoming amused as Jimin continues rambling. “Can’t you obliviate me or something? Wouldn’t that be the best way for me to help her? Wait
 but do you have to erase everything I know about her -- will I still know her? Can you make sure I still know her? I really like her! I don’t like Hoseok or Jungkook very much -- they kind of scare me -- but I like her! I don’t want to forget her, but also if me knowing that she’s a werewolf is only going to cause her more trouble, then I really think you should make me forget--” Dumbledore lifts his hand calmly, effectively silencing a frantic Jimin.
“Have you always had such a one-track mind, Mister Park?” Jimin smiles weakly, offering a half-joking response.
“It’s my only redeeming Ravenclaw quality
” Dumbledore chuckles before scratching at his forehead with a heavy sigh.
“Unfortunately -- and I do truly mean that -- I cannot erase a student’s memories. So, you and I will need to continue this difficult conversation.” Jimin considers the man’s words, knowing that it really would be better for everyone if he had his mind wiped clean and hating that he’d unknowingly put Y/n even more in harm’s way. He looks up when Dumbledore sighs again.
“Mister Park, you do understand that you are strictly forbidden from informing anyone else of this situation, yes?” When Jimin nods immediately, opening his mouth to assure the man that he wouldn’t say a word, Dumbledore only shakes his head. “No, Mister Park, I’m not sure you really understand. This situation is infinitely more complicated than you could ever imagine, so it is absolutely imperative that you keep this information to yourself.” Jimin blinks, unsure what’s meant by ‘infinitely more complicated’, but he nods again.
“I’ve put her in enough danger just by being here, Sir -- I’m not breathing a word of this to anyone.” Dumbledore examines him a moment longer, essentially staring into Jimin’s soul to gauge his trustworthiness. Eventually he nods, leaning back in his chair.
“What advice would you like me to give you, Mister Park?” Jimin stays silent, thinking hard about any way that he can make Y/n’s life easier, especially after all the trouble he’s caused up to now. His mind flashes back to the conversation he’d overheard in the library. He opens his mouth slowly, choosing his words with care.
“Sir
 how does a student that isn’t even taking Potions know how to brew the wolfsbane potion? Isn’t it nearly impossible?” Jimin sees Dumbledore’s eyes flicker with recognition, and the headmaster responds cautiously.
“
If that student isn’t taking any kind of Potions course at all, they’d need to already be an expert from having dedicated all their studies to the art of potionmaking. They would also need an immense amount of private mentoring, even if they are taking Potions. We do not teach the wolfsbane potion in the curriculum. As I’m sure you can imagine, it wouldn’t fare well in these times
” Jimin squints, putting the pieces together quickly in his mind.
“And where would a student like that find this kind of
 private mentoring?” The headmaster hums at Jimin’s question, peering down at him with knowing eyes.
“Well, Mister Park, if you wish to receive mentoring on much
 safer forms of potionmaking, I’m sure Professor Slughorn would be happy to help you. However, if you are asking me about Mister Jung Hoseok of Slytherin House, and if you are wondering just how he became capable of caring for Miss Y/l/n at the young age of 13, well
 you’re looking at his mentor.”
--
When Jimin leaves Dumbledore’s office almost an hour later, he feels like his head is going to explode. The nights of sleeplessness seem to also have come rushing back to him at once, and he’s not sure if he’s going to collapse first from the exhaustion or from the weight of everything he knows now. For a moment, he considers that maybe he really should ask someone to erase his memories -- Jungkook or Hoseok, perhaps.
Yeah, I’m sure they’d absolutely love to do me that favor.
Dragging his feet as he trudges down the corridor in the direction of Ravenclaw tower, Jimin stops short at a window when movement down by the Black Lake catches his eye. Almost as if thinking about them has caused them to materialize before him, Jimin watches the silhouette of Jung Hoseok stroll casually down by the shoreline, followed not long after by Jeon Jungkook racing toward him, a body perched precariously on his back. It’s not hard to see that Y/n’s clinging weakly to him as he runs, her arms wrapped around his shoulders as he keeps his hands hooked under her knees. Jimin can see that she’s got a gown on from the Hospital Wing, and it’s obvious that Jungkook and Hoseok have snuck her out from under Madam Pomfrey’s stern supervision.
They head for the Forbidden Forest, Y/n reaching back for Hoseok when Jungkook passes him. She beckons him forward, and Jimin watches as the three of them disappear together into the trees. He sighs deeply when he can no longer see them, muttering to himself under his breath as he makes his way to his room, overcome with extreme guilt at the entire situation.
“You’ve really gone and done it now, you fucking idiot.”
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danyka-fendyr · 5 years ago
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Absence of Good - 6
Chapter 6: Take Your Troubles and Double Them
Okay so it’s a long time coming but here it is! I took so long writing this because honestly I was just super burned out and dreading writing it. So a part of this was written in small increments, but then today I actually wanted to write, so I sat down and -imagine this- just wrote it. Now I know I just did a fic where characters get injured but well... If two characters are two halves of a whole, the perfect yin and yang to each other, when the one gets hurt should not the other also get hurt? ...and I needed it for plot reasons because we’re finally to the point in this story where I’m storyboarding. Anyway, I hope it’s up to snuff since I actually edited this time.
Taglist: @dreamwritesimagines @rhabakoli
AoG Taglist: @pancakefancake @prettyboyspenerrr @youreasnack @alioop3818
Wordcount: 
Warnings: Extremely dark themes. Violence against children. Death and murder. Death of children. Torture. 
“Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain.”
-Patrick Rothfuss
           You were sitting in the bullpen, working on not working. Technically you were supposed to be writing up reports, but it was early April and everybody had spring fever. There wasn’t a single member of the BAU who was actually doing what they were supposed to except maybe Hotch.
“Hey, Garcia, I’ve got a fun fact for you,” you said.
“Am I going to like it or is it about serial killers?”
“You’re going to like it.”
“Then fire away!” Garcia beamed at you.
“Did you know that the average human needs at least 8 hugs a day to maintain oxytocin levels?”
Garcia looked like the cat that ate the canary. “So what you’re saying is
it’s actually beneficial for me to declare group hug time!”
Immediately she latched onto you with an enthusiasm that could only be achieved by one Penelope Garcia, and with a glare that dared the rest of the team not to come join in.
Some people might be surprised that Spencer was the first to join, but the people who knew him knew better. While the Doctor might seem stiff and awkward from afar, once he got comfortable with people he could be quite warm and affectionate. It just might take a few months or
years. Either way Spencer had no reservations about snuggling into you, and his head was a surprisingly good fit on your shoulder.
It didn’t take the rest of the team long to join in, cocooning you in an envelope of human warmth.
“Does this count as my eight hugs for the day since there’s like, a dozen people hugging me right now?”
“There are exactly 6 people hugging your right now and no,” Spencer said. “It has to be chest to chest contact to count as a full hug.”
“So this counts as no hugs?” You asked, disappointed.
“Don’t worry sugar plum, I’d be more than happy to provide you with an unlimited supply. Whenever you need a hug you just let me know,” Garcia said, patting you on the head as the group hug disbanded.
Not a moment too soon either as Hotch walked in to announce a new case. Nothing like murder to raise your oxytocin levels.
 Hotch made the briefing short and sweet, as he always did. There was a series of child abductions happening in Pennsylvania, which meant time was of the essence now more than ever.
“This unsub is escalating at a rate we couldn’t have possibly foreseen. He’s quickly getting desperate and has already shown himself to be deeply unpredictable. Amongst his victims is now 22-year-old Alicia, a nanny to one of the children he abducted. This unsub will go through anything or anyone to achieve his goal, and the murder of Alicia Bennet shows no signs of remorse anywhere in the body positioning or methodology. Wheels up in 10.”
You could feel the panic hit you like a shot of whiskey, burning in the pit of your stomach. You tried to control it though. Panic always came with this job, but it was harder with unsubs like this. Fast moving and unpredictable and ruthless. Something in you knew before you ever stepped foot on the jet that this one would haunt your nightmares.
Spence noticed your distress immediately, finding it in the jittery way you grabbed your go-bag and the shaking hands that made you a cup of tea on the plane before you sat down by yourself to think while the rest of the team brainstormed. After giving his contributions, he was quick to join you.
“It’s eating you alive, isn’t it?” He asked.
You looked up at those soft brown eyes and knew there was no use lying to him. He always knew exactly what you were feeling. You communicated in a language you didn’t even know, in the quirk of his mouth and the skim of his fingertips and the curve of your spine and the whispers of your breathing. A tacet tryst all your own.
“I don’t like time crunches.”
He accepts that as an answer and an end to the conversation. Except there is never an end to your conversations anymore. The silence just stretches into a requiem of every word between the two of you, a living, breathing thing still. Which means there is nothing awkward about you interrupting it, because the conversation is still going.
“Do you ever wish you’d just
taken a gap year? Or several gap years? You certainly had the time.” You laugh a little bit.
Spencer’s answer is fast enough that you know already what he will say.
“I thought about it once. After everything with my Mom
I almost did.”
“So what stopped you?”
“Well I brought up the idea to my Mom and her reaction was basically that I would give up what I loved over her dead body.” Spence huffed a smile, looking at you out of the corner of his eye. “What about you? You had the time to take a gap year too. Why not?”
You leaned back against the smooth leather of the jet seat behind you.
“I thought about it. When I was 16 I had this brief ambition to take a gap year to be an occupational therapists assistant.”
“That’s not even a real gap year!” Spencer elbowed you teasingly before going serious again. “So why didn’t you?”
“Well to say my parents thought it was the worst idea I’d ever had would be an understatement. I pitched them the whole scheme, you know? I would go and get my associates degree and then I could use that to get the job and train for a year then help pay my way through college while I was getting my psychology degree. They said that if I stopped for a year though I would never go back to school and get my bachelor’s and then it would all be a waste. So, here I am.”
Spencer was quiet for a moment, thoughtful as he always was. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to go after your dreams.”
“It’s okay. I’m happy to be here, so it all turned out for the best.”
Hesitantly, Spencer’s hand came to rest over yours on the armrest. “I’m happy you’re here too.”
You turned your face away from him, but you were unable to stop your eyes flicking back to him, your breath coming too fast for a different reason now. There were certain lines that coworkers just didn’t cross, and you and Spencer
you had been skirting those lines for quite a while. This was just a new way to push the limits.
 You should have known right away that it would be a bad idea to try to go undercover. There was a reason you didn’t go undercover in your line of work, the reason being it was stupid. But the best way to catch this guy might just be to masquerade as a nanny for a child that you were almost certain he would target. What made you so certain? Well, she was his after all.
Eventually, Garcia had pieced together enough clues to determine that your killer was a Mr. Derek Mayner and that he had a young daughter who had been adopted by an upper middle-class family. Her mother had hid her existence from him, but you could only assume he had found out since the girl’s mother had been killed when she was only two in a way that fit your killer’s style all too well. Unfortunately for Mayner but fortunately for Gina, his daughter, he was put in prison shortly after that for drug possession and a series of other crimes including aggravated assault and a few other more minor charges. Once Garcia discovered that it was easy to draw a connection between the girls who looked eerily like Mayner’s daughter, as well as Alicia Bennet’s resemblance to her mother, the chilling cherry on top of this case.
Gina’s adopted parents had agreed to let you pose as a nanny, as the other option was leaving their daughter almost entirely unguarded against her serial killer father. You had been the obvious pick from the team as you were the only one who was young enough to be a truly believable nanny. And who would suspect sweet little you was hiding a gun inside your purse?
In theory, everything should have gone off without a hitch. The adopted parents would go out for dinner at the same time they always did on Saturday, their standing date, leaving you with Gina. You would be wired, and so when the unsub broke into the house trying to abduct the sweet 4-year-old girl in your care you would speak your codeword and the team would come back you up while you got Gina to safety.
In theory, the unsub didn’t take you by surprise.
In theory, the unsub didn’t come out of nowhere and shove you into a glass coffee table.
In theory, your mic didn’t break.
In theory, you didn’t get abducted with a 4-year-old girl you were supposed to protect.
Everything was better in theory.
 You came to groggily, trying to gain your bearings. Everything hurt but breathing especially. The first thing you realized was that you had probably broken a rib. Well, not you. Derek Mayner had broken your rib. Wait
the unsub. Where was Gina?
You looked around in a panic, causing a sharp, stabbing pain to shoot through your chest before you caught sight of her. She was slumped unconscious just off to your right, and it looked like her tiny little body had been drugged. Something to keep her docile while Daddy dearest kidnapped her.
She stirred slightly, coming out of her drugged haze slowly. She blinked up at you with wide chocolate colored eyes for a moment before quickly bursting into tears. That was bad. That was very bad.
Before she could attract her father’s attention, you quickly pulled her into your lap, holding back a scream from the pain in your ribs.
“There now, it’s alright sweetheart.”
You doubted you looked like it was alright. You could feel the scratches littering your face and body, and you were sure there were some shards of glass stuck through your arms, fibers laced through your face. It didn’t get better when you failed to calm her.
“Take your hands off my daughter.” Mayner growled at you, slamming the door open.
“I’m just trying to calm her do-”
“I said take your hands off her!” He screamed, reaching around her to hit you.
The blow landed weakly, but the pain of it was increased by the injuries you had already sustained. It jarred Gina out of your arms, which only made her cry harder, her distress increasing. Mayner roared, furious.
“Look what you did!”
That was when your pain really began.
He dragged you out to a barn at the edge of the property, an abandoned house he had been keeping you and Gina in. Grabbing chains that implied a sickening amount of premeditation and perhaps more kills than you had given him credit for, he strung you up from the rafters, your toes barely dangling from the floor. With your broken ribs, the agony was unspeakable.
Mayner’s past kills had been fast, more business-like than most of the unsubs you dealt with. His primary focus had been getting his daughter, and his aggressive tendencies took a backseat to that. Now that he had her though, he was free to explore. And explore he did.
It seemed like the pain was never ending, exploding across your body. In the back of your mind you noted that it probably meant something that Mayner’s preferred weapons were knives, and he really liked stabbing. You clung to that, trying to escape to a different mindscape.
In your head, you were on the jet, discussing a case. Your case, since apparently you could only get so far removed from your current situation.
“Impotent, most likely,” Rossi said casually.
“That would explain the stabbing, but not the daughter. You think his impotency happened in the two-year gap where he was in jail?” Morgan asked.
“It’s possible.” Emily leaned forward in your mental rendition of the jet. “That would explain the obsession with his daughter. As far as he knows, she’s the only child he’ll ever have.”
“That makes sense. A man’s children are his legacy, and a man like Mayner would be obsessed with taking control of that.” Hotch nodded.
Mayner dragged the knife up your side, and your mental vision blurred red hot. You tried to focus, tried to bring it back, but it hurt. Gosh, it hurt so bad. You scrambled for any memory you could reach, any happier, higher place. Your brain supplied you with an unexpected one. You remembered Spencer telling you a story of when an old unsub he and Hotch had interrogated in jail tried to kill them. Spencer had talked him out of it by asking one simple question.
You took a jagged breath. “Do you want to know why you did it? Why you killed all those girls?”
Mayner froze, and a wild hope sprang up in you.
“I mean, that’s not like you, right? You’ve committed a lot of crimes, sure, but you’re not a murderer.”
If you could just string him out long enough, the team would come for you. You knew they would. They had to.
“I did it for my daughter. You wouldn’t understand.”
“But I think I do understand Derek. Because you didn’t have to kill all those little girls. But you did it anyway, didn’t you? And you liked it, right? I can tell you why if you just put the knife down.”
“What would you know about me? You’re just a nanny.” He spat in your face.
You tried to hold back your disgust, not to let any weakness show. “I’m a psychologist. I work for the FBI, and I was assigned to go undercover and protect your daughter. And do you know why they picked me? Because they knew, they knew that I would understand you Derek. That I’m the only one who can.”
“What do you know about me?” He demanded, lowering the knife ever so slightly.
“I know that it started with Gina’s mother, right? She was the first person you’d ever really killed. And when you did, there was such a rush, wasn’t there? You would do anything to get that kind of high again. It was better than the drugs, better than anything you’d ever done before. So then you wanted to do it again. But more than that, you wanted your daughter back. So what did you do? You went after your daughter, like any good father. But in the process, you couldn’t control your appetite, could you? You had to kill. But you could have killed anyone, anything. So what do we have to ask ourselves now?”
The barn exploded, and you could have cried with relief.
“FBI! Put the knife down now!” That was Morgan’s voice, strong and authoritative.
Derek didn’t put up much of a fight. Sure, he liked murdering people, but he also liked staying alive. You had broken before he was even cuffed.
Tears poured down your face, the excruciating pain and relief washing over you.
“Get me down,” you begged, a mantra rolling out of you over and over again. “Get me down. Get me down.”
It was Spencer who raced to your side, gently extricating you from your chains. Who caught you as you collapsed, yelping in pain.
“I need a medic here! Now!” Panic laced his voice, and you dimly registered that you had never heard Spencer this afraid before.
“G-Gina, is she?”
“She’s fine. Just breathe, okay? You’re going to be okay.” Spencer’s warm hands cupped your face, and you realized you were freezing.
“I’m, I’m okay Spence,” you tried to say through stuttering breaths. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Medic!” Spencer’s voice was a frantic demand now, but it was getting dimmer.
You vaguely registered Mayner, begging you for an answer as Morgan dragged him away.
“Why?” He asked. “Tell me why.”
You coughed, which hurt, but seemed to come secondary to the hot blood dripping down your chin. Summoning up all of your remaining strength, you looked Mayner in the eye in a last act of bravado.
“I have no idea.”
Then you passed out.
 You came to for the second time in what you guessed was 24 hours, except this time you were in a hospital wing.
“Mmmm,” you murmured quietly, shifting in your bed. “Is that morphine I feel?”
You heard Spencer chuckle to your left. “Actually, it’s fentanyl. They tried to give you morphine, but I convinced them fentanyl would be better.”
“And by that he means he bullied the poor nurse into giving you the good drugs,” Garcia said from your other side.
You laughed weakly, but that definitely still hurt. Guess the drugs could only do so much.
“Okay Penelope, you’re going to have to stop being funny now because that hurt.”
It seemed you had unintentionally caused the blonde distress as tears sprang to her eyes and she leaned forward to give you a very gentle makeshift hug.
“Oh, I’m just so happy you’re okay! Spencer’s been sleeping in hospital chairs for the past two days and we were all so worried! About you, obviously, not him, although we were kind of worried about him too because he already slouches so much and-”
“Spencer!” You frowned over at him. “Go home.”
“No.”
“Yes. You’ve been sleeping here for two days? That’s insane. You’re going home and you’re going to take a bath or shower, whichever you prefer, and then you’re going to eat some real non-hospital food, and then you’re going to sleep for 9 hours in a real bed.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Spencer protested.
“Which was all well and good when I was asleep and flirting with death, but now I’m awake and I feel fine. Which means you need to go take care of yourself.”
“But what if they try to give you morphine instead of fentanyl? Or what if they don’t run the right tests or they miss something that I would have seen or what if-”
You precariously turned so that you were facing him better, wincing slightly as you did so. “Or what if you went home and rested and let Garcia and the rest of the team take good care of me, and then you came back tomorrow?”
“She’s right, boy wonder. In your current state of delusionalness, you wouldn’t be able to catch anything the doctors supposedly missed anyway. Come on, I’m having Morgan drive you home.”
Before he could complain further, Penelope ushered him out of your hospital room, leaving you alone with the strong scent of hand sanitizer and latex gloves, under the bright white lights that were sure to give you a migraine if you kept staring at them. So you turned to the only other option left. You closed your eyes, stopped staring at the cursed lights, and went to sleep.
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
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snowdice · 5 years ago
Text
Masterpost (Old As Of 4/7/20)
If you would just like to see all of my writing, I tag everything with #adriana writes on my blog. Click here for everything in chronological order of my posting. Click here for my AO3 account.
Completed fics are marked complete in their summary.
Sanders Sides:
The Prison You Deserve: (On hiatus while I edit the Sometimes Labels Fail Prequel Fic “Gaps in his Files.”) Virgil should have known better. Trying to help only ever ended badly for him. After a misunderstanding, Virgil gets thrown into the most infamous prison across all of the kingdoms, where the most evil criminals are thrown to get what they deserve at the hands of nightmarish creatures from the void. Luckily (for once) Virgil really didn’t deserve it. Trusting that this isn’t just a cruel trick and he isn’t actually going to be tortured though is going to take a while. (In which Patton is a eldritch horror, telepathic nightmare, and still is the sweetest thing on the planet and off it.)
AO3  Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Is There Anything Left of Patton?: (Zombie AU; One-Shot Series)
Logan has a secret in his basement. Three months into living with him, Virgil finds that secret. He almost wishes the secret was a simple as he first thought it was. Almost.
AO3 
Something Left 
Someone You’ll Never Meet
Food You’ll Never Eat
Things You’ll Never Do
There are Things You Have Lost 
There Are Things That Are Missing 
Labeled Universe (A Superhero AU)
Sometimes Labels Fail: (Complete) Logan was good at labels, at categories. Logan sorted the citizens of his city into 6 different categories in his mind: heroes, villains, vigilantes, criminals, government authorities, and civilians, and knew how to deal with each. But
 but what was he supposed to do with him. Virgil was just trying to survive, though he didn’t think the part of him that compelled him to throw himself into fights whenever he saw the superhero Bluebird struggling had gotten the memo. His English teacher was right; he really was stupid. When the villain criminal
 when Shadow Caster gets injured while throwing himself into the line of fire for Logan, Logan can’t find it in himself to turn him over to be arrested. Luckily, he knows a doctor very, very well. Virgil is going to get kidnapped adopted by the end of it.
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features 
Sometimes Labels Shift: (Post Sometimes Labels Fail stories)
Two Dinner Plates: (One-shot: Complete) A muscle ticked in Logan’s jaw and Virgil tried not to flinch. “We seem to be coming from fundamentally different philosophies on how food should be distributed in a family structure.” In which we finally actually talk about Virgil’s thingℱ with food. It goes about how one would expect it to.
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Back to School: (One-shot: Complete) It’s Virgil’s first day back to school after everything and he has some adjustments to make.Aka a blatant excuse to enact the hug Virgil initiative.
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Sticky Note Pandemonium:   (One-shot: Complete) There were also sticky notes on the kitchen counter, the refrigerator, Virgil’s backpack, and even the oven, not to mention every wall. There was even one sticky note stuck on Logan’s butt.His husband had gone on a rampage.
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Arguments and other ‘A’ Words: (One-shot: Complete) Logan and Virgil have a row. Virgil’s new family has a weird way of fighting.
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The Things We Haven’t Talked About: (Complete) Patton and Logan have noticed some concerning behavior from Virgil in their month with him. Beyond the flinching and haunted look in his eyes courtesy of his last foster father, there’s something else of concern for Patton and Logan and they really aren’t equipped to deal with it. They enlist some help from a couple of friends.
AO3 Part 1 Part 2
Wind Symphony (One-shot: Complete) Patton and Logan are still trying to figure out how to be parents and are worried about strange behavior coming from their new son as of late. Logan takes measures to figure out what is wrong.
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Coffee and Cinnamon Rolls (One-shot: Complete)  Remy meets his best friend/bosses new child and immediately has the must protect at all cost urges.
Virgil’s Birthday:  (Complete) Virgil has his first birthday with Logan and Patton and he’s going to get everything he ever wanted.
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Mini Fic Series: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven
Relabeled; Refiled: (Prequels to Sometimes Labels Fail)
Coffee Shop Meet Cute  (One-shot: Complete) Is this what falling in love felt like or was Patton just about to pass out from exhaustion? Patton and Logan’s first meeting in the Sometimes Labels Fail Universe.
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Coffee Shop Incident Report  (One-shot: Complete) Patton and Logan’s first meeting in the Sometimes Labels Fail Universe, but what Logan put in his files about it afterwards.
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The Things We Never Mentioned  (Complete)  “Believe it or not, academia and relationships are not mutually exclusive.” That was likely true, Logan knew. It was also not the problem. The problem was his ability to move things with his mind, a blue suit he kept in his bag, and the mountains of red files he kept hidden in his apartment. No one knew that Logan was Bluebird, the cities resident superhero. He hadn’t even told his parents and he wasn’t planning on doing so. Sharing such a secret with anyone was a danger to everyone involved. He refused to do so. At the same time, he knew that starting a romantic relationship with anyone who didn’t know the truth, was unfair to that person. Inevitably they would find out and there would be a disastrous fallout, but beyond that, starting a relationship on a foundation of lies was a horribly cruel thing to do to another person. These two conflicting rules Logan followed had never posed an issue for him before recently, but
But he did like Patton.
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 
Logan’s 25 Step Plan to Ask a Boy Out: (One-Shot: Complete) “No! Logan look,” she said. “He likes you and you like him. You don’t need a list or a plan or schematics for this. Just walk up to him and ask him out before you hesitate so much that he thinks you don’t like him anymore.” | Logan’s eyes widened. “Is that something that can happen.” | “Oh god, this is hopeless.” | How is Logan so good at, but simultaneously so bad at this?
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Gaps in His Files: Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them? 
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Epilogue
The Origin Story of a Yapping Mop: (One-Shot: Complete) Virgil was not the first living creature Logan carried in his arms to Patton. This is how they ended up with a dog.
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Cops and Not Robbers AU:
You I’ll Come Back For: (Complete) They’d met in a jail cell, you see, but unlike now Patton had not been anywhere near trapped, not that Virgil had been aware of that fact. He’d just seen his sweet little cell mate who’d clearly not done anything to deserve being on that side of the bars. Virgil had said “What did you do to get stuck in this joint?” and Patton had started crying. It had taken zero lies and five hours for Patton to coax out the information he’d needed. He’d thought when he’d pranced up to the bars and told Roman he was ready to leave that the absolutely astonished expression which was quickly slipping into fury would be the last thing he’d ever see of the man whose crimes numbered enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. He’d escaped during his transfer to federal prison. (This was a dice fic. It also appears below!)
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Mistaken Identities: (One-Shot: Complete) Roman was just walking out of an ice-cream shop when an unfamiliar man’s irate voice made him pause mid lick and look up. “Dammit Remus, I told you to meet me two blocks that way and you’re getting ice cream?” | Now as an identical twin, especially one with a brother who had a
 certain personality, he wasn’t exactly unused to this sort of thing happening. So, he promptly opened his mouth to say, “Oh no I’m not
” | “Remus, I don’t care right now,” he interrupted. “Get in the car.” | “But-” | The man snapped his fingers and a hand descended on his shoulder. “Get him in the car.” | Roman meets Deceit and later Logan when he is mistaken for his brother who is apparently doing SOMETHING with his life.
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Dilemmas One-Shots
Moral Dilemmas: (One-shot) “But that doesn’t make any sense!” he yelled.| “Patton,” Remus said evenly.|“It doesn’t!” he screamed turning on him viciously. “There’s a big difference between not being sad someone’s dead and
 and
 and no! No! I wouldn’t be okay with seeing someone I hated die. I wouldn’t!”| “Yes, you would,” Remus said, standing up himself. He pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You would! And you know you would! Do you think you are the only one who can get a read on another side when functions cross? Those thoughts in your head are my domain and I knew exactly what you were feeling when I asked that question!” Virgil was forcibly summoned immediately, eyes wide. Patton and Remus have a philosophical discussion and then will have to deal with the fall out.
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Ethical Reasoning: (One-shot: Complete) “What happened Remus?” Remus looked at him for a moment and then slammed the door in his face. “Okay,” Logan growled at the closed door. “I’ve had about enough of this. ”Everyone else has to deal with the fallout from the end of Moral Dilemmas. It isn’t pretty.
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Mismatched High Heel Shoes: (One-shot: Complete) The boys are having fun. (This was for the #magpie500 event.)
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Roll the Dice Event:
Buckets of Roses: (One-shot: Complete) As far as anyone knew, Logan was supposed to be in class right now. Which begs the question of why and how Roman is now in his room with him. (“And now that I have explained why I am currently in my own dorm room, would you care to explain why you are here?” “Not, um, not particularly.”)
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Touch Me Gently: (Complete) He had a total of four soulmarks: not an unheard-of thing, but rather rare. There were purple fingerprints on his wrist, looking like a day-old bruise from where someone had grabbed him too hard. What his mother had seen when he’d entered the kitchen was actually two soulmarks that overlapped slightly: a light blue one that darkened his lips and a yellow handprint that covered the lower parts of his cheek and jaw. The ring finger and the tip of the pinkie hit his lip, mixing with the blue to look like a sickly greenish-yellow bruise. What his dad had seen peaking out of the top of his t-shirt was a dark blue mark in the shape of fingers around his neck. Roman had been overjoyed when he realized what the marks were after the initial confusion. His parents had been a little less enthusiastic. (Roman meets his soulmates one-by-one and it’s not at all what everyone assumed when they first saw his soulmarks.)
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features
Markups: (One-shot, Complete) Roman leered down at him, clearly incredibly pleased with himself. “You,” he said as Logan did his best to swallow down the rest of his laughter, “have been criticizing my work all day. Which is basically like you’ve been criticizing me. So
why don’t I return the favor?” He wiggled the uncapped pen in front of Logan’s nose. “You wouldn’t dare,” Logan said lowly. (Logan and Roman do some editing.)
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Moral Dilemmas: (One-shot) “But that doesn’t make any sense!” he yelled.| “Patton,” Remus said evenly.|“It doesn’t!” he screamed turning on him viciously. “There’s a big difference between not being sad someone’s dead and
 and
 and no! No! I wouldn’t be okay with seeing someone I hated die. I wouldn’t!”| “Yes, you would,” Remus said, standing up himself. He pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You would! And you know you would! Do you think you are the only one who can get a read on another side when functions cross? Those thoughts in your head are my domain and I knew exactly what you were feeling when I asked that question!” Virgil was forcibly summoned immediately, eyes wide. Patton and Remus have a philosophical discussion and then will have to deal with the fall out.
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You I’ll Come Back For: (Complete) They’d met in a jail cell, you see, but unlike now Patton had not been anywhere near trapped, not that Virgil had been aware of that fact. He’d just seen his sweet little cell mate who’d clearly not done anything to deserve being on that side of the bars. Virgil had said “What did you do to get stuck in this joint?” and Patton had started crying. It had taken zero lies and five hours for Patton to coax out the information he’d needed. He’d thought when he’d pranced up to the bars and told Roman he was ready to leave that the absolutely astonished expression which was quickly slipping into fury would be the last thing he’d ever see of the man whose crimes numbered enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. He’d escaped during his transfer to federal prison.
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
The Horror of Stereotypes: There had always been a certain stereotype about people like him for as long as anyone could remember. After the Heart War of 1963, those stereotypes had been legalized and places like this had been created to enforce the universal truth: everyone had a soulmate. One soulmate. No more and no less. At least they were supposed to. When Remus’s brother gets arrested because of his two soulmarks, Remus risks everything by infiltrating the facility he legally should be in as well due to his own two soulmates to save him. There he meets Logan and it turns out they have a lot in common: they both got hired this week, they both have two soulmates, and they’re both here for the same reason. Oh. And as it turns out, they’re each other’s soulmates too.
AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features
Remains of Memories: (One-Shot: Complete) Patton is about to graduate high school. As his life changes, he figures it’s time to confront some memories with the people he loves. 
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Tea, Cookies, and Handcuffs: (One-Shot: Complete) Logan finds a strange man on his property and of course invites him in for tea.
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toastscraps · 6 years ago
Text
Princess
Written for the Discord Prompt “Flowers”.
One Way or Another: > 500 words, < 1.5k words: yes
In the fields of Hyrule: yes
Disclaimer: @jojo56830 owns @linkeduniverse, and Nintendo owns the characters. I just play with them.
Warnings: Poor attempt at humor, little editing, slightly OOC
Summary: Sky is hopeless.
               Sky couldn’t stop smiling. They were in his Hyrule. It wasn’t as populous as the others’, but it was his. It had the Hylia statue and a camp of large tents for tools, supplies, and dwelling. One was the guest tent, which tonight would be fuller than it had ever been. But that wasn’t what made his world the best. No, there was something, or rather someone, who made all lands pale in comparison.
               “So you say this area is about a month’s journey to the west?” Her voice dripped like golden beams of honey from a benevolent sun, small pale fingers dancing across charcoal-marked papyrus.
               “Yeah; I don’t know the latitude though.”
               “Oh Link! I’m so amazed at all you found! While you were there did you happen to see a flower like this?” She reached for something in her pile of papers and held it out. “Oh, wait, not this one; just a sec,” her sun-bleached hair swung outward as dug through the stack. “Ah, here it is.” Delicate hands held a sketch of a five petalled bloom with long, green sepals. Its white corona flaunted a blue center, lacy leaves sprouting from the stem and ringing its base.
               “No, I don’t think I have
”
               Zelda sighed. Sky felt his own mood fall at her dejection. He didn’t like disappointing her. Her blue eyes became distant. “I wish I could find it. I saw it on my travels with Impa, but
 while you were gone it haunted my dreams.
               “I’d love to find it. It’s the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen,” was what Zelda really said.
               What Sky heard instead was, “I have a new mission for you; find this most beautiful flower and bring it back.” Zelda mentioned something about dinner and left. Sky sighed happily and grabbed her drawing of the flower. It would be best to start early.
               The sun was high in the sky and he had his map of their world; he could scour Faron Woods and add more to the map before nightfall. Sky began to hum the Ballad of the Goddess as he nearly skipped. When he got back, he would propose to her. They would build a life here
maybe have a couple kids

               “Hey, Birdbrain!” Sky turned to find Legend standing there, fists on his hips. “Time wants you to
 what’s wrong with your face?”
               “My face?”
               “Yeah, you look like a bloomin’ idiot.” Sky felt his mouth stretch wider. “Oh Nayru, we should never have left you two alone. Anyway, Time–”
               “Sorry Legend, I’m on a mission,” Sky turned from his friend and continued on his way to the bird statue.
               “Hey! Don’t ignore me!” Sky unfolded his sailcloth as Legend trotted after him.
               “I’ll see you later,” he called, raising the cloth as a strong updraft shot from the statue. His shoulders jerked and he was pushed into the air with a whoop. Once he was high enough he whistled. A familiar companion swooped underneath his body and caught him. It was good to be back. “Alright, let’s go get that flower.”
                              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
               “He just
 left! Into the sky! Without any warning!” Legend wasn’t freaking out. He wasn’t.
               “That’s strange; he usually likes going with Wild to get supplies.”
               “
 No one likes going with Wild to get supplies, Time.” Legend ignored Wild’s affronted gasp and continued, “Besides, I didn’t get a chance to tell him that.”
               “He shouldn’t have gone alone. He knows better.”
               “I don’t think he was thinking very clearly. He was grinning like a love-struck Featherhead!”
               Hyrule placed an awkward hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay. He’ll be back soon.”
               “No, that’s the thing! He said he had this ‘mission’ and just took off! What could be more important than the one we’re on now?”
               “It’ll be okay.”
               “Stop saying that!”
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                 Sky circled around Faron Woods once more in the dying light. “Alright, I don’t think it’s here,” he frowned. The crimson Loftwing sighed. “Oh well. I suppose we should probably stop for the night.” His bird landed in a clearing on the ground and he dismounted. His partner huffed and roused before settling. Sky leaned against the wall of plush feathers. “I’ll search farther in tomorrow. This is the only place I imagine it would be.” The bird’s beak began to whistle with snores. Sky smiled and drifted off to sleep.
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
                 They waited for morning, but he still didn’t return. Time sighed. “Twilight, Wild, why don’t you two go track him down? We need to be together in case we switch worlds again.” The two nodded and disappeared into the forest beyond. The others were helping around the settlement. Warriors, Four, and Time were aiding the Gorons in building the temple around the monument, while Wind, Hyrule, and Legend were following the Kikwis through the forest and gathering edible and useful plant material. Time turned to Sky’s Zelda. “Legend said Sky mentioned a mission. Would you know anything about that?”
               The girl’s brow furrowed. “I don’t recall him saying anything about a mission, but maybe.”
               Time smiled and bent over to push his wheelbarrow forward. “Twilight and Wild will find him. He can’t have gotten far.”
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
               Sky was proud to have gotten this far. They’d gone quite a ways since that morning, and he’d mapped out a fair chunk of land. Unfortunately, he had yet to find the flower Zelda described. He landed in a clearing and decided to continue into the forest on foot.
               Suddenly the point of something sharp prodded him in the side, and he slowly raised his hands at a high-pitched command. Sky turned carefully, smiling when he saw a slightly different kind of Kikwi than his own. Careful to telegraph his every movement (he didn’t want to get a spear stuck in him after all), he got out the picture of the plant. “Have you seen this flower anywhere?”
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                 “We can’t find him anywhere!” Wild’s hands were posed to rip out his hair.
               “There aren’t even any monsters out,” Twilight continued, “But I just can’t find his trail.”
               “Well, he did fly away, Scruffy. It would be hard to track him up there.”
               “He’s not in Skyloft. I checked there after lunch! I don’t know where he is! He should be back by now! Usually he’s here by nightfall if he’s out exploring!” Zelda’s hair was disheveled from running her fingers through it.
               “We’ll look for him,” Time soothed her. “He has to be here somewhere.”
               Only a few hours remained until dusk, but they all searched in pairs for their missing member.
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                 “Feather mites,” Sky cursed, dodging a Bokoblin’s sword thrust. “I just wanted to know if you’d seen this flower before!” He quickly finished off his foe and turned toward the foot of the mountain. “Maybe they’re high altitude plants?” There was only one way to find out.
                                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                 It had been four days since Sky had gone missing. Four days since they’d heard his soft voice and seen his kind smile. Zelda’s eyes were red and hung with bags. The rest of the Links weren’t much better off.
               A sudden cry and a red tangle of feathers and limbs disturbed the air, crashing down from the sky above. An enormous bird stood to its full height, shaking its head and squawking as a body tumbled from its back. There was Sky, dirty and scratched and bloody, but with starry blue eyes and a smile to rival the sun.
               “I got it!” He cried triumphantly, holding up a surprisingly healthy flower in a jar. He had a slight limp, but cradled the plant protectively as he stood before a gob smacked Zelda. “I found a field of it atop a mountain peak to the east! Oh, and I also filled out some of the map!”
               The Links didn’t know what to say. Apparently neither did Zelda. But she knew what to do.
               SMACK! Sky was on his rump with a red handprint and surprise marking his face. Zelda ripped the plant and map from his lax fingers and angrily marched off.
               “Zelda, wait!” He pushed himself up from the ground. The giant bird huffed, spreading its wings and flapping into the sky. “What did I do?” She didn’t answer. “Zelda? C’mon!” Nothing. “Talk to me!” The girl remained silent and Sky hurried behind her. “Zel? C’mon! Zelda? Please answer me!” Sky’s pleas faded as the pair disappeared from view.
               The remaining Links were quiet, until, “Well, I guess we know why it’s called Silent Princess now.” Legend’s remark earned a chorus of groans.
               Their short brunette rested a hand on his red-clad shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
               “Hyrule!”
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alkalinesims · 7 years ago
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Episode 9.
Previously on Rising Sun...
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Episode Nine.
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Despite the fiasco that was her morning and the storm that was brewing outside, Soleil was looking forward to her night. She hadn’t been able to hang out with Ayana for almost a month. She had recently been promoted to Surgeon General at Willow Creek Hospital, so they hadn’t had nearly as much time to hang out as they normally would. With a deep breath, Soleil decided that she wasn’t going to let bullshit with Darien ruin an evening with one of her best friends. Cookie dough in hand, she was determined to have a fun girls-night in.
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As if they had never been apart, they fell into their girls-night routine. They would have these every week back when Ayana was just doing clinicals. But it was always the same. Ayana would put cookies on to bake, Soleil would pour them wine, they would put face masks on at the kitchen sink, and then they’d watch Simflix. They had made camp on the couch in front of the tv, their treats and goodies spread across the table in front of them, “Soo, what’s new? How’s life as a Surgeon GeNeRaL ?”
“It’s busy, but I love it. It’s everything I thought it would be.” Ayana slowly whirled the Von Haunt Estate Meloire around in her wine glass, a thoughtful look on her face.
“I’m so happy for you, you’re moving up the medical ladder so quick!” Soleil was so proud of Ayana, she was doing so well. She had always been so passionate about medicine, so it wasn’t a surprise.
“I know. My schedule has been changing so much lately though.”
“I’m so proud of you,” with a dramatic sigh, Soleil continued, “you’ve come such a long way from writing me fake doctor’s notes in high school.” The ladies cracked up at the old memory.
Their conversation was interrupted by a loud beeping from the kitchen. The cookies were done. Giggling, Ayana tossed a pillow at Soleil and headed towards the kitchen. Taking another sip of the sweet pomegranate wine, Soleil busied herself with her most recent crisis; she needed to find a photographer as soon as possible. She had a concept look-book commission, but she didn’t have time to take the photos herself, and her original photographer bailed.
She just needed someone to take a few casual shots in the city. But who would be available on such short notice? Just as soon as Wicked Whims in the City (a Lycsims production) started, Soleil felt her phone vibrate on the couch next her. She had been hitting people up all day with little luck, she needed some good news.
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[NEW MESSAGE] from Mari🩋: Heyyy so I got in touch with someone, they can meet you tomorrow at noon if you’re free.. 👀?
🌞: Yeeeessss!!! 😭 Where??
🩋: Chai’s Latte in Magnolia
With a sigh of relief, and a warm cookie in hand, Soleil could fully enjoy her girls-night with Ayana. They sat back, fully stocked with their cookies and wine, and giggled their way through the rest of the night. She had definitely needed this girl time, and was grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with her good friend.
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Soleil was running late, in any other circumstance, sunny with a breeze, Magnolia Promenade would have been a nice place to go for a walk, but she had somewhere to be. Somewhere she should’ve already been.
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Just as Soleil removed her phone to text Mariposa that she was going to be late, it rang. It was an unknown number. As she came to a stop on the sidewalk, she was tempted to just decline the call. Raising her thumb to press the red button, something told her to answer it. They probably just have the wrong number, she thought. Deciding to answer, she brought the phone to her ear.
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“Hello?”
“Heyyyyy Leiiiiii.”
And just like that, with the sound of his voice, Soleil felt whole again.
“Why haven’t I heard from you?! My twin senses have been tingling for a week!” Soleil was so happy to hear from him, she could’ve cried.
“Your twin senses?? Mine been buggin’ for months!”
Soleil continued leisurely down the street, a bright smile on her face. They were able to catch up, but they mostly talked about why he hadn’t been able to call her. Reign was her identical twin brother, they’re quite literally two peas in a pod. He had been doing activist work in Selvadorada for nearly a year. He loved it, the country was gorgeous, and he felt good about the work that he did. There were really only two down sides for him; his twin was thousands of miles away and it was hell securing a phone signal.
“So what are you doing now?” He asked, he could hear birds chirping in the background.
“Nothing, I was just—shit! I’m supposed to be at a meeting that you made me late for!”
Reign just laughed, “You were already late.” She couldn’t help but laugh with him as she hastened her pace. He knew her so well. Soleil hated not hearing from him for so long. It was bad enough that he was all the way in Selvadorada; sometimes they would go days without speaking. She still had so many questions for him, things she wanted talk about, but fortunately
 or unfortunately, she had arrived.
She sighed quietly as she fidgeted the tassels on her romper,“It just—”
“—sucks. I know.”
“Well
 I’m here
” She sounded sad, and Reign knew why. He was too. It was weird being without her for so long.
“Don’t be sad. I promise we’ll talk sooner, okay?” She hoped so.
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Walking into the coffee shop, Soleil felt more like herself than she had in weeks. With her head clear, she realized that she didn’t even know who she was looking for. Looking around the quaint little cafĂ©, Soleil didn’t immediately notice anyone that particularly stood out to her. How was she supposed to know which of these people was the photographer
 Her eyes scanned the room, trying to find a familiar face at the least. At the least she recognized the drinks on the menu.
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“It’s nice to see you again,” came a velvet-smooth baritone from behind her. The voice sounded oddly familiar, so she turned toward the rich voice, and Soleil felt a smile slowly creep across her face.
“Hi,” he said, cooly. It was the photographer from the shoot the other day, the one who had ‘noticed’ her taking charge of his shoot. She had forgotten how tall he was, and when she first turned around her eye-line met his chest. Looking up at the man standing maybe a little too close (maybe not), her smile widened.
“Hi.” She hadn’t meant for it to, but the word came out almost as a whisper. Well
 I found my photographer.
“Hello, stranger,” he mused, taking in the sight of her. Soleil saw his eyes travel down her body slowly before making their way back up to her face. She flushed slightly.
“Hi. I don’t uh—I don’t think I got your name last time we met,” she reached out to shake his hand.
“Oz,” he took her hand in his and brought it up to his lips, taking his time to give it a gentle peck. Soleil had to hold the giggle that was about to burst out of her body and she removed her hand from his grip.
“Well. It’s nice to officially meet you... Oz,” the way his name sounded on her lips was enjoyable. “And the same to you Miss
” he smirked, then she realized she hadn’t given him her name, “Oh, my name is Soleil,” she gave a small grin and did a small curtsy and he laughed. It was a beautiful deep rumbling sound. “Well. Soleil,” he said her name slowly, trying it out before his lips settled into a small smile, “shall we have a seat?”
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Find out what happens next time on Rising Sun...
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AN: Y’all, my game been BUGGING OUT (and tumblr APPARTENTLY as well) 😔 I had to go through so much shit to take these ss rip. ALSO Excuse the weird blue haze in the background, it only happened in Magnolia, idk wtf is going on smh. But TODAY IS THE DAY. 😏 I just wanna say how FOINEE Oz is.... smhđŸ€ŠđŸœâ€â™€ïžNow I really gotta start making poses 👀
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P.s. Soleil says ‘ciao’.
Edit: This took like 20 minutes to post. WHY.
previously  ‱  next time
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destiny-smasher · 6 years ago
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Kingdom Hearts 3 impressions
So, uh, I will ONLY be talking about stuff up until the very start of the second World, and only AFTER the break. Kingdom Hearts 1 was an incredibly important and influential piece of media when I was growing up. I was writing fic based on Smash Bros. just before KH rolled onto the scene was like, “Yo, Disney and Final Fantasy, BAM, fuckin’ random? fucking RADDDD” and I was all about it. You had FF characters remixed with OCs remixed with Disney characters, and the villains were all crossing over to form the League of Bad Cartoons, it was a great time. And then Nomura realized his gamble was a win and decided to waste the next 15 years of everyone’s time shoving in every trope he liked, every IDEA that felt “cool” together into a mish mash of whatever the hell this “narrative” has become. Suffice it to say, I’ve got beef with Kingdom Hearts as a “story.” It just occurred to me today that a big part of this is thematic/tonal.
But it’s also VERY rare, maybe even unprecedented, for a piece of media like Kingdom Hearts 3 to come around. For years, then months, then weeks, then days, I told myself, “It’s not real, that game doesn’t exist, I won’t believe it until I’m literally playing it” and just could not be bothered to be hype or interested, if only because Nomura’s “vision”, from my perspective, warped something I admired in my youth into a fucking train wreck, leaving me very little to feel emotionally invested in outside of Aqua and by proxy the two lads she is trying to protect. (also I GUESS I’m slightly invested in Axel/Xion/Roxas.../Namine? for similar reasons now that I think about it?) Well, guess what? Kingdom Hearts VERY WELL might be real, and I very well might be about three hours into it. And for all of the beef I have with the plot, I am fucking relieved that those three hours have felt/sounded good, as a video game. NOW we’re gonna talk about the first World. --
When I first heard that Olympus was gonna be the first World in KH3 I was disappointed and BAFFLED. We’re visiting that place a THIRD time? And why THAT World? Turns out, there’s actually some substantial thematic relevance and that’s actually A-OK, not to mention that starting with a familiar world after ALL OF THIS TIME is not such a bad way to kick things off. First off, structurally, I actually really enjoyed the way this world played out. Two of my biggest problems with KH as a video game series have been that worlds feel like empty, vacant, haunted houses, and that said worlds are usually small and linear with a lot of pointless backtracking. Olympus fixes all of this. There are NPCs. Actual fucking PEOPLE in this world. Sure, they’re just people in danger, calling for help, but they’re THERE for once! And they have vocies! EVERY line of dialogue (except for like one “plot” moment) has actually been voiced so far! About time. Also. This World is not as linear as most KH Worlds. In fact, it help more open and dynamic than ANY World in any KH game so far, not to mention it featured three, THREE (wtf) unique and distinct types of settings. The city, the mountain, and Olympus. Nice. ALSO also. The music. We’ve been here before. We KNOW that Olympus theme from earlier games. And as you traverse the city, up the mountain, you hear this more sweeping, movie-like version, and it’s like “oh whoa nice” aaaaand then you get TO Olympus and it KICKS in, the old song, up to modern snuff. That was great. That was a thing that really helped convey “Kingdom Hearts is back, baby.” The World was big, compared to typical KH worlds. It had multiple nooks and crannies to explore, side-paths to go down, treasure to find hidden away. There is a LOT of verticality. Running up walls and seamlessly hopping over things in the environment makes traversal more enjoyable than it ever has been. Even though a lot of the World is technically a linear path it’s not structured like a path. Going off and exploring rewards you with items and the like, and the World is big enough to actually feel like you have places to poke around in. Having said this, WHY is there no...map? Like. You literally COLLECT Maps from Chests like you used to. But near as I can tell, there’s no way to pull up an actual MAP, to seer where the main path is, to see where the side paths are. It’s boggling. Maybe the game has the option hidden away somewhere but if so, that’s just silly. And if there’s just no actual map option at ALL that’s just...baffling. There were barely any load times for how much SPACE there was to navigate, and things looked very shiny and pretty, and ran at a smooth 60 fps MOST of the time. Tech specs aren’t everything, but when your brand is built on “looking pretty” it sure af helps when you bring scale AND a smooth framerate to match. It’s weird, and a bit jarring, sometimes in a good way, to see all of this stuff rendered in modern tech. Stuff looks...a little too plasticy a lot of the time, (which actually ought to pay off when we get to Toy Story?) but the environments so far feel rich and vast and detailed all at once in a way we just have never seen the series, because we’re basically jumping from PS2-level tech to PS4. So that difference in production is more noticeable for the wait -- I just wish things looked a bit more...I guess cel-shaded? Like the original trailer. Things (specifically, characters) look a little too flat/plasticy at times, for how pretty things are. Combat seems to be as flashy as ever and I’m sure I’ll feel differently as I get further in and unlock more options but it’s still too easy, simple, and mashy for my tastes. I am HOPING we get more moments that require quick reflexes and specific tactics like the harder moments of older KH games. The amusement rides mechanic is...weird. It’s given NO context in universe. And they last a little too long/feel too overpowered for how easy they are to utilize. Similarly, there are frequently seemingly random party-member tag-team attacks that...just seem like “press triangle to win” moves. I wish they entailed more interaction, and/or felt less common/random. I like the IDEA of these kinds of moves, especially ones that change your controls/method of attack for a few seconds (like Hercules’ team attack) but the execution makes them feel too cheap and easy to abuse, with combat that’s ALREADY skewing on the “too easy” side for the genre. I like the “form change” for keyblades, and that you can swap keyblades in the middle of a fight. Really hoping this allows for some good tactical stuff later -- buuuuut that would also require the game to ASK OF ME to do more than “mash X,” which KH as a brand typically does not do... Characters SPEAK in reaction to gameplay moments, when you initiate things in the environment, etc. It’s a nice touch that makes them feel more like characters in an RPG. Donald and Goofy are ALWAYS in the party, alongside the Disney member(s). NICE. Maybe KH3 is putting its best foot forward, but overall, I was pleasantly surprised with Olympus. It single-handedly corrected MOST of the issues I’ve ever had with Kingdom Hearts level design. I only hope the momentum keeps going. Moving on, Gummi Ships. What little I played is easily the best they have every been. I love having an open world with optional places/fights to explore, while still giving me those shmup-like bursts of action. The Gummi Phone seems like a fun mechanic, and taking selfies/photos makes SENSE for this game because of how visually detailed it is -- but the pleasant surprise was how I took selfies with Donald and Goofy and they REACTED to it, starting to pose and commenting on it. On the other hand, the loading screen being nonsensical “social media” posts from KH characters...I don’t like it thanks go away. x’D I’ve spent only a few minutes in Twilight Town and INSTANTLY I am so much more enamored than I ever was in previous games. Not just due to the bump up in visual fidelity, but also because -- GASP -- NPCs??? Are you trying to tell me this is an actual TOWN that people LIVE IN?? Holy shit, Kingdom Hearts, I never knew! For all of this stuff I liked, though, KH3 is still...a KH game. Which means after you get through the intro, after you gear up to land in Olympus, the game flashes the title: “Kingdom Hearts II.9″ ...no. Just no. Fuck. Stop doing this shit. Whenever an Organization 13 member (or EX member) shows up and starts speaking all cocky in riddles like the flamboyant anime jackass they are, whenever Mickey starts dead-ass blathering about weird nonsense whenever the plot HAS to acknowledge “oh right Sora golly gawrsh ya FURRGOT this random bullshit a-FYUCK better shove this expository throwaway dialogue right in here before we go n’ furrget again!” whenever Kairi continues to be irrelevant and invisible after ALL THIS TIME whenever Rikku has to say some obligatory thing about his darkness or his copy of himself or Ansem or whatever whenever the plot informs Sorta/Dornold/Goffy about another convoluted ridiculous THING that we already know about and they MAYBE already know about because it is OBLIGATED to because this game’s entire purpose has become to “wrap things up already Nomura” I am reminded of the freshly opened scar on my heart from how much SHIT this series has dragged itself through for...what? Nothing worth all of this, IMO. Thankfully, these moments feel less and less pressing in KH3â€Čs opening hours than they certainly could be, though I’m sure the closing hours of the game -- once they’ve tidily gotten all of that silly, inconsequential DISNEY CONTENT out of the way (even though that’s the BULK of the game environments and HALF of the series’ identity/purpose) -- those closing hours will surely be packed to the gills with all of this crazy crap. Maybe by then I might finally care enough to finally get the catharsis I’ve waited over a decade for. I dunno. I’m just relieved the game looks, plays, sounds, and feels as good as it does so far. EDIT: almost forgot to mention this since it hasn’t actually come up yet BUT I picked up a BUNCH of “ingredients”??? Like. FOR COOKING??? Which is one of my all-time favorite mechanics in a video game?? (thanks Paper Mario) So I’m at LEAST excited to see what THAT is all about.
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crimsondomingo · 7 years ago
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Heroes aren’t meant to act like their villains—or fall in love with them. The elements touch everyone on Earth—Fire, Water, even Light—but every so often someone becomes more attuned to their elemental leaning and develops true power. When an evil Elemental known as Thanatos arrived in Olympus City, it saw the rise of its first hero—Zeus. But the death toll caused by defeating Thanatos changed Zeus, who by day is young detective Danny Grant. It’s been six months since Thanatos terrorized the city at the start of Lovesick Gods. Danny should be used to his duty behind the mask, but the recent past haunts him. His girlfriend left him, he snaps at the barest provocation, his life feels empty—he needs an outlet, any outlet to pull him out of his depression. Enter notorious thief Malcolm Cho, the Ice Elemental Prometheus. There was a time when Danny welcomed a fight with Cho, filled with colorful banter and casual flirtations that were a relief compared to Thanatos. Even as a criminal, Cho had recognized the threat Thanatos posed and promised to help Danny stop him, but the day Danny needed Cho, he never showed. Cho was the reason so many people died that day—including Danny’s mother. Danny decides to teach the man a lesson and fan the fire of their attraction into something more. At worst, he’ll get some no-strings-attached sex out of the deal and finally blow off steam; at best, he’ll get Cho to fall in love with him and then break his heart to spite him. Danny doesn’t expect to fall for Cho in the process, and he certainly can’t predict the much darker threat on the horizon.
AT LAST - as of today, both the paperback and eBook for Lovesick Gods has officially released! Stay tuned for upcoming blog tours where I’ll have giveaways and fun tidbits to share.
The greatest thing you can offer me if you read this story and enjoy it is leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads to let me know. :-)
I’ll also be at one of my favorite conventions of the year, Fall Con, at the Minnesota State Fair grounds this Saturday from 10am - 6pm, where you can purchase a signed paperback.
I know a lot of you have been eagerly awaiting the release of this title, as the original adaptation of my ColdFlash fanfic, Lovesick, and book 1 is now OUT. Hold tight for more in the coming months, including the conclusion in book 2, planned to release Spring 2018.
To @faded-dreams-and-blue-jeans for editing and @dolkav for the gorgeous character art, I truly could not have gotten here without you both. THANK YOU!
And thank you to everyone who read the fic and encouraged this next step. As the dedication in the book says:
To my family of ice and lightning. Without you, none of this would be possible.
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olderbynow · 7 years ago
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Some time ago the always lovely @whopooh​ made a post asking writers to talk about their own fics, posing five really interesting questions she’d like to get input on. And is there anything you can think of that writers love more than talking about their writing? (Other than maybe comments.) No, right? So settle down around the fireplace, kids. Get your marshmallows roasting and prepare to be bored stiff for a while as I talk endlessly about me, myself and my fics. (And most of these answers are even MFMM related.)
Pick one fic that you’ve written and talk about what makes it important to you.
 For this first one, I've got to go back a bit to my pre-MFMM days and this one fic I wrote for Rookie Blue, the show I loved and then hated even more than I had loved it, but which got me back into writing again, so I'll have to be grateful to it for that. But yes, back when things were still mostly rosy I wrote this fic called These Dreams Will Haunt You, which is the only time that I can think of when I've posted something and thought, "I have no idea if this works outside my head, but I don't really care. I like it." Which is a pretty powerful feeling. I set out to write a specific thing, in a specific way, and I did. That fic is the story I meant to write when I started writing, written in the way I meant to write it. THAT NEVER HAPPENS. (I'm obviously not saying that I didn't angst endlessly about it while I was writing it, and I'm not saying I didn't sit there biting my nails as I waited for comments from my incredibly patient beta, I'm just saying: The final product is something I've always felt good about, even with all the water under that fandom bridge.) 
Pick one of your older fics and say what about it you like most, and what you would do differently now. 
In MFMM, I think my biggest "regret fic" (of the published ones, there are plenty of things I regret about the ones that never saw the light of day) is The Place Where He Fell When He Saw The Stars, which is one of those fics that started out as what I thought was a good idea, but then I just completely failed to do what I had wanted to with it. Which is why it turned into the one-shot that it is, rather than the full on multi-chapter fic I had been meaning to write I still like the idea, and I like the intention behind this fic, I just don’t particularly like the fic itself. If I got a do-over on this one, I think I’d have given up on the Year of Tropes deadline that I was working towards and hung onto it until I knew how to do what I wanted to do, rather than writing myself into a corner I can’t be bothered to make my way out of. (But I do think, honestly, that then the fic would never have been published at all, so I’m not sure where that leaves us, really.)
Pick a fic and say something about why you wrote it – if there was a specific inspiration, perhaps from RL, fandom life, or a theme or a trope you felt needed to be written in a new way. 
I hesitate to bring attention to a WIP that has gone un-updated for more than six months, but lets forget about that for a bit and I'll tell you about Fast Times at Wardlow High, the high school AU the MFMM fandom had been pretty damn sure they didn't want until @heavyheadedgal​ suggested one here on tumblr and we all realised that YES, 17-year-old Jack rocking the debate team and Mac with a mohawk are in fact things that should be in our lives. And after reading people's suggestions for this non-existent AU I was so determined to bring it to life that I wrote a quick one-shot in a day, completely desperate to get it out there before AO3 was flooded with HS AUs. LOL. That one-shot turned into a thing, and although it doesn't look that way from the infrequent updating, it's my favourite thing that I've done in MFMM fanfic, because it's just my happy place in fic. There's no pressure, since I've totally given up on things like plot and character development and this making any kind of sense in the long run and am entirely focused on just enjoying writing it. I only do it when I feel like it, and I never really worry if it's any good. Because it's a HS AU, there's something about the nature of that that just allows for all sorts of badness. Basically I’ve given myself carte blanche to suck, and it’s really liberating and I should probably do that more, actually. In life in general.
Is there something you wrote in a fic that was read differently than you intended, and that made you see your own fic in another light? 
 I think the best example of that happening to me is the MFMM fic Back In The Ring, which was my contribution to the March Trope of the amazing Year of Tropes organised by @firesign23​ and was a very poor excuse for a bottle episode fic. The fic was just meant to be a jokey bit of plotlessness, but some people seemed to take the whole thing more seriously - and in a very different way - than I had intended. They certainly took it all much more seriously than Jack had done in the fic. But it led to my favourite ever analysis of anything I've written in the history of the Universe by @whopooh​, and so I can't really be sorry for the fact that a few readers were offended by Phryne's offhanded attitude to her past dalliances. 
Is there a fic by another writer that has inspired you? 
Okay, the thing is, for MFMM fandom, I don't have that. I have fics that I love, and I am inspired by this fandom as a whole (cue string section) but there's no one specific fic that has made me go "I need to write a story now." (Possibly this is the one downside to being part of a fandom with SO MANY writers who are just so incredibly talented? Which is not a thing you'l find me complaining about. Ever.) But in past fandoms, it has definitely happened, and this stroll down memory lane as I tried to find a good example of it was threatening to steal whole days from me as I reread past favourites from fandoms of yore, but instead of doing that, let me tell you about these two writers who used to co-write Rookie Blue fic and then edited their way into writing original fiction instead. Their style of writing was completely mesmerising to me, and I devoured, repeatedly, anything they wrote, whether or not it was a ship/au/whatever I was interested in. Because I just adored their words. They influenced my own style of writing in a lot of ways, but mostly in a way that was "Huh, so I can just write like I'm me and that's fine?" rather than feeling like you need to write like you're ~literature. I don't take that with me in all my writing, and I think in MFMM you mostly see it in Wardlow Whoopie, which was very much me trying to force this extremely contemporary sounding narrator's voice into a story set in the 1920s. I still don't understand at all how it could ever make sense, but it made me laugh as I wrote it, so I'm not going to argue any fine points here. (But yeah, that fact that I can't just do that is definitely the most challenging thing about writing MFMM fic - which I guess is also why writing Fast Times is such a relaxing thing, because I get to mostly do it there.) 
I’m pretty sure people have been tagged on this already - I know I was, which makes me think everyone else must've been covered, but in case you weren't and this is the first you've heard about this questionnaire, you should definitely do it!
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briteboy · 7 years ago
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stealing @bratsims format because i need a less ugly way to mass answer your messages which will hopefully motivate me to stay on top of this! at least i can say i tried
so if you sent me an anon message in the past...idk MONTH (i’m bad i know) it might be here. (older ones are near the bottom) if not, check my faq because it’s probably answered there. (and if you’re the person/people who sent the twin flame & 7th house asks, i plan to answer those separately because i have a LOT to say. get ready)
game of thrones, nuclear war, real life santis, lou theories, i’m evil, HERE WE GO!! i literally had to cut it off at the last one because it was just too much for now. i’ll try to answer some more later ok
we’re starting off on a great note
Anonymous said: gaddamn rooney's tiddies lookin' hella ( ͥ° ͜ʖ ͥ°)
STOP!!!!!!!!!!! THAT’S MY CHILD soaidfnjds she’s supposed to have like b/c cups (goals for me tbh, the big boob life is not fun) and sims 4 pregnancies just fuckin make them...NYOOM i’m mad you can’t edit sims’ bodies during pregnancy even with cas.fulleditmode on -___- so i let her live with her giant preggo tiddies for now
Ngl I want a kiss between Santi and Gianni (I'm sorry I'm literally trash)
then i’m here to satisfy your desires: they do kiss periodically because gianni is one of those people who’s like “why shouldn’t you kiss your friends?” free love 4 everyone
IM SCREAING AT UR YOUTUBE CHANNEL OK!!!! I LOVEEE IT, WOW
DON’T IT’S UGLY EXCEPT FOR LIKE TWO VIDEOS
hey this is kinda random but i thought joe seaward from glass animals looked kinda like santi? he has quite a weird face too lmao
oMG i actually love that, i know what you mean. that dude reminds me of a bull terrier lmao i actually saw glass animals like two weeks ago!! i didn’t really get a good look at the drummer but now i wish i did. missed connection
i just finished reading santi's story and ugh it almost had me in tears! beautiful, your story telling skills and editing skills are perfection!
ahhhhsdkgkds thank you so much ;____; that means the world to me <333
Unpopular opinion: im so done with game of thrones tbh. It's not even good anymore :/ I liked the first season but since then i've skipped through episodes because they are just sooo fucking boring and dragged out!
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see like the first three seasons were pretty good because they stayed true to the books. (actually that’s a lie, littlefinger’s chaos speech in the s3 finale was real fuckin bad because guess what: it was original material LMAO) the fourth season was where it started to get messy and then the fifth season was a fucking shitshow because they completely IGNORED the fourth book and cherrypicked all the “good” parts out of it (read: the most action-y parts, while ignoring all the most important pieces of character development) and they botched the dorne storyline, oh and who could forget the iconic moment of throwing in a rape (THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS) just for fun :) love it! but anyway if you think the show is boring i probably wouldn’t recommend the books, they’re even slower getting through them lmao. but it’s worth it in my opinion. there’s so much they don’t include in the show and it makes me Angery
Okay, game of thrones fan here, I haven't read the books (yet at least, I bought book 1) but I feel like dany is going to practically turn into her father, this season she is already showing traits like his.......
OH YEAH i definitely feel like they’re moving in that direction in the process of revealing jon as the “true” king of westeros and it’s so bad lmfao. the thing is, like...cersei is already mad king 2.0? why do we need another one?????? the entire point of dany’s arc is that she’s constantly trying to deviate AWAY from the way her father ruled, demonstrated by the fact that she freed the slaves (whereas all the targaryens before were slave owners), the fact that she’s not perpetuating the whole incest thing (LMAO GUESS AGAIN BECAUSE JONERYS HAS TO HAPPEN FOR SOME FCKING REASON), the fact that she has dragons which haven’t existed in how many years...like, if she ever ends up being like her father in the books, it’s NOT gonna fucking happen like this. but i don’t think she will anyway, george rr martin has been pretty clear about her trajectory thus far. anyway this show is so ugly, next question
rooney's eye are so BIG
just like her tiddies lmao i kno sometimes i forget how big they are and then she does one of those silly endearing animations and i’m like o ;-; hello big dumb baby cow eyes
Cows? Are you secretly Matthew Daddario?
WHO i had to google him lmao i was about to say “oh the teen wolf guy” but jk @ myself u idiot it’s shadowhunters damn i literally googled “matthew daddario cows” and
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tru
I love how fragile Lou looks like but the truth is that she is strong af and you can't play with her bruh
SHE IS ;-; and that’s a huge theme in her story, i’m excited <3
ima leave ur blog and come bk and spam you so you will finally notice me
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im part of this online forum of girls that talks about our period and weather or not one of us might be pregnant and once this girl posted saying that her husband invited his mom without telling her to thier honeymoon and she didnt find out until they arrived at the hotel and she was already there. the most recent part reminded me of it. but long story short, her dad moved all her stuff out of his house and her friend came to pick her up and they got a divorce.
OISOJDFAKNLJSD WHAT!!! i’m guessing you sent this because of that thing i said about the reddit post lmfaooo imagine your mom on your honeymoon. why. that’s soooooooooo good 4 her u know. u don’t need to be married to his mom as well
thanks 4 trusting my love santi. he's beautiful
thank u he thinks ur beautiful too 💘
do you have any tips for runing game in good quality and fast?
euhhhhh the only tips i have for you are to merge your cc, close all other programs while you play your game, maybe invest in a cooling pad uhhhhhh yeah idk any other tips you can probably find on google
You told that thing about unfollowing people and I thought you unfollowed me, but then I checked and you didn't and I'm crying omg
lmao omg ;-; i literally cut my following list in half, it was so chaotic and it was making me anxious. so if ever unfollow any of you please don’t take it personally (i know it’s a stupid thing to say, and it’s a lot easier said than done) it’s just my brain explodes when there’s too much going on at once and some content blends into others, i’m trying to only follow people who i’m genuinely interested in enough to keep up with their posts from now on
I haven't been able to sleep in over 72 hours thanks to the constant fear over the looming world war. I'm fine. Completely fine
Oh shit, have you noticed that the media has been putting out more 'what to do during a nuclear attack' kinda articles? This world is slowly going to shit, for real. I'm not even near any of the danger really, but it still absolutely terrifies me to see all of that bc it could very well go wrong and hit my place as well yknow? I have no idea why i send this to you but you seem chill and calm so thanks for reading my freakout askfjsls
YEP it’s pretty terrifying. but at the same time don’t let fear overwhelm you, fearmongering is an ugly, ugly thing and you don’t want to live your life constantly worrying. so just prepare yourself for what might come, but at the same time, just spend as much time with your loved ones as you can, do all the things you’ve ever wanted to do, and then if it doesn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would, you *tim mcgraw voice* lived like u were dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyin’
@ Jesus anon: I really don't think it's the right time to complain about "using the lord name in vain" when there are people terrified of leaving their homes bc they are afraid to get killed (aka that poor, poor Jewish anon in charlottesville)
yeah idk like i want to respect everyone but it seemed to be in poor taste to bring that up at a time like that lmao. and also i’ve literally never in my entire life met someone who actually takes “don’t say the lord’s name in vain” seriously. 
I asked about the poses and HOLY CRAP THANK YOU SO MUCH! I finally have good poses to use for story telling. Thank you soo so so so sooooo much!
YAY i’m glad you found some good stuff <3 and honestly just going through lana’s blog you’ll find a ton of good poses, it’s a gold mine
Idk how much tv you watch, but have you've ever come across a tv show that used music from The Sim? Because once in a while I'll hear Sims 3 build/buy music on some random show and I'll get a lil shook because I find it so weird that the generic music they're using comes from a major game title.
OMG LMAO NO what i wish i’d come across that tho. one time i used sims 1 music in a video i made for school and someone recognized it
I love your stories gosh I check your page "it's everyday bro with femmesim flow" Lol sorry for that awkward Jake Paul "poop" ❀
lmao thank u i had no idea who jake paul was until my friends started talking about him
yo, I also remember once in french class real life santi asked me what videos games I like to play. When I told him the sims, he looked at me for a while and shaked his head. He was like, "why do you want to watch your sims use the toilet?"
WHY DO YOU WANT TO WATCH YOUR SIMS USE THE TOILET SAME that’s all i care about when i play
that rooney face in the 5 facts is so iconic, its my fave picture of her. You should blow it up and frame it
i should tbh. i should print it out and put it in my wallet to show everyone because she is my child
sorry the bother you, merging cc makes your game smoother? can you explain to me please?
boop
hi i love you ♡ pass it on
I LOVE U
Can I say that hearing a MacBooks fans screaming for dear life as they try to cool down when playing the sims has actually started to haunt my nightmares
SAME my macbook is actually doing it right now for no reason. thanks laptop
Maybe Santi should go to therapy to talk out his issues.
maybe he should đŸ€”  but tbh he’s already talked out everything, there’s nothing really more to talk out. he just has to cope with it. he’s treated lou like his therapist thus far and that’s not okay
i love ur story and omg i totally get where lou is coming from with being tired of being compared to molly by santi, thatd hurt so much esp with how much she cares about him
thank youuu ;-; i’m glad you understand, this was a part i’d wanted to get out for a loooong time now, and i know you guys were always like “um why does she put up with this” lmao. she just loves him, that’s why. but you’re right, it does hurt.
My theory is very similar to the other anons in that Fiona's dad/Lou's ex had a mental illness (schizophrenia, depression, what have you) but he actually did kill himself and that's why she's not completely losing it on Santi because I feel like most people in that situation would have not handled it as well as Lou did
đŸ€” you’re right about the last part, and there’s a reason she has so much patience, das all i’m sayin
i started your story from the beginning last night and i am in awe. Its amazing. It inspired me to put a little more effort in learning to edit and write. It was like reading screen caps from a movie! I didn't want to stop reading. Anyway thing was a super sappy ask, but i appreciate your stuff. And i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words.
omg ;__________; when people tell me i inspired them it means the most to me, my brain just can’t process it lmao. so thank you so so much ;-; <333 THE MOVIE THING ESPECIALLY GOT ME IN THE HEART because i feel like that’s my aesthetic with most things i create because i’m such a film person lol. don’t worry i love super sappy, and you did a good job of wording everything because it got me right in the feels <33
Okay I've been snickering for about 43 minutes bc SANTI GOT THAT GRU CHINNN
WOT is that i googled it and the only thing that came up was the dad from despicable me lmfaosdkjfs but ok
Please, please do punk edits of your some of your characters! I'd die.
WHAT DOES THIS MEANNN do you mean like. those 2010 tumblr edits of punk disney characters and then the joker from suicide squad looked like one of them. do u want santi to be the joker. because my boyfriend already relates him to suicide squad joker because of his face tatt lmao
You love to make me cry
i do i’m sorry. if it makes you feel any better i love to make myself cry too. but my biceps grow stronger with every tear
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I reeeally dont think those chancla comments were offensive??? Why would they be?? I'm hispanic (born and raised in the sunny Dominican Republic, received a fair amount of chancletazos myself) and I laughed out loud when i read them 😂😂
I JUST WANT U TO KNOW I SHOWED @ichosim THIS MESSAGE AND SHE LAUGHED FOR 12 HOURS AT “CHANCLETAZOS”
whATT my little brothers name is santiago n we call him santi for short!! guess it's not rly that uncommon but we live in a small country and he's also 4 so like,, no other santiagos!! idk why im saying this its completely irrelevant just kinda surprised me :'))
OMG wow hell yeah another real life santi...santi acts like a 4 yr old so he might as well be your brother
Just curious.. Do you play sims or just use it for storytelling? Sorry if thats weird haha
well my recent gameplay pics should answer your question lmao. i do like to play but i don’t have enough time to both play and pose scenes so i mostly just pose scenes for now. :[ i am gonna be off work for like two weeks tho so hell yeah gameplay here i come!!
I'm starting a Fiona appreciation movement because she is the real star of santis story RT and i love her and she is way underappreciated and I love her KThxBi
SHE IS THE REAL STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ve said this before but santi’s relationship with her is the most important to me, out of every relationship he has in this story. i’m so glad you love her so much, sorry about what’s about to come in the next few scenes tho
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Oh my heart, Santi is alive, god exist
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I have a pretty hard time understanding Santi's story mostly because I'm not English but I'm sure I'll figure it out:)
ahh oh no D: i’m sorry i wish i spoke every language in the world lmao. if you want, you can message me off anon and i’ll help you understand it!!
Lou is an angel honestly
“there are worse things than seeing an angel before you die”
what tablet do you use? or how do you draw hair? it looks so pretty.
omg haha i don’t have one! i wish i did tho. all of the brushes i got from deviantart, i’m trying to find the specific ones but they’re all elusive wtf. i’ll post them when i find them! for now, here’s a good guide to drawing hair, by airi <3
Nah nah I always knew you'd save him.....eheheeh.....THANK YOU FOR NOT KILLING BABBY SANTEEEEEEEEE DNDDNSKANW YOU WOULD HAVE HAD SO MUCH BLOOD ON UR HANDS AS ALL UR FOLLOWERS COLLECTIVELY DIE FROM A BROKEN HEART BUT DW WE DIDNT BECAUSE UR QN ANGEL....but I toooootally knew you'd save him... /sweats/
I’M GLAD U HAD FAITH <3 i know omfg i would’ve expected a mob at my house if i’d actually killed him. if i ever killed him i would just lay down somewhere and die. that’s it for me
Lou & molly almost always have teeth showing, do you draw them on each pic?x
no, only sometimes i’ve drawn them when i felt like their mouths weren’t matching the expression i wanted. but most of the time it’s just the pose.
is it too late to send 16k dollars to guarantee santi's inclusion in a loving home with loving friends
it is absolutely never too late to send me 16k i promise you that
I just bought school books for $550 who knew studying marine biology could be so fuckING EXPENSIVE
EWW WTF...i’ve been lucky and haven’t had to spend a ton on books in my college career (one time i even went to such lengths that i got access to free trial version of one of my school books in a pdf, screencapped EVERY SINGLE PAGE, which was more than 400 pages, just so i wouldn’t have to spend $70 on it. i love cheating the system)
waIT i never saw ur selfie where is it, must see
u could probably just search “selfie” on my blog and find it, or enjoy the ugly closeup drunk snap i posted last night
Hey guys I'm a happy trans man that has no mental illnesses. I'm fucking pissed about Trump's ban. And to any one that says it's logical FUCK YOU! I'm having flashbacks to don't ask, don't tell because this is the same fucking wacked up logic. I'm so angry, like I'm a human, yes I may require testosterone shots once a month but that's it, I even administer them to myself. I pay for them with my own god damn money so fuck you transphobic bigots who say this law is fair. It's not. WE ARE HUMAN TOO Also same anon that ranted. Sorry about that I'm just really pissed and I love and thank you for sticking up for the community. We love you and I love you. And you're right not all trans people transition. We all do what we want to. Some start on T or E and have the full surgery. Some just have top surgery. Some just do testosterone or estrogen. Some never do anything. We're all still trans and we're all valid.
YES ALL OF THIS, sorry i didn’t answer this when it was all happening. but askdkjfas thank you for this message, I LOVE YOU TOO, SO MUCH <333 and i’m glad you feel comfortable enough to voice this in my inbox. yes every trans person is valid no matter what they decide to do with their bodies <3
One of those old hot topic shirts that said " if Darryl dies we riot " but with santi instead of Darryl.
OMG LMAOOOOO NOW THAT’S A CONCEPT who’s making these i want one
your use of references and reaction pics and gifs fucken KILLS ME
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Crystal anon here. I googled around my area to find there are none of those y'know, crystal, candle, incense, magic type shops. I have panic attacks when I go outside and I wanted to look into alternative stuff since I'm on meds and w/e. I wanted to know if you or friends had any experience or recommendations for buying crystals online like on etsy or amazon. How can you tell if they're real?x
ooooh ok. usually there are shops like those in cities or even in towns with like kitschy little promenades with independent shops. (i know there’s one around the town over from mine, which is so random lmao) i do have friends that have crystals but i think they mostly just collect them for the ~good vibez~ and don’t really look too far into the healing aspects of them. i would say first go with the one that coincides with your birth because those are the ones that are like specifically catered to you and strengthen your being. as for buying online, hmmmmm i mean i don’t really know any specific trustworthy sellers because i don’t have much experience with this, but definitely read the reviews! those will help you a lot <3
Hello could you please tell us how you edited the pic of rooney in that one post that the anon asked for the unedited version?
i honestly didn’t do much of anything that differs from my usual editing process! i made her eyes a bit bigger by using the clone tool, cloning the top of her eye and applying it a little bit farther up...if that makes sense. it’s hard to explain how to use that tool lmao. and i think i used the liquify tool to bring part of her eyebrow down to look more worried.
there's still a part of me that says she ain't dead and molly is just in a coma lmao end mE
OMFLDKGKJS yeah she’s not dead surprise. i WILL say there is still flashback stuff that will be revealed. well not “revealed” like molly’s death was revealed, like i just still have to showcase some things that happened afterward. because it doesn’t just end with molly’s death, there’s stuff after that as well :~}
I'm Mexican, have lived around Mexicans, have been to Mexico multiple times growing up, just came back from a family trip at practically the border between Mexico and Guatemala and never in my life have I ever heard the word "joder" i had to look it up xD (not hating or anything I just thought I'd mention it cuz I found it funny...lol) k bye...
OK NOT SURE IF the ppl you’ve been around just don’t curse or whatever but...joder is DEFINITELY something i’ve heard mexican people say before lmao
Okay so this is random, but i was telling my sister the name of one your characters in ur story (santi) and she kinda just starts singing his name, and she said "santi high, santi low, santi go." And im just sitting there, like woah.
LMFAO WHATKNJDSKJGD “woah” same
u gonna incorporate fis hat into a really like emotional sad thing in her story huh
oMG i wasn’t planning on it but hmm đŸ€”
Why no el chingo? NO ME GUSTA (I'm joking btw ily)
LMFAOOOO because i didn’t wanna have to defile my son by downloading the penis mod RIP
let santi grow out dem eyebrows 2kforever
omg he does let them grow out except for the little line he shaved in when he was 14 that never grew back RIP
in ur bio it says "kt" and i know why,, it means killing them as in killing off ur characters slowly i see u gurl
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i bet this story was just an excuse for you to see the world burn. well done.
OMG i mean, that was definitely one of the side effects of it all. but really it was just that i NEEDED to get this story out after it had lived in my brain for so long.
ur dead 2 me
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I... just.... can't... too much pain Y U DO DIS 2 UZ?!?!!!
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freudensteins-monster · 8 years ago
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Full Metal Bitch
Whilst not directly inspired by it, if you’re interested in reading an Avengers x Edge of Tomorrow fic (set in the Avengers universe, featuring Mimics and time loops, starring Steve and featuring multiple ships) then I recommend When You Wake by sevenfoxes. It’s pretty devastating at times but I couldn’t put it down. I read it ages ago and this idea just popped into my head out of nowhere this morning [edit. the morning I started writing this
 back in November], something about Barnes being a ‘full metal badass’ and then *click*
My fic has Avengers/MCU characters in an EoT-type universe, except I gave them Chitauri  to fight instead of Mimics  (no alphas, omegas, or time loops here) to go for a whole alternative version of the Battle of New York. And I gave them a pretty stupid weakness because I couldn’t help but put in a reference to Darcy and her taser.
Title from the nickname of Emily Blunt’s character in “Edge of Tomorrow”. Check out this link to see her / to get a mental picture of the exo-suits.
Darcy would be straight up lying if she said that the recruiting posters hadn’t influenced her decision to sign up with S.H.I.E.L.D., but she was far from the only one. She had yet to meet a single new recruit who didn’t say “I wanna be like the Avengers.”
The leader of the Avengers was Captain Steve Rogers. He started out as an actual poster boy, and with his all-American good looks and genial personality (even when battling hordes of Chitauri) he’d had been dubbed ‘Captain America’ by the world’s media. He was just some ridiculously handsome artist the PR department had discovered trying to sign up with S.H.I.E.L.D. after the Invasion. They convinced him he’d be doing more good helping to boost recruiting numbers, and if he did he’d be given his own squad to lead if he did his part, and he believed them, for a time. But as the war dragged on, and too many recruits came home in body bags, Rogers decided to put his up-til-then ornamental Captain’s rank to good use and snuck onto a transport to kick ass alongside his fellow soldiers. Rumour had it he had been forbidden from damaging that pretty face of his and when Rogers made it back from his first battle he had told the PR department where to stick their latest recruitment campaign. The powers that be weren’t going to let it go, and were ready to court martial Rogers for his insolence, until the story of the corporate pretty boy turned war hero started making news. He used the publicity to finally gain command over his own unit and hadn’t stopped flashing those pearly whites since.
His first official recruit had been the Iron Patriot, the most advanced exo-suit around (the damn thing flew!) originally piloted by a decorated army colonel, James Rhodes. He got the choicest tech because of his friendship with the creator of the exo-suits, Tony Stark, and he used the famed exo-suit on dozens of missions until a severe injury forced him to retire from the field. The PR guys wanted to keep the symbol alive so Colonel Rhodes selected the most promising candidate, Sam Wilson, a paratrooper who went by the call sign ‘Falcon,’ to take up the mantle.
The Black Widow and Hawkeye had managed to keep out of the public eye, even if soldiers had been telling stories about their amazing exploits around the barracks since the war started, until they took out a whole squadron of Chitauri in front of some quivering mess of a war correspondent.
The Black Widow had apparently gotten her moniker well before she even set foot on a battlefield - the Russian recruit utterly destroyed every sparring partner she ever stepped in the ring with – but the way she effortlessly dropped from a transport ship on a wire like a spider cemented it. Her suit was terrifyingly minimalist (the harness painted blood red) and lacking in protection, which allowed for smoother, faster movement. Watching her slaughter alien hordes was akin to watching a prima ballerina on centre stage.
Hawkeye, a rambling former carnie from Iowa, disliked guns and had jerry-rigged his exo-suit to shoot more vicious projectiles instead, and never missed a shot. When news of Hawkeye’s customisation reached Tony Stark he had been appalled at the craftsmanship but intrigued by the idea and had soon designed a new suit to accommodate the marksman’s more paleolithic interests.
The last member of the Avengers was Darcy’s favourite; Sergeant James Barnes. He was just a soldier drafted into doing his duty, but he was Steve Rogers’ best friend and one of the main reasons the poster boy had been so desperate to join the fray. They made an impressive pair, their fighting styles well synchronised after a lifetime together, until the Sergeant lost an arm during a skirmish somewhere in Europe. After an injury like that most soldiers would have accepted their pensions and retired, far away from the battlefield. But not Sergeant Barnes. He had Tony Stark design him a metal arm and then rebuild his exo-suit to accommodate it. If that wasn’t the hottest thing ever, Darcy didn’t know what was.
So, yes, it was because of her ridiculous crush on the legendary Sergeant Barnes that Darcy had enlisted and tried to be the best soldier she could be. She wanted to impress him and had imagined a thousand scenarios wherein the Sergeant saw her kicking ass and became instantly enamoured with her. It was stupid – she knew it was stupid – but she couldn’t help herself; she wanted him to notice her.
She’d once had the privilege of watching the Avengers walk out to their transport ship together – she swore everything moved in slow-motion - and her best friend had to hold her back lest she lick the shiny appendage attached to the dark and broody Sergeant Barnes. But it was the death of this same best friend that made Darcy finally see the war for the brutal battle for survival that it was, rather than a ‘bloody eye candy parade’ as she’d often joked.
They’d met in basic training and everyone in their squad agreed that Jane Foster was too smart to be crawling around in the mud with the rest of them. They made her their squad’s medic and tried to keep her out of the fighting as much as possible, but Jane was nothing if not determined, even if she freely admitted she’d rather be studying the alien invaders than killing them.
She’d thrown herself in harm’s way to protect their newest recruit, a barely legal kid named Peter without sense enough to take cover. Darcy hadn’t noticed until it was too late. She’d been too busy trying to catch a glimpse of the Avengers in action a few blocks over and would never forgive herself for letting her best friend die alone.
** *** **
Darcy woke with a start, the image of Jane’s blood as it left her body filling her dreams. She threw off her itchy standard-issue blanket, laced up her standard-issue boots, and wandered around the base until she found herself nearing the Avengers’ personal – and off limits – training area. It was barely 2am but there were noises coming from inside drawing her in. There, twisted into some ridiculous yoga pose in the middle of a room, surrounded by metal claws programmed to dart around violently to mimic Chitauri movements, was the Black Widow. Darcy watched on silently until the Avenger pressed a button on a remote strapped to her wrist to stop the training claws. She effortlessly unfurled from her complicated pose and levelled a cold stare at the interloper.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded in her lightly accented English.
“Would you spar with me?” Darcy looked as surprised as the Black Widow to hear the request. “I mean, I’m not really good, pretty terrible actually, but I want to get better.”
The Black Widow took in Darcy’s haunted expression and nodded just once, beckoning the green soldier closer. Darcy was on her back in three seconds flat, but she got back up and did it again, and came back every night for more punishment. By the end of the month it took the Black Widow a full ten seconds to get her opponent on her back.
** *** **
Darcy stepped into her exo-suit and went through the standard system checks, ignoring the furtive glances sent her way. It was going to be her sixth battle without Jane by her side, and each time it just got harder and harder to get strapped in as her squad was filled with new faces to replace her ever-growing list of dead friends.
Word of her midnight sparring sessions with the Black Widow had spread like wildfire through the base and her fellow cannon fodder now regarded her with a mix of respect and fear, so much so that they made her the unofficial leader of their squadron. Officially the title went to a Swede by the name of Thor, as he was the only one in their squad to serve before the war (and looked like the Scandinavian god of lumberjacks to boot), but he had been quietly nursing a crush on Jane since their first meeting and her death had hit him particularly hard.  
“A-Squad! The transport ship leaves in five minutes and you better be on it, or so help me you’ll all be on latrine duty for the rest of your lives.”
Darcy bit back a growl as an obnoxious Major by the name of Sitwell, who had never suffered more than a papercut in the name of his country, strode into their barracks demanding they march themselves to their deaths in an orderly fashion. Darcy stepped down off her prep station, the threatening whir of her exo-suit doing the talking for her.
“Lock and load,” Sitwell bellowed, breaking eye contact with Darcy first and hustling out of the room to go bother another squad.
“You heard the douche canoe,” Darcy called out with more confidence than she felt. “Lock and load!”
** *** **
They were dropped in the middle of a battlefield and Darcy got to work, her exo-suit spewing forth a hail of bullets as she pressed forward, trying to find some cover for her squad. They were doing well, all things considered, and had taken the high ground as they continued to push the Chitauri back, when Darcy did a quick head count and realised Thor was unaccounted for. She spied him half a city block away doing battle against a horde by himself. She ordered her squad to hold their positions and raced to Thor’s aid, cursing his stupid and inappropriately timed berserker rage. Darcy screamed out as Thor took a hit and the last standing Chitauri went in for the kill. Darcy riddled it with bullets but the damn thing kept coming back for more. In an act of desperation she reached down for a mostly empty exo-suit, hurling the sparking and bloodied tangled mess of metal at the alien. She continued shooting at the shrieking creature as she raced to Thor’s side, unable to process what she was seeing until well after the battle. In the moment she had been more concerned with dragging Thor back to their squad by his beard than checking out the fried corpse of one Chitauri.
** *** **
The Black Widow (“Call me Natasha”) was waiting for Darcy in her usual sparring room. As the minutes and yoga poses ticked by the Avenger started to worry that her new acquaintance wasn’t coming back, but then she heard the tell-tale shuffle of Darcy’s boots on the concrete flooring and let go of the breath she’d been holding. Darcy stood in the doorway, lost in thought.
“What is it, sestra?”
“You know Tony Stark, right?”
** *** **
Darcy strode through the weapons warehouse, forcibly ignoring the sight of mechanics hosing down bloodied exo-suits and welding the brokens pieces back together. She followed Natasha’s instructions and took a poorly marked freight elevator to a basement level.
The sounds of utter chaos coming from behind the bunker door would have scared off a less battle weary soldier, but if Darcy could face down swarms of Chitauri she could damn well talk to one eccentric scientist. She pushed opened the door and was felled first by a wall of sound (“Shoot to Thrill” – AC/DC) and then by a cloud of smoke.
“Did something explode?” Darcy coughed as she stepped inside the junkyard masquerading as a well-funded workshop.
A shock of black hair popped up like a meerkat from behind a huge exo-suit prototype, startling Darcy. She took in his hair, his singed clothes, and the fact that he was still carrying around a fire extinguisher, and declared the mystery solved.
“Dr Stark?” she called, trying in vain to be heard over the music. Oblivious to her presence he pulled down his industrial safety goggles and disappeared into the cavity of the suspended exo-suit. Darcy moved to where he had been standing and wondered how she was going to get his attention without scaring the life out of him. The music suddenly dropped in volume but before Darcy could say anything a hand shot out from within the mass of metal.
“Wrench – quarter inch. Now,” he added when the required tool didn’t appear instantaneously.
Darcy scrambled, located the required wrench, and passed it too him.
“Mallet.”
Darcy passed that over too, wincing as he put it to work.
“Donut.”
“There’s no donuts,” Darcy replied, looking around the lab frantically.
The inventor froze at the unfamiliar voice and backed out of the suit. He pulled his goggles off, leaving rings of soot around his eyes, and stared curiously at Darcy.
“You’re not Pepper.”
“Pepper quit last week, Tony.”
Stark turned to the new voice, a man with glasses, fluffy hair, and pristine white lab coat who greeted Darcy with a nervous smile as he stepped into the workshop.
“Huh
 She’ll be back,” Stark shrugged. “Hey! Dum-E! No!” he shouted at a mechanical arm in the corner of the lab. “What did I tell you about playing with fire?” he grumbled, wrenching a blowtorch out of its grip. “Fire bad. You keep malfunctioning and I’m going to turn you into an exo-suit, I swear to God. Do you want that?” The machine whirled sarcastically, if such a thing was possible, and waved its arm in a way that suggested being an exo-suit was probably more desirable than the abuse Stark inflicted upon it daily. “Yeah, yeah, keep whining. And stay away from fire,” he ordered.
“Tony,” the scientist sighed, directing Tony’s attention back to Darcy.
“Oh, right. And you are?” he asked before promptly turning his attention to something more interesting.
“This is Private First Class Lewis. Romanoff sent her. Apparently she has a theory about the Chitauri.”
“Oh, a theory,” Stark cooed. “Banner and I love a good theory. Hit me.”
“I
” Darcy stammered, completely flabbergasted by the inventor. Chitauri were definitely easier. Right
 Chitauri. “I got into a firefight with a particularly stubborn Chitauri yesterday. Bullets weren’t stopping it, and it was about to kill a friend of mine, so I picked up a short-circuiting exo-suit 
”
“Hey! My suits do not short-circuit, alright? They are works of technological genius. And what do you mean you ‘picked up’ an exo-suit? What kind of idiot would disengage his suit in the middle of a warzone?”
“He didn’t disengage it exactly,” Darcy replied, biting back a sigh. “He was still inside it but missing most of his extremities. And his middle. The cause of which probably also caused the exo-suit to short-circuit.”
“
Continue,” Stark nodded, appearing as sheepish as a narcissist such as himself was capable of.
“Anyway, I threw the exo-suit at the Chitauri and it just sort of
 freaked out,” Darcy said for lack of a better word. “Then the exo-suit started sparking even more – I might have helped it along by emptying the rest of my clip into it – and I think
 I think it got electrocuted.”
The two men shared a look.
“Are you sure?” Banner asked over the rims of his glasses.
“Well, by the time it stopped twitching it looked like a piece of burnt calamari, and smelt half as appetising, so I’m pretty sure.”
“You didn’t happen to bring us back a sample of this burnt calamari, did you?”
“Sorry, I was busy making sure my squad got back in once piece.”
“Right, right
 warzone
” Tony mused as his mind wandered.
“I know it’s not concrete evidence, and I don’t expect you act on half-assed intel, but I was wondering
 I was hoping you might be able to make me something to test my theory.”
“Like?” Tony prodded.
“Some sort of flash grenade?” Darcy shrugged. “Or maybe, like, a military grade taser? Honestly, I don’t know. You’re supposed to be the genius. Do you have any ideas?”
“Of course. I’ve got a million of ‘em. I can even spare you a few,” Stark teased.
“Okay, then. My squad’s got to have boots on the ground at 0600 Thursday. Do you think you could put together something for me to test out by then?”
“Absolutely,” the inventor replied distractedly, already pulling up a holoscreen to start on a new blueprint.
“I’m in Building 12, across the compound.”
“Uhuh
”
Darcy rolled her eyes and turned to the more responsible looking scientist who gave her a sympathetic smile.
“Private First Class Lewis. Building 12. 0600 Thursday.”
“Thanks,” she muttered as the music returned to ear-splitting levels.  
She left the lab, leaving the two geniuses to argue over the specs, passing a familiar face as she stepped into the elevator. She tried not to react as her arm brushed against his metal one. She had more important things to do, like get her ass handed to her by Natasha.
** *** **
Sergeant Barnes meandered down to Stark’s lab to get his arm checked out, accidently brushing said appendage against a stony-faced female recruit when he stepped out of the elevator. He turned to watch her leave, almost stumbling into the lab.
“Who was that?” he asked in the silence that fell between two songs.
“Who was who?” Stark asked obliviously.
Barnes turned to Banner as he pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
“That was Private First Class Lewis. A friend of Romanoff’s.”
“Romanoff has friends?”
** *** **
Darcy paced in front of her exo-suit, watching the minutes tick by. It would take her ten minutes at least to get suited up so if Stark, or the more reliable Banner, didn’t show up soon she was going to have to suited up in her old gear. A wave of hushed voices rolled through the building and Darcy stopped panicking.
“Private First Class Lewis!” Tony Stark called, strutting in like a damn peacock, revelling in the attention his appearance garnered. Behind him Dr Banner and a few mechanics were pushing two new exo-suit stations towards them. “I come bearing gifts,” he smirked.
Darcy walked over and examined the first exo-suit and couldn’t help feeling a little bit disappointed. It looked pretty much like her current one, at least like her exo-suit did when it first came off the production line.
“What changes did you make?” Darcy enquired, trying to keep from sounding unimpressed.
“Hop in, I’ll give you a tour.” Darcy did as requested, ignoring the dozens of eyes watching the scene unfold. “Okay, it’s pretty much your standard Mach 5 exo-suit,” he explained, strapping Darcy in and taking over her wrist mounted control panel. “But I shed some unnecessary weight and powered it with arc reactor tech, so no more lugging around extra battery packs. Now to your toys. For every standard weapon you’ve got an electrified version. Ten Nebula grenades, patent pending. They’ll light up everything in a five yard radius. And ten clips of Nebula bullets, patent also pending. Do not waste those by firing on automatic. Shoot one, give it a second for the charge to detonate, shoot another if you need to. Got it?”
“Got it,” Darcy nodded, testing the movement of her new suit. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” the inventor replied dismissively. “Now, where’s your Norse god?”
“Huh?” Darcy blinked.
“Sergeant Odinson!” Tony called out, reeling back when Thor stepped out of the line-up. “Sheesh, Romanoff wasn’t kidding. You’re a friggin’ giant. How do you even fit into the Mach 5?”
“With difficulty,” Thor replied, glancing at Darcy for answers.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about squeezing into that exo-suit anymore. I got you a new one. Step on in. Pretty much standard, but obviously it should fit you better,” Tony rambled as Thor tested the suit out, smiling to himself when he discovered he didn’t have to hunch over quite so much. “You’ve got your standard weapon on the left arm but on the right,” Tony drawled, pressing a few buttons and revelling in the surprised gasps from his captive audience as the enlarged right fist of the exo-suit shot out and landed with a loud thunk five feet in front of them. He pressed a few more buttons and the fist, connected to the suit by a several chains and wires, retracted quickly.
“Oh, I like this,” Thor beamed, raising his hammer shaped fist up to inspect it.
“You can also use it to electrocute the bastards. Hit your target then press this button right here to light ‘em up. But, and I can’t stress this enough, make sure you’re gripping these handles when you do. They act like grounding wires and stop the exo-suit from roasting you like a turkey. Got it?”
“I understand. Thank you, Dr Stark.”
“No big deal. A little spider said you were having some anger management issues. This should help you work through them.”
“Thank you,” Darcy repeated.
“Uhuh, just bring them back in once piece – I’m gonna want to retrieve all their hard drive data.”
“Sure thing, Stark.”
“And now that I’ve made my monthly public appearance, I’m going back to my lab to work on the Hulk.”
“The Hulk?” Darcy enquired, her mind flicking back to the oversized exo-suit the genius had been working on when she met him.
“Tony, the PR guys said you can’t call it that,” Bruce sighed wearily.
“It’s my baby, I can call it whatever I want,” he argued as they wandered back to the weapons warehouse.
The mechanics left but the silence remained as they were replaced by the Avengers themselves, all geared up and ready to go.
“Alright, A-hole-Squad!” Hawkeye shouted out, making Darcy roll her eyes. If she ever got her hands on Quill, the leader of L(oser)-Squad and coiner of her squad’s irritating moniker, he was going to end up in the infirmary. “You’re riding out with us today. Lock and load, we leave in five. Last one on does my laundry for a month.”
Darcy didn’t bother waiting for the Avenger to be out of earshot before she addressed her squad.
“You heard the douche canoe. Lock and load!” She ignored Hawkeye’s amused expression and fell in step with Natasha. “Not that I’m complaining, but what’s with the royal treatment?”
“We’re friends. The others seemed to think it was appropriate.”
“We’re friends?”
“Everyone says so.”
“So it must be true,” Darcy finished for her, flashing her a smile. “Stark pimp your ride too?” she asked, eyeing the new additions to the arms of the other woman’s exo-suit that seemed to glow blue at full charge.
Natasha pressed a button on her control panel and two short metal prongs appeared at the end of her fists, sparks flying between the two points.
“Stark dubbed them ‘Widow’s Bites.’ Patent pending,” she smirked.
Darcy just shook her head, “I’ll never understand why you’d wanna get up close and personal with these bastards.”
“What can I say?” Natasha purred as they got locked into the transport. “I’m a hugger.”
** *** **
The transport ships had barely crossed the Hudson before the proximity alerts went off and the bravado her squad had shown in the Avengers’ company started to falter.
“A-Squad!” Darcy shouted over the alarms. “You land clean, you stay together, and you work your way downtown. We’re gonna push those extra-terrestrial fuckers into the Bay, do you hear me?!”
“Sir! Yes, sir!” her squad shouted back.
** *** **
Sergeant Barnes couldn’t take his eyes off the avenging angel across the row, even as the bottom dropped out of the transport ship, wind and the sounds of battle whipping around them.
“What are you smiling about, jerk?” Rogers asked, shouting to be heard, glancing knowingly at Natasha’s friend.
“It’s just good to be home, punk,” Barnes shouted back, grinning from ear to ear. “Hey!” he pointed down at the familiar cityscape passing them by. “You always said you couldn’t wait to get back and for a run around the park,” he laughed.
“Yeah,” Rogers grumbled as the call to drop sounded. “This is exactly what I meant,” he said, pressing the release switch.
** *** **
The battle was already well underway when A-Squad landed. Darcy raised an arm to lay down some cover fire when bullets began to rain down from above. She risked a glance up to see Natasha swinging from her wire in a wide arc, not disconnecting until the immediate perimeter around her team was clear.
She landed gracefully next to Barton, smiling as she began emptying a clip into the next wave of Chitauri.
“Why do you gotta make us all look bad, Tasha?” Barton whined, before shooting a projectile behind him, smirking as it exploded on impact, taking five of the initial targets buddies with him.
“Avengers! Assemble!” their captain shouted over the noise of the battlefield. “Falcon! Clear a path to down towards Columbus Circle. Hawkeye, take to the rooftops and keep an eye on the park. Xavier and Lensher’s teams should be clearing it and I wanna know if any survivors come our way. We don’t want any surprises. The rest of you, follow me!” he called back, more to A-Squad than Natasha or Barnes. He pressed a few buttons on his wrist display and metal plates shifted on the left arm of his exo-suit to form a shield. He marched forward, protecting his now iconic American flag helmet from damage with his left arm and taking out Chitauri with his right. Barnes watched his back and Natasha kept an eye on both of them. Overhead Falcon made runs up and down the street, firing down on the Chitauri, never giving them a chance to regroup. They continued downtown for several minutes without too much trouble but then Falcon’s panicked voice came in over their comms.
“We’ve got skiffs incoming!”
“Shit,” Barnes spat, his eyes shifting to the skies.
“They are on my ass! I could really use a little help here!”
“Yeah, yeah
 I got you covered,” Barton drawled, aiming his arm in Falcon’s direction. A projectile shot out of his customised barrel, right between Falcon’s wings, taking out the skiff behind him in a fiery explosion.
Free of his tail, Falcon landed in from of his team, his metal wings folding back.
“I’m a sitting duck up there, and I can’t get high enough to get the drop on them,” he advised as he caught his breath.
“You just need some back up,” Natasha smirked, eying an incoming skiff. “Cap?”
Rogers looked between Natasha and the skiff and sighed. “You sure about this?”
“It’ll be fun,” she assured him, getting a run up as Rogers planted his feet and held his shielded arm out. The rest of the Avengers covered them as Natasha used Rogers’ shield to launch herself at the skiff as it passed over them, swinging herself up and taking out the pilot with her Widow’s Bites.
“Remind me to thank Stark,” she said to no one in particular as she got a handle on the alien craft and turned it around. “Falcon, you coming or what?”
“How the hell do you make this look so easy?” Falcon grumbled as he took to the skies again, flying under Natasha like a Remora fish. Together, with Barton watching their six, they kept the skiffs occupied and away from the ground troops.
The Avengers were a finely tuned machine and any soldier would have felt honoured to watch them work, but Darcy had more pressing matters to worry about, namely not letting her squad get killed.
Upon landing and taking up the rear behind the Avengers her squad was joined by L-Squad. For all Quill annoyed the shit out of her, he was a decent soldier and cared about his squad as much as she cared about hers. Thor and Drax from L-Squad teamed up, going at groups of Chitauri like a goddamn battering ram. Crude but effective. Parker had miraculously survived their last few battles, and though he had become a better soldier since Jane’s sacrifice Darcy kept him close. He’d been making eyes as L-Squad’s Private Watson and Darcy wasn’t about to let Parker run off and make the ultimate sacrifice for some girl he’d never spoken too.
A pack of Chitauri were fleeing the park and making right for her squad so Darcy took the opportunity to test out one of Stark’s grenades. She lobbed the blue-glowing cylinder towards them and waited. Time slowed. Darcy could swear she could hear the soft tick-tick-tick of the timer over the battle. She watched anxiously as the Chitauri made to scatter, but then they were enveloped in blinding flash of blue light.
“That was amazing!” a dozen voices chimed as their eyes adjusted and the first thing they saw was the charred remains of the Chitauri.
“Use them sparingly!” Darcy shouted as she passed all of her remaining grenades but one off to the nearest soldiers.
A guy from L-Squad that Darcy only knew as Rocket (named for the homemade rocket launcher he took into every battle) made grabby hands for the last available one, a manic grin spreading across his face as he discovered it fit snuggly in the tube of his DIY weapon.
“Oh
 Yeah
” he growled excitedly, running down the street and climbing up the customised exo-suit of L-Squad’s tallest recruit (a guy from parts unknown whose grasp of English was extremely limited). Rocket hauled his rocket launcher onto his shoulder, barking at his teammate to hold still as he took aim at group of Chitauri that were charging towards them from Columbus Avenue, cackling wildly as they writhed in the blue light.
Darcy ordered Parker and Maximoff, a new guy from Europe (his twin sister worked out of Medical and the kid did everything he could to avoid meeting her there), to her side, covering her as she tested out the Nebula bullets. It was a hell of a lot harder for her, shooting one bullet at a time. She had to make each shot count, had to hit her target, and accuracy wasn’t something her superiors worried about when their regular weapons can unload 625 rounds/min. And whist they were just as effective as the grenades it was frustrating and slow going using the bullets, so Darcy decided to take up the rear, picking off stragglers, trusting Thor and Quill to keep leading their teams forward.
And just when everything seemed to be going so well it all went to shit. A skiff got past Natasha and Falcon and distracted the ground troops from the horde spilling out of the park on their left. Rocket stole a Nebula grenade from one of his own squad and fired it towards the park. It took out a handful of them but the rest kept coming. Darcy switched back to regular bullets and practically cut them in half. Rocket loaded his bazooka with its standard projectiles but just as he was ready to fire his human tower took a bullet to the knee and they both fell backwards. Rocket’s finger hit the trigger as he hit the ground, sending the projectile straight into a burnout car on Darcy’s right.
Before she could even think to move someone was screaming her name, a blur of black and shining metal racing towards her. He made to tackle her to the ground but the ensuing blast sent the car sailing towards them, knocking the pair of them into the park. Voices called out them, Darcy could hear them as the ringing in her head subsided, but they were all too busy not dying to come to their aid. She staggered to her feet and almost fell on her ass again when she saw that her wannabe saviour was none other than Sergeant Barnes. As he came to and struggled to get to his feet Darcy moved to cover him as several Chitauri that had escaped X and M-Squad’s near surgical purge of the park made their way towards them.
“Shit,” she hissed, thumping one metal encased arm on the other, trying in vain to unjam her weapon. “Get up, Barnes!” she shouted. “My weapon’s jammed! Get up!” she ordered, practically dragging him to his feet by the scruff of his exo-suit.
She practically pointed him in the direction of the oncoming Chitauri and screamed at him to shoot until the fog in his head cleared and he was able to fight under his own power again.
“Quit yelling at me, Lewis. You ain’t my CO,” he growled as he mowed down the first wave.
Darcy’s retorted died on her tongue as the familiar, skin-crawlingly creepy sound of the Chitauri screeching was heard behind her.
“Shit! Barnes, we’ve got company,” she all but wailed, failing to keep her rising panic in check.
Barnes glanced over Darcy’s shoulder, swearing under his breath and he relieved her of a couple of clips, reloading before dragging her away.
“Come on, we gotta catch up with the rest of our squad. Barton!” he called, tapping on his ear. “Barton! Get your ass back here and watch our six. We’re coming in hot. ‘m fine, Steve. I’m fine,” he repeated aggressively. “You’re about two blocks ahead of us. We should be caught up in ten, if Barton can keep these assholes off our backs.” He jabbed at his ear, silencing his worried team leader, before turning back to Darcy. “Come on, we gotta get moving. It’s getting too hot, we’ve got meet up with everyone at the extraction point.”
Darcy stuck to Barnes’ back whilst he took out any threats from the park side, Barton and Falcon had them covered from the street side. Their squad was in sight and the incoming transport ships could be heard overhead when Darcy saw her life flash before her eyes. A lone Chitauri, injured and feral with rage, dropped out of tree right on top of her. She screamed and batted at it with her weaponless arms, and then it was gone, ripped off her exo-suit by Sergeant Barnes. He tried to throw it into the park but it latched on to his own exo-suit and tried to pry Barnes out of it. With the added weight riding him like a damn bronco he stumbled, falling into a pool of water caused by last week’s grenades and last night’s rain. He caught hold of the Chitauri, his metal hand wrapped around its throat, and threw it as far away as he could manage.
Darcy watched as it flailed in the knee-deep water before righting itself. Her hand straying to her last Nebula grenade as it made to charge at Barnes who was struggling to walk out of the muddy swamp. She raced forward into the water, transferring her all available power to her to arm joints before reaching for Barnes’s metal arm, throwing him over her shoulder like a rag doll before tossing the grenade at the advancing Chitauri. Darcy tried to get to get clear of the water and out of the blast radius before the grenade went off
 she didn’t make it.
** *** **
It was dark. Darcy’s chest hurt. Then she felt lips on hers and air being pushed into her lungs and she came back to life with a cough.
She woke up in the mud, feeling naked and vulnerable without her exo-suit, with Sergeant Barnes leaning over her almost crying with relief.
“Thank Christ
” he murmured, pressing a hasty kiss on her forehead. “Almost lost you for a second there, doll.”
“Who you calling ‘doll’? You’re the pretty one,” she mumbled hazily.
“Is that so?” he chuckled, helping her to her feet. She made for her exo-suit, which looked like it had been pried apart by a metal arm, only for Barnes to stop her. “Your suit’s shot to shit, Lewis,” Barnes advised her, trying to pull her back towards the street. “Come on, we gotta get you back to the transport ship.”
“Can’t leave my suit,” she argued. “Stark’ll kill me if I don’t bring back his data.”
Barnes sighed and moved past her, ignoring Darcy’s protests as he ripped off the control panel with his metal hand.
“Here,” he said, pushing it into her arms. “You’ve got Stark’s data. Now let’s get you to safety.”
“Alright, Mr Bossy,” Darcy grumbled, following Barnes back to the transport ship as their teams cleared the area of the alien scourge.
** *** **
The war ended overnight, not with a bang, but with a tired sigh. One minute the Chitauri were attacking, the next they were retreating as fast as they could as one by one, literally dropping dead like someone had cut their strings. Nobody could say for sure what happened, none of the soldiers believed the nonsense the media was spouting, but they didn’t take their sudden good fortune for granted, burning all but a few corpses which were sent to Banner’s lab for dissection.
Stark regarded the remnants of Darcy’s exo-suit like it was a drool covered tennis ball his pet dog had laid at his feet.
“So, good news – my Nebula grenades work. Bad news – the war’s over.”
“I’m sure the world’s governments will be back at each others’ throats in no time, Tony,” Bruce offered helpfully.
“You’re right. There’ll always be a new war,” Tony sighed.
“But?”
“But they’re gonna want to take the exo-suits and give them to soldiers, who are going to fight other soldiers. I designed them to fight alien invaders, not to put kids in body bags,” he grumbled, slumping onto a stool.
“What are you thinking, Tony?” Bruce asked warily. It didn’t do to let Tony’s ideas wander around unsupervised.
“I was thinking of maybe channelling my energies into less violent areas. I was thinking about my arc reactor tech, and Sergeant Barnes’ arm,” he admitted.
“Clean energy and prosthetics?” Bruce clarified.
“I realise there’s miles between the two, but just think; I’d be helping build a better world, not just blowing up the old one,” he said, punctuating his sentence by hefting a screwdriver at the now defunct Hulk exo-suit. “You should come with me,” he blurted, avoiding Banner’s eyes. “If high tech, neural interfacing prosthetics doesn’t get your motor running, my tower’s got like, ten R and D floors. I’m sure I can find a place for you.”
“That sounds amazing, Tony,” Bruce beamed. “And you should give Dr Helen Cho out of Seoul a call. She was doing amazing things with cell regeneration before the war.”
“Will do, but first,” he said, pulling up a holoscreen. “I’ve got to delete all my files from multiple government servers, and then I’ve got to call Pepper. You might not want to be here for the treason
 or the tearful begging.”
“I’ll go get us some coffee,” Bruce laughed.
** *** **
Darcy, fresh from the showers, was tidying up her bunk when a hush fell over the room.
“Holy shit! It’s the Full Metal Badass!” Private Wilson, the unluckiest/luckiest recruit ever (the guy had more holes in him than a block of Swiss cheese), shrieked excitedly.
“Can it, Wade,” Darcy ordered, throwing one of his obnoxious stuffed animals across the room to distract him. “Sergeant Barnes. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, and that Medical gave you the all clear. And you know, war’s over. You could call me James,” he said, offering her a nervous smile.
“Oooh, James!”
Sergeant Barnes whipped around to glare at Captain Rogers and Senior Airman Wilson, who were batting their eyelashes and making kissey faces at each other.
“Quit it, assholes,” Sergeant Barnes hissed, turning a bright shade of red.
“Aw, come on Barnes. Don’t be like that,” the less crazy Wilson objected.
“We’re just teasin’, Buck,” Rogers continued to tease. “Lord knows you would have done worse to me if I’d been mooning over a girl the way you have.”
“I wasn’t mooning,” Barnes griped quietly, the blush in his cheeks deepening as Darcy watched on with amusement.
“’Buck’?” she asked with a quirk of her brow.
Barnes threw his head back and sighed as Rogers and Wilson laughed at his expense some more.
“Bucky,” he admitted with a huff. “Childhood nickname that the punk delights in sharin’ with everyone.”
“Cute,” Darcy replied doing her utmost not to contribute to the laughter.
“Well, if you like nickname you should get to know the rest of me,” Barnes smirked, watching carefully to gauge Darcy’s reaction. “Over drinks?”
Rogers howled with laughter, drowning out any response Darcy may have had. “Bucky, that was godawful. I can’t believe I ever thought you were smooth with women!”
Barnes turned to rip Roger’s throat out but Darcy’s hand on his arm stopped him.
“I, um, I could really use a drink actually.”
“Yeah?” Barnes beamed back.
“Yeah,” Darcy nodded before turning her attention to her squad who had been watching the entire exchange with interest. “A-Squad! Get dressed, double time. First round’s on Captain America!” she announced, smirking as her squadron cheered.
“What?!” Rogers squawked indignantly, moving to punch Wilson as he doubled over with laughter.
“You know,” Wilson chuckled, wiping away a tear. “I thought I was going to have to worry about the poor girl that fell for your so-called charms, but that girl is going to run circles around the both of you,” he laughed, slapping Rogers on the shoulder as he led the expedition to the nearest bar.
“You know, I could write you up for this Private Lewis,” Rogers grumbled as he counted heads and tried calculate the damage they’d do to this wallet.
“Whatever,” Darcy snorted. “I’m out of here tomorrow. I’m going back to college, getting my last six damn credits, and finally graduating. And then it will be Lieutenant Lewis, thank you very much.”
“Lieutenant Lewis?” Barnes smirked at the alliteration. “I like it. I think I’m gonna call you LuLu.”
“You most certainly are not!”
“Are too!” he teased.
“Fine. Then I’m calling you ‘Bucky’, since you like it so much.”
“Bucky and Lulu
” he mused, offering Darcy his flesh arm. “Sounds like a couple of cartoon characters.”
“Children’s cartoon characters,” Darcy snorted.
“Nah, they’d be badass superheros. Cutesy names to contradict their grim exteriors, tragic backstories, and their kickass skill sets.”
“Oh yeah? What would our superpowers be?” Darcy asked as he led her out of the barracks, paying no attention to the squadron trailing behind them.
“Well, I’d have my amazing strength - and my incredible good looks,” he smirked as Darcy snorted. “And you
 you’d put men under your spell,” he said, gazing at her adoringly until she began to blush. “And then light the bastards up with your lightning powers,” he chuckled.
“Nice,” Darcy grinned. “Maybe we should retire from the military and go to Hollywood with our great idea.”
“Nah, you gotta build the groundwork with a comic book first. Stevie here was an artist before he joined up. He can draw the pictures for us.”
“I’m already buying half the barracks a drink, jerk,” Steve shouted over his shoulder. “I’m not doing another goddamn thing to help you get laid.”
“Oh please, Rogers. Like he needs the help,” Darcy shot back, pulling her favourite Avenger in for a kiss.
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modernart2012 · 8 years ago
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Day Two -Social Media
skatecatangel
 Definite Proof Yuri Plisetsky and Otabek Altin are Dating (pt3/5)
  As I said previously, there’s been rampant speculation about Yura (Yuri Plisetsky, aka, One of the Greatest Skaters to Ever Liveℱ) and his relationship(s) or lack thereof. But what a HUGE portion of the skating community has overlooked is that he definitely is in a relationship and has been for a while. Part One covered basic background/ timeline, Part Two and body language, here and here.
 But, SCA, you say, that’s all coincidental. It could be that they’re close friends. (HA, WAIT UNTIL PART FOUR!) Which, sure, they could be “close friends” but for further consideration: they wear each other’s clothes. And not just that. They choose clothes and outfits that complement each other.
 What does that have to do with them being in a “relationship”? Well, dear anon, who is haunting my ask box as I write this, let me explain: have you ever noticed that over time, articles of clothing from your S.O.’s wardrobe ends up in yours? And that you wear it, and end up thinking, ‘hey, I like this let’s get more of something similar.’ Or even, ‘ah, this color is like that one, let me get it.’
 Case in point, here is Yura in the present, wearing what looks like a classic black leather jacket and leopard print tee shirt and his classic leopard print sneakers.
 Here is younger Yura, around the time of the 2016 Grand Prix Final. In a black hoodie with his Team Russia jacket, and leopard print sneakers. A natural progression, you’d think, as a person ages their taste changes. WRONG. Because look closer at that leather jacket, friend, and you’ll find that it looks the same as the one Otabek was wearing in these photos captured by Otababes recently.
 “A JACKET MEANS NOTHING,” I can practically hear the antis scream. Ah, if only it were just a jacket.
 See, ‘cause if you look closely, you can set up a timeline for how you go from hoodies and eyesores like this tiger sweatshirt (sorry Yura, you have to admit that purchase was questionable!) to fashion forward, yet still classic outfits. And not just Yuri, precious kitten tiger that he is. Otabek too. And it’s practically relationship GOALS.
 Let us commence the perusal.
 We’ve already seen pictures of Yuri’s past style (Death to the neon pink and orange combinations! Nothing more needs to be said on the subject of his younger, daring, garish fashion combinations. It’s rather obvious), so now we bring Otabek for comparison.
 Here is baby!bek, in his pre-2016 Grand Prix Final state. (For those of you who failed to read the timeline, this is when they met. There was fleeing from Xtreme Angels, on a motorbike. We’ll get to that in a minute.) Leather jacket, neutral scarves, neutral toned athletic wear, jackets. Very monochrome palette. Now look at this photograph of baby!Yuri and baby!bek on a motorcycle. Yuri is in fine fashion form (probably trying to stay incognito from the Xtremers), and Otabek is in fine monochrome form. Even his sweater, possibly a pale pastel blue or grey (the lighting is bad), does not clash with his black leather jacket (and doesn’t that look familiar), dark grey scarf, and dark blue-grey pants. Even his fingerless gloves match! Boy goes the extra mile for his aesthetic, can’t you tell?
 Don’t they look cute fleeing to safety who knows where? 💕💕💕
 Fast forward through the next year, year and half, because things are largely the same as far as clothing choices. What is interesting to note is that Otabek, largely inactive and apathetic to Instagram, starts to use it more frequently than just (seemingly PR enforced) posts about travel or competitions. We start to see the two of them in each other’s Insta, as well as in Snapchat (the classic video of Yuri badgering the poor man as he finishes setting up his account posted to his story made the rounds on twitter so quickly, the sound barrier was probably broken.) Somehow, Yuri Plisetsky dragged Otabek into the age of social media both by personal use and Otabek’s own independent usage, and from then on we have (though infrequent on Otabek’s part, if not pictured with Yuri) a more accurate record to pull from as to sartorial choices.
 The first thing to transfer - whether by diffusion or simply being left after a visit, is a dark grey scarf. One that looks particularly like a certain scarf a Kazakh skater was wearing in a certain photo. People who are vague friends or casual acquaintances don’t wear each other’s clothes, even if they are outerwear like scarves. (As an aside, who doesn’t find the sight of their crush or S.O. borrowing clothes from their wardrobe exciting?) Given the timeline, we can make the hypothesis that this could be pining stage, or at least mutual attraction stage - giving a bit more to build with in the conclusion.
 Noticeably, Otabek starts wearing skinny jeans. (Humans with eyes to see the world over rejoiced. Instagram and Twitter crashed.) He may or may not have also rediscovered the color emerald, and it clearly loves him. (If that also happens to be the eye color of a particular Tiger ....)
Shortly after, he starts wearing skater shoes. And if one looks closely enough at pictures, they seem to be of the same brand as Yuri’s.
 But SCA, the antis scream, those could all be coincidental! These are all either stuff that could have been left behind sometime or liked the look of some item and copied! This is not clothing sharing! Or complementary outfits! Well, my screaming mob, let me learn you a Thing. Beyond the fact I have several advanced degrees in Statistics, you idjits, and calculated that the probability of these events together (at the time point!) happened due to chance is less than <.0001 (and thus NOT DUE TO CHANCE), we do have to remember a few things. First off, this is evolution, this is not the final product. It’s not going to be complementary quite yet. Second, that it’s around this time Yuri goes through the Dreaded GROWTH SPURT. The sheer height increase (and difference) makes it entirely likely Yuri was running through clothing like green grass through a goose. (EDIT: The phrase “green grass through a goose” is a colloquialism meant to indicate something that happens fast and suddenly. Apologies for the simile.) There is no way Otabek would have fit into any clothes before, and definitely not when Yuri is outgrowing things quickly.
 Luckily, this growth spurt is good for something other than Yuri’s meme-ing ability (and sheer impossibility of certain poses, no one should be able to do standing splits with legs that long,  isn’t flexibility supposed to go with age? This is entirely unfair). Namely, we get Yuri Plisetsky in a grunge stage - hoodies with cut off sleeves and raw edges (adorably tiger striped), jeans ripped across the thigh and knee, t-shirts that are more hole than fabric, and so much more. And, oh the henleys. Except wait. Where have we seen that last one again? Hmmmmm......
 And while Yuri goes through his mandatory teen grunge phase (a bit later than most, to be fair) and brings punk/pop punk/ emo back en vogue, we shall investigate Otabek’s wardrobe. Sometime between the earrings and growing out only the top of his hair into a full blown curtain (to which millions of humans swooned, because ffs wolf tails), Otabek discovered the rest of the rainbow. Brilliant blues (that are NOT his Team Kazakhstan jacket)? Heck yeah. Yellow? Oh, my, YES. Bright red? PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF THIS SWEATER, AND IT’S NOT BECAUSE THEY WERE VIRGINS.Not to mention patterns. Plaid is drool-worthy. Stripes? Oh my sweet Buddha. What about this subtly leopard printed scarf??  
 Oh, I could practically hear the mental record scratches and screeching, and it was glorious. That’s right. Otabek Altin. The Hero of Kazakhstan. In a leopard print scarf. One that we have no evidence for Yuri, Wearer of All Things Big Cat (however questionable), ever owning or even knowing about before seeing it on Otabek via Instagram. Meaning, to be explicitly clear: Otabek picked and wore that piece himself, without anyone else’s input. (We do see Yuri in the same scarf via Instagram during a visit to Almaty, but only the once. This is also date stamped as after the photos of Otabek wearing the scarf by several months.)
 But wait, Yuri doesn’t have anything reciprocating the exchange! Beyond the fact that that barely, barely Englished, random imaginary anon, that’s only because I have yet to point out how Otabek has influenced Yuri’s wardrobe at this juncture. Because if you compare the past Yuri and the contemporary Yuri, you’ll see the very subtle progression of his color choices. Namely, that the absolute eye-searing atrocities that are his previous outfits slowly gain neutral bases to prevent retinal burn induced blindness. (And who do we know who loved his neutrals?)
 That’s not all, because after this? Things accelerate (because apparently no one does slow burn relationships these days???)  Yuri ends up in a black on black hoodie, with an embroidered tiger on the sleeve in a style reminiscent of Japanese Yakuza. The grey jeans and deep plum fingerless gloves give the entire looks a certain style, wouldn’t you say? (So does the fringe on the  gloves, but that’s not relevant to the point.) Within a week, an intrepid Babe photographs Otabek in bright green athletic pants, and tiger striped socks, and a neon pink v neck (not at the same time though; it was the same Babe who took those three pictures.) What about this pair of yoga pants in a deep grey with subtle spotting? And Yuri’s rather amazing athletic jacket with the matte stripes, or the dark wash jean jacket?
 Put any one of those photos of one of them next to a random photo of the other and try to tell me they don’t complement each other. Because they do. They’ve managed to sync outfits across countries and timezones, and still look like a frickin’ Power Couple. And the pics of them together? We’ve already analyzed some of these for body language, but just take in their outfits for a moment. Taken a good hard look? Good. See how it’s a cohesive image, with certain elements of one being reflected in the other? Now look at these celebrity Power Couples. They too have elements of each other’s styles and outfits that go together. Coincidence? I think not.
 I can hear the haters screaming fruitlessly, so for a final nail in the coffin. This picture was posted on Yuri’s Insta account last week during Worlds (with Otabek tagged of, course). In it, you can see his latest pair of skates, proudly debuting a set with hydro-dipped blades with a leopard print design. Next to them you can see a pair of grey-white skate guards with a leopard print design. You’d think they’d be part of the same set, right? Lol, WRONG. If you translate the caption, and some of the comments, what you get is that only one of the pairs of items shown in the photo is Yuri’s. More than that, if you watched the competition, you’ll see Otabek putting the skate guards on his skates.
 Of course, this is merely window dressing to the way they interact (Part Four), as seen in video and social media posts. Stay tuned for that last bit before the conclusion.
(Cross posted here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9852197)
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docholligay · 8 years ago
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Check and Balances
@katrani, one of my Patrons, commissioned, “Neo Queen Serenity doing her taxes” as a fic from me this month, on my Patreon. AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, THIS WAS A TRIP TO WRITE, and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for sponsoring me and helping me out, it means so much! 
She looked at the form quizzically and turned back to her book, ‘Taxes for Dummies: One World Government Edition,’ flipping through the pages. She had thought, as she had picked up the book, that any old person could do it. She’d told Ami to make the rules as simple as she could while still being fair. And yet, much to her dismay, there were still a thousand questions, some of which struck her as moral more than anything. When she visited Mako in South America, was it for diplomacy, or to try some of her new cakes? Were the medals she had designed for each of her Senshi really a necessary cost, seeing as she’d never award them to anyone else? Could the cost of letting each girl know how special she was be deducted?
These were the things that haunted a Serenity who was still more Usagi than anything, and she looked up at the girl who would one day be Neo-Mars, but, for now, was still fairly firmly Rei Hino, and posed a question.
“Do you think I can deduct the cost of Haruka’s new sword?” She stuck a pen in her mouth and drew her nose to the form. “I fink that’s a bushnish expensh.”
“Serenity, don’t talk with your mouth full.” Rei looked back at her. “Also I don’t think you can expense that much bedazzling. Since she’s a kept woman now. And Michiru was never poor to start with. And Haruka didn’t need a new sword. For any reason.”
She removed the pen. “She’s still one of my guardians.” She crossed her arms and whined piteously. “And she works hard, Rei!”
And it was true, all of them were, though it mostly seemed a diplomatic post now. Each senshi had received command of a continent, after the globe had fallen under Serenity’s hand, but Haruka had chosen to stay with Michiru instead, and live out the life she had dreamed of.
Rei who was also Mars rolled her eyes. “Your dedicated Guardian is opening up a Uranus World Chicken in the Capitol next month.”
“I know!” There was Usagi, in the pep and excitement of her voice. “I’m cutting the ribbon at the opening ceremony! She’s going to name a new mustard after me! It’s got apples in it, so it’s sweet!”
Her chicken empire had spread far and wide, and Rei sometimes wondered if it was her own nearness to Serenity that was turning her into Mars, slowly—Haruka and Michiru rarely came by the palace, and, from what she could tell, they seemed as much Haruka and Michiru as ever, maybe more than they had been during the war, Haruka having relaxed into herself with the removal of the threat, Michiru’s smiles and laughter more genuine than she had known they could be.
Even Usagi, newly minted as Serenity, had not been surprised at Haruka’s request to stay with Michiru. After the fighting had stopped, and, somehow, they had remained standing, all Haruka had wanted to do was disappear into the love of her wife. Michiru had very likely wanted the same thing, but accepted that diplomacy was very likely the one thing she could say she was truly born to, and so did not reject the call of duty, laid upon her again, as she accepted the keys to the ornate palace from her new Queen.
And Haruka was a success, it could be fairly said of her,  of a thing she had built with her own two hands, and that pride had given her a sense of confidence that had calmed her.
Unless, of course, the subject was Seiya Kou, whose picture was still posted at every chicken outlet with a large x through it, denying her service worldwide. Haruka had made it a part of the training video.
“I think,” a coy voice came from the door, “you’re the benevolent dictator of a global government, and you can probably do what you want.” Mina strolled into the room and sat down at the table next to Rei. “Besides, aren’t you just
stealing from yourself?”
“I want to do this right!” She gave a little stomp that was decidedly unqueenly. “I have to follow the rules too.”
“No.” Rei and Mina said in perfect unison, then stealing a glance at each other, their eyes playful.
But she ignored them, and looked back at the book. “And it’s not FOR ME, it’s for my people. They depend on me. I have a lot of ideas for projects and stuff, you know, over the whole world! I’m actually working on one with Haruka.” She crossed her arms indignantly and stared at her two guardians. .
Mina laughed, her nose crinkling in delight.  “A worldwide push for terrible wardrobe options? FINE POLYESTERS OF THE WORLD, IN PATTERNS INSPIRED BY THE HUBRIS OF MAN”
Rei leaned forward, a grin on her face. “Yelling lessons for underprivileged children?”
“Oh, that’s a good one,” Mina chuckled, “I was gonna say a PSA on how to run straight into danger.”
Serenity put her hands on her hips and scowled at them both. “Um, a thing to feed hungry teenagers, actually.” Her annoyance dissipated, and she gave a puzzled look. “You two have started talking alike lately, did you know that?”
Mina grinned. “Sexual trans—“
Rei stomped on her foot aggressively, and sputtered out some explanation. “We’re working on a program together!”
“Oh really?”Her eyes were wide with excitement. “About what?” She picked up her book. “I know there has to be something here where we can get you a break! You two are so smart, I’m sure it’ll be great work.” She clutched her book tightly, and stared at both of them. “So what’s the program?’
“Um,” Rei gestured into the air, “It’s uh, Mina, you’re the one who came up with it, you should really explain it.”
Many who knew Rei would have been tipped off at the utterly inconceivable act of her giving another human being the floor, but Usagi was trusting of everyone, to say nothing of the boundless latitude she gave Rei personally, and so this passed without a second thought.
“Gee, thanks, Reinaldo,” Mina looked up at Serenity, her mind working overtime, “It’s a... fitness program, you know how into training I always was, back when we were soldiers.”
Serenity looked over at Rei, puzzled.
Rei wanted to argue about how the application of money toward fitness instead of things like clothing and housing for the poor was an example of the rich’s desire to keep the underclass a usable commodity for labor, but that would expose the fact that their greatest project had mostly been licking champagne off of each other’s bodies last week, which sounded rather bourgeoisie as she considered it, and so she simply said:
“I mean what, fitness isn’t good??” And scowled at Serenity, hoping the effect came across as genuine.
“No,” Serenity clapped her hands together in delight, twirling around “I think it’s wonderful! You’re so generous, Rei!”
Mina leaned over toward Rei, a coy smile on her face. “If only she knew how generous you could really be, given the right--”
Rei pushed her off the chair and onto the floor.
“Oh, Mina!” Serenity moved over to her. “Are you okay?” She reached out a hand to help her off the floor.
Mina dusted herself off. “It’s fine I was just...trying a new move,” she winked to Rei, “That didn’t quite work.”
Rei crossed her arms and fumed as Serenity whirled back to her stack of forms.
“Now I have to be sure to do this right.” She smiled up at Rei and Mina. “So you can keep working on your project.”
Mina leaned forward, grinning slyly. “Good. We all know I’m into...civic engagement.”
Rei sighed heavily and rolled her eyes, looking away from Mina, trying not to smile, and losing, a touch, as a smirk touched the edge of her mouth.
Serenity sat down at her table. “I’m so proud of how much work everyone’s done since we took over.” It was an odd choice of words, took over, as if it had simply been handed to her--which, in a way, was not incorrect, but also there had not been much room for debate as the world lay flattened, Usagi and her soldiers the sole infrastructure left.
In any case, she had managed as best she could, and she trusted her Senshi to be fair, and to be kind, and from what she understood to be the relative peace and safety of the globe, it seemed as if her trust had not been mislaid.
Mina cocked her chair back. “What about the ball you’re throwing?”
“Oh, I would never deduct that!” Serenity looked shocked, but then burst into a grin. “That’s for me! There’ll be a huge band, and I told everyone to get the most beautiful gowns they could find--except Haruka,” she gestured to Rei and Mina as if they might have been surprised by this revelation, despite having known Haruka for years, “She’ll probably want to wear a suit, but she’ll look really handsome, don’t worry,” Her eyes glowed with excitement. “It feels like it’s been so long since we were all together, and I just, “her lip waggled a bit, “Miss everyone. Like we used to be.”
Everyone in formal ball attire amidst what would surely be a stunning display of small, elegantly presented cakes and a bowl of cocktail shrimp that would please a beluga whale, was not precisely how they used to be, Elegant but lacking in the warmth of games of Super Smash Brothers, Haruka accusing Mina of cheating, boxes of pizza spread out in front of them.  But Rei did not feel it important to bring this up, as Serenity pored over the book.
There was a loving desperation in the way Neo Queen Serenity did it, a deep desire to give whatever she could, whether it mattered or not in a larger sense. She felt the burden of queenliness extraordinarily, even somewhat removed from the day to day happenings of her extended kingdom.
She twirled the pen in her hand thoughtfully, her eyes glazed over as she looked at the mountain of forms in front of her. It all seemed so overwhelming, and the strain of it showed in her face. Each expense had to be carefully thought of, each stream of income accounted for. How could she expect her people to respect her, if she did not respect them?
“I just want to do this right.” It could have stood for taxes, it could have stood for ruling, it could have stood for her ribbon-cutting at at Haruka’s new chicken restaurant, and all of those thoughts were laid together in that one simple statement.
The girl who would become Mars, but, for now, still worried about Usagi and called herself Rei, pulled herself up and walked over to Serenity, who she still thought of as Usagi.
“You’re doing fine.” She gestured broadly over the spread out documents. “You’re...you,” said, said, not quite able to bring herself to say the word Queen, even now, “ You could always give more money later, if you wanted.”
“And take it from whereever you wanted!” Mina piped up, in her helpful unhelpful way.
Serenity bit her bottom lip, still considering her options.
“I know!” A sudden joy came to Serenity’s face, an answer revealed before her. “I’ll ask Ami to do them! She’s so smart, and she’s always fair, she’ll know just what to do.”
Mina couldn’t help but think that The Territory of Europe would be a little light in the purse this year, and grinned
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mastcomm · 5 years ago
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A New Martyr Puts a Face on China’s Deepening Coronavirus Crisis
WUHAN, China — More than 600 people have died. Tens of thousands are infected. Millions are living under lockdown, and the government has sought to silence complaints.
But what provoked an online revolt in China on Friday, the fiercest assault on the censors in almost a decade, began with the death of one man: the doctor who tried to raise an alarm about the coronavirus.
The deluge of mourning and anger at the death of the doctor, Li Wenliang — from the same virus he was reprimanded for mentioning — at times overwhelmed China’s sophisticated censorship and propaganda systems. Many on social media called the doctor a martyr and a hero, and government officials, celebrities and business leaders risked rebuke by the Communist Party to join ordinary citizens in expressing frustration and grief.
“Li Wenliang’s death has become an emotional flash point,” said Wang Yu, a Wuhan man in his 20s, showing the torrent of comments on his phone about Dr. Li in his social media feeds.
“He’s a tragic figure in this epidemic, and his death has taken this tragedy to a new extreme,” Mr. Wang said. Then he hesitated and took back his words. “I worry that his death won’t be the extreme of this tragedy.”
The doctor’s death posed a new test for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who was already facing deep political problems — over a newly signed trade deal with Washington, Taiwan’s recent election and Hong Kong’s protest movement — before the virus spilled out of Wuhan. In recent weeks, Mr. Xi’s talks with foreign leaders have shifted to a defense of China’s response to the epidemic, which has sickened more than 31,000 people and brought the country to a near standstill.
Now, the government is also caught in a tug of war over Dr. Li’s legacy that could challenge Mr. Xi’s powerful censorship apparatus.
Image
Li Wenliang at Wuhan Central Hospital last month.Credit
Li Wenliang, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Dr. Li, 34, warned of the virus in an online chat room more than five weeks ago, the police made him an example of what befalls those who do not comply with official demands for secrecy. He was summoned by the authorities and forced to sign a statement denouncing his warning as an unfounded and illegal rumor.
After his death on Friday, many Chinese said he was a haunting reminder of the early steps taken to cover up the outbreak.
Updated Feb. 5, 2020
Where has the virus spread? You can track its movement with this map.
How is the United States being affected? There have been at least a dozen cases. American citizens and permanent residents who fly to the United States from China are now subject to a two-week quarantine.
What if I’m traveling? Several countries, including the United States, have discouraged travel to China, and several airlines have canceled flights. Many travelers have been left in limbo while looking to change or cancel bookings.
How do I keep myself and others safe? Washing your hands is the most important thing you can do.
Stuck inside by widespread lockdowns, many people are glued to the internet, with abundant time to dwell on the doctor’s death. Chinese social media, often fractious and fickle, was as unanimous as it has ever been in its grief for Dr. Li, with eulogies flowing from all corners of the country. For a few hours, a trending hashtag called for freedom of speech.
Unable to fully expunge the discussions, Beijing has turned to state media to transform Dr. Li into a loyal soldier aligned with the government’s cause. The tussle over the doctor’s memory and the political implications are reminiscent of what happened after the SARS outbreak, some said in posts that were quickly deleted.
Jiang Yanyong, the retired military doctor who first called attention to widespread undercounting of SARS cases, has been erased from the official record of that time. By contrast, Zhong Nanshan, the doctor who first identified SARS, has been lionized as a faithful servant. When Beijing needed someone to publicly deliver bad news about the coronavirus, it turned to Dr. Zhong.
Dr. Li’s death also showed how online anger can occasionally slosh over the tall censorship walls built to stifle it. China’s censors have not been this overwhelmed since 2011, when anger and embarrassment over a high-speed rail accident in Wenzhou became impossible to scrub. The Wenzhou crash helped spur new policies to more tightly police the internet.
While many of the lives lost in the coronavirus outbreak have been obscured by the numbers, Dr. Li’s death has provided a face and story for the victims of the epidemic and the medical workers struggling to contain it.
In Wuhan, a steel-gray sky hung over the melancholy day of Mr. Li’s death. An impromptu memorial of flowers, a black-and-white photograph and singed cigarettes — a stand-in for joss sticks — formed at the entrance of the hospital where he had died. The mourners during the daytime were few, perhaps because many people in Wuhan remain afraid to stray too far from home.
“Thank you for your courage,” said the message on one bouquet of chrysanthemums, the Chinese flower of mourning. “Heroes never die, thank you,” said another.
In an interview with Pear Video, Dr. Li’s mother spoke of her grief through sobs. For several weeks, he was stable and able to get out of bed and eat, she said, adding that only in the last two days did his condition deteriorate. She said she had not been able to see him before he died and described the shattered family he left behind.
“In June, his second child will be born,” she said, adding that she and Dr. Li’s father had both contracted the illness, but recovered. “What happens to his family? Is it not broken?”
“Me and his father were cured, but pitifully our child, our child didn’t make it,” she added. “He was 34 years old. He had great potential. He was a very talented kid. He isn’t like other people who lie — he was loyal to his duties.”
Candle emojis, quotes and images of Dr. Li dominated social media feeds. Business leaders and celebrities, accustomed to muzzling political hot takes for fear of invoking the government’s wrath, shared their thoughts and condolences. One popular illustration turned the outlines of Dr. Li’s surgical mask into barbed wire.
A part of Dr. Li’s appeal has been his Everyman sensibilities. He loved fried chicken thighs, was annoyed when cherry prices rose too high and often got stuck working extra shifts at the hospital. Like many others in China, he wrote all about it online.
On the microblogging site Weibo, users surfaced his old musings.
“A life not examined is not worth living,” he wrote in a characteristically quirky post, after musing about the origin of egg pancakes. “I hope everyone can fulfill their values.”
The country’s state media released its own remembrances, in some cases working to subtly co-opt Dr. Li’s story.
China’s National Health Commission recalled him not as a Cassandra warning about the virus, but instead as a doctor on the front lines of the response. Although Dr. Li had expressed a desire to help his colleagues, he was an ophthalmologist who was sickened by a patient he was treating for glaucoma.
“Since the start of the epidemic, many medical workers disregarded their own safety, gave up their small family, and braved the difficulties for the bigger family, and fought bravely at the foremost front line of the epidemic,” the health commission said in a statement. Those workers, it added, “made great contributions to protect people’s life and health, and we pay the utmost respect.”
China’s state-run television broadcaster sought to link Dr. Li directly to Mr. Xi’s own words about the battle against the epidemic. “Beating this devil virus is the best consolation to the deceased,” the broadcaster said in a commentary, echoing Mr. Xi’s characterization of the illness.
On Friday, bowing to popular pressure, Communist Party officials said they would send a team from the powerful anticorruption committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding Dr. Li’s death.
The State Supervisory Committee has “decided to send an investigation team to Wuhan, Hubei Province, to conduct a comprehensive investigation on related issues reported by the masses about Dr. Li Wenliang,” it said on Friday, releasing a one-line statement on its website.
It is rare for the Communist Party to react so swiftly to public outrage. Several top officials and state media outlets had joined in the chorus mourning Dr. Li’s death. In statements online, the National Health Commission and the Wuhan government said they had expressed their condolences.
The New York Times spoke to Dr. Li a week before his death. “If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he told The Times, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”
“I felt I was wronged, but I had to accept it,” he said of his arrest. “Obviously I had been acting out of good will.”
“I have felt very sad seeing so many people losing their loved ones.”
Reporting was contributed by Daniel Victor, Eimi Yamamitsu, Steven Lee Myers, Sui Lee Wee, Elaine Yu, Liz Alderman, Denise Grady, Scott Reyburn and Vivian Wang. Research was contributed by Lin Qiqing, Albee Zhang, Elsie Chen and Cao Li.
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