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whatbettyread · 5 months ago

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Pulling Swords from Stones: What's the matter with YA King Arthur Retellings

I have read a lot more this year than I have in a long time, and basically read anything someone recommended me. I tried to stay in the umbrella of queer, indie, and diverse voices. Unfortunately, that means I never want to be mean! I don't want to kick diverse voices or smaller creators, and I don't want to discourage those creatives. On the other other hand, I appreciate people being bitchy, especially when it's about a book that I was interested in. So I'm splitting the difference-- overly positive on goodreads, with my negative comments here, where nobody will read them.

I know part of the Cait Corrain (sp?) drama was that she was reviewing indie authors and friends positively but being negative on alt accounts, and I hope that's not what I'm doing here. I think both of these books are relatively big, and I don't know the authors personally, but I also think they're small enough the creators might come across the reviews. Hopefully they're smart enough to avoid reading reviews.

This is about the following books:

Once and Future

Gwen and Art are Not In Love

Probably needlessly negative, which is why it's under a cut, but:

Once and Future is the only book I definitively DNFed this year. It should be a slam dunk for me: I love sci fi, I've had "Arthur comes back as a marginalized person" as a concept in my head for decades, I love queer characters and characters of color taking the lead. Once and Future has all of these things!

Once & Future, by A.R. Capetta, Cory McCarthy, is billed as a "bold, sizzling YA retells the popular legend with the Once and Future King as a teenage girl -- and she has a universe to save." The protagonist is a plucky teenager, a woman of color, and queer-- sapphic, even-- living with her brother and on the run from a spacefaring megacorporation.

Even setting aside the Arthur of it all, I had a few issues with this book from the jump. Capetta and McCarthy both seem uncomfortable with writing a woman of color as their protagonist-- one of the authors is part Lebanese, but there still seemed to be a lot of discomfort with how they wrote those characters. You could feel the difference between how they write Ari and how they write Merlin: Merlin is immediately a comfortable point of view.

The introduction of Merlin into the story is actually where I fell off. Merlin is The Merlin, from the Arthur Times. He wakes up in the far future and misgenders someone, and then is corrected. He immediately apologizes and becomes Woke.

And this made me feel crazy! Because it was simultaneously too easy and not easy enough. Merlin is The Merlin from Arthurian Times, who Wakes Up Every Few Hundred Years and Updates His Knowledge. So... he has never met a single nonbinary person for thousands of years? He is not held to any sort of social norm from the Arthurian time period, or does he just update his understanding super quickly once corrected? There's no bafflement from the protagonists-- who have only existed in a world where gender is fluid-- why someone would struggle with the idea of nonbinary people. And then Merlin explains that he is from the past and has outdated ideas!

Third genders and nonbinary genders were on Earth during the Arthurian era, just outside of England-- did Merlin just keep all his vast knowledge confined to the British isles?

It felt like a handwave: a way for Merlin to stay "outdated" and to address the changes in time, while also showing that he's a good dude who will update his ideas immediately when confronted. It felt too easy-- and if you want it to be easy, why not have him interact with nonbinary people at a previous time? He is specifically written to be The Merlin, but the authors seem like they don't want to tackle what having a dude from the 5th century running around would actually be like.

Similarly, Gwen and Art are Not In Love wants to split playing with the time period with having things be Easy. The novel doesn't commit to a time period, so the extent to which homophobia existed is hard to pin down. We are in generic middle ages time period, maybe after the 12th century: the references to Arthur are about cycles, rather than a true retelling. This is the story of Gwen and Art, who are betrothed, but Gwen is in love with the Only Lady Knight, and Art is gay. They fake date to get people off their backs.

Unlike Once and Future, Gwen and Art is mostly just trying to be a good time. It really reads like fanfiction. I enjoyed it! Really. But the second I turned my brain back on, the ramifications. The rammies. The book is interested in some of the history and politics, but is fearful of making any institution seem truly flawed. There is a civil war coming, but we aren't shown why people might want to fight against their ruler: Gwen has a servant she mistreats, but they're actually friends its fine. Once you have a rebellion: people who are unhappy under a ruler-- one has to start asking questions.

I don't tend to like stories about royals. I'm originally from the UK: I don't like the idea that magic blood makes someone better than me. But I can deal with this for a story written well: either one that explores what royalty means, or one that ignores it.

I think a lot about Bridgerton in terms of this. The race-blind casting in the show is fantastic and the actors are brilliant and beautiful-- and then they explain it by saying George III married a black woman and it... ended racism? And I didn't need an explanation! I didn't want one. But once you say that, I start thinking about the period being built on the slave trade, the British Empire built on the stolen wealth of Africa and India, and George III being mad, and how he would never be allowed to marry Charlotte, and if he used his royal power to do that-- would the colonies revolt sooner? I mean, think about what the west did to Haiti--

You see what I mean?

Both books try and straddle between "legitimate retelling" and "don't worry about it." But I'm going to worry about it if you bring it up!

The Goblin Emperor is a book that is very concerned with the morality of Empire. It doesn't shy away from the idea that Empire itself is a toxic thing, even when led by a good ruler, and that even a good ruler will struggle with the machinery of empire. The Twelve Kingdoms tackles the idea of royalty differently: the Royal in charge of a Kingdom is actually tied to the well-being of the land and its people. Many of the snapshots we get are to see how different rulers manage-- or don't manage- their kingdoms. You are King as long as you serve your country-- and emphasis on Serve.

Additionally, they seemed to suffer from the "fujoshi's curse"-- something I say fondly, as a sufferer myself on occasion, but still a detractor.

The fujoshi's curse is this: you are more interested in your male characters than your female ones, even as a woman or as a queer person ostensibly writing about multiple genders of character. Both this and Gwen and Art suffer from this: the authors seem to struggle to enjoy the female protagonists, or to understand their attraction to women. In Gwen and Art, Gwen is implied to be demisexual: this is fine and good! But since she's the only queer woman whose interiority we're invited into, we get the vibe that her attraction is only to this particular Lady Knight. When her attraction is described, it doesn't feel comfortable for the writers. In Once & Future, once Merlin is introduced, he is immediately the writers favorite.

Both books seem to feel like wlw relationships are an obligation, something you need to avoid people telling you that you're just fetishizing mlm relationships. They feel flat. Gwen has been in Love With Lady Bridget, but also kind of wants to be Lady Bridget. The writers keep adding elements to their relationship as though adding hooks will find something to keep them interested. But Lady Bridget, and Gwen, are somewhat superfluous to the story. They are given things to do that seem plot important, but the narrative exists primarily for Gwen's brother and Art.

Gwen is punished by the narrative for her cowardice, without the narrative leaving any room for why a woman might be more cowardly than a man at that time period. Gwen is portrayed as being in the wrong for caring what other people think: her arc is her being brave and breaking the rules and maybe being nicer to servants.

What is the point of a King Arthur retelling? What is the point of taking a story about Kings and Royalty and the Inevitable Good of The Ruling Class and rewriting it with members of the underclass? Gwen and Art say: everyone else gets a fun middle ages romance, in the system of middle ages royalty, so we queers get one too. Once and Future says: you think you like the inevitable power of the ruling class? Well this is a brown, queer woman from the underclass, and she has been gifted this power. They do not go beyond that. They do not ask more questions.

At one point, in Gwen and Art, Lady Bridget, the only female knight, the only character of color in the book, lifts the sword from the stone and wields it in battle. What are the consequences of this? A few jokes. When she is at tourneys, some people talk about it, but she doesn't like it. Gwen's brother, Art's boyfriend, becomes the King. The Good King. And he Makes Gay Marriage Legal.

We know there are flaws in the kingdom, in the system. We know that, in Once and Future, the Evil Corporation infects everything, is galaxy spanning and all powerful. But the problems are fixed, in both, without violence. Violence comes from outside: from the violent members of a cult. Their invasion is repelled, and the system is fixed by the royals from the inside. In Gwen And Art, the Good King rising to the throne brings about a period of liberal niceties and wokeness, but with the King. In Once and Future, paperwork and a marriage Fix the galaxy.

Both books tackle Class with characters from different ends of the system, but both conclude with remarkably similar ideas. The rise of liberalism, and a 20th century moral outlook, brought about by the Right People Being in Charge.

What do the villains want? In Gwen and Art, they want to be in charge, because they're part of an Arthurian cult. In Once and Future, they're a fascist neoliberal government corporation. But it never feels like the enemy is an ideology or a people: the enemy is an obstacle we need to get past, but it doesn't come from anything.

I'm not just a killjoy: like I said, I enjoyed Gwen and Art well enough when I was reading it. But both retellings seemed to stop at "we are recasting with diverse characters." Why? What does it say? What does it mean? What are the themes, and how are they challenged by these changes? Royalty, empire, corporate oligarchy, the existence of Kings: all of these things are parts of oppressive systems, and the stories we tell about them are about those oppressive systems.

Secret royalty stories have existed forever: the pauper who is a prince is a classic tale. Those stories say: royal blood always floats to the surface. Subversions, too, have something to say. But you have to figure out what.

#what i actually read #negative #book review

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aliteralsemicolon · 5 months ago

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Sometimes it’s a bit jarring if i’m reading a fic and I read y/n y/l/n in a sentence… i do like it when writers circumvent it by writing a pet name or just writing an oc without physical descriptions. Do you have any tips or ideas on how to avoid y/n because I tried writing (never publish my works tho) from in 3rd person from Spencer’s perspective and it’s really difficult unless i use y/n or makeup a name…

Yea using pet names is my favourite way, but when I can't I normally imagine myself in a conversation with someone who's name I don't know and how I'd address them. This helps with 3rd person povs because they're especially tricky.

So in conversation pet names are the easiest option. Second, I'd divert/catch their attention with "Hey" as in "Heyyy, don't cry."

When doing like a monologue or inner thoughts, I would stick to using whatever the pronouns are for the reader in this story (e.g. I'd stick to she/her" as in "She's my entire world."

I'd also keep the writing in relation to Spencer. So if it's Spencers pov and he's describing reader walking down the isle I'd keep it "She looks as beautiful as I've always known her to be" or something.

Describing reader in relation to Spencer is especially important when trying to be non-descriptive because if reader's given their own persona or too much personalisation away from Spencer then they become too real, and are harder to relate to. What I mean is don't focus too much on who reader is as a person, don't go too deep into their interests and their backstory. Everyone has different interests and back stories, so going too deep narrows how many people relate.

Another thing you can do is say stuff like 'I call out her name, but she seems too deep in thought to have heard me' or 'She finally turns to face me at the sound of her name' from Spencer's pov.

Basically just keep reader as surface level as possible, stick to pronouns and pet names, redirect with attention grabs and describe the action of calling out readers name but not actually saying it.

Second person povs are easier because you can get away with a lot of 'you's as in "you pout at his suggestion" or "you hear him call out your name".

I hope this is useful for you! Good luck on your writing

#; answers #✉️ from anon #; plays #writing tips

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branmuffins22 · 5 months ago

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from this ask game

🧮 what are you working on? describe it in 20 words or less

🌅 do you typically known the ending to something before you start writing it?

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

📚 do you ever read similar works while writing, or do you intentionally not read them?

😊 say something nice about your writing

Thanks for the ask!

🧮 what are you working on? describe it in 20 words or less

Lots of Owl House stuff, mostly Vee-centric/adjacent fics, but also a canon rewrite and a Code Lyoko AU.

🌅 do you typically known the ending to something before you start writing it?

Ehhh, kindasorta? Yes and no? I usually try to get a rough idea of what the consequences of the story will be, like who ends up where and some of how they got there, but I rarely have it nailed down completely before I start. Gotta give the characters a chance to wander before I pin 'em. For instance, in The Disappearance of Masha DeLisle, I knew going in that it would end with Masha waking up on a beach in the Demon Realm, and with Vee isolating herself between her breakdown and the imminent shutdown; but I didn't know Vee would lock herself (and one of her cabinmates) in Cabin 7, and I didn't even consider the counselors' POV until I got there, despite that segment being the actual end of the fic.

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

Kinda, but not really? Not yet, anyways. Or, not that I can think of? Hm. Maybe I shouldn't be answering asks so close to bedtime... Two of my WIPs have been marked for major revision: one because I tried to do a little too much at once and didn't leave myself room to actually tell the story, and another because I realized an entirely different format could tell the story in a much more effective way. That said, I haven't actually started writing either of those revisions yet. Still in the most basic planning stages of "Here's how I should fix this." Either way, while the contents are changing, the stories themselves are fundamentally the same. So I guess, I've come across these obstacles on my way to those destinations, and I've picked out what detours to take, but I still haven't started moving from where I stopped.

📚 do you ever read similar works while writing, or do you intentionally not read them?

I read a bunch of similar works, since those are what scratch my itch, but perhaps predictably, nothing is quite exactly the way I'd do it. If nothing else, I like to collect relevant headcanons and such, like some sort of possum. I try to maintain a list of credits for where I got certain ideas from, but it's hard when I just spontaneously remember A Thing I'm Pretty Sure I Read In A Fic Somewhere and decide it's so compelling that I simply must include it. It once took me like a month of off-and-on searching to find the fic I got a certain spell idea from, and the search is over a year and still ongoing for the fic that cheekily described a giant Worm Off The String as one of the Boiling Isles most fearsome predators, that Luz and one of her friends encounter in the woods, having to stay perfectly still to avoid its detection/ire... Anyways, yeah. I read similar stuff. It's fun and inspiring!

😊 say something nice about your writing

ooooo, ur brain is sooo awesome. ur dedication to The Bit is exemplary, nobody is using literary devices as character gimmicks quite like u 😤

#ask games

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sowthetide · 1 year ago

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I devoured this story and almost immediately started rereading it, so I thought that I should thank you for my favorite parts.

1) Fleshing out the Iron Islands! It is so, so boring when Theon has to choose between his noble foster home and his horrible natural family. Getting to see the Ironborn not so much for their good points as their reality has been a delight.

2) Quen! I love her. She is very much Theon, just with different opportunities. I find that the fandom tends to underrate Theon's strengths, which is understandable given his crash-and-burn storyline and because the show really makes him the butt of the joke, but I find it easy to understand why Robb is in love with her in your story.

3) On that note, their relationship is really wonderful. They are very convincing best friend; they know each other probably best in the world and they just enjoy each other so much. But the love story isn't too saccharine, as both of them (yes, including Robb) hurt each other sometimes, on purpose and by accident.

I also enjoy how the way they treat each other romantically is so different from their rapport with everyone else. Quen will check out anyone hot and fun, but her love for Robb only turns romantic over the course of the main storyline (for the best, given the age difference; no need to take after Unvle Euron). Robb is saving himself for marriage, but he has probably been marinating in hormones and yearning since he was twelve. And the poor boy has no one to talk to about it, while the love of his life is merrily taking randoms to bed (unless...Jon? We haven't seen much of him in this story, because Quen doesn't care, but did tweenage Jon notice Robb looking at Quen's legs?).

4) The potential in-law dynamics! You develop Quen's relationships with her family so much that it actually startled me to realize that Robb hasn't met any of them. Frankly, it is his turn to suffer. Quen has been living with Catelyn for a long time already. I am extremely eager to see him Asha, but Dagmar even more so. That's basically his wife's dad, but does Robb know that? And once they are all living together, he is short of a father now. Dagmar is so different from Ned, who is really *the* model of a man and a father for Robb, that their interactions have to be interesting. Plus, your story has really made Alannys a real woman, that I really look forward to having her bounce off new people. Like I said, it's Robb's turn to be uncomfortable with his mother-in-law!

In short: fantastic, I love it, thank you for continuing!

You're so incredibly kind ❤️ I'm glad you've enjoyed this story!!

#1: I LOVED getting to flesh out the Iron Islands. I have a similar dislike of "Starks = good, Greyjoys = bad" Theon stories, where Theon would never have been accepted on the Iron Islands or had a good life, which is just ridiculous. I think it's a lot more interesting if Quen had the option for a happy on the isles, either with Alannys at Ten Towers, or as Lady of Hammerhorn with Greydon Goodbrother. That way, it's a hard decision that she has to make, and it ends up being a bizarre combination of "selfish/selfless" ("selfish" for the impact her northern ambitions/loyalties will have on her mother, "selfless" for the personal sacrifice she's making to secure a better future for the ironborn).

I've really tried to be fair to the ironborn, as GRRM's writing of them left a lot to be desired IMO (basically vikings, except with all of their interesting, non-violent cultural aspects stripped away). We get to see some of the northern lords' individual personalities, but the ironborn lords in canon just seem to go along with whatever Balon/Euron decides, which is, quite honestly, lame. So it was a ton of fun to explore a bunch of different ironborn characters and locations.

To me, the ironborn are not uniquely evil/brutal, but chapter 38 will make it clear that they're definitely not nice, either. In the same way, I'm trying to avoid portraying the north as straightforwardly "The Good Guys". I think the Starks as individuals are well-meaning, but war always means devastation and I don't think the smallfolk who have been brutalized give two shits about getting justice for some random northern guy that got beheaded (sorry Ned).

#2: I love her too ❤️ I really tried to keep as many elements of Theon's core personality as possible, whilst also balancing the inherently transformative nature of genderbending. Being born a different sex in a world like Westeros changes so much about that character's experiences that I really had to reflect on who Theon would be within the experience/expectations of manhood.

Fandom also really does underrate Theon's strengths (which is, as you say, veryyy understandable given his complete flop of a storyline in ACOK). But he does have strengths! Like Theon, Quen is (somewhat) clever, ingratiating, funny, bold, inventive, ambitious, etc. I can't remember who described Theon as "hungry to live", but I think that's the perfect description of him/Quen as we see them starting in AGOT.

#3: Anything with Robb & Quen were always some of my favorite scenes to write. It was important to me that they be friends first, and that Robb really had his own arc where he came to understand the power imbalances at play in their relationship. There's such an ease and a comfortability to their relationship that they both desperately need(ed), and that will return in the late-game of this fic.

I also thought it was important to portray Robb as someone who has significant and noticeable flaws. Quen's flaws are pretty apparent (to say the least), but Robb also has a tendency to lash out, to take loyalties/forgiveness for granted, to bottle up his feelings, to disappear into his responsibilities to avoid difficult emotions/circumstances (as we'll see in chapter 39).

For Quen, sexual feelings are easy and of no consequence. Romantic feelings (specifically for Robb) on the other hand... well... Let's just say that Robb has had some ten years to come to terms with his feelings, but it's still very new to Quen. She went down the Romantic -> Sexual -> Oh Fuck I'm In Love With Him pipeline at break-neck speeds.

Unfortunately, I'll have to keep my silence on Jon (as he will have a Part To Play), just know that we'll see more of him later on ;-)

#4: TeaInABowl has me FERAL about the potential of a Greyjoy-Harlaw-Stark family sit-down. I don't wanna spoil things, but there will be some intersection of Quen's northern and ironborn relationships in chapter 40, just not in a particularly fun context (but it's not as ominous as I'm making it sound). There will probably also be a real ironborn-northman sitdown later on, and I'm sooo excited about it.

Alannys hates Robb's ass for real (and I imagine her and Catelyn get along like oil and water too), but I think Asha and Robb would at least be united in Wanting Quen To Be Happy. Asha's not necessarily happy about it herself, but she'll have to make her peace with it. Again, I don't wanna spoil, but I imagine Dagmer as joining Quen's household at Winterfell in the eventual happy ending. That's her dad!!! And, like Asha, I think he would have a lot of guilt/anger for leaving Quen alone at Winterfell in the first place.

Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a wonderful ask!!! Chapters 38 and 39 are done (pending beta-ing, yippee!), and I'll be cranking out the rough drafts for chapters 40 and 41 over the next two weeks. All goes well, I should be back March 10th with at least 4 weeks of chapters for y'all!

#ask #unfortch i will be pretty busy these next few days catching up on school work. i've got stuff due sunday that i have NAWT even started #then it's back to the chapter 40 trenches 🫡#i love this fic and i love you guys <3 <3 <3

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anthrofreshtodeath · 2 years ago

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Do you remember what the first smut you ever wrote was? And how did you get so confident in writing it (or was it always easier for you?) I am dabbling in some writing for the first time in my fandom life and I find a lot of it flows right out of me, but the smut?? Good christ I’m all over the place with it and don’t think I’m succeeding in what I’m actually trying to convey 😂😭 Do you have any tips?

Hmm… I think the first smut I wrote was when I was 19 for Alucard and Integra of Hellsing (the anime). I never posted it. It was bad.

And I hope I’m not bursting your bubble, but for me, the smut writing never really got easier 😂. I don’t really think my smut is all that good, so I may be the wrong person to ask. But like you, I struggle because it is very… choreographed. It’s like playing Tetris with your writing. The end result is supposed to be sexy, but the process is so technical as to be dry (at least for me).

But, with that said, I guess I have a few tips:

1) unless you’re writing PWP, try to give your smut a purpose. I’ll use CMWHS chapter 14 as an example - Jane and Maura are fucking, but Maura is using the fucking to punish Jane in a very particular kind of way that she knows will hurt Jane because Jane hurt her. So, successfully or not, it serves the plot. Once I know what I want the sex scene to do, then I plan out the acrobatics, LOL. Meaning what positions, what do they say to each other, etc.

2) just get the skeleton on the page. If you’re not sure of all the above, put a barebones placeholder down, like a sketch of how you want the scene to go, then return to it later after you’ve had time to think about it. Wow, lots of bones talk here, but I do this one all the time.

3) listen to music to get you in the right headspace! This doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me. Listen to sex music. Get a feel for what is sexy to you and to other people and draw inspiration from that. Notice I am not recommending a certain genre because sex music can mean different things to different people. Send an ask or a DM if you want to know specific artists or songs I listen to in order to get in the smut writing zone.

4) read other people’s work! This is so important for all types of writing, smut included. Well-rounded readers are better writers. Don’t copy, but draw inspiration.

5) Last one - don’t try to be too sexy. This is hard to explain and I’m not even sure I can articulate what I mean by it very well, but I’m going to try. Avoid porny language, the “oh yeah right there baby” stuff. The over the top, “her orgasm ripped through her” type of stuff. I think we’re all guilty of going there from time to time, myself totally included, but sex is a thing that real people do. Real people say real things and crack real jokes and express real emotions during sex. They say silly things, they say sexy things that you wouldn’t necessarily find conventionally sexy, but oh boy does it work for their partner(s). Write about what you find sexy, or what people have told you they find sexy, independent of what media tells us what we should think is sexy. Queer spaces are great for this. One thing I think is hot? When Jane Rizzoli crosses her arms and nods while Maura Isles is talking, all while she looks down at her, in a completely nonsexual context or conversation. I can take that body language and transpose it onto a sex scene, alter it a bit, and it works. It’s not, you know, them making out or moaning or getting bent over or whatever (those things can be hot too), but it feels more real because it’s true to character. I hope that made even the tiniest bit of sense 😂. Long story short I think the hottest smut is the smut that is unique to those characters, not just the smut that ticks all the kink boxes or gets all the conventional positions right. Though getting those boxes ticked can be fun too! When people combine the character development and the kinky boxes? God tier smut.

Like I said - probably not the right person to ask given my complicated relationship with my smut writing, but I hope this helped! If it wasn’t so awkward I’d do a “my favorite sex scenes and what I find successful about them” series of posts or something.

#ask anthrofreshtodeath #fic writing

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girl4music · 4 months ago

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There’s a few Xena and Gabrielle video edits set to this song on YouTube. I have one in my collection that’s different to this but provokes the same feelings in me.

I think what both Xena and Gabrielle/Elphaba and Glinda prove as “non-canon” ships is that friendship can be romantic. That there is no either/or to it when it comes to love because love is friendship caught fire.

Both ships are legendary in the LGBTQ community for being art/entertainment stories centered around the love between lead female characters and they prove that that lead character dynamic can actually work very well for storytelling when done sincerely and honestly.

Of course it doesn’t have to involve romance at all, but odds are when you depict a deep friendship between female characters, it’s going to be interpreted that way.

So why not just lean into it that way?

What’s wrong with it? Nothing.

It’s just conservative heterosexual audiences always say that it won’t work. That it will “ruin” the storytelling. Well both Xena and Wicked prove that’s not true. Focusing on lead female-to-female relationships in art/entertainment storytelling can be a very profound thing. That goes for whether it’s purely platonic or not. And I think that the room for interpretation with both these ships that you can choose to view them as purely platonic or as romantic is part of what makes them so iconic. I think ambiguity of the nature of what the love between them is what makes their love stories so timeless and open for debate and analysis over and over again. After all, WLW isn’t just about romance. It just means love between women in general. And no one can deny that there is not a deep love between these ships.

However that’s thought of or interpreted is up to you.

I genuinely love the fact that it’s like that because it forces the creators to go deeper with the relationship. It forces them to have to find other ways of representing the romance between them without using sex. It forces them to write and portray… an actual RELATIONSHIP that is much like real-life WLW relationships rather than something very fictional written for a specific audience. Both these WLW ships are very realistic within a fantasy world and that’s the draw because you can do so much with that. You can have all those high-octane romance narratives and themes and ideas between same-sex lead female pairings that are typically given to opposite-sex pairings in that genre and it’s just as entertaining and compelling. It doesn’t even really need to be intentional,.. just be sincere and respectful.

It will come across successfully just the same as canon. I think the ones that don’t are the stories where there is no real focus on female characters in general. Nether in their relationships, nor in their individual representation.

For example in Supernatural where the female characters aren’t just love interests to the male characters but also plot devices and they constantly have the female characters defer to the male characters to elevate the intentional perspective that men are superior to women. It’s not sincere. Then there’s all these problems with “the male gaze” and that also diminishes the individual strength and power of a woman. So at the end of the day, I think it really comes down to the differences in storytelling depicting feminism vs misogyny and not in platonic vs romantic because even if there’s no intentional romance involved between female characters, so long as there’s focus on the female characters and their relationship together, it will still be something very worth it to watch. Valuable.

Which is why people love TV shows like OUAT, Supergirl and Rizzoli and Isles so much. It’s because even though all of them are notoriously known as queer-baiting shows, the relationships between the women are still written extremely well and are still very inspiring to see.

There’s still so much love, support, respect, care and trust there even if it purposefully avoids or prevents romantic connections altogether. They’re a bit of an eyesore for me because of that reason, but they’re still very good storytelling within what they want to depict and maybe one day I will go back to them once I figure out my shit and no longer have necessity for romance because hopefully I will have that covered elsewhere.

Hopefully by that point there will be more lead WLW dynamics and stories that are genuinely really great female representation and development as well as queer and/or gay representation. I’m so starved for it.

youtube

So 18 years ago, little 14 year old, gay me, found this fan edit of my favourite show Xena Warrior Princess. Xena ment so much to me then and still to this day as it was my gay awakening lol. I wanted a love like Xena and Gabrielle had. Their connection and story really holds space in my heart. This video was my intreduction to Wicked. My first impressions. Not knowing anything of the story of wicked just the song For Good and how it felt like such a perfect and beatiful song to use for a video about xena and gabrielles love and journey. Then i found myself obsessed with wicked. Seeing so much in common with the love stories and connections the women have. I feel like elphaba and glinda really emulate the 'soul mate/kindred spirit' relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. That glinda was the only person to ever make Elphaba feel grounded and wanted unconditionally. The same as Gabrielle did for Xena. I remember getting my hands on a really bad camcorder copy of the original cast preforming Wicked. It was a disc copy and i watched it till the disc was unusable. Then for my 18th my mum got us tickets to see Wicked on the west end. Traveling from scotland to london to see the wonder that it is live. I am so greatful for both wicked and xena for giving me that emotion and rawness. The depth of feeling you can experience for something you connect to on an emotional level. Finally finding something that made me feel seen. Even if their love storys werent 'canon' or without their flaws... they still both gave hope to a generation of young lgbt+ people who found a relatability or a safe place in their stories and in their fandoms. It feels nice to feel connected to others threw those shared feelings.

When Wicked: For Good comes out at the end of the year i might just take a shot of making my own xena fan edit and give this a little update. Just for fun.

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queensectonia · 2 years ago

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THIS POST CONTAINS DETAILED DISCUSSION OF THE MAGOLOGUE AND ITS ENDING UNDER THE CUT

please avoid reading further if you wish to remain spoiler-free! all spoiler posts from me about the remake will be tagged “spoilers” and “dreamland deluxe spoilers”.

so this is where i’m going to expand on that interesting point i mentioned in my other post

i think HAL is trying to pull a fast one on us with the magologue, lads.

so basically, at the very start of the magologue, when you get the flashback cutscene to magolor being defeated and going poof, it's actually magolor soul being shown.

now, we know that for as much as HAL loves to write agonisingly vague figures of speech and outright leave things out, they don't get little details like this wrong - especially not with this game. making it be magolor soul in that cutscene was an informed choice.

this comes around to be very interesting during the credits sequence where we see magolor supposedly crossing over into the clash universe.

magolor soul is from an exmode. exmodes aren't canon - HAL has told us this many times, that they are “what if” experiences exploring alternate ways things might go down. they've never been canon, and it's really only been as recent as "exmodes" becoming whole actual self-contained Entirely New Stories (specifically, HiAD and Isolated Isles) that you can even make an argument for them being canon.

(and even then, Isolated Isles is... dubious, but that’s a topic for another post.)

so i think the magologue actually happened in two slightly different ways.

magolor from the canon game went through the magologue, and at the end his portal out lead back to popstar, or wherever the fuck in the real world, and he went on to build his amusement park and get back in with the good guys like we're all familiar with. magolor from the exmode went through exactly the same thing, but his portal out lead to the clash world.

the concept of magolor going through his whole purgatory thing and ending up in the clash world instead is weird. it completely fucks with both the pre-remake established canon of him coming back and being a good guy, and with what the REMAKE ITSELF establishes with magoland!

speaking of magoland, there’s definitely some weirdness going on there, but most of it is explainable by out-of-text reasons.

firstly, the entire concept of unlocking magoland practically the second you start the game is just one big instance of “haha hey everyone, please ignore the giant continuity hole this makes, we just wanted to get our crazy-popular character who is arguably the entire selling point of this game front and centre! thanks lmao have a good day!” understandable, frankly.

they even go out of their way to tell you this, to your face...

this wording is clunky, but it gets across the necessary point of “please pretend this happens after you clear the game” because, well, it does.

the pop-up you get initially telling you that magoland is open contains something that might be a mistake? in the context of the introductory spiel and everything else the game shows us.

saying that magoland is on a “distant planet” is just... not true?? dream collection downright tells us it’s on popstar, and the remake explicitly shows us where it is! it’s still on popstar! you can literally see magoland in the background of levels. it’s not even floating in the sky or on its own little planet, it’s whole ass on the ground.

which makes me wonder if saying it’s on a distant planet was a small misunderstanding on the translators’ part regarding the whole “different world (figurative)” vs. “different world (different planet)” distinction.

either way, that one tiny touch of showing magolor soul in the opening cutscene instead of his main game design is both deviously subtle and explains this apparent discrepancy.

it was exmagolor who ended up in the clash universe as shopkeeper magolor, and it was the real magolor who came back to make magoland on popstar and mend his friendship with kirby.

this even fits in perfectly with exmodes being “what if” scenarios and the clash universe being so self-referential.

#kirby #spoilers #dreamland deluxe spoilers #magolor

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lestcat-de-lioncourt · 2 years ago

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(Gerard Way, by me. Black ballpoint, red fine-liner. 🖊🩸 )

Soo I’ve not posted much OC character stuff of recent as I’m still writing the second chapter of The Lord of Wet and Pyro Princess Adventures (Genshin Ayato x Diluc fanfic I’m having a lot of fun with as I’m back in ~Genshin playing mode~ since I invested a bunch in the game and it’s also the Lantern Rite time of year again, a favourite of mine).

I’ve had a request to finish my WattPad Kaze fanfic too, which I’ll try and deliver but I got kinda stick in the basement scene lmfao as writing Zero as a top is so odd for me even though I Want It to happen.

I’ve wanted to get out some Kaze stuff as not as many people post it anymore and I’ve realised there’s still a big fandom community for Vampire Knight which is excitingg! I might move it over to Ao3 once I have time.~

I’ve been a little busy planning and “making the art” and custom credit card designs as well as payment plan ideas not too mention considering setting up an Etsy or Fiverr or somewhere people have more access to than pixiv as setting up my regular posting on my pixivFANBOX and trying to build a schedule for Saturdays whilst juggling my physical/mental health and transition as well as parenting and socialising more. Basically I want a gallery of stuff to trickle out rather than doing it every week under pressure rather than when it comes to me, as whenever I have pressure to deliver I lose my imagination and just feel like it’s a chore so avoid it. I’m sure other creatives can relate!

Likewise I’m sitting back and reading again to unwind again and haven’t caught up with everything I’m reading yet but I’ve got numerous things In The Works I’m taking more time on rather than rushing out chapters such as:

• The NYE one shot for Orange Juice in the Studio~

• Chapter 3 “A Date In The City” of Orange Juice in the Studio, essentially the ~teaser~ Aquarium and ice cream parlour date where I finally introduce supporting character into the actual story who works at the parlour! I don’t know when I’ll be introducing Mama but they are on the horizon for sure. I’m currently busy researching real locations in Valencia and I’ve never been so I don’t have in person reference and am sourcing that online. I’m also researching top LGBT+ hang out locations/clubs in the city to make appearances in the storyline.

• ORANGE JUICE IN THE STUDIO CHARACTER INFO SHEETS!!! Exciting.

Here I’ll give lots of what you need to know about OC and Reader! I’m wondering if I should not make one though for Reader or ask for engagement from my actual readers of Who Reader Is To Them, as well, the whole point of the character is to depict You as a reader, and those who relate to what I write can get on board. I will make a mock up one for sure and be loose with it as a rule! Or leave out absolute details like “star sign” or height or something.~

• Beginning work on the AU “HorrorLand! The Isle of Marionettes”! This will be about the Orange Juice OCs. As you can tell, it’ll be slightly gory horror fiction, somewhere to express my love for horror and things but not canon. Just a little fun.

• Designing what will be in my monthly newsletter which only Bronze subscribers will get for yours truly to enjoy!

• Weekly updates to my pixivFANBOX, with my manga style art specifically. My pixivFANBOX is for my manga art style only, my other types of art can be found on zer0comicz IG, and Zer0 Comics on Facebook, or posted on here. This is my official name for my freelance illustration/comic business.

• I’ll try getting some new commissions up I’ve got of OC and Reader on here and/or on @crimsonyoukai , if not that, I’ll make some mock ups on PiCrew whilst I’m doing my own.

• Tiered FANs will be getting The Monthly Marionette+, this begins after the first month of being a patron on Bronze, Silver (to be set up) and Gold (to be set up). I’ll announce when the newsletter is starting to air!

You can get early teasers for chapters of OJITS posted on my pixivFANBOX as well too on Bronze tier, I’m not posting teasers so much on here anymore until I’ve aired it for protection of my work etc.

My Ao3 profile for writing updates!

Any queries or questions or anything you’d like to know in general or what you may like to also see from me, please feel free to drop them into my Ask Box!

I have commissions open for art likewise. Each custom piece is £5, £10 for more detailed works, which I offer postage for the original or a print. Tattoo designs are £25 each.

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annoyingstupidmiracle · 4 years ago

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Frat Boy- l.r.h.

CONTAINS SMUT...OBVIOUSLYY

Word Count: 2813

I hope y’all enjoy ;) Lmk what you think, and I DO accept requests!!!

I sighed while thumbing through the stack of papers on the desk that were waiting to be completed. I was currently working on physics- my worst subject. As soon as I began to work, a crowd of voices entered the room. Turning around, I encountered my sorority sisters who were all laughing. Yeah, I’m a sorority girl. We’re all apart of Alpha Phi, the hot girls who did well in their classes, but didn’t choose the big majors, and we partied... a lot. Which is exactly why I’m having trouble with my subjects, because I had gone to class hungover from the Frat party we went to last week.

“I heard there’s a Frat party tonight.” One of the girls, Leah, said to the group. I instantly stopped writing and listened in on the conversation.

“Yeah, isn’t it at Alpha Delta?” Another girl asked. My heart instantly dropped. There had been one of the frat boys that shared nearly every class with me, which was another reason I hadn’t been able to get all of my work done. He was the most attractive person I had ever seen, and I couldn’t concentrate around him.

Checking the time, I silently cursed to myself. My last class of the day started in nearly 15 minutes, which also happens to be one of the classes I share with the Adonis. I shoved my earbuds in my ears and gathered my textbooks before exiting the house. I hurried across campus to the correct building, just when the door swung open, knocking me back and causing the books to drop from my arms to the ground. Stumbling, I tore the earbuds from my ears and went to yell at the person who was in such a hurry to leave the building but came up speechless as my eyes met the blue ones of the special frat boy, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.

“(y/n)?” He spoke causing my mouth to run dry. My heartbeat harshly in my chest as I stared at him.

“H-How do you know my name?” I asked finally after moments of silence.

“We have pretty much every class together, you know?” I nodded, still allowing my eyes to bore into his. “And I see you at all the parties.”

“Yeah, my sorority sisters make me go.”

“Ah, not a partier then?”

I shrug. “Depends on my mood, I guess.” He smiles at my response before crouching down to gather my textbooks.

“Well, then I hope I can put you in the mood to come to my frat’s party tonight?”

“We’ll see,” I say with a smirk, finally gaining my confidence back.

“We will.” He replies, smiling back at me. He stood back up and extended his arms that held my books in them. I pulled them into my chest and watched as he opened the door for me to enter. I decided to sit myself in the middle row so I didn’t drag too much attention to myself, but just enough so that the professor will think I’m listening enough to not call on me.

The door of the classroom opened again, and a loud laugh followed. There, entering the building was Calum Hood. Another frat boy, who was also part of the same frat as the pretty blonde boy across the room. They walked up to one another, joking around and shoving one another in the isle of seats. I was pushed out of my daze by a hand squeezing my upper arm.

“See something you like- or should I say someone?” I turned around and met the mischievous eyes of Ashton Irwin, my sorority sister Leah’s, boyfriend.

“Shut the hell up.” I grumbled.

“I hear his frat is having a party tonight.”

I nod, gulping at the thought. “Yeah, they are. What’s it to you?”

“Leah told me. She also told me that you have the hots for-” Before he could say anything further, I cupped a hand over his mouth.

“I swear, if you ruin this-” I was cut off by him licking the palm of my hand causing me to move it away from him. “You’re disgusting.”

“Not as disgusting as the sex you’re-”

“What about sex?” A perky voice questioned while plopping in the seat beside me. I groaned, turning to who I already knew was Michael.

“You guys are going to ruin this for me.”

“Ruin what exactly?” Mikey asked. Ashton nodded his head over at the blonde who was talking to Calum.

“Miss (y/n) has a crush on our boy Luke.” I let my head fall into my hands and sighed.

“I don’t have a crush on him. I just- think he’d look good like... I don’t know. In my bed?”

Mikey laughed. “And your car, and in the shower-”

“Okay, okay. Can you guys please stop giving me shit?” I begged.

“Alright, students!” A loud voice boomed through the room. We all stopped our conversations and faced the professor. “Today, we’re learning about the reproductive system!” Ah, right, anatomy. Of course, it had to be today that we learned how the penis ejaculates.

I ran my fingers through my now curled (h/c) hair as I stared at my makeup that Leah had done for me. She sat back with her arms crossed and a smirk spread across her face. “Well, don’t you look hotter than before.”

I laughed, “thanks. I’m fucking nervous.”

“Babe, Luke won’t be able to control himself. You know how he is.” I sighed. Yeah, Luke was the type to get around on campus. That’s why I hated myself for having growing feelings for the guy. I usually avoided going to the same parties as him, but I couldn’t avoid the sexual tension for long. I used to tutor him, our sophomore year, it took everything in me not to drop on my knees. He had me weak every time I saw him. Everyone could see it, hell, I think he could too.

“You really think so?”

“Have you not heard the things he’s said about you?” I shook my head. “Well, maybe if you didn’t have your earbuds in your ears all the damn time, you’d know.”

I blushed at her words and stood up, finally ready. I had fishnet tights over my legs along with a tight black dress that stopped barely midthigh. Platform heels decorated my feet and strapped up my ankles. Along with it all, I decided against any sort of undergarments in hopes that I’d get lucky with a specific hot blonde.

“Alright, I’m ready.” Leah grinned and dragged me out the door. We walked for a few minutes along the sidewalk in the cool October air until we finally met with the huge fraternity. They had a huge sheet with spray painted Greek lettering on it in order to stick out to everyone attending the party. The sun had already set and people were walking up the path to the double doors of the house. Ashton was waiting, leaning against one of the pillars of the house while chatting with Michael and Calum. I gulped, squeezing the arm of Leah who gave me a reassuring look.

“You’ll be fine, just go in and take a few shots.” I nodded and followed her up to the boys.

“Ah, you actually came!” Calum cheered while staring at me.

“Me?” I asked.

“Yeah, Luke said he invited you.” He said with a grin. “You look good, by the way.” And with that, he walked inside. Leah looked over at me and smirked.

“I told you they think you’re hot.” She says while elbowing my side. I giggled and rolled my eyes.

“Alright, Mikey. Come in and take some shots with me.”

“You convinced me. Let’s go.”

We walked inside and were instantly met with the dank smell of weed and booze. I took a deep breath in order to get used to the smell and looked around. I seemed to be one of very few girls who decided to dress like this for a party, but I didn’t mind. Eyes trailed behind me as I walked, and I loved it. One of the many perks of being apart of Alpha Phi.

“Damn, (y/n), you’re like a fucking celebrity.” Mikey joked while nudging me. I finally reached the alcohol and poured us each a shot of some Pink Whitney. We clinked our glasses together and threw our heads back, letting the harsh liquid flow down our throats. I clenched my eyes together, shaking my head.

“Alright, another one.” Mikey grabbed the bottle, laughing at my words as he poured the alcohol into the small glass. With another tilt of my head, my second shot was down then a third and a fourth only minutes later.

“(y/n)?” I turned around towards the voice and met with Luke who stood there with an unopened beer in his hand.

“And that’s my queue to leave.” Mikey said while walking away.

“I came.” I told him while gesturing to myself.

“Yeah, you look hot.” He compliments, eyeing my form a few times to take in my appearance.

I swallowed my pride and smiled at him, “so do you.”

Luke seemed to think for a second before speaking. “Do you want to grab a beer and go out on the balcony with me?” He asked, shocking me.

“I, uh, yeah. Sure.” Bending down into the cooler, I felt his eyes on me the entire time. I smirked, wrapping my hands around a cold can and stood back up. He reached out to grab my hand and lead me through the large crowd of people up the stairs. There were a few straggling drunks in the hallway of the second story, but no one that was watching as he took me out the double doors of the balcony. I cracked open the can and sipped on the beer nervously, waiting to see what his plan was.

“So, is this the part where you kill me?” I joke while watching as he popped his can open as well.

“Actually, it’s the part where I tell you what I want to do to you.”

“Wait, what?”

“I said, I just wanted to talk.” What the fuck am I thinking? Nodding, I allowed him to go on. “I wanted to hang out with you alone, but a party is fine too.”

“Mhm,” I mumble against the cold can of beer against my lips. Luke seemed to let his eyes trail down my legs covered in the lacey material before throwing his head back.

“Fuck the small talk.”

“What do you-“ Before I could finish my sentence, he had taken three intimidating steps towards me and cupped my cheek in his hand, pressing his lips against mine. My heartbeat sped up, and my stomach flipped as well. I didn’t hesitate to let my free hand tangle in the back of his hair, pulling at the ends. He groaned against my lips before eventually pulling away. Looking down into my eyes, he searched them for some sort of reaction. I blinked innocently up at the frat boy and smiled.

“I can’t get your gorgeous face out of my head, (y/n).”

“Thank god.” He cocked his head in confusion, so I elaborated. I took a few chugs of my beer before finishing it and tossing the can to the ground. “I really, really want you.”

“I’m going to fucking ruin you.” He nearly growls under his breath before grabbing my wrist and taking me back inside to what I’m assuming is his bedroom. Without another word, he closed and locked the door behind me before pressing me against it. I gasped with surprise but felt nothing but pleasure as he lifted me up by my thighs and carried me over to the bed. I plopped down onto the mattress and watched as he tore his shirt from his body and discarded it to the side.

Luke curled his fingers around the edge of my dress and pulled it up over my waist. I stared at him to get his reaction when he notices- “You’re not wearing any… Did you expect this to happen?” He questioned with a laugh.

I nodded, bringing my bottom lip between my teeth. “I hoped it would.”

“With me?” I nodded again. His eyes flickered down to my womanhood before starting to pull down my tights. One they were down my legs, he looked back up at me and put two fingers between his lips, letting his spit drench them before inserting them inside of me. I jerked upwards, leaning up on my elbows as my mouth fell open in an ‘o.’ “You like that?”

“Mhm, yeah.” I moaned causing him to thrust them in and out of me. I allowed myself to relax as I grew wetter by the second. After a few seconds, he added his mouth which only made me moan louder. His tongue flattened against my clit, circling around it in a pattern that drew me close to the edge. He was amazing with his mouth. “L-Luke, please.” I begged, but he didn’t stop. Although I wanted to cum around him, I couldn’t help it. He wrapped his lips around my clit and sucked while curling his fingers inside of me. My chest heaved up and down as my thighs attempted to clench together while my climax approached. He used his free hand to keep my legs from closing and felt as they shook at his touch. “Fuck!” I screamed out. He chuckled against me before sitting up and pushing me farther on the bed. With quick hands, he pulled my dress over my head and stared at my chest.

“No bra either?” I smiled cheekily up at him before his hands came down and groped my breasts. I reached down and unbuttoned his jeans before sliding them down his legs revealing his name brand boxers. I nearly drooled at the size of the bulge before palming him through the thin material. Carefully, I pulled his member out and pumped him a few times. “God, your hands feel so good.”

“I bet my mouth would feel better.” I say confidently. He looked at me with his eyebrows raised as I switched my position so that I was sitting up. I parted my lips enough to allow him to slide in my mouth. I dragged my lips down to his shaft, my nose brushing against the happy trail against his navel. Groaning, Luke tangled his hand in my hair, pushing my head down slightly. The tip brushed the back of my throat, allowing for more spit to lubricate his member. I pulled off him and looked up.

“I know what would feel even better.” Luke says before pushing my shoulders back against the bed, pinning me underneath him. Spreading my legs, I waited for him to slide past my entrance and let an erotic moan erupt from my throat as he did. “Yeah, much better.”

“Please,” I whined.

“Please what?” Luke smirked. He knew what he was doing.

“Please fuck me, Luke. I need you so bad.” And with that, he slammed himself in me all the way. Our moans filled the room as well as the sound of skin slapping together. I lifted one of my legs up and rested it on his shoulder as he pounded in and out of me. My back arched against the mattress as my nails scratched the skin on his back, clearly leaving marks. Without warning, he pulled out of me.

“If I go any longer, I’ll bust so hang on.” I laughed at his words and waited for him to grab a condom. Once he did, he slid it over him and lined himself back up with my entrance. Grabbing the backs of my thighs, he held onto them as he began to slam himself in and out of me constantly, and roughly. I reached a hang down between my legs and rubbed at my clit to get myself closer to the edge, knowing he was close as well.

“Fuck, you’re so big.” I whimper. Luke chuckles and spreads my legs even wider, hiking them over his shoulders before leaning down against me. His lips latched onto mine, getting me closer to my orgasm. My body begins to shake as I reach my second climax of the night, feeling him twitch inside me as he reaches his as well.

“Good fucking girl.” Luke growled, watching me writhe beneath him. I breathed out, finally able to catch my breath and looked at the blonde through tired eyes.

“I thought you were good in bed, but not that good.” I admitted causing him to chuckle.

“Glad to meet your expectations.” After throwing away the condom, he pulled his pants back over his legs and tossed me a clean shirt that was neatly folded on the nightstand. I looked at him with confusion.

“What’s this for?”

“Yeah, you’re not going anywhere tonight- or for a while.”

Laughing, I slid the shirt over my head so that it draped over my bare torso. “So, that means what exactly?”

“I’m gonna make you mine, whether you like it or not.”

“Not complaining.”

#luke hemmings smut #luke hemmings #luke hemmings imagines #luke 5sos #5sos smut

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haljathefangirlcat · 2 years ago

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I don't want to add all of this under the post I took this pic from, because I'm going to get nitpicky and long-winded and it would probably get really annoying for OP... and also because this is the "are you saying we piss on the poor" website, so someone would inevitably think I'm hating on either OP or Mary Reufle. Which I'm not, btw. I think the passage above says something really beautiful and tragic about humanity, and I'm thankful to OP for posting it, otherwise I might have never read it.

But it does remind me of a stupid pet peeve I've been trying to ignore since people on Tumblr started debating whether asexual sailors would be safe from the lure of sirens and other people started replying that, hey! Sirens in Greek mythology, especially the Odyssey, don't lure sailors by offering sex! They lure them by offering them what they desire! Which might be sex for some, but might be just some really great pasta for others!

... again, to avoid another obvious "we piss on the poor" moment: no, I don't actually have anything serious against jokes, thought exercises, and stories in that vein. Ace people belong in fun fantasy and/or mythology-inspired stories and story ideas as much as everyone else. And I'm well-aware you don't need my permission to write about a sailor saving their entire crew by being totally indifferent to sex or almost dooming them because some weird lady on a rock in the middle of the sea was loudly singing about being desperate to share cool frog facts with someone. Hell, I'd probably read both.

But anyway, the pet peeve I was talking about before going on that tangent is that the sirens do sing Odysseus' story to Odysseus, and it just annoys me so much, seeing people ignoring the fact that that's actually a thing that happens. Like, this is from Book XII:

"[...] the Sirens failed not to note the swift ship as it drew near, and they raised their clear-toned song: “‘Come hither, as thou farest, renowned Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; [185] stay thy ship that thou mayest listen to the voice of us two. For never yet has any man rowed past this isle in his black ship until he has heard the sweet voice from our lips. Nay, he has joy of it, and goes his way a wiser man. For we know all the toils that in wide Troy [190] the Argives and Trojans endured through the will of the gods, and we know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth.’"

... yes, this translation is taken from Perseus and is, unfortunately, in prose. Give me a break, it's not easy to find good poetic translations of the Odyssey posted for free online when I'm not even a native English speaker and to me "Odyssey translation" means "Rosa Calzecchi Onesti's translation from the '60s." The point is, the sirens try to lure Odysseus (and would definitely succeed, if not for the ropes-and-wax trick) by telling him that they know everything, including all that has happened to Odysseus himself and everyone else who suffered through the war of Troy.

And yeah, you could argue that the main draw for Odysseus (his greatest desire, to tie it all back to mythological shitposting) is knowledge itself, because he is that kind of guy. But the sirens don't give any details on their knowledge of all that is presently happening "upon the fruitful earth." They do, however, give details on their knowledge of the past -- specifically stating they know Odysseus' past. The same man who, if you remember, can't take Demodocus singing about a couple of episodes from the war of Troy without needing to hide his face due to being completely overcome by tears, yet has a piece of meat from his own plate brought to Demodocus as a show of respect and gratitude for his singing. Unlike his own wife, Penelope, who when hearing the aoidos Phemius singing about the same war back in Ithaca, asks him to change the subject to something less painful...

It's just. It's so painful and complex and wonderful and it makes me want to tear my hair out every time I think about it. And nobody ever remembers it when someone brings up the sirens and specifically the ones from the Odyssey! *screams*

Btw, now that I've had my nice little rant, please do me a favor and listen to the song Le Sirene by Vinicio Capossela. Because this Italian singer and composer? He gets it.

Here's a rough translation of the lyrics:

The sirens

Tell you about yourself

What you were

As if it were forever

The sirens

Have no tail nor feathers

They only sing about you

The man of yesterday

The man you were, two steps from the sky

All your life before you

All your life as a whole

They say, stop here

The sirens

Assault you at night

Created by the night

They kept all the faces you loved and now

The sirens have them

They sing them to you in a chorus

And you're not alone anymore

They know everything about you

And the best of you

It's a song of sirens

And you hear it in the regret

Of what you lacked

What you glimpsed and won't have

They give it to you

Only in song

They sing to you of how you came from nothing

And nothing you will be

The sirens are a night of beer

And the dawn won't come anymore

They're street ghosts coming in in gusts

They have the voices of sirens

Fill your ears with wax

To not hear them when it's evening

To stay firm

Tied to your routine

But if you listen to the sirens

You won't come home

Because home is

Where they sing about you

Listen to the sirens

They won't stop their singing

In the endless wake, they sing

All your life

Who you were, who you were, who you were

Who you were, who you were, who you are

Mnemosyne

Why go on until old age

Until you feel ill?

It's all already here

Stop here

You don't have anywhere to go anymore

The sirens

Don't sing the future

They give you what has been

But time isn't kind

And if you stop and listen to them

You'll let yourself die

Because the singing is neverending

And it's full of deceit

And takes your life from you

As it sings it

youtube

... also, if you know Italian or you don't mind running lyrics through an online translator (not Google Translate, pls, they don't deserve to be butchered like that) or you're just looking for new music to listen to, do yourself a favor and go listen to Capossela's other Odyssey-inspired songs from the album Marinai, Profeti e Balene. They are:

La lancia del Pelide (The spear of Pelides, and yeah, this one is actually about the Iliad)

Le Pleiadi (The Pleiades, from the POVs of Odysseus and Penelope, and a much deeper and more fascinating take on their relationship than either "Odysseus is a jerk who doesn't care about her because he has sex with other women" or "he's cool, she's cool, they're a cool power couple" could ever hope to be -- even though I do love the latter a lot, admittedly)

Aedo (Aoidos, set in the aftermath of Odysseus' killing of the suitors)

Calipso (Calypso)

Dimmi Tiresia (Tell me, Tiresias, set in Book XI, when Odysseus summons the spirit of the dead seer and receives a prophecy from him)

Nostos (Actually about the tale of Ulysses' final "mad flight" and death in the Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto XXVI -- yes, you need to listen to this one, too)

... okay, yes, this post did turn into Vinicio Capossela shilling. I swear it wasn't the initial intention, it just happened. But you know what? I don't even care because most of the songs that make Tumblr users go "OMG THIS MAKES ME FEEL SOO UNHINGED 😭 TOTALLY FERAL 😭😭 WHY DOES IT GO SO HARD 😭😭😭" don't go even half as unnecessarily hard as the lyrics to Aedo and Nostos. So, yeah. You can thank me after lying on the floor like "head full. way too many thoughts" for an hour or two.

#long post #greek mythology #the odyssey #odysseus #sirens

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lec743 · 2 years ago

Text

The Ocean’s Kindness (FNAF Fanfic)

Beginning + Ch. 10 + you are here + Ch. 12

Summary: You are kidnaped by a creature you've only heard stories about until now.

Word Count: 7055 words

I’m inspired to write this story by @bamsara , @paper-lilypie, and Chex_Nyx on AO3.

Don’t like reading on Tumblr, neither do others. Here!

AO3

Fanfiction

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CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE VOICE

You screamed and punched at the bristle teeth that held you in the mouth of the siren. You didn’t believe that sirens would actually eat people like you were told. You thought that it was one of those uninformed exaggerations about the species. Yet here you are, holding on to the other side of this siren’s bristle teeth, hoping you can find some way out of it.

Being inside the mouth of the siren was like being in a cramped moist cave. It smelled of salt and old fish and the tongue of the creature made having any sort of stable footing impossible. You gagged a bit from the way the saliva dripped on and around you.

“Dear, all things that are holy,” you whined, “how can anyone even imagine sexually liking this,” you gag again, “No! Bad! Do not think about vore! Do not!”

“What is vore?”

That was your own voice asking you that question.

You looked around in the cramped space.

“I-I’m not going to tell you…”

“Aah… Fine,” your voice pouted at you.”

You held on tightly to the bristles of the teeth, making your hands hurt with your arms and torso. You looked through your dim surroundings.

“Are you, siren person, speaking back to me using my voice?”

Your voice giggled in a very unlike-you manner then said, “No silly. Think again.”

You thought about it for a moment. You thought about where you were and why you weren’t dead and all the voices that you’ve been hearing. As you thought about it, you began to hum that song that you’ve been hearing at your stay at the Eastern Isle.

“I’m glad you memorized my song. It’s nice having someone like me to sing with now,” your voice said back to you.

It finally clicked in your head.

“THE VOICE,” you screeched accusingly.

More than one voice started to giggle in the small space, like the interdimensional creature couldn’t contain their glee.

“Ahr! That’s me,” they said, sounding like Foxy, “I’m so glad I could get you away from those horrible creatures,” they continued in Chika’s voice.

“Hey! That’s my crew you’re talking about,” then you panicked and quickly asked, “Please! Please! Please! Call off the sirens! Please! The Crusty Waters is truly only passing through!”

“Calm down,” the voice said using Moon’s words, “As soon as we grabbed you everyone left.”

It was freaky that The Voice was using your captain’s voice to calm you and you didn’t like that it was working. You grimaced into the dark.

“Why would you want me? I thought all you had wanted for company were your sirens,” you asked.

“That was true, until I learned you were here.”

In Sun’s voice, they said proudly, “It’s quite easy for me to know what the Agony knows. That’s how I’ve been able to avoid it ever since I got here. Finding you was the hard part.”

“How’d you finally find me?”

“The siren that you named DJ told me about you. He praised you so much, I had to go to you. It was odd, staying at that beast filled isle, but eventually you showed up, and I kept you company until you and your captors left. How did you get so hurt?”

“You weren’t listening in?”

“No, I was,” they said in Pigpatch’s voice, “but it was about things like the surprise gift Chika was making for her anniversary with Roxy. The nightmares that Happy was having. The quiet love confession from Chip to Monty. Bets being placed on who will confess their love to who between you and the two stickmen—” “—I’m sorry, what!?”

There was a multitude of giggling around you.

“I know,” they said conspiratorially in Roxy’s voice, “As if you’d like anyone from here like that. You’re too different. They can’t begin to understand you like I do. You’re forced to play nice with those things to stay alive. But don’t worry, you and I can be real friends.”

“I don’t appreciate the way you talk about my crew or my captains. They are my real friends. Even if I can’t remember everyone’s name, I care about them all.”

“Hmm…”

There was silence for a second.

“The Agony almost got me and severely harmed my crew.”

“I feared that was the case,” they said in Moon’s voice, “I’m glad I was there to protect you until your departure from that stinky isle.”

You scowled hard into the dark, having quite enough of their disrespectful comments about the people in this dimension and what do they mean, they protected you?

“Where are you taking me,” you asked forcefully.

“I’m taking you home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Far, far away from anyone else. You’ll be safe there away from The Agony and we will make beautiful music together, forever and ever and ever.”

You sigh, then say, “You’re lonely.”

“I’m not that lonely,” they said in Freddy’s voice, sounding a bit defensive, “I have my children after all. We make wonderful music together all the time.”

“Look… Voe.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Voe. Like Zoe, but with a “V”.”

“Huh, I like it. See! We’re already starting to become friends. How about I call you… Bass.”

“Bass?”

“Yah, since we’re Bass Friends now,” they said changing their voice to sound like Chika.

You sigh and say sharply, “Look. Wherever you plan on taking me, I’m not staying.”

“Sure, you are, where else would you go?”

“Back to the ship. Together with my crew, I’ll figure out how to contact Zulon.”

A high-pitched clicking sound rumbled out of the siren. You covered your ears in pain, as you tried to stay sitting upright in the closed mouth of the creature.

Your ears were still ringing even after the siren went silent.

You inhaled sharply when you felt water pouring into the siren’s mouth and within seconds you were submerged underwater and pushed out by its tongue.

You let lose some of your breath to feel where the bubbles went, and you followed them. Even with your eyes open under water, you still couldn’t see anything with how dark everything was. You swam with as little panic as you could. Your heart beating in your ears as you moved your limbs.

You tried not to think about the water crushing you. You tried not to think about how your arms and stomach hurt. You tried not to think about what was in the water below you. You tried not to think about how it hurts to hold your breath.

With a gasp you broke through the surface of the water. You look around in the inky darkness.

Wiping the salt water out of your eyes you coughed, then sneezed.

“Hello?”

Your voice echoed in the dark.

You stilled for just a moment for what that means.

You yelled loudly, like you were the lead singer of a mariachi band. Your voice reverberated and echoed and bounced around you. You were in a cave. An underwater cave.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw a light. You swam to face it, and you saw the walls slowly started to glow. You swam towards it and saw that it was a kind of glowing green moss or lichen. It gave you a bit of light to see by.

A few yards away from yourself, you saw a rock poking out of the water. You immediately swam for it. Feeling icky about being in water you couldn’t see in. It was hard, because of how slick the surface was, and because of your injuries, but you managed to crawl your way onto the sturdy surface.

You laid face down on the pores, slick, solid surface.

Laughing to yourself you said, “Oh my god. Solid ground. I haven’t felt you in months.”

You took a moment to enjoy the hard surface, then you rose and looked around.

“You’ve been hiding down here, all this time?”

The Voice didn’t answer you. Weird. You thought they’d be excitedly doing a kind of welcome wagon thing with the way they were talking about being bff’s and what not.

You stand up and find that you aren’t steady on your feet.

“Ah, fuck me. You spend months out on water, and you forget how to walk on solid land.”

The glowing greenery spread further down into a tunnel and not knowing what else you could do; you followed the path ahead.

It’s a bit embarrassing for you, being on solid ground yet walking like you were a newborn baby. As you walked, you tried to remind yourself that it’s okay that you lost your land legs and that you don’t want to move fast. Just keep a steady pace.

You sang quietly to yourself to keep yourself entertained and calm as you moved through an unknown tunnel with no idea if you’ll end up dead from asphyxiation by poisonous gas or if you’ll meet a hungry cave dwelling animal, or if you’ll die the long way of plain old starvation and dehydration.

You pause and take a deep breath, “One step at a time, ya old scallywag. One step at a time.” You smile at your own silliness for trying to mimic Foxy.

The farther along you walked the more you realized that the moss was placed down systematically. There was an artificial pattern along the walls that in a way suggested that it was planted to make a path. It wasn’t like at the entrance of the cave, where it was seeping everywhere and ended in splotches, like it had run out of nutrients to grow from.

You touch your hand along the cave wall and feel that the moss is thick and fuzzy and feels remarkably healthy. The wall feels kind of warm too and you feel groves in the wall that suggest a consistent digging against it.

You sniff the air, but you don’t smell anything like sulfur or smoke. So, if you are near one of those underwater thermal vent things it hasn’t breached the stone walls yet.

You turn your attention back to the moss on the wall.

“Ugh,” you groan, “I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”

You dig out a chunk of the moss, then hesitating for only a moment, you put the plant matter into your mouth.

It tastes earthy, stringy, and like grass… and surprisingly… lacking the taste of salt.

Ever since you’ve been here in this dimension every single piece of food has some lingering taste of salt. Whether it’s because it’s preserved in it, or because no matter how hard the people try, the salt content in their fresh fruits and vegetables are abnormally high because of their surroundings.

This moss was not salty. This moss was curated and grown using fresh water. There’s a freshwater spring here!

You spit out the moss and keep moving forward.

“Voe! Voe, why have you gone quiet?”

You only hear your echo… Or to mess with you, The Voice is pretending to be an echo. You don’t know enough about fellow interdimensional creature to be sure.

“Voe! Come on! You’ve let me wander on my own long enough. I’m tired and hungry and thirsty. How is this place supposed to keep me alive?”

There was a bend in the tunnel and as you followed it, you come across a statue. You get excited for a moment, thinking it’s an old relic of this universe’s past, but then it turns its faceless head towards you.

You couldn’t help the scream that came out of you as it kept moving to face you with its whole body.

You were frozen in place as you stared at the statue thing. It didn’t move as you continued to stare at it in fear.

Through the faint lighting of the moss, you could see that the statue had a big bulbus head kind of shaped like an onion and a rough cylinder-shaped body, with stubby arms and legs. There was no indication that they had any elbow or knee joints for extra flexibility. They were covered, or maybe wearing, a kelp skirt and there were dying coral fans on their head, giving them the allusion of having twin pigtails. They kind of looked like a crudely made baby doll.

Nothing happened.

You raise your hand up and wave hesitantly, “Hello?”

The sound of creaking stone could be heard as it lifted its stubby arm. It raises it up like it’s pointing at you. Then you hear stone scratching on stone as it wiggles it from side to side at you.

You lower your hand, and it lowers its appendage.

“Huh?”

“Hello, Bass Friend,” you heard Chika’s voice echo around you, “How have you been enjoying your explorations of my home?”

Not wanting to answer, since you don’t exactly have any kind words to say right then, so you pointed at the moving statue and asked, “Who is this?”

“Hmm? Oh. Just ignore it. That’s one of those old things, from before The Agony showed up. It got into my cave a long time ago. It’s been keeping itself busy with the plant life that grows down here.”

“They haven’t given you their name yet?”

“I’ve never heard them speak,” they said in Chip’s voice, “So I ignore it.”

You frown at that. Then you turn to the moving statue.

“Can you nod your head? Like this?” You ask, giving the creature a nod.

They mimic you.

“Can you shake your head? Like this?” You then ask, giving the creature a head shake.

They mimic you.

You clap excitedly then said, “Alright. That’s something then. So do this,” you nod, “to mean yes, and do this,” you shake your head, “to mean no. Do you understand me?”

They nod.

“Fantastic!”

“Hey!” The Voice said in Sun’s whiney voice, “I said ignore it. You can’t even speak to it like you can with me.”

“We all have different and valid ways of speaking, Voe, I’m not going to ignore them.”

Sun’s voice whined needily above your head.

“So how exactly do you plan on keeping me alive down here. I’m not immortal. And if I get hurt, you won’t be able to do anything to help me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I will die sooner than you think.”

“Wh-what? You can’t die. You’re a creature brought in by the monster Zulon. You’ll live for forever.”

You look in the general direction of the interdimensional creature’s voice and raised a disbelieving brow up at them.

“Yah, I don’t think so. If that was truly the case, then I would be hearing more stories about The Shapeshifter or The Tree Witch. And they’d be talked about as if they’re still causing trouble, not as legends to explain the origins of other people’s creation.”

“And what about that,” they said accusingly in Roxy’s voice. The Voice was now sounding like they were talking over the rock person, “This thing has been here for almost as long as I have. It hasn’t died at all.”

“Well, I’m biodegradable. They’re not. It seems to me that so long as nothing wears them down in a literal since, like acid rain, extreme temperatures, erosion of any kind. Then they are affectively immortal.”

You heard Roxy’s growl.

“You know, we need to give you a name,” you state to the rock person.

It tilts its head at you to give you an indication that it’s listening.

It didn’t take you long to give the statue a name. You just went with cat naming logistics.

“I’ll name you Baby. How do you like that?”

Baby nodded.

“Hey. Come on. I want to teach you another song,” The Voice whined.

“Not until I know I’ll have something to eat and drink here.”

The Voice whined some more.

Baby started to waddle away, but when you didn’t follow, they stopped and turned their head at you.

“You want me to follow you?”

The nodded.

“Okay then.”

As you followed Baby, you tried getting The Voice to tell you more about The Agony, Zulon, and about the world in general.

“So why is it easy for you to know what The Agony knows?”

“Well,” they hesitated a bit, then changed their voice to sound like Happy, “It has the loudest voice. Generally, if you talk, I can “hear” it, but it’s not like people are talking one at a time, so often, I get easily overwhelmed by the voices of the world. I find it easier to ignore everything when I sing or I’m singing with my children.”

You hummed contemplatively, “So does The Agony ever stop talking?”

“No. Ever since I’ve been here, I’ve never heard it stop.”

“Does that mean you know where The Agony is?”

“No. Not unless they say I’m west of the setting moon or something like that. They don’t talk like that.”

“Then what about Zulon. Have you talked with them? Have you heard from them?”

They say nothing.

“Voe, come on. Why do you keep going silent when I mention Zulon?”

You round a corner, and you have to squint because a light was blinding you. You follow Baby farther into the light and felt a slight heat on your skin, and when you finally adjust, you see that you’re in some kind of clear dome. On the other side, you saw magma slowly bubbling and swirling outside of the dome.

You were frozen at the sight. You don’t know what the material was that was keeping literal magma out of this underwater cave, but it was something. You walk towards the closest clear surface and put your hand to it. It felt like pressing your hand up against a sink that was just drained of its hot water.

“Oooookay. So, then this material must have a higher melting point than fucking magma, wow,” you say out loud to yourself, not entirely reassured.

You hear grinding stone behind you, and you turn to look at Baby who’s pointing behind themselves.

You look around them and see a large pond surrounded by greenery that were bushes and flowers and trees that you have never seen since you’ve been in this dimension.

“Baby, this is beautiful,” you said as you run towards it all, forgetting your body aches for a second.

Some of the plants had fruits and/or vegetables hanging off them. Your stomach growled at the sight, but you weren’t too excited to accidentally poison yourself.

You took a cucumber shaped fruit off a fluffy looking bush and took a bite out of it. It tasted like pineapple to you. You took two more bites then sat it aside so that if you did get sick, you’ll know it’ll be from that.

Then you ran for the pond in the center of the dome. You cupped the water and smelled it. It didn’t have that salty smell to it. Holding your breath, you dunked your head under water and saw that the pond was actually the entrance to a deep underwater tunnel. You saw little fishes swimming around at the farthest reaches of your vision and the water didn’t sting your eyes like saltwater does.

You were going to resurface, but then you caught sight of a white, rainbow-ish looking figure. Then you saw it swimming towards you with the speed of a sword fish. You scrambled away from the water. Then you saw, breaching from the water towards you, was a baby siren.

The siren’s four arms gripped around your neck and under your armpits as it landed on you, affectively glomping onto you and knocking the breath out of your body as you fell hard on your back.

The siren purred and clicked happily as it rubbed it’s face against yours.

As you were getting your breath back you took a moment to realize who was on you.

“Do?”

The baby siren trilled.

“Ah! Do! Look at you,” you cooed as you struggled to sit up, “You’re getting so big! You’re as big as me now.”

You struggle to your feet and try to carry the baby siren, princess style, but instead you just ended up hurting yourself.

“Ow, ow, ow. Okay off. Off please.”

The baby siren whines at you in concern as they sit at the edge of the pond while you took a second to look at your wounds. The wrap around your left arm that was bit wasn’t bleeding through so that means you haven’t popped a stitch on that yet. So that’s good.

Then you checked the bandages around your waist and saw that you were bleeding through your bullet wounds.

You lay down and take a deep breath. You didn’t want to freak out. A lot has happened in one day… or two days… you’re not sure of the time right now, but you had to of been bleeding for only a little while. The wrap isn’t saturated with your blood so it’s fine. You’re okay. It’s okay.

You felt a hand on your foot. You looked up to see Do was staring at you, along with six other heads that were poking out of the water.

You smile at the sight, “I’m sorry I can’t carry you like I could before. I’m hurt and you all are too big for me too.”

There was a choir of concerned clicking.

Do’s siblings reached their hands out to you and placed them on wherever they could reach you.

“Awe, you kids are so sweet.”

“You’ll be able to see them like this every day,” The Voice said in Chika’s voice, “You won’t be hurt like you have while you’re here. You have food and water like you said you need. Please, won’t you come sing with me now.”

“I don’t want that. I don’t want to hide for forever down here. I want to go back to my dimension and see my family. I want to spend time with my crew. I need to unpack what you said back inside the siren about my captain’s confessing to me, with them. I have so much to do and if you won’t help me, then fine. But it won’t stop me from doing everything I can to get back to my ship.”

A cacophony of screaming echoed in the dome, making you cover your ears in pain. The baby sirens ducked underwater, hissing as they went.

Now in Freddy’s voice they yelled, “How can you say that! There is no way back home for you. You’re only going to keep facing pain! Those things up there will only keep hurting you and try to use you for what you are and for what you have! You can’t trust any of them.”

You glare up at the empty air.

“I trust my crew with my life. Now either tell me what you know about Zulon or leave me alone.”

“Fine!”

Then there was silence.

“Voe?”

There was no answer.

You sigh as you get up on your feet. You wanted a drink of water, but until you were sure you wouldn’t getting sick from the fruit you ate, you had to save off for now. Feeling tired and not sure of what else to do, you went up to one of the trees and slept with your back to it. It took a while because of your new environment, your aching body, and lack of an actual bed, but eventually you fell into a fitful sleep.

Sometime later, you woke up to the feeling of something rolling into your face. You sit up a bit to see that it was the weird cucumber-looking, pineapple-tasting fruit that you ate previously. Since it has probably been a while now, and you don’t feel bad from eating it, you figured it was okay to eat.

With a groan you sat up and started gnawing on it. Looking up all the way, you saw Baby standing in front of you.

“Worried that I had died or something?”

They nodded.

“Don’t worry. I was just a sleep.”

You dejectedly ate the fruit as you stared in the middle distance. Finishing it with a sigh, you asked aloud to yourself, “How am I going to get back to my crew? How am I going to find Zulon?”

Baby’s nubby arm found its way into your line of sight, and you looked up at them. They turned around and started walking away. Then they paused and turned back to you, looking like they were waiting for you.

You got up on your feet and started to follow them.

Baby lead you to a denser part of the foliage that grew in the dome. After leading you through it, they stopped then pointed forward.

You looked at them curiously, but they just kept pointing. You continued walking forward. Looking over your shoulder, at Baby, every now and again while you moved forward. The rock person kept pointing you forward.

You trip over a rock protrusion and stumble forward. You pulled a muscle somewhere in your neck as you get your footing back. As you look down at yourself, you see a Zulon’s Heart. That white eight petaled flower that has a rainbow-shine to its leaves. It didn’t look as healthy as the one you saw at North Shallow’s Isle, but it still managed to grow underground.

Just like on the ship. The sight of the flower pulled you in. You got on your knees before it and cupped your hands gently around its flower.

We’re both far away from home, aren’t we, you think to the flower as you press your forehead to it.

West of the setting moon and follow the heart cluster.

You reeled away from the flower and looked around. You’re pretty sure that The Voice was still unwilling to talk to you. So why did it feel like you heard someone talking?

Your eyes were drawn back to the flower before you as it started to glitter faintly. The head of the flower started to rise towards you, like how a sunflower follows the sun. You leaned back into it and rested your forehead against its silky petals.

West of the setting moon and follow the heart cluster. West of the setting moon and follow the heart cluster. West of the setting moon and follower the heart cluster.

The voice in your head repeated this over and over. The words desperate and pleading. Like it’s a prerecorded message that was left to be found.

You repeated the phrase in your head a few times with it until it was stuck in your head. Then the flower wilted and died in front of you within a matter of seconds.

You looked at the flower, sad to see it dead, but know you have a destination towards Zulon. All you have to do now is get out of here.

Getting up on your feet you stomp through the underbrush and walk past Baby. You hear them follow you through their garden as you make your way over to the fuzzy bushes and pluck a few more of the weird fruits. Then you take off your shirt. Tie the hem into a knot. Then you throw the fruits into your shirt as a makeshift bag.

Once you had your spoils you were going to make your way back to the tunnels, but then you heard concerned clicking from the pond. You saw Do on the shore waving at you.

You walk up to him and hug him.

You see his siblings poking their head out of the water looking at you.

“Can your dad DJ come up here?”

You pulled away and Do shook his head.

“The entrance must be too small for him to fit in then, but I can’t go to him. If I don’t get crushed by the water pressure, I’m sure I’ll die of drowning. I don’t have the same lung capacity as you kids do.”

You saw Re, Ti, and So duck down under water as Mi, Fa, and La swam closer to you.

“I have to get out of here. Wherever Zulon is, they’re obviously in need of help. Why else would they keep bringing people in after what happened with The Agony.”

Do and his siblings cooed sympathetically at you.

The thought of being stuck in an underwater cave with no way of saying goodbye to your friends that you’ve made along the way, made you start crying a bit. Not much. Just a few tears slipped from your eyes.

You felt the babies start to put their wet hands on your shoulders and head as you heard comforting trilling from them.

“No. I’m good. I’m fine. I know I’ll figure something out.”

You quickly wiped your eyes.

Ti, So, and Re resurface, and they squawked something to their siblings.

The gentle hands that were on you gripped your arms tightly. You quickly inhaled as you were pulled underwater by the sirens.

You struggled against their hold, but they kept a firm grip on you as they pulled you further and further down. Your ears popped uncomfortable as the water pressure grew around you and you saw it become darker. Your ears had popped a second time as you were running out of breath.

You thrashed harder against the baby sirens, but you felt one of them grip you around your waist with one set of arms, as they held themselves against you. Then you felt another pair of hands grip your head and then you felt a snake-like mouth press against yours and air was passing your lips. You sealed your mouth over the siren’s mouth as best as you could, but you still inhaled some water during the practice.

Now that you had an idea of what the kids were doing. You stopped struggling against them so much.

You don’t know how long they were dragging you under water for, but since you can only hold your breath for less than a minute and the babies had to give you mouth to mouth five time, you’d say it took five minute to reach what felt like had to be the end of the cave tunnel.

Your head and body hurt so much from the pressure, and you needed actual air badly. It was so dark wherever you were, and your eyes started to sting with salt water.

In the distance, through your blurry vision, you saw a dark figure swim its way towards you and the baby sirens. You could feel your heart rate spike at the sight, and you jerked in the baby siren’s hold. They held you close to themselves, and you heard them trill as a group towards it.

The figure swam faster towards them.

Soon you saw a pair of large hands wrap around the eight of you. Through your blurry vision you saw a large eye look down at you. The baby sirens let go of you and quickly, you swim to DJ’s mouth and pantomime to him to open.

DJ did, and you swam in.

You hoped that DJ would get what you were going for as his mouth closed in around you. As you sat in his mouth, struggling not to breath in the water. You then felt the water start to rush out through the giant siren’s bristle teeth. Soon there was a bubble of air, and you inhaled greedily, only to start coughing up all the water that has managed to sneak its way into your lungs.

Once you had your breath back you yelled, “Please. I need to be on the surface.”

You covered your ears as DJ rumbled at you. You held on tight to your bag of fruit and to DJ’s bristle teeth as you felt him move.

You don’t know how long you were in DJ’s mouth, but you hoped that you can trust that he’ll help you. You preoccupied your time by worrying about how much The Voice knows about what you’re doing, and if they’ll find out. You only hope that DJ and his kids don’t face any kind of godly rath from The Voice if they do find out how you left.

You covered your ears as DJ rumbled, your bag of fruit hitting you in the chest as you hunkered down. Then you were falling out of the giant siren’s mouth into bright sunlight.

You were blinded.

You fell into the ocean and flailed as you tried to get your bearings.

You felt hands cup under you and raise you out of the water.

Breathing heavily, you squinted up at the bright sky as you laid in DJ’s hands.

DJ and the kids clicked concerningly at you.

“Just. Just hold on. Give me a minute,” you wheezed.

You took a couple of deep comforting breaths, and you enjoyed the warmth of the sun on your face and chest.

You coughed as you forced your in-pain body to sit up and look at DJ. His two large eyes and six smaller ones were trained on you.

You sigh, then said, “Man. I never got to thank Baby for showing me the flower…”

You look all around at the horizon. You saw nothing but water. Some yards away you saw the water bubbling with heat.

“Do you know where South Shallow’s Isle is?”

DJ shook his head.

You sigh again.

“I’m personally still not all that great with my cardinal directions,” you admit out loud.

You cough some more. Making your stomach hurt.

Let’s see, you thought to yourself, if the sun here rises in the west and sets in the east, then you just have to pick two directions. Even if you go the wrong way, you’ll loop back to the right direction eventually. All it’ll do is take you longer to get to your destination.

You looked up at the sun through your fingers.

Then you looked back to DJ.

“Will you take me back to my ship. I need my friends.”

DJ trilled, high pitched and nodded. The babies in the water trilled with him.

“Thank you,” you said, getting emotional, “Thank you, all of you.”

DJ seemed to give you an apologetic chirp as he leaned his face into you. You cupped your arms against his lower cheek.

“Hey. It’s all good. I have no way to tell if I have CO2 poisoning or not, but I’m not dead yet so that’s something.”

He leans away from you, and you stand up fully to look at where you need to go. You point where you think south is, and you ask DJ to take you in that direction.

DJ agrees and then places you on his head and starts lowering the rest of his body into the water. DJ keeps his head above water so that you have a little island to rest on. You appreciate this immensely.

The nights were cold, and the days were unbearably hot. You had Do and his siblings to entertain you and you taught them some songs to sing with you when you were bored, but you couldn’t do much else.

The first time DJ tried to hunt with you on him still, you lost your grip on him underwater and was accidentally thwamped in the back by his massive tale. It was almost like being hit by a car. So, you were forced to have DJ leave you in the open water, but at least you weren’t alone. One of the baby sirens would stick with you. Usually it was Do, the little troublemaker always seemed to be so brave to you.

Your fruit didn’t last you long. You’ve eaten it all after the first day. So you were forced to eat the raw fish that DJ catches. It wasn’t easy, but with the help of the babies’ claws, you were at least able to scrape off the freshly dead fish’s scales so that all you had to worry about was the bones.

You’re glad you don’t have a fear of blood or anything like that but being forced to drink fish blood so that you don’t die of dehydration still sucked.

As the sun rose on your fourth day out on the open water with DJ and his babies, you stood up and stretched your aching body. You were starting to think that maybe you should sleep during the day, since you’ll be able to sleep through being hot easier, when you spotted something on the horizon.

You strained your eyes and once you focused in on it, you saw that it was a boat.

“Ah!” you screamed excitedly as you pointed at the ship.

You startled DJ and he popped his head up, making you fall into the water. You scrambled back up his neck and onto his head. Then you kneeled on the side that you wanted him to turn his head to look and slapped down excitedly.

“Look, look, look! A boat! We have to go to it!”

DJ was looking in the direction you wanted him to look, then he gave you a concerned rumble.

“Please DJ. I need to see if they will help. If they won’t then we’ll run away. Okay?”

DJ didn’t say anything, but he did start moving towards the ship.

You squealed excitedly.

As you got closer, your excitement dwindled down to disappointment. The boat was hardly a boat, mostly it looked like a ghost ship. The masts were broken. The hull looked barely held together, and you didn’t see a soul on it. It looked like one bad storm away from sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

Still, the prospect of having access to supplies that you didn’t have would be better than nothing.

DJ gently placed you on the deck of the ship and you quietly told the siren to wait for you under the ship. The babies, thankfully, didn’t whine when you disappeared from their sight. Understanding that this was possibly a dangerous situation.

You made your way over to the captain’s cabin first. It was a mess, but it had some things that you wanted. You took off your old, wet clothes and unwrapped your bandages. Your wounds looked wrinkly and gross, but still not puss filled so that’s something. You found a new pair of pants under the bed, and you put them on, happy to be dry for once. You stayed topless so that your wounds could air out.

You saw bullet holes and sword holes in the wood of the walls and floor, so whatever happened to this ship, they were fighting in the captain’s cabin too.

You left the cabin and trekked your way across the deck to the stairs that’ll lead you to the belly of the ship. The stairs to the first level were still intact and you managed to find the kitchen. You immediately raided the cupboards and found salted potatoes and a bottle of rum. You scarfed them down, happy that it’s not raw fish.

Holding a few of the potatoes in your arm so that you can snack while you walk, you went to check and see if you could find the medical wing of the ship.

As you were eating, you heard someone cussing.

You froze.

The figure continued to cuss and talk angrily out loud.

Slowly. Carefully. You followed the voice to where the cargo bay would be.

The cargo bay was lit up by the sun as it shined through the cavity of the ship. In the middle of the cargo bay was a stickman working on making a makeshift rowboat. They had a thick head of leaves that shown under the sun like autumn leaves, and they were missing one arm.

There was a loud clang and she hissed and cussed as she shook out her one hand.

Then she picked up what she dropped and went back to work.

You slowly sat down the food you found and looked around. You didn’t want to risk this person attacking you so wanted to make sure there weren’t any weapons they could use. Quickly, you spotted a sort of, luggage area, and saw a sword shining in the light. It was all pilled behind the stickman, so you had a chance to sneak up without being caught.

You carefully worked your way up to the pile, never letting your eyes leave the person. You grab the sword. Then you quietly snuck up on the stickman.

You’re not great at threatening people, and you’re not even sure if it’s a good idea to even talk to them in the first place, but you got to try and show that you’re not someone to be messed with.

So, you lightly poke the sword against their back and clear your throat.

They immediately stiffen.

“Um, yah, I don’t usually do this, but—”

You don’t finish your sentence.

Your feet are swept out from underneath you and the sword is wrenched from your grasp as you fall to your back.

You try to get back up to your feet fast, but you’re frozen in place as the sword’s point is shoved in your face.

You look up at the face of the stickman. She was glaring daggers at you, but you saw her eyes roam down to the half-healed wounds on your arms and abdomen.

“Word of advice. If you wanted me dead, you should have run me through when I thought I was alone.”

“I didn’t want that, I just wanted to show that I couldn’t be messed with or pushed around,” you sigh as you lay down on the ground, “That didn’t work out, huh?”

“No. It didn’t.”

You give her your name and said, “I was kidnapped by The Voice, and I’ve been stranded at sea for the last four-ish days. What’s your name?”

“Eclipse.”

Your head popped back up, “Sun and Moon’s old teacher?!”

The sword that was aimed at your face left as the stickman squatted beside you.

“You know my boys?”

“Yah! I’m a member of the Crusty Waters! I’m trying to find my crew!”

Eclipse gave you a scrutinized look, but then she sheathed her sword, then offed her one hand to you to help you back on your feet.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

#fnaf #fanfiction #pirate au #alternate dimension #y/n #chapter 11

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ellieswhoreeee · 4 years ago

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The Two of Us. pt 3

Author’s Note; Hello everyone! Welcome back :) Thank you once again for reading The Two of Us, i’m so excited for he directing this will be heading. The ideas are flowing! Anyways, i think this story will be less then 10 chapters. There will be conflict- with some angst so be prepared! Enjoy!!

Endgame Pairing: Ellie Williams x fem! Reader

Warnings: Violence, marijuana, swearing, ect.

———————————————————————

“Wanna hear a joke?” Ellie asked after a couple of minutes of silence. You smiled, somehow feeling nostalgic. Ellie used to have this pun book that she would carry around when you two were younger and randomly tell you jokes.

It was refreshing.

“Alright, hit me.” You nodded, looking over at Ellie who was next to you. Ellie was on Shimmer, riding gracefully. She was looking straight ahead, almost as if she was avoiding eye contact with you.

But she wasn’t. If anything she was nervous.

Suddenly, she leaned over towards you- and smacked you over the head. She retreated back to where she originally was and smirked at you. The look on your face told her everything. “What? You said hit me, so i did. You’re welcome.”

Funny girl. Of course, you couldn’t even be mad or negative. You let out a small laugh. “Ellie, i’m pretty sure that wasn’t the joke.”

“How’d you figure?” With another look that you threw at her, she understood what it had meant. She thought about something for a moment, and then remembered what the joke was. “What did the grape say when it got crushed?”

“I don’t know, something with raisins?”

“What? No- you really suck at this,”

“Shut up and finish the joke.”

“Nothing, it just let out a little wine.”

“Ellie, god that was horrible.” You chuckled out, and continued to grip onto Gemini’s reins. At the moment you were passing a small town. You had no idea what the name was since the vegetation was covering all the signs, growing onto the buildings and overgrown as shit. Everything was so green and lush, but the way it was abandoned made it look scary.

Which made you even more cautious for infected.

“Oh yeah? Well, i’d like to hear one of your fabulous jokes.” Ellie’s voice rang through your ears. You looked over at her, somehow she was now ahead of you. You stared at the back of her head, looking at her long neck, her hair that was tied back and her slender shoulders. Ellie made you forget about the apocalypse.

“Sorry to break it to you but my speciality is pick up lines.” You answered with a smile. You finally looked away from her and your attention fell onto the graffiti on the buildings. But the moment you felt Ellie’s eyes on you, you looked back.

Ellie’s eyes were sparkling. You didn’t know what that look on her face meant, it was the first time you’ve seen her like this. “Really? Alright, i’d like to hear what your ex’s fell for.”

“Ellie, they don’t count since they’re not really ex’s.” You frowned, remember the people who you used to… Well, “hang out with”. There was a time in your life where you denied the feelings for Ellie. Where you thought it was a phase and that you were mistaking your feelings as something else. You thought the interest was you just wanting to be her close friend because god, Ellie was amazing. It took you some time and talking to some friends to realize what you felt was more than wanting to be a close friend.

“Doesn’t matter. I want a good pick up line!”

She seems fine with it, why wouldn’t she? It’s not like it’s something serious. You got this. Playful attitude and it’ll all be okay.

You nodded, and cleared your throat. You stopped Gemini from continuing to walk. You waited for Ellie to stop Shimmer, so she could actually look at you. And she did, she turned shimmer around so she could stare at you. You two were in the middle of the road, out in the open. “Can i borrow a kiss? I promise i’ll give it back.”

Ellie’s face flushed- it couldn’t be helped. That was a good pick up line, she couldn’t deny that. The way you said it, the way you were looking at her and… God, she was helpless. Wait- what was she thinking? She had a girlfriend back home! She swore to get over after realizing you couldn’t have liked her back!

“What? Was that not good enough? Well, i do have seasonal pick up lines. Like, If a kiss was a snowflake, I would send you a snowstorm.” And with that you sent her a small wink, and leaned closer to Gemini’s neck. The look on her face was… Different. You couldn’t really understand her.

“Y/n-“ There was a scream- multiple screams and clicks that brought you back from your little world with Ellie. You felt your stomach drop at the noise. Infected really are a pain in the ass.

“Infected,” You warned, looking around in the town where the sounds seem to be coming from. You noticed a broken window from a grocery store. It was dark, and there was small noises coming from in there. “I thought this area would be clear.”

“They like to wander, remember?” Ellie reminded you with a hard look on her face. You jumped off Gemini, and decided to tie him to an old bike post. “What are you doing?” She asked with a frown.

You pulled out your handgun from your holster, checking to see how much bullets you had in the clip before looking at her. “We have to clear this place, we are on patrol.”

“This isn’t the checkpoint, what are Danny and Axel gonna think when we don’t show up on time?”

“Then we should deal with this quickly. Come on,” You urged, walking towards the broken window and jumped in without hesitation. Ellie quickly followed behind you, trying to catch up.

You get pretty impatient when it comes to clearing areas. She’s not sure where it came from. You were more hostile around infected- with good reason too but it was to the point you would jump in even if it killed you. That’s how bad it was.

From where she was she could see you silently bringing down one of the runners. There was three clickers strolling around the registers while there was some more runners strolling the isles. 7 infected in total- well now six.

She followed your lead, and decided to take down some of the runners quietly. It was much easier than showering them with bullets that you needed. But just in case, you kept your gun close.

After a couple of minutes, you two finished and decided to look around in hopes of finding something good. Which was rare, but it was still worth a shot. You body lead you to the back of the store where a door caught your attention. With your left hand you attempted to open the door but of course it was locked.

“Come on, let’s get going now.” Ellie walked up to you, watching you as you kept your attention on the door. You looked up, finding the entrance of the vent open. Bingo.

“Ellie, give me a boost.” Ellie raised her eyebrows at you, and it seemed like all she wanted to do was leave. First, Ellie promised Joel she wouldn’t take the longer routes and that she would start off with groups patrols but here she is, doing the longer routes and doing paired patrols instead. She just hopes that Joel doesn’t find out. “I’ll just check in there and then we can leave. I promise.” You reasoned, giving her a convincing smile.

She sighed, and nodded. She couldn’t say no to you. She leaned against the wall, and got in position to give you a boost. With one foot you stepped into her hand and she hoisted you up. You climed straight into the vent and crawled into the locked room. The room was bigger than you expected. You thought it was a janitors room but it was actually an office. It was nicely put together for a room that has been locked for what you assumed was years. You were about to walk closer towards the large desk when you heard something, but the banging on the door distracted you.

“Y/n! Open the door already!”

You sighed, and moved towards the door. Just as you were about to unlock it, an ear piercing scream sent you into panic but you weren’t fast enough to react to the stalker who had grabbed you from behind. You were so close to its mouth that you could hear it’s teeth chattering in anticipation.

You struggled against its hold, trying everything in your power to get it the fuck off you because god, this thing was disgusting. “Get the fuck off of me!” You grunted, continuing to fight off against the thing but you don’t remember where you put your knife. You were barely holding the stalker back, but you grip on its neck was the only thing keeping you alive at the moment.

Two gunshot rang out, and the stalker dropped behind you. You fell to the ground, feeling the sick to your stomach. “Y/n! Fuck, fuck, fuck! Are you bitten!?” Ellie jumped down from the same vent that you came through, and kneeled down to you. She grabbed your face and continued to check for bites- or any signs of injuries.

You couldn’t look her in the eyes. “Shit.” You closed your eyes. “I’m loosing my shit.”

“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here.” She grabbed your hand and pulled you up from the ground. She unlocked the door and lead you outside where the horses were waiting for you. Almost as sensing something was wrong, Gemini leaned into you once you were close enough.

“Hey, buddy. I’m okay.”

Ellie decided to let go of your hand. Your skin was warm and somehow she was comforted by that. But then she remembers that it probably meant more to her than it did to you. It always did.

She could never read you.

“What took you two so long?” Axel asked once you two made it to the dam. You two walked into the building, and straight to the watchtower. Ellie went straight to the couch while you walked towards the notebook and decided to report what had happened.

“Infected, we were clearing the an area and lost track of time.” You explained briskly. Axel nodded, noticing something was off but decided to say anything. Danny and Axel left after packing up.

You looked over at Ellie who was lounging around on the couch that was in another section of the room. She was writing something in her journal. You were curious as to what she was writing. “Watcha writing there, El?”

She didn’t look up and just continued to write. But she was smirking. “Only writing that i had to save your ass… Again.”

You groaned, hearing her laughing from her spot. “Watch it, William. I swear i’ll haunt you from beyond the grave.”

“You’ll never get the chance because i’ll always be there to save your ass.”

You rolled your eyes playfully. “Oh, yay. My own personal prince charming. What’s next, saving me from an evil queen who placed a curse on me?”

“We’ll, it’s on my list.” She joked, finally finishing up whatever she was writing in her journal. She closed her journal and hides it back into her backpack. You decided to look into the other room, you were looking for something specific. After some scavenging you finally found it. A bong.

“Hey, El! Guess what i found!” You yelled from the other room. You looked at the beautiful glass piece in-front of you.

“Please tell me you won the lottery, i would kill for a cruise ticket!”

“Funny,” You walked into the room Ellie was in, and presented the bong to her. Ellie’s eyes widen.

“How’s you know that was here?”

“There’s always at least one at each checkpoint.” You replied swiftly, giving her a grin. “ Eugene is a very chartable man.”

“We shouldn’t. Plus, we don’t have- wait, do you have some on you?”

You reached into your bag and pulled out a small bag of bud. You smirked and tossed her the bag. “As i said, Eugene is very charitable.”

Ellie was awestruck. “Jesus, y/n. Since when did you become a pothead?”

You hummed. “That’s a really good question- i’m not going to answer though.”

“Aw come on! I literally tell you everything.” Ellie slightly pouting at the fact that you were withholding information from her.

“Come talk to me when you’re 18.” You responded with a smirk on you’re face.

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Quit being a dick. You turned 18 a couple of months ago and don’t know how to act.”

“Shut up,” You walked over to her and sat on the opposite side of the same couch as her. You pulled out your bottle of water. “So, inside or outside?”

“Outside, obviously. Only one bowl, deal?”

“Deal.”

After many hours of waiting, you and Ellie were finally replaced at the dam checkpoint, so you two finished running your routes while riding back to Jackson. It started out rough but at the end of your shift you were feeling better. You had made it through the gates in one piece thanks to Ellie- and she made sure you didn’t forget it.

As soon as you made it to the stables you let out a relieved sigh. You started to stretch out your limbs. “It feels so good being back.” You let out a yawn, after you jumped off of Gemini. Ellie followed after you and stepped off of Shimmer. She grabbed Shimmer’s reins and held out her other hand towards you. You were confused on why she was doing that. “Uh… Is this one of your weird ways of telling me i’m awesome?”

“Psh, you wish. Give me his reins. I’ll bring him in.”

“You sure?” She nodded without any hesitation, so you handed her Gemini’s reins. “I’ll wait for you outside, maybe today’s the day we finish the flood arc.”

Ellie looked just as excited as you- maybe even more. “I’ll hold you to that.” She grinned, which made your heart beat faster. You turned on your heels and waited right outside the stables for her. You shouldn’t get too excited. She’s you’re best friend, your best friend who has a girlfriend. She doesn’t like me back. She doesn’t.

You felt like you were being watched so you looked around, finally finding as Cat walking over to you. She was taller than you and way more intimidating. “Uh, hey?”

She looked unimpressed. “Hey? That’s all you have to say after everything you’ve been doing?”

“Woah! What the hell are you talking about?” You had no idea what she was talking about. You didn’t do anything wrong, at least you don’t think you did. You wouldn’t do anything intentionally.

“Don’t pull that crap. I know you have feelings for Ellie.” She had said it a little too loud, and that’s what made you uncomfortable. You hated how open she was about everything- not everyone can be like that. It was one of the things you envied and hated about her.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Cat. Remember… before anything that Ellie is my best friend. So whatever the hell you think happened- didn’t!”

She scoffed, laughing bitterly. “Right. You expect me to believe that when you’re making Googly eyes at her all the time?”

“Cat! This isn’t the time or place to be talking about this. I’m serious.”

“Fine. Just admit that you have feelings for her and i’ll leave you alone.”

You scoffed, crossing your arms in an attempt to protect yourself from her glaring eyes. “Yeah, right. So you can kick my ass when you hear something you don’t want to hear? Why can’t you understand that what i’m feeling is one sided and that Ellie literally loves you! God, Cat. Couldn’t you have realized that instead of cornering me like this? I cant lie to you.”

“Y/n.”

You immediately recognized the voice, and you felt sick once again. You slowly turned around to face the girl who had been the cause for this altercation. She knows.

“Ellie…”

#ellie williams x reader #ellie x reader #ellie williams #tlou2 ellie #dina tlou #jesse tlou #cat tlou2 #the last of us part two #maria tlou #tommy tlou #joel miller #tlou2

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eldragon-x-moved · 3 years ago

Note

(kickflips into your inbox) not to talk about my blorbos all the fucking time but luz and viney? and as a treat, talk about hunter too

Keeping this shorter than I normally would have just because Tumblr decided to hate me when I was almost done writing this and I have to start over now 😔

Luz

Fav thing about them The way she usually comes across as cheerful and light-hearted which makes her a very delightful character, but when she deals with a problem, it’s usually by downplaying it in some way or trying to take responsibility for it by herself to avoid “burdening” others. E.g. dealing with her issue of choosing between the human world and the Boiling Isles by helping Kikimora during Coven Day and acting like she Totally Only Did That Because She Wanted To Help Eda And Raine And Felt Bad For Kiki :) Or trying to help Amity connect with her dad which will Defenetly help Luz distract herself from the anniversary of her own dad’s death. What’s really killing me is the current Philip situation. Luz went through hell and back in Hollow Mind, almost got killed, but the first thing she brings up is that she had a hand in it (which is not her fault by any means) and needs to do something about it right now, no time to take a breather and process everything she just went through. I know the next episodes are building up to the Day of Unity but I at least hope Eda will support her as much as she can because God do I feel sad for her.

Least fav thing about them This is a hard question when it comes to characters I don’t dislike lmao

Fav line “This mama is ready for trauma.” purely due to how it aged.

brotp Gus and Willow are her besties, I just wish there was more screentime dedicated to them and more involvement in the overall story for them alongside Luz. I do have hopes tho, Labyrinth Runners made a point to cast the spotlight on Hexside and remind us that Willow and especially Gus are powerful. Also Luz and Hunter have strong sibling energy, I’m on the same boat as everyone who felt this since Hunting Palismen.

otp Lumity I guess. I don’t consider myself a shipper but y’know, nice canon relationship.

notp Lunter, see brotp.

random hc The Azura book series is her top favourite piece of media but she’s generally very invested in fiction. She’s mostly drawn towards anything fantasy/magic ect. I want to say she loves The Last Unicorn for the sake of projection but I think she’d enjoy more light-hearted stories over it tbh.

unpopular opinion If she would have to choose between returning home forever or staying in the Boiling Isles, there’s not one better option that she “should” go for. Luz made a home, friends and family in the BI, but she still has a home and family in the human world too, not to mention the grave of her dad that she and Camila visit yearly which is clearly an important ritual to her. I personally hope she gets the option to travel between both worlds at will in the end

song I associate with them It’s hard finding songs for characters, I got nothing.

fav picture

Her Grom attire is so pretty. She has some kind of gender going on here.

Viney

Fav thing about them Didn’t pay much attention to her until recently and I need to personally apologize to you because I completely forgot she was actually part of the detention student group until looking up pictures of her for this and I’m going to have to rewatch this episode later but regardless, I really like her design, her choice of studying healing and beast keeping is such a neat combo and I love how casually she handles her big scary pet griffin which is also named Puddles and her baby.

Least fav thing about them /

Fav line None right now but I really need to refresh my memory on her from season 1 as mentioned above.

brotp She and Skara are besties this is a fact.

otp /

notp /

random hc She actually wants to look into more different kinds of magic, she’s just putting her focus on healing and beast keeping at the moment.

unpopular opinion /

song I associate with them /

fav picture

I adore this little scene as a whole actually, her going “Look Puddles it’s the friend you made earlier! :)” reads to me as her trying to calm Puddles down and letting her know that Hunter isn’t a threat (and vice versa) and she’s failing but the energy is there.

Hunter

Fav thing about them There’s just something about him being a young person who has so far spent his life isolated with his abusive parental figure who has manipulated him and taken control over his life, making him believe he’s doing the right thing for his abuser’s own personal gain. And you root for him to change for the better and because you know he’s a good but misguided individual in a terrible living situation that he doesn’t even realize. And when he eventually does realize the truth of his situation, his world falls apart and it’s scary but it’s the first step towards healing and finding his own way in life. He’s still going to deal with the trauma of his upbringing no doubt, but he’s going to get better.

It’s the N Harmonia effect.

Least fav thing about them Nothing rn, I’m just a bit afraid that instead of finding his own identity, he’ll adopt the identity of Wittebro (derogatory) and the show will treat it as a good thing. I’m holding out hope that they won’t pull that though.

Fav line Shoutout to Zeno Robinson for his delivery of: “What did you do to the other guards? To our family! It wasn’t wild magic, was it?” I could feel the second-hand pain and betrayal Hunter was experiencing while watching Hollow Mind for the first time.

brotp He’s big brother material to Luz and Gus, Willow is his bestie, I want him to interact with King again after all that happened and they bond over sharing the horrible experience of learning that their ancestors died horribly.

otp /

notp Lunter again, even worse when ppl ship him with Gus who is twelve years old, people need to remember this.

random hc Hunter is aromantic in the same way Berdly Deltarune is aromantic: Thinks he has a crush on his girl best friend because feelings are complicated.

unpopular opinion Funny one considering what I just said but I don’t care nor worry about the implication that he has a crush on Willow. As long as they don’t become a canon couple within the show, it doesn’t bother me and I’m tired of people loosing their minds over it.

song I associate with them Said this before but “Valley of the Dolls” by Marina is such a him song regarding the whole Golden Guard/Grimwalker thing.

fav picture

This makes me feel so much actually. He’s happy. <:)

#owl house #toh spoilers #hunter tag

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descendantofthesparrow · 4 years ago

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Interlude - Rewrite mini series - Harry Hook x reader - Part 10 (final)- new vks

-(July 1st 1:17 am, the mines underneath the Isle of the lost)-

Hadie stared down at the almost blank application, he had taken one nearly a week after they arrived on the isle and had yet to do anything more than write his name. and the first pick-up day was today at 4 pm sharp.

Hadie sighed and buried his head in his hands, his father, Hades, had encouraged him to turn in an application if only to be finally able to be with his mother and sister; Persephone and Melinoe. Hadie had been taken away with his father to the isle at only a month old, so he hardly knew his mother beyond stories from his father and he had seen his sister on the tv a few times.

But in turn he would be leaving his dad on the isle, and while his dad wasn’t the best person in the world, he wasn’t a horrible father or husband…well, other than that one thing his father did 19 years ago but Hadie had blocked that from his memory. But- Hadie rubbed his face and pushed his hair back, looking down at the application - his father had told him to fill out an application…

Hadie picked up his pencil and started to write.

-2:00 am-

Claudine sighed in relief; she was finally done filling out the transfer application. She had hidden her application away from her father to prevent him from taking it and keep her from leaving the isle. But she had to get away from him, she just had to. She signed her name at the bottom and inked her thumbprint onto the corner square. She waited for it to dry as she got dressed to sneak out to go turn it in.

Thankfully the ink had dried for the print as she finished tying off her boots, she then grabbed the application and folded it, sliding the paper into her shirt. She grabbed a hoodie and pulled it on as an extra layer to combat the isle chill.

Claudine slowly opened her door, freezing as the floor creaked under her boot. She waited for twenty seconds before moving again, stepping onto the spots that wouldn’t creak that had been ingrained into her mind after so many years of sneaking out.

Claudine unlocked the front door and slipped through, locking it again behind her and setting off towards the main market where one of the application drop-off/pickup spots were.

As she finally arrived, Claudine gasped and took a step back into the shadows.

Hadie, the son of Hades was at the drop-off spot, setting down an application. Claudine had never had a personal problem with Hadie but her father always went off about how he and his father were preachers of the devil, being beings that didn’t go in line with her father's beliefs so he called them sinners and were in line to be with the devil. He didn’t believe in the gods of old that were very obviously real.

And Claudine knew there were always people that followed her father's beliefs around and about at this time of night and would rat her out if she was even seen near the son of Hades. So Claudine waited until Hadie had walked back towards wherever he had come from and she bolted forward, sliding in her application into the large box that only allowed applications to be inserted but not taken.

She pulled her hoodie closer to her and turned to run back home, praying to whatever gods were listening to help her get off the isle.

-1:30pm-

Ginny couldn’t believe she was actually doing this; she was actually applying to transfer to Auradon. She stared at the drop-off spot which was being surrounded by hundreds of kids doing last-minute application pickups and others dropping off their filled-out applications.

Over two hundred kids and young adults had and were applying for this transfer program, and only six would be picked twice a month, and Ginny knew it was going to be a long shot for her to be picked by any of the original six vks. Maybe Harriet would put in a word for her old “friend” but Ginny wouldn’t put her hopes on it.

Ginny waited until most of the crowd had cleared to drop off her application, some of the younger vks jumping out of her path to avoid her as she walked toward the table. She ignored them and slid the paper into the box, turning on her heel and bumping past Diego as he did the same as her.

Ginny paused for a moment, waiting until Diego turned again and started to walk back to where ever he had been before turning in the application “You applying too?” Ginny asked, stuffing her hands in her dress pockets and walking in stride with Deigo, who gave her a mean side-eye “Hey I’m just askin’” Diego rolled his eyes, sidestepping a running kid.

“Yeah, so what? You can't blackmail me for it since you did the same thing” Ginny grinned, patting Diego's arm and giggling as he pulled away, brushing off the place she touched.

“Oh don’t be so dramatic, I’m just bein’ curious, you think you might get picked? You do have family over there” Ginny was reminded of Carlos, Diego's cousin, and due to that Deigo probably had the best chance of getting picked first round.

“Maybe, maybe not, I dunno, now beat it” Diego snapped, taking a sharp right towards the abandoned theater and disappearing into the market crowd. Ginny hummed and rolled her eyes, placing her hands on her hips.

“What a drama queen” Ginny muttered, yelping a bit as an arm wrapped around her neck.

“Hey~” Colin cooed and started to drag Ginny off towards the salon “What are you doing out here~?”

“Turning one of those applications in” Ginny muttered, loosening Colin's arm around her neck and standing straight, pouting as Colin’s heels still gave them an advantage over her. “Why are you out here?”

“Same actually!” Colin gasped, giving a teasing smile to Ginny “why’d you apply? Just wonderin’?”

“…” Ginny just gave Colin a look, the look many vks shared when one of the more ‘proud’ vks asked who and why they would even want to go to Auradon. Fresh air, real grass, actually changing seasons, fresh food that wasn’t supplied by the ships and had actual different things than the constant same old same old the isle got in its provisions.

“Oh, okay, gotcha” Colin laughed, taking their arm from Ginny's shoulders and rubbing the back of their neck.

“Why’d you apply?” Ginny shot back, pausing as a loud shriek of rage echoed out from within the queen of hearts salon “I think I just heard the answer to my question”

“Yep” colin popped the ‘p’ and sighed, closing their eyes “My mother’s a pain in my ass and I can't wait until I don’t ever have to deal with her or her issues again, do you know how many times I've heard ‘off with their head’ in one day? Too many to count I’ll tell you that” Ginny was once again dragged by colin as they grabbed her wrist and took her inside the salon “Come on, you’re gonna help me deal with my boredom”

Ginny let Colin push her into a chair and start messing with her hair, it was high time she needed a haircut, it had long grown out of its bob-undercut she liked and now rested below her shoulder blades.

“Go nuts” Ginny sighed, closing her eyes and letting Colin work their magic.

-3:45pm-

Celia huffed as she raced through the marketplace, trying to get to one of the drop off spots to turn in her application before the applications were picked up. She had gotten the application almost immediately after they had been delivered but she had been so busy with fortune-telling, being Hades errand rat, and school that she hardly had time to fill it out and get it to the drop-off spot.

But she had finally signed it off only ten minutes ago and now was racing to turn it in in time. She slid to a stop in front of ‘Carlos' house’ and ran in, gasping for breath as she slammed her hands onto the table and slipped the paper into the box. “Uhhhh, Celia, you good?” Jamie, one of Umas ex-crew members, placed her hand on Celias back, staring at the younger vk in concern.

“Out” Celia gasped between each breath “of, breath, ran, all the way, from, arcade.” Jamie sighed at Celia's response and helped her stand up straight.

“What took you so long in turning the application in? the pick-up times in ten minutes” Celia looked to the clock on the wall and winced. It was already 3:50, only ten minutes until the Auradon guards came to pick up the turned in applications “Whoop” Celia felt herself be picked up and moved to the side as a crowd of vks rushed into the room, all holding an application “Well…that’s a lot of last-minute turn-ins” Jamie laughed, setting Cellia down and watching as the vks climbed over each other to try to get their application in. Jamie patted Celia's shoulder and walked over to the large group, calming them down and quickly getting them into an orderly fashion to make sure not one application got left behind.

Just as the last paper was slipped into the box, an Auradon guard stepped into the room, giving a kind smile to the vks and picking up the box, making sure it wasn’t tampered with before turning on his heel and rejoining his fellow guard outside the shelter.

The vks all looked at each other for a moment before they all decided to follow the guards, Celia pushing to the front and watching as the guards loaded the six boxes filled with applications into the sleek black car, the Auradon symbol adhered to the back doors.

The guards closed and locked the back doors and one offered the watching vks another kind smile. The guards climbed into the car and it drove off, the crowd parting as it made its way to the bridge.

“Well,” Jamie muttered, stepping up to stand next to Celia “it's all up to luck now huh?”

“Let’s just hope the future is on our side” Celia mumbled back, turning on her heel and heading back to the arcade, mind racing as she thought about her possible future in Auradon.

“Cher! You’re back! How’d it go, did you get the application in?” her father greeted her as she stepped into the arcade, in the background the games were being set up by the arcade workers as school had ended the day before, and now her dads summer hustle needed to be up and running by the end of the day.

“Yep, and now we wait” Celia leaned into her dad's side as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and led her back towards his fortune-telling table.

Celia sat across from her dad and watched him as he shuffled through his cards “Something on your mind cher?” her father gently asked, looking up at her under the brim of his top hat. Celia shrugged, slumping in her seat and resting her chin on the table.

“Just the application stuff, kinda hard to believe it’s actually happening” her dad hummed at that, laying down his cards in a swift motion. “…do you think I’ll get picked?” her father drew three cards, laying each one down.

The first was a mask with two sides, one happy one sad, her past. A miserable life on the isle but taken care of by her father. He drew a second card, a rolled-up application with the words awaiting on the front. Her present, her application, and her hope of being chosen to go to Auradon.

He drew the last card, smiling at her.

It was her, wearing her favorite outfit nonetheless, sitting on top of a large pile of coins and cash, a big grin on her face as king Ben's castle rested in the shadows behind her. “I think you don’t need to be worried about a thing cher,” her father said softly, picking up the cards and shuffling them again.

Somehow, even though the barrier blocked all types of magic, her father was able to predict past, present, and futures perfectly, and while she more often than not scammed her clients, she had this same ability.

Her father had said his cards weren't connected to the shadow realm but his own abilities, so Celia guessed that’s why it wasn’t affected by the barrier.

Eh, it was too much of a headache to think of now, Celia sighed and stretched in her chair as her father stood to check on the arcade set up. Celia smiled and took out her cards, shuffling them in her hands as the arcade workers bustled around her getting ready for the surge of teenagers wanting to play.

-July 16th, at (y/n) and Harry’s house-

“And we are officially! Moved in~!” you dusted your hands off and closed the garage door with your foot, sharing a grin with Harry as he stood up from packing away the last of the cabinet food and wiped his hands on his pants.

“An’ tha’ last two weeks haven't been official why?” Harry joked, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders as you skipped over to him and wrapped your arms around his waist.

“Because I have officially unpacked and put away the last box~ ha ha ha!” Harry snorted at that and cupped the back of your head with one hand as the other grabbed your hips, smiling at you.

“Yeh got meh there darlin’” you grinned and bumped your head into his, humming as he tilted his head to kiss your forehead. “How bout some root beer floats to celebrate?”

“Hmmm, I would love to but-“ you pulled out your phone and unlocked it, showing him the vks + Ben and Doug group chat where Ben had announced the arrival of the approved applications from the council “-you have applications to go through and Ben wants us over there in an hour…and you need a shower” Harry pouted at the loss of the celebratory dessert and sighed, kissing the top of your head and dropping his hands from you, moving around you to head to the bathroom. “We’ll head out in thirty okay!”

“Kay!” you nodded and pulled your slightly sweaty shirt (another you had stolen from Harry) and hummed, deciding to use the other bathroom to take a shower as well.

Mal groaned in greeting as you and Harry stepped into Bens room at the castle, he had decided to have the ‘’first official application choosing” in his room after seeing the number of applications the vks would have to go through. Harry made a face at seeing his pile of applications, they had been sorted through “favorite vk” so each of them had a pile or three of applications where the isle kids had chosen them as their favorite.

“This is gonna take forever” Harry muttered, giving you a pout as you smacked his arm “yeh denied meh a root beer float, I’m gonna be grumpy”

“I have provided snacks and root beer floats” Ben laughed, gesturing over to the large folding table holding many snacks and a tray of cups next to a tub of vanilla ice cream and a big bottle of root beer.

“Beasty boy, yeh have gained points, (y/n) yeh loose some” you rolled your eyes as Harry almost skipped over to the table and began to make himself a float, you walked over to Harry’s pile and began to sort through it, happy that the council had actually approved of a good amount instead of stinging on the vks and approving only a handful.

“Welp” you clapped your hands, sharing a grin with the already ‘tired of this bullshit’ vks (they were still happy to get more kids off the isle but sorting through all the applications was gonna get boring after a short while) “let's get this started shall we~?”

-three hours later-

Harry sighed as he placed his last application into his ‘first group’ pile, which was at least a good half foot tall and he would have to choose between the vks in that pile but he was done with the majority for now. You, Doug, and Ben had been great helps in taking their applications they had both sorted through and had yet to go through and organized them into ‘favorite vk, age, and big/small villain parent’ (which sounds biased but it helped choose)

“As much as I want to get more kids here, I never want to look at another application for the rest of my life” Mal groaned, flopping into Jay's lap and blowing a raspberry as he flicked her head for blowing over one of his (thankfully small) piles of applications.

“I never want to look at the Auradon logo ever again” Evie groaned from her place on the floor, halfway behind Carlos who was finishing off his pile. He turned and smiled at her, patting her face twice in empathy.

“So,” Ben sighed, setting down his drink and smiling at the vks “who are we picking?” everyone looked to each other before Harry took the top paper from his stack and held it up.

“Before we go through the papers again, I jus’ want ta’ point out the council actually approved Hadie” Mal sat up at that and snatched the paper from Harry, who glared at the purple-haired fae for a moment before turning back to his stack.

“Wow, and here I thought he’d be one of the ones to be denied” Mal snorted, Hades was one of the most feared villains on the isle, he was big and strong, even after losing his powers to the barrier, he wasn’t seen all that much though, even during the early days.

“Whose Hadie?” Ben asked, leaning over to look at the application.

“Son of Hades” the vks answered at once, making Ben laugh a bit, Mal continued to explain “he’s like, the oldest vk on the isle, I think he’s even older than the isle actually?” Mal peered at the written birthdate “when was the isle made exactly/”

“July 4th 1995” Doug quickly answered for Ben beginning to help Evie go through the papers once again to look for Celia’s, to which Jay handed it to her as Celia had written him as her favorite vk. Mal nodded and played with the application in her hands.

“Yeah, Hadie was born about a month before the isle was created, doesn’t he have a sister or something? I remember him mentioning that like, years ago” Ben raised his brow at that, before his eyes went wide.

“Oh, do you mean Melinoe? She’s Persephone's daughter…and she was born June 20th 1995, could she be?-” Mal nodded, showing Ben the application and pointing at Hadie’s birthdate. “Oh wow…well now I know the reason for the 1995 blizzard, Persephone must’ve caused it in reaction to Hadie being taken with Hades. Honestly, I don’t blame her, I would rage too if my barely a month-old child was taken from me” the vks nodded, remembering their parents telling them of the Auradon winter that happened soon after the isles creation that lasted almost into the spring of next year before it stopped, assumed to be the other gods telling her to stop before Auradon collapsed before it really began.

Mal smiled as a thought came to mind “I think I’m going to choose Hadie” Ben and the others tilted their heads in confusion as Evie seemed to understand what Mals thought process was. “Well, I just thought, ya know, im the daughter of the evilest villainess in the world, why not chose the son of the evilest villain? Ya know, keep the train going and all that” Ben grinned and leaned over to kiss Mal's cheek, who blushed and giggled at the affection.

“That sounds like a wonderful idea” Ben hummed, smiling as Mal reached over him and grabbed the “approved” stamp, and then used it on Hadie’s application “All right, one down, five to go!”

Two hours later and the six new vks were chosen. Mal had chosen Hadie, Evie had chosen Celia Facilier, Carlos had chosen his cousin; Diego De’vil, Gil had chosen Claudine Frollo, Jay had chosen Ginny Gothel, and Harry had chosen Colin Hearts.

“Well,” Ben clapped his hands, standing from the floor and offering his arm to Mal to help her up as well “that’s it! We’re done! All that’s left to do is register them to their schools and then announce them on vk day!” the group cheered and Harry stood, helping you up as he did. “it’s been three and a half long years its finally happening, on the 17th we’ll officially celebrate the three-year anniversary of your arrival as well.” The group cheered again as they all stood and stretched from sitting on the floor for several hours. “So, enjoy the rest of your day guys, I’ll be here” Ben sighed and laughed, looking at the large stacks of applications he now had to put away "doing king stuff”

“yeah” Mal sighed, patting Bens shoulder, keeping her face sympathetic as he gave her a ‘you wanna help?’ look “well, im going to go back to bed, bye benny~!” she kissed his cheeks and raced out of the room as he attempted to grab her, cackling as she went.

“Imp!” Ben yelled, grinning as Mal's laughter echoed back. He turned back to the rest and smiled “thank you guys, really, none of this would have been possible without you”

“We wouldn’t be ‘ere without yeh beasty boy, so thank yeh” Harry pulled Ben into a side hug, Ben laughing a bit and squeezing Harry's side. “Really, Ben, you saved us from a life on the isle, we owe yeh our lives” Ben felt himself get teary-eyed as the rest of the vks nodded along with Harry, all smiling at Ben.

Mal popped in head back in and grinned, holding her thumb up in agreement “I would still be under my mom's thumb if it weren't for you, thank you Ben”

“I would still be afraid of dogs and my own shadow, ” Carlos laughed, Evie squeezing his shoulder as he looked at her.

“I would still think beauty over brains, thinking that I needed a prince to be happy” Jay gave a somber smile as Evie spoke, and crossed his arms, rubbing his thumb over this Auradon class ring.

“I would still be alone, sleeping on the floor of my dad's shop” Gil stepped on Ben's other side, squeezing the shoulder opposite of him.

“I wouldn’t be living my best life alongside you, and I would still be the dumb sidekick for everyone” Harry titled back into Ben's vision after Gil spoke.

“And I wouldn’t have met (y/n) or gotten away from meh father if it weren't fer yeh, so really, thank yeh Ben, if you ever need anything, anything at all, we’re here fer ya. We’ll always have yer back” Ben let out a quiet cry and the vks crowded him in a hug, Mal bounding back into the room to join in as you and Doug cooed from the side, letting Ben and the vks have their moment.

“I love you guys” Ben’s voice wobbled out from the pile of vks and they echoed it back at him. After a few moments, they separated and Ben wiped his tears “I should thank you all as well, without you I wouldn’t be the kind of king I am and I would probably be under the council's thumb or something, anyways enough with the sob fest im starving” you snorted and lifted your arm as Harry stepped next to you and pushed into your side.

“All righty then, we’ll see yall later, bye!” you and Harry walked out of Bens room and headed to the parking garage to head back home to chill for the rest of the day as really the only plans you had was doing applications and it was only 3 pm.

“We have dinner with your sisters tonight, right?” you asked as you pulled out your phone, checking on your calendar to make sure your brain was correct.

“Aye, somethin’ bout Hettie getting her sailors license, so celebratory dinner fer tha, but until then, nap time!” Harry opened the passenger's door and gestured for you to get inside, you did so and Harry closed the door behind you, walking around the front to get to the driver's seat and sliding in as you buckled up.

After Harry started the car, you clicked on the radio and jammed out to the song playing as Harry drove back home, keeping your eyes on the ocean as you did.

Uma this whole time had stayed ‘on the run’ even though Ben had confirmed to the kingdom that she would be forgiven for her ‘crimes’ which had caused some questioning but he gave some insight to the isle and it calmed the situation quickly. You had asked her time and time again if she wanted to come back to the mainland with you or to tell Harry and Gil about her presence but each time she declined, why you didn’t know but you didn’t want to push.

‘ I'll visit her tonight, give her an update on everything’ you thought to yourself, eyes going down to your phone and turning it on, tapping in and out of random apps.

Hours later and it was almost midnight, you once again trekked through the bush towards one of the coves against the Strait of Ursula, smiling as you found Uma sitting on the shore, her hair had changed once again, now in teal locs that stopped at her lower back. “I like the hair” you hummed as you set the bag full of food next to her, sitting down as she unzipped it and started to dig through.

“Thanks, wanted to try something new” she grinned as she took out a box of chicken fettuccine alfredo and a fork, she popped open the box and dug in “dang, Gil needs to go to culinary school, and I really should have had him cook more on the isle” Uma muttered, dancing as she ate while you snorted.

“Actually, this is Tony’s restaurant cooking, we ate out tonight with Harry’s sisters” Uma stopped for a moment then resumed eating.

“Huh, alright then, compliments to the chef then” she stuck a piece of chicken in her mouth and turned to you, cheeks puffed as she chewed “any updates?”

“Uma, it's chicken not see food” you joked, holding up your hand to cover your view of her mouth, laughing as she rolled her eyes and smacked you “sorry, I had to. But yeah, all six vks for the next round have been picked, Hadie, Colin Hearts, Ginny Gothel, Claudine Frollo, Celia Facilier, and Diego De’vil”

“Only one person in that entire selection is high school age” Uma muttered, raising her brow as you shrugged.

“Eh, we weren’t going to strictly high school age, more just…villain kids. Celia will be attending Auradon prep, while the others will attend a quarter at Auradon prep to get started then spend the rest of the year at Auradon city community college, then they can do what they want from there.”

Uma slowly nodded, looking out onto the ocean where the moon was setting behind the isle. “How long do you think it’ll be before all the kids are off?”

“Well,” you sighed, looking up at the stars with your lips pursed in thought “twelve kids a month from now on? There's what probably…I don’t know let's say a thousand kids on the isle?...maybe less than three years? Give or take? So not the fastest process ever but hey at least somethings going to be happening now instead of just waiting, and the fresh food and necessities program will continue even after we get all the kids off so even the villains won't be living under human rights violations” Uma hummed at that, setting down the now empty box of her ex-dinner and curling up, setting her chin on her knees.

“I know Ben’s been doing his best, you all have…even the imp from what I've heard” Uma grumbled, hesitant to ‘compliment’ her old bully. She was still unsure of Mal even after you told her about Mal going to therapy and agreeing with Ben to ‘forgive’ Uma for her ‘crimes’. Mal had been cruel and relentless for years so Uma really had many reasons not to trust Mal one bit. “But it still feels too little too late”

“Blame the council for that, if Ben could he would just let kids go from isle to Auradon willy nilly and he would have done it years ago, but the main council are a bunch of old goons who are still scared of your parents and refuse to see that these kids don’t deserve any of this” you gestured to the isle, your jaw clicking in anger as thunder rumbled above it “Ben actually had to threaten them to get them to go through all the applications in time, or to make unbiased disapprovals. If they had their way, everyone would be back on the isle by now”

Uma huffed at that, standing and dusting off the sand sticking to her legs and skirt “you have a point” she went silent again, looking out at the isle “well, I guess now we wait again, at least we know things are happening now…keep me updated” she started to move back into the ocean but you stopped her.

“Do you want me to tell-“

“No” she interrupted you once again, looking back at you with somber eyes and a watery smile “I-…I don’t think im ready to face them yet…even after three years…I’ll see you later (y/n)” Uma dived into the waters and disappeared in a golden glow into the deep.

You watched the waters crash against the shore for a minute before you grabbed the bag and empty food boxes and packing them up. You sling the bag over your shoulder and turned on your heel, heading back through the bush to where you parked your bike and headed home.

When you arrived home Harry was already in bed, probably asleep by now. You quietly unlocked the front door and stepped inside, sneaking through the house and putting away the empty boxes in the dishwasher, then hanging the bag in the closet. You undid your shoes on the couch and rested them next to the door the next time you passed it to go to your room.

Harry had kept the door cracked for you so you slipped in and smiled at the crumbled form of Harry on your bed, his body mostly on your side of the bed as his face smushed into your pillow, light snores pouring from his lips.

You got changed into one of Harry's shirts and a pair of sleeping shorts and slipped into bed next to Harry, resting your head next to his on your pillow and tossing your arm over his shoulder, smiling as he unconsciously pulled you into him and buried his face into your air.

“I love you Harry” you whispered into his shoulder, unable to keep the grin off your face as he, in his sleep, replied back.

“I luve yeh too”

-End of Interlude-

Part 10!!! Part 10!!! Interlude is finished!!! Thank you all for reading this and finale will be coming in August! Oneshot showing the relationship development between (y/n) and Harry coming at some point before that but again thank yall for reading!

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

Photo

I feel a sort of reverence in going over these scenes in this most beautiful country, which I am proud to call my own, where there was such devoted loyalty to the family of my ancestors – for Stuart blood is in my veins.

- Queen Victoria on Scotland

For a British monarch, Queen Victoria was extremely quick off the mark in making her first visit to Scotland in 1842, only five years after her coronation as Queen. Hooked on the stories of Sir Walter Scott, Queen Victoria toured the country with Prince Albert, spending several days in the capital at Edinburgh.

Then in September 1844 she returned to Scotland with Prince Albert and her young daughter Vicky at her side. This time she visited Blair Castle in Perthshire. They all enjoyed not only Scottish oatmeal porridge but its spectacular fresh landscapes, especially the Highlands, which captivated them both and inspired a rich new adoption of ideas. Later, they took on Highland life in the fullness of its tastes and traditions, something which was recorded in a wealth of artwork, not least in the Queen’s watercolours.

Victoria and Albert loved Scotland so much they inspired a trend for tartan and tweed across the kingdom. They returned over and over again, and after taking possession of Balmoral in 1848 they actually built a castle of their own.

Queen Victoria was a keen diarist and kept detailed records of her stays in Scotland, writing exhaustively about what happened each day: whether Albert’s hunting trips had been successful, who they dined with, her thoughts on the landscape, Highland pony riding, plans for scenes to sketch, details of the people she met, whether she liked them or not.

One of the most common urband legends of Victoria’s time in Scotland is that she and Albert got lost in the Highlands and sought shelter and hospitality in a poor family’s cottage.

Queen Victoria certainly never mentioned getting lost in the forest alone with Prince Albert on horseback, as depicted in the recent British drama series Victoria.

Queen Victoria never mentioned being forced to seek shelter with a kindly poor couple who cooked delicious trout over an open fire and let them stay the night, and there’s no record of her hiding her identity as Queen and learning to darn a sock like a “normal” person.

Still – you can see where this fanciful storyline came from. What we do see in her journal is that, for her, the wild Scottish Highlands were an escape from reality.

“After the constant trying publicity we are accustomed to, it is so pleasant & refreshing, to be able, amidst such beautiful surrounding, to enjoying such complete privacy & such a simple life,” she wrote in her diary.

And while and Albert avoided getting lost, they did have an idyllic pony ride accompanied by only one servant – as close to privacy as the monarch could really get.

“When I awoke the sun was shining brightly & it lit up the mountains so beautifully,” she wrote. “At 9, we set off, both, on ponies, attended only by Lord Glenlyon’s excellent servant, Sandy McAra, in his Highland dress, to go up one of the hills.

“We went through a ford, Sandy leading my pony, and Albert following closely, and then went up the hill of Tulloch straight over a very steep cabbage field, afterwards going round zigzag to the very top, the ponies scrambling up over stones & heather, & never once making a false step. The view all round was splendid & so beautifully lit up. From the top it was quite like a panorama.

“We could see the Falls of Bruar, the Pass of Killiecrankie, Ben y Gloe, and the whole range of hills behind, in the direction of Tay mouth. The house itself & the houses in the village looked like toys, from the height at which we were. It was very wonderful. We got off once or twice, & walked about. There was not a house or creature near us, only pretty Highland, black faced sheep.”

She added: “It was the most delightful, and most romantic ride and walk, I had ever had.”

Another time they cut it fine on a pony ride, with the Queen suddenly becoming worried about nightfall – “Got alarmed at seeing the sun sinking, for fear of our being benighted, & we called anxiously for Sandy to give a signal to Albert to come back. At length we got on the move, skirting the hill & the ponies went as safely & securely as possible.”

But they made it home just in time: “A long day indeed, but one which I shall not easily forget.”

And as for visiting a couple of unsuspecting-yet-kindly Highlanders at their cottage?

The only mentions of a “cottage” make clear this is no poor man’s house: “We got out at the Cottage, which is pretty & beautifully situated. There are some good Landseers in the room we went into.” With paintings by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer on the walls this is not exactly a poor man’s hut…

As she prepared to leave at the end of September, Victoria reflected on her time in Scotland: “I am so sad at thinking of leaving this charming place, & the quiet, liberty, & the pure air we have enjoyed. The action life we have been leading, peculiar in its way, has been so delightful.”

Having already lost her beloved husband Albert, Victoria found solace in Scotland and its people. John Brown was famously associated with Queen Victoria.

The Queen first mentioned Brown in her Journal on 11 September 1849, and from 1851 John Brown, at Albert's suggestion, took on the role of leading Queen Victoria's pony. In 1858, Brown became the personal ghillie (shooting guide and gun-loader) of Prince Albert.

After Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria went into deep mourning, becoming almost a recluse. In 1864, her daughter, Princess Alice, noted that the Queen had always been happy at Balmoral, especially when taking a ride in her pony cart. Why couldn't pony cart rides be made available at Windsor and at Osborne (the Queen's home on the Isle of Wight), with the Queen in the care of the man who so effectively led her pony at Balmoral? The Queen agreed and in December 1864 John Brown became a full-time servant. He was, as Queen Victoria put it in her journal, "indefatigable in his attendance and care".

By 1866 gossip about the relationship between the Queen and her extremely informal servant had started. Brown was the only person around Victoria prepared to "tell it like it was", and he often proved abrasive with members of the Royal Household: even, it is said, on at least one occasion giving the Prince of Wales the rough edge of his tongue. Rumours soon spread more widely, and Brown was featured in the satirical magazine Punch on 30 June 1866, and Queen Victoria came to be referred to by some members of her household (behind her back) as "Mrs Brown".

Speculation about Queen Victoria's 20 year relationship with Brown, following the early death of her husband Albert in 1861, started in court circles almost as soon as the unlikely friendship itself did when the queen was in her mid-forties.

Victoria's daughters joked about "Mama's lover", and the then Duke of Edinburgh (the queen's second son) claimed he had been evicted from Buckingham Palace because he refused to shake the servant's hand.

The news of 1866 carried a piece in the Gazette de Lausanne, a Swiss paper, that read, “On dit…that with Brown and by him she consoles herself for Prince Albert, and they go even further. They add that she is in an interesting condition, and that if she was not present for the Volunteers Review, and at the inauguration of the monument to Prince Albert, it was only in order to hide her pregnancy. I hasten to add that the Queen has been morganatically married to her attendant for a long time, which diminishes the gravity of the thing.” Most assuredly, no British paper carried such a tale, but once the word spread of the Queen’s supposed affair, there was no reining it back in.

In the United Kingdom it was Alexander Robertson’s pamphlet “John Brown: A Correspondence with the Lord Chancellor, Regarding a Charge of Fraud and Embezzlement Preferred Against His Grace the Duke of Atholl K. T. of 1873” that first openly suggested that Queen Victoria and John Brown had married morganatically - this being related to, or being a marriage between a member of a royal or noble family and a person of inferior rank in which the rank of the inferior partner remains unchanged and the children of the marriage do not succeed to the titles, fiefs, or entailed property of the parent of higher rank.

Citing one Charles Christie, ‘House Servant to the Dowager Duchess of Athole at Dunkeld House,’ Robertson claimed that John Brown was regularly noted as entering Queen Victoria’s bedroom when the rest of the household was asleep. Robert purported that Victoria married Brown at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1868, with Duchess Anne standing as witness. The Duchess of Atholl vehemently denied Robertson’s allegations. Robertson went on to make other incendiary allegations without any proof including that Brown and Queen Victoria had a love child which as given up for adoption in Vaux, Switzerland.

Meanwhile, in our more recent times various newspaper revelations went as far as suggesting that the two had actually married based on newly unocvered letters from Victoria’s courtiers. Indeed a film was even made: "Mrs Brown" became the title of a 1997 film about the relationship, starring Dame Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as John Brown.

In 1872 John Brown knocked down a would-be assassin in what was the fifth attempt on Victoria's life. John died at Windsor Castle on 27 March 1883, aged 56, by some accounts because he was too devoted to Victoria. It is suggested that had he taken to his sick bed at the first sign of a chill, he would have survived, but his sense of duty was such that he carried on working until it was too late. He was buried at Crathie.

Were Queen Victoria and John Brown married? Historians are divided over this contentious claim. Those that have believe it have based their views on four pieces of information, none of which is in itself conclusive. But they believe that, when taken together, help swing the balance of probability in favour of a wedding having taken place:

After Victoria's death, two sets of mementos were placed in her coffin, at her request. On one side was placed one of Prince Albert's dressing gowns, while on the other was placed a lock of Brown's hair, along with a picture of him and a ring worn by Brown's mother and given to Victoria by Brown.

The published diary of the Liberal MP, the 1st Viscount Harcourt, for 17 February 1885 related a second-hand story told to his father, the then Home Secretary, by a renowned gossip, that on his deathbed in 1872 the Revd Dr Norman Macleod, the chaplain to Queen Victoria,stated that he had conducted a marriage ceremony between John Brown and Queen Victoria.

The Daily Mail on 2 September 2006 reported a similarly second-hand story in which a late senior member of the Royal Family had said that documents confirming a marriage had many years earlier turned up in the Royal archives at Windsor, and been destroyed.

After Victoria's death (a full 18 years after John Brown's own death), Edward VII tried to destroy everything connected with Brown, including busts and photographs. A life-size statue of Brown at Balmoral, commissioned by Queen Victoria after his death, was only saved by being moved to an obscure part of the estate where Edward was unlikely to find it.

My own view is that it’s a much ado about nothing. Although much of the gossip about John Brown and Queen Victoria was seen as ridiculous steps were taken to suppress information, for instance, when Queen Victoria died her daughter Princess Beatrice removed pages from the queen’s journal ‘that might cause pain” in her own words. People have msiread the intent behind such actions. The Royal family down the ages have always doused more petrol on the fire by simply trying to quell any rumours of impropriety that it invites unfounded wilder speculative tittle tattle.

It is clear, despite public gossip, there was nothing immoral in Queen Victoria’s relationship with John Brown. Queen Victoria would never have contemplated sex with a servant. People forget how rigid social roles really were and how seriously people viewed them in Victoria’s age despite the hypocrisy we have come to see them with.

Furthermore, she was never alone to carry out an affair having court ladies always within shouting distance. That was the whole point of having a royal court and doting ladies in waiting about the place.

The significance of Queen Victoria’s attraction to John Brown was that he - at worst - made a career out of her. He never married, had few holidays and devoted his life to the queen, and he was a walking encyclopedia of her like, dislikes, moods and needs. As a downright selfish person this greatly appealed to the queen. She liked him because she needed to be fussed, cosseted and spoiled. He told her the truth, spoke boldly to her and importantly too; unlike her family and senior courtiers, he was not afraid of her. Above all, when Prince Albert died Queen Victoria needed a male friend — she never really made close friendships with women — and someone to lean on. John Brown supplied all that.

Victoria’s visited Balmoral in her beloved Scottish Highlands in the late autumn of 1900. The Queen could not know it, but it was the last time that she would see the new castle which Prince Albert had erected in her words as his ‘own work… as at Osborne’ and which had become a box of intensely personal memories.

So deeply did the Queen feel her first visit to Balmoral after Prince Albert’s death in May 1862 (in pouring rain) that she wrote with painful dread to her eldest daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia of the strange reality of everything: ‘Oh! Darling child… the stag’s heads – the rooms – blessed, darling Papa’s room – then his coats – his caps – kilts – all, all convulsed my poor shattered frame!’ (cit., Delia Millar, Queen Victoria’s Life in the Scottish Highlands, 101). Even the Queen’s lonely pursuit of spinning wool, which later became synonymous with her early widowhood, had been a vigorously traditional Highland activity (Ibid, 76). Now her widowhood of waiting was drawing to an end, forty years later, with the Queen’s approaching death.

The Queen’s unknowing leave-taking of Scotland took place gradually, over these last days at Balmoral. Touchingly, she was still referring to ‘tea’ – although by now, it consisted only of arrowroot and milk – drinking it at her secluded Highland retreat of Alt-na-giubhsaich. Queen Victoria’s last day included luncheon in Prince Albert’s rooms with her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice and her Battenberg children. She left Balmoral fittingly, with the weather ‘wretchedly gloomy & dark’ whilst with her, she had a wreath to take back to Windsor, to place on the tomb of the Prince Consort at Frogmore; possibly it also contained the Balmoral heather she loved so much. Perhaps there may have been a presentiment, within the sentimental.

The Queen’s trusted doctor, Sir James Reid was with her at Osborne when she died, so presumably, the Queen would have had the comfort of a Scottish voice at her side, in between her lingering states of consciousness.

After her death, the Prince of Wales spoke a moving sentence of gratitude for Reid’s devoted service: ‘You are an honest straightforward Scotchman… I shall never forget all you did for the Queen’ (read Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, pg. 494).

Significantly, the Queen instructed amongst the many sentimental items to be put in her coffin ‘some of which none of her family were to see’, a photograph of her devoted Highland servant, John Brown, which she ordered to be placed in her left and, with a lock of his hair. These were both tactfully hidden inside a silken case, the handiwork of the Queen’s late wardrobe maid Annie MacDonald, wrapped in tissue paper.

Afterwards, the Queen’s left hand was covered with Queen Alexandra’s flowers. Also put into the Queen’s coffin was a simple sprig of Balmoral heather, which Sir James Reid covered with a quilted cushion – made especially to fit the coffin – to preserve the Queen’s privacy in death.

Scotland was at her funeral, in the form of her Highland ghillies, as the Queen’s German grandson, Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, wrote in his private memoirs: ‘[The moment] when her coffin was lowered in the mausoleum at Frogmore, remains unforgettable to me… I remained a moment there alone. When I looked about me, there were kneeling near me all of her ghillies [Highland servants] from Scotland, all strong, sturdy men, who were weeping there uncontrollably like sons for their mother…’ For her funeral, the Funeral March by Handel was substituted as per the Queen’s instructions, for music by Chopin and Beethoven and importantly, Highland dirges.

The sarcophagus or tomb chest was hewn from a flawless block of grey Aberdeen granite from the quarries at Cairngall in Scotland. Three attempts were made before this one was successfully carved out and it is purportedly the largest of its kind ever to have been hewn for such a use.

It was an appropriate Scotch bed for the Queen’s final sleep. Upon this sarcophagus, the effigies of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria lie still, a more sublime rendering of their marriage bed, staring into the beyond. Touchingly though, the head of Queen Victoria’s effigy is half-turned towards that of Prince Albert, as if it somehow suggesting that he died before she did. As in life, she is leaning, straining after the beloved husband that she mourned for half of her life.

The fact that their sarcophagus was quarried in Scotland is an appropriate choice for a royal couple who loved that country so much, becoming a little more Scotch with every visit. Appropriately for the Queen, parts of Eastern Central Scotland still celebrate Victoria Day, the last Monday before or on 24 May, Queen Victoria’s birthday.

Scotland was indeed with them, in the end. And continues to be with the House of Windsor.

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