#tumblr and more specifically the tags have become my place to yell this is kind of great for me

[poltergeist-coffee]

i love qforever he is my blorbo so much and also i need sleep

[alyssa-orowane]

Fantasy tropes to avoid (and ideas to reinvent them)

Hello aspiring writers of Tumblr! How is it going?

This is my first post on here and I decided to dedicate it not only to the genre I am writing in, fantasy, but also to a crucial topic, which relates and affects every genre in different ways.

TROPES.

It's lazy to build stories on something that has already been written a million times before. I don't like tropes at all as a reader. If I wanted to read the same stereotyped story all over again I would just stick to the previous book I have read with that same plot, so I would also spare myself the trouble of learning the unpronounceable names of these new stereotyped characters.

On the other hand, as a writer it might be tempting to give in and use tropes. "Why not? After all everybody uses them and I am already SO busy writing the actual chapters of my story."

I tell you what: every time a trope threatens to slide into your story, crush the page and throw it across the room, yelling:

Seriously, though: tropes are just general, undeveloped ideas. That's what you need to do, develop them. In this way only will you ever be able to unleash their hidden potential.

Without further ado, may I present you three of the most common fantasy tropes and hints to reimagine them.

*Keep in mind that this is only my personal view on the subject and you can either agree or disagree with it.

1. The chosen one

This one is the most obvious one and I am also quite sure that you expected to find it on the list. Interesting, Watson: I guess that it makes this article stereotyped too…

Well we all know those characters. Those characters that were meant to be the one. The prophecies had spoken about them long before they were even born. They might as well be the only one capable of using magic or wielding a certain weapon. This character is either the only one who pushes forward the storyline or that one protagonist who does everything except choosing anything actively in the plot. There is no in between. Either way, they only possess notable qualities. Of course there is no trace of flaws. I mean, they are the hero.

Have a side-kick (or co-protagonist) be the chosen one instead

A great idea, if you really want to insert this trope in your story, is to use it to your advantage and surprise the reader with it. Who could ever expect that the protagonist was actually never the chosen one? Or that another character is the chosen one from the start?

To see this trope well recreated I recommend watching the BBC TV series "Merlin" in which a young sorcerer, Merlin himself, must help the future heir to the throne, the prince Arthur Pendragon, to fulfill his destiny and become the greatest king who has ever lived. Arthur has no clue of what has been foretold, nor that he even is at the centre of a prophecy. All of Merlin and Arthur's choices will determine either the glorious success or the tragic failure of the quest; all of this while Merlin hides his powers from Arthur and everyone else as magic is condemned in Camelot.

2. Overused fantasy Races

...which translates mostly into putting Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, dragons and any of the Tolkenian elements and creatures in your own story. Now, don't get me wrong. Tolkien is one of my favourite authors, hence I am always captivated by those fantasy novels that display these Races in their stories. But I don't want to read a copy, I want to read your own masterpiece.

That's exactly why you should:

Redesign the well-known fantasy Races and adapt them to your world and to your theme or just create brand new ones

Personally, I absolutely LOVE to craft new fantasy Races. I believe that it adds depth and realism to the world-building (which does not consist only of geography). Each civilisation brings their culture, their traditions to your story and that's what makes a world truly breathe. In my opinion, the purpose of fantasy is not to focus just on the epic deeds narrated or on endless battles enriched with magic and legends, though those are very important part of this genre and they must be just as equally developed. The reason why I write fantasy is to spread awareness around the vast variety of themes that coexist in our society nowadays, in the first place global warming, the racism that still today people experience, LGBTQ characters which are often unrepresented both in literary fiction and TV. What better genre than fantasy is there to represent diversity and multiculturalism? On these latter points I will never not be thanking and loving the works of Steven Erikson which are part of the high-fantasy series "Malazan Book of the Fallen". Diversity and the brand new variety of intriguing Races are a huge part of what makes Malazan such an awesome fantasy series. I refer to Steven Erikson as the main inspiration of my writing and I recommend you to give a try to his books, if you have the chance. I warn you though, that it is not any light or easy reading.

The other option might be to reinvent the well-known Races. Tolkien himself did not "invent" the Elves of Middle Earth, rather he made a legend of his own after having studied the myths and ballads of ancient civilities. Then he developed their language, their history and their culture as if they were a real existing population. Every single aspect of Tolkien's worldbuilding can be read in his Silmarillion. I think it is a must-read for anyone who is looking forward to reinvent the traditional fantasy Races or just to know more about them.

3. Unfailing magic systems

Magic can be anything you want. That doesn't mean, however, that it should be your escape point: stuff in your story should happen because of your characters, not only because of magic as it is simpler to put it that way. A magic system should be rational and engaging. The reader needs to be able to understand exactly how, when and why does magic work in your world. No, the answer should not be "because it's fantasy."

Set rules, limits and costs to the magic in your world

How do character gain magic abilities? Is magic accessible to everyone or is it elitist? Is it taught in specialised schools or is it something that resonates from within? Are wizards free to practice magic or is it banned? Or maybe are there only specific areas of magic that are prohibited? What is its source? Does magic come from higher beings or are spells more powerful the stronger the mage's will? Does magic need a catalyst (such as a talisman, a weapon etc.) to be casted? If not, do wizard recite spells? Do they need to trace specific symbols? Otherwise is it necessary to make specific hand gestures in order to release their powers? Does it exist only one system for all mages to use or are there multiple kinds? Last but not least, what are magic users in your world called? It's all up to you to decide. Ask questions and let each question lead you to another one. You need to know exactly how your magic system works and so does the reader.

What I love about crafting magic systems is the freedom to establish the boundaries and the natural laws that apply to your world, as magic is a huge part of the story if you're writing fantasy. Well, this could also lead to another question: is your world actually ruled by magic forces or do magic abilities have just a marginal role in the world building?

Remember that magic should not be used as an excuse to fill eventual plot holes in your story. Your magic system should function correctly and it should always stay true to itself. In other words, it must be believable.

And I can hear you thinking "but it‘s magic!"

Then guess what? You need to make the readers believe that magic is real!

First of all, set the rules, the limits and the costs that apply to your system. Having done that, you'll have finished most of the work that concerns the use of magic in your world. Most, not all. If you are a bit of a perfectionist like I am, consider the importance of developing your system furthermore by asking yourself questions, such as the one I have written above.

Rules: decide what makes your system work and what magic can be casted for.

Limits: decide what kind of tasks your magic system cannot perform.

Costs: decide from what kind of source is magic obtained from and, literally, what does it cost to mages to obtain their magic from this source (as Rumpelstiltskin of OUAT wisely says: "all magic comes with a price.")

The most excellent and well-rounded magic systems I have ever come across are the ones created by Brandon Sanderson in this "Mistborn" trilogy: allomancy, feruchemy and hemalurgy. All three magic system permit the magicians to use a wide range of abilities based on the metals they can "burn". Magic originates in the Shards and from Preservation and Ruin, two god-like beings. If you're already interested, I definitely recommend you to check Sanderson's novels out: they are a useful resource of inspiration.

I hope this post has somehow given you the inspiration to go and write right now. 
If you have questions about some of the points or requests for the next articles, don't be shy and send me a message! I will try to cover your topic as soon as possible and as best as I can (and I will also tag your profile, if you agree). 
Thank you all for your attention. Bisous^^

[darks-ink]

Absurdism Chapter 12

*casually drops headcanons all over this chapter*

Rating: Teen/K+ (a lil swearing, because teenagers, man) Warnings: - Genre: Family, Hurt/Comfort Additional Tags: Sibling Bonding, Family Bonding, Alternate Universe - Halfa Jazz AU, Jazz makes friends

[AO3] [FFN] [more Absurdism on Tumblr] First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

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Chapter 12: Control Freaks

Cold air curled in Jazz’ lungs, and she paused in her flight. She’d been expecting it, yes, but not this soon. Normally her ghost sense wouldn’t pick up on Sidney until she actually entered the school. To have it go off this soon… Was he outside?

Concern niggled in her brain, and she turned herself invisible. She would just check the school grounds and make sure he wasn’t in any trouble. During times like these, she wished she was as good as a tracker as Phantom, but apparently that was a hard skill—and a late one.

Luckily it wasn’t that hard to find Sidney. He was hidden from the crowd of students, but not actually hidden hidden.

More surprising was the person he was apparently talking with: Valerie.

Jazz bit her lip, hesitating for just a moment. Should she listen in? No, definitely not. That was just… creepy. She could just join it like a regular person. A better question would be, join as Specter or join as Jazz? But that, too, was an easy question to answer.

She ducked into a bush—not too close, but not overly far away—and shifted back to her human form. It was Jazz, after all, that had connections to both Valerie and Sidney, and who had encouraged Valerie to be nicer to ghosts.

A few determined steps brought her back towards her talking… friends? Was friends the right word to use? Sure, whatever, she was allowed to call them friends in her internal dialogue. A few determined steps brought her back towards her talking friends, and Jazz pushed her way through the brush, glancing between human and ghost.

“Hey, thought I heard your voices. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Valerie quickly assured her. Next to her, Sidney nodded. Huh. That was surprising.

Jazz shot them both a doubtful look. “Last time I checked, Valerie, you still thought ghosts were scum, and you only talked to Sidney because he had information about Ember, and only while I was there. What changed?”

Valerie shrugged kind of uncertainly. She didn’t say anything.

“Oh, well.” Jazz looked at Sidney, but he wasn’t any help either. “Would it help if… I told you about how we met? Sidney and I?”

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that, actually.” Valerie nodded.

“Alright, so.” Jazz clapped her hands together, grinning at Valerie, and ignoring Sidney’s nerves. Now, how to tell this story with as little lying as possible but without giving away her secret… “So, ghosts were kind of becoming a generally known thing, right? Obviously my parents already believed in them, but now proof was coming out that ghosts really are real, yeah?”

Valerie nodded along, and Jazz continued. “And I saw some kids getting bullied, and I… I just hate that. Having to watch it happen to other kids, knowing they won’t target me, but also being powerless to stop it. So I started wondering… If ghosts are real, who says that the Sidney Poindexter from those Casper High rumors isn’t also real?”

“Okay…” Valerie said, slowly. “So then why did he suddenly start showing up? Did you meet him afterwards, and was he—” She turned to Sidney, “You, sorry, were you lured here by something? Why did ghost activity go up so much?”

Sidney shot Jazz a worried glance, then, cautiously, explained. “I have a special portal to the Ghost Zone, and only I can go through it. Jazz found it, and must’ve guessed that that was it, because she tried talking to me through it. That’s when I started becoming active around here, and we actually spoke not too long after.”

“I see…” Valerie’s eyes narrowed in Jazz’ direction, almost suspiciously, but she nodded anyway. “What about Specter and Phantom? They seem pretty set on stopping other ghosts from coming here. Didn’t they have a problem with you, or can you avoid them with your portal?”

“It’s not like that,” Sidney immediately corrected, shaking his head. “It’s not— they’re not like animals, it’s not some kind of territorial dispute. There are lots of ghosts out there that could—and would—hurt humans if left to their own devices. Usually not on purpose, although exceptions exist, but because they don’t know any better. Most animal ghosts, for example, and plenty of more intelligent ones as well. It’s…”

He made a face. “It’s kind of hard to remember, sometimes, how easy it is to hurt a human. If you’ve been a ghost for a while. Jazz warns me, sometimes, if I toe the line. If my retaliation against bullies becomes a little too much. But not every ghost has human friends, or contacts, or would even care if they accidentally got a little too rough. That is why Phantom and Specter patrol, and help the town. And sometimes…”

Sidney shrugged, smiling a little. “Sometimes they help ghosts, too. They gave me some of the earlier pointers, on how far I could reasonably go, and how to stay safe from ghost hunters. On places I could go to see… the see life, to see the human world, without getting pounced on by ghost hunters.”

“I… see.” Valerie nodded, slowly, and Jazz could almost see the gears turning in her head. “So there might be… more ghosts, out in Amity, and no one but them would know about it?”

“Possibly,” Sidney agreed. “But I don’t think many of them stay for long. Natural portals are finicky, and portals like mine are, well, extremely rare, and only work for one ghost. Most of the others that travel to Amity come through the Fenton’s artificial portal, but that’s…” He made a face. “Well, you kind of have to pass through a ghost hunter’s lab just to come and go. Not exactly a risk many ghosts like running.”

“So why not just camp out here?” Valerie asked, quirking an eyebrow. “If coming and going is so dangerous, what’s stopping them from just setting up base in the city proper, and not returning to the Ghost Zone?”

“They can’t,” Jazz said, drawing the attention back to her. “Well, most ghosts can’t, anyway. They need some form of energy to fuel themselves, or they’ll burn out. They usually get it from the ectoplasm in the air, which is high in the Zone, and which the portals expel. It’s still kind of high in Amity in general, so ghosts can last a while, but they’ll burn out sooner or later. Some ghosts can gain energy from different sources, though. Ember, for example, could draw power from her fans. Other ghosts might draw energy from, for example, human emotions, or even actual electricity.”

Valerie shook her head. “But if it’s so dangerous, why do they even try? If they have to get past ghost hunters just to come here, why would they risk it? What’s so alluring about the human world, or so bad about the Ghost Zone, that ghosts feel like they have to come here?”

“It’s curiosity and interest, mostly.” Sidney frowned a little, in thought. “I can’t speak for everyone, of course, and I’m not sure if I would’ve come here if I had to go through the hunter’s portal, but… the Ghost Zone gets boring, if you spend enough time there. I mean, ghosts don’t sleep, usually, so we just spend day in day out in the same place. After a decade or two, or in my case, fifty years, wouldn’t you risk potential danger just to see something else? And, yes, the world changed while you were out, and isn’t that so interesting? If you had the chance to see what the world looked like in fifty years, and even at some risk, wouldn’t you?”

“And you have to remember, Valerie, that ghosts are sturdier than humans,” Jazz pointed out. “Just getting hit by a few shots from an ecto-gun isn’t that painful to most of them, and they heal faster, too. As long as they don’t actually get captured for research, run-ins with ghost hunters aren’t that dangerous.”

“So it’s just like… boredom? Wanting to see something different, combined with the fact that traveling here isn’t that much of a risk, even with the ghost hunters?” Valerie’s eyes narrowed a little, again, but it seemed thoughtful now. Jazz wondered if Valerie knew how probing her questions were, if she realized how suspicious this all sounded without the background knowledge of Red talking to Phantom last night.

“Basically,” Sidney admitted with a shrug. “Some of us have different reasons too, of course. Personally, I greatly dislike bullies because of my experiences with them in life, and being able to stop other kids from suffering through the same… I like that, being able to help. Other ghosts might come here to pursue specific interests, too, or to do things they’re passionate about, but can’t do in the Zone.”

“Right, so—” A loud screeching sound interrupted Valerie, suddenly, startling all three of them. The school bell, Jazz realized. Whoops. She’d gotten so caught up in the conversation that she forgot.

“Ah, shit,” Valerie swore, snatching her backpack off of the grass. “Jazz, we have the same class first, right?”

“Yeah.” She ran through the contents of her backpack, quickly. Did she have everything? Yeah, she thought she did. “Do you need to stop by your locker?”

“Nope. Come on, let’s go!” Valerie already started rushing towards the school when she slowed, turning to call over her shoulder. “And Sidney? Thank you for talking to me!”

Jazz was already hurrying after Valerie when she heard Sidney get over his surprise, and yell back, “No problem! Thank you for listening!”

---

Danny dove low over some of Amity’s buildings, twisting himself into a curling maneuver that was perhaps just a tad unnecessary. So what? He liked flying!

Something in his peripherals drew his attention, and Danny found himself coming to an abrupt halt. It niggled in his mind, somehow, although he didn’t know what he’d seen.

He turned, trying to figure it out. What could he possibly have seen—

oh.

Freakshow’s giant blown-out face grinned at him, the printed image of the red crystal ball instantly drawing Danny’s eyes back to it. It itched in his brain, the swirling—

No!

Danny clenched his eyes shut, trying to draw up mental walls to block the image. No! Not fucking again!

He forced himself to continue flying in his original direction, keeping his eyes shut until he felt confident that he’d gone far enough. When he reopened them, he stubbornly refused to look back, no matter how his mind niggled at him that he should.

It was far enough from FentonWorks—and Casper High—that Jazz wouldn’t come across it. Danny could tell her about the ads when they met in the woods, make sure she knew about the danger. He would have to put a little more thought into Freakshow, figure out how they could deal with him.

Well. Not them, that was for sure. He wasn’t going anywhere near Freakshow and his crystal ball, and Jazz definitely wasn’t.

He touched down in the clearing, Jazz’ innocent youthful face greeting him. No, he definitely couldn’t let her go anywhere near Freakshow. He’d rather die.

“Sorry, I didn’t keep you waiting for too long, did I?” he asked, running his hands through his hair in a hopeless attempt to flatten it some. Just… appear normal, and think it over while training. That’d be alright.

“No, it’s fine.” Jazz cocked her head, a slight frown to her brow, but didn’t comment. “What are we working on today?”

“Well, you’ve got a pretty good grip on both ecto-rays and shields, so we can move to more advanced techniques.” But more advanced offensive techniques weren’t really Jazz’ jam, were they? “We can see if you can get a grip on something elemental, like electricity, or even ice or fire, or we can try something more neutral. There’s this one technique which I can do, but that I’ve never seen Vlad do, that’s like an exploding shield? Like a field which pushes enemies away. You might be able to learn that, if that’s more your style.”

“Hm. Focusing on more defensive techniques would make my core lean more towards those skills, right?” Jazz twirled a strand of hair, clearly thinking it over. “It would be good to focus on offensive techniques too, especially if I can use them in a variety of situations, but the repulsion field sounds useful too.”

Danny nodded. “We can focus on the repulsion field today, and try something elemental the next time. Actually, it might be good to give you homework for that.”

“Homework?” Jazz repeated, almost incredulously. “Wow, now you sound like a real teacher. What would homework for this even mean, besides using my powers?”

“Well, elemental powers are finicky. You know how most ghosts tend to focus on a single element, which in turn lead to people concluding that ghost cores must be element-based?” Jazz nodded, and Danny continued. “Right. Obviously that’s not the case, but most ghosts still lean towards a single element, or two at max. Beyond that, it gets really complicated to be well-trained in them, and you’ll notice that control and power will go down.”

“Okay,” Jazz said, slowly, drawing out the word, “But how does that factor into homework?”

“I want you to feel out elemental leanings.” He formed a shard of ice, holding it up for Jazz to see, then ran lightning over it. “Personally I lean towards electricity, and I picked up ice thanks to a mentor in the Zone. I can do some fire as well, but it’s lesser, because I haven’t focused on it much. I want you to focus on… well, everything, really. See if there’s anything that you particularly feel connected to.”

Jazz nodded, and Danny nodded back. “Right, so, that’ll be your homework. For now, the… what did you call it? Repulsion field? That’s a good name for it, I like that.”

She snorted. “Thanks. Can you show it first, so I know what I’m trying to learn?”

“Yeah, of course.” He floated up and away a little, making sure that Jazz wasn’t too close. Then he curled up in a ball, gathered ectoplasmic energy around himself, like forming an ecto-blast but not in the palm of his hand. The energy gathered, coiling and swirling in a ball around him. When he was satisfied that it was enough for a demonstration, he pushed.

The energy blasted away from him, grass and leaves rustling in the sudden rush of wind.

“Wow,” Jazz breathed, but she was grinning when he looked at her. “That’s so cool! I definitely want to learn how to do that.”

Danny drifted closer again. “Right, so there are a few elements to it, but it’s pretty similar to ecto-blasts and shields. First, you’ll want to curl in tight—less surface for the energy to spread over. Built up the power like an ecto-blast, but around your whole body, rather than just your fist. But it’s gotta be strong like a shield! And then, when you think it’s ready—or when you can’t hold it anymore—push! Uncoil yourself and shove the energy from a shield into a blast!”

Jazz nodded along. “I think I got it. Like a shield, except you can push the energy out into a blast.”

“And curling up into a ball! That’s important, since it’ll help you make the push. Putting a physical element into it—like thrusting out your hand for a blast.”

“Gotcha.” Jazz pushed herself off of the ground, but didn’t quite curl into a ball yet. “How will I know if it’s enough energy?”

“It’s just experience, really.” Danny shrugged. “Kind of like ecto-blasts, you get used to compare energy to power. You can start off easy and build up. That’ll be better for your core, too, and it’ll be like a warming-up exercise.”

She snorted. “I thought there were no warming-up exercises for ghost powers?”

“Oh, shut up,” he said without heat, rolling his eyes. “Feel free to overload your core by accidentally drawing out too much energy if that’ll make you feel better.”

“I take back what I said, you’re a terrible teacher,” Jazz joked, curling up into a small purple ball. Golden energy startled swirling around her, slowly growing denser.

When she pushed out, the blast only gave off a little energy, the grass barely waving in its wake.

“Oh,” she muttered, quietly. Disappointed. “That…”

“Was a good start,” Danny finished for her. “You’re figuring out the technique first, and the power second. Better to start off weak, but know you’re doing it right, than go for too much and accidentally explode your arm, or something.”

“Ugh.” Jazz made a face. “Did you really have to go that visceral with it?”

No, but he was probably already in a bad mindset from thinking about Freakshow. He shrugged at Jazz, though, instead of vocalizing that. “It worked, didn’t it? Now go ahead, you’re not gonna get any better by chatting about it.”

She sighed, almost petulantly, but curled back up again.

Danny watched her repeat the move several more times, every attempt growing more powerful. When her blast left the trees wavering with aftershocks, Jazz held up a hand, stopping Danny before he could compliment her.

“What’s up with you today?” she asked, frowning at him. “And don’t give me that face. You’ve been distracted the whole time.”

He hadn’t thought he was that obvious about it, but… well, this was Jazz he was dealing with. She could probably see through him like it was nothing.

“It’s… eugh. An upcoming confrontation, I guess.” He shrugged, vaguely. “It’s this one human guy, except he has an artifact that allows him to control ghosts, including us, in both human and ghost form. I ran into one of his ads today, and it reminded me that we gotta deal with him, except we can’t deal with him, and—”

He stopped. Slapped himself in the face, and groaned dramatically. “Of course. We can’t deal with him, but we can sic Valerie on him! She’ll be immune to his staff, and she’ll be enticed to do it because he forces ghosts to do crime, and that’s bad.”

“Right.” Jazz stared at him, her golden eyes piercing right through him. She must’ve realized how he’d discovered that the staff worked on them. “And that’s not… a problem? Sending Valerie to deal with it?”

“Probably not. Sam and Tucker shattered it in my universe, and doing so freed all ghosts under its control,” he explained, ignoring the way his stomach curdled. They didn’t break it, not like that, but… it was easier than explaining the truth. “I don’t know how Val feels about us two, exactly, but if we explain that this guy can make us do terrible things… I bet that that would do the trick.”

“Yeah, that seems likely.” She frowned, still. “What… How does it work, exactly? Like, can we resist it, somehow?”

“Not… really.” He scratched the back of his neck, pushed down the desire to fly away and never talk about it again. “Any command you hear while seeing the crystal ball, you must do. There’s no stopping it, it just… drowns you out entirely. Don’t even look at the ads, although you might be able to push those out. The TV ads, especially, are a no-go.”

His grim tone seemed to function as a wake-up call, because she nodded, and didn’t push. “Valerie sounds like a good plan, yeah. Do you want to go look for her now?”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “We’re training now. I’ll talk to her later, and you can do your homework. Like, your real actual homework.”

“Yeah, alright,” Jazz allowed. “But we probably shouldn’t continue for too much longer, in that case.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “That’d be better for your core, too, if we don’t strain it like that.”

“One more, then?” She was already lifting up from the ground, curling into a ball.

“Better make it good!”

She laughed as her golden ectoplasm gathered around her. “I’ll give you a show, alright!”

The energy burst with such power that it knocked Danny over entirely. The woods rattled with the wind, branches snapping off and raining down.

“Uh, whoops.” Jazz laughed sheepishly. “That was maybe a little too much.”

“Maybe,” Danny agreed, floating upright again. “But you might need that much if you’re surrounded by ghosts. It was a good lesson, anyway.”

Jazz nodded. “Good luck with Valerie. Let me know if there are any problems.”

“I can handle it, Jazz.” He rolled his eyes, exasperatedly. “But, yes, I’ll let you know if there’s anything you need to worry about. Good luck with your homework. Both human and ghostly.”

“Yes, Mr. Phantom.” She stuck out a tongue, a warm green, but pulled it back in quickly. Too childish, probably. “See you Friday.”

She pushed off, and he watched her go. “And avoid those Freakshow ads!” he shouted after her, feeling satisfied at her wave back.

Well. No putting it off any longer.

Danny let himself float up as well, flying back to Amity at a more casual pace. He could go looking for Valerie, yes, but he would probably have more luck drawing her to him. She had ghost scanners, but he didn’t have any human scanners.

He hovered over a quiet street—after making sure no Freakshow ads were nearby—and pretended to be looking for something. It didn’t take long for the roar of Valerie’s hoverboard to reach him.

Ah. He loved it when something went according to plan for once.

“Phantom. Looking for something?” Valerie asked, pulling to a halt beside him.

“You, actually,” he admitted easily. “Specter and I could use your help with something.”

Her posture was tensed—and had tensed up even further when he spoke—but she didn’t raise her gun. “With what?” she asked, shortly.

“Have you seen the ads for that goth circus? With their ringmaster, Freakshow?” He waited for her nod before he continued. “His staff has this weird crystal ball, bright red? It’s… I don’t know what it is, actually, but it can used to control ghosts. All of the people in Freakshow’s show are ghosts he’s forcing to participate, and that’s not the only thing he uses them for.”

“It’s not?” Valerie sounded almost incredulous.

“Nah. Apparently circuses don’t pay enough, because Freakshow has his ghost army stealing, too. You can follow the trail through the few cities he’s been in, and he’ll start doing the same here, probably. Might even try luring Specter or I out in the open so he can control us as well, since we’re tons stronger than the ghosts he has now. We know better, but, y’know.” He shrugged.

“You can’t come nearby without getting affected?” she guessed.

“Yeah, basically.” He huffed out something that was almost a laugh. “Besides, it would be better to let the human hunter deal with the human enemy. We wanted to call the police on him for the robberies, but someone needs to deal with the staff first. As long as Freakshow has his army of ghosts, he can just use them to escape from the law.”

Valerie nodded. “Gotcha. I’ll investigate, and if you’re speaking the truth—which I bet you are, because this sounds too crazy to be a lie—I’ll deal with Freakshow.” She made a face. “Ugh, is that really his name?”

“Stage name, I think. I don’t exactly do research on my enemies, though.” He shot her a grateful grin. “But, hey, thanks. Specter and I really appreciate it.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” Valerie said, coarsely. “But whatever. I’ll make sure you don’t have to worry about that crystal ball anymore.”

That… seemed like a strange way to word it. Ah, whatever. He was probably just being paranoid, now, driven up by Freakshow’s reappearance.

“Right. Well, thanks anyway. Have a good night, Red.”

She nodded. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Her hoverboard roared as she left again.

---

“Did you hear?” Jazz asked Valerie, once she thought the locker room had gotten empty enough to get away with it. “About that guy’s arrest?”

“Who, the creepy ringmaster that could literally control ghosts?” Valerie scoffed. “Yeah. Did your parents go crazy about that?”

“Kinda, yeah.” Jazz straightened her shirt, then reached for her hair. Started twisting it up into a ponytail. “I’m glad, though. Imagine how powerful that guy could’ve gotten if he managed to get his hands on a really powerful ghost, like Phantom?”

Valerie hummed, but didn’t say anything. Jazz turned slightly to squint at her.

“What?” Valerie asked, raising an eyebrow. Her expression was… weird, though. Hard to read. “Yeah, I guess that that could’ve been bad. No point in speculating, though. For all we know Phantom and Specter just wanted us to deal with Freakshow, and are now free to hurt the city.”

Jazz felt her stomach roil. “Do you really think that?” she asked, lowering her hands again. The end of her ponytail brushed along her neck, something it didn’t do in her ghost form—the strands defied gravity like that.

Valerie seemed to stare at her for ages.

“Not really,” she finally said, after what felt like forever. “I just…” Valerie sighed and shrugged, taking her eyes off of Jazz. She walked out of the locker room before Jazz could say anything.

“Weird,” she muttered to herself. It was almost like Valerie… knew. But there was no way, right?

Just paranoia. Things were weird, so of course she was overly wary. Nothing to worry about.

[let-it-raines]

Not Your (soul)Mate {3/?}

Killian Jones doesn’t like the idea of soulmates. He sees how happy his friends are with theirs, but he still doesn’t like the idea, not when he’s found love and lost it time and time again only to still not know his sign. He has no markings on his skin, no voices in his head, but then one day he meets Emma Swan and everything changes. Because, well, he may not have ink on his skin to tell him who to love, but the very first time that he hears Emma’s voice he knows that she’s the one for him. Then again, that could simply be his desire talking. After all, for every word she speaks, he becomes aroused.

It’s not the worst thing in the world to be incredibly attracted to a beautiful woman, but things aren’t that simple when she doesn’t have any interest in being his soulmate.

He’s screwed. And not in the good way.

Rating: Mature

A/N: Are you guys ready for some meddling friends and conversations about stealing bread? Cool. I am too 💜 As always, thank you to @captainsjedi for her beautiful artwork and supportive reading and to the organizers of @cssns for putting this event together! 😘

Sorry for reposting. Something weird happened, and I had to delete it and try again!

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

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Tag list: @captswanis4vr @a-faekindagirl @galaxyzxstark @emmas-storybook @searchingwardrobes @spartanguard @ultimiflos @jamif @idristardis@dreameronarooftop15 @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke@tiganasummertree @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld@jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @superchocovian @ultraluckycatnd @artistic-writer @cs-forlife @andiirivera @qualitycoffeethings @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81@xellewoods @thejollyroger-writer @cssns

-/-

“I’m going to kill you for dragging me out here.”

“No you’re not.”

“Asshole.”

“Wanker.”

“Bastard.”

“You’re my brother, so if I’m a bastard, so are you!”

Killian stops running, his feet halting in their tracks, as his breath fully escapes him. They’ve been out here for over an hour, and his legs are burning. Hell, his entire body is burning, every inch of him slick with sweat that is doing nothing to put out the flames. He can practically feel his heart beating between his ears, and he knows that he shouldn’t hastily stop his running, that he should walk it out, but he can’t physically run anymore.

As much as he likes having their workouts done before work, sometimes six in the morning is too early when they don’t even have to be in the office until ten.

Scratch that. All of the time. Six is too early all of the time, and he’s an early riser most days. Unlike Liam, he’s never quite gotten out of a lot of the routines he became accustomed to in the Navy, but he likes to spend that time drinking his coffee or tea and eating breakfast, possibly catching up on some television or on what’s going on the world that he might need to know about. That’s not always the most pleasant thing, but it’s a necessary thing.

“I can’t believe,” he huffs, stretching his arms over his head to try to catch his breath and relieve some of the tension that’s pulling at all of his muscles while a pleasant breeze blows up from the beach, “that you basically just gave me a version of ‘I know you are but what am I.’”

“I probably got it from Luis and Luca. They’ve really been into fighting with each other lately.”

He looks over to his brother, eyes flickering down to his feet which are still moving despite the fact that they’ve stopped their run. The man is still getting exercise in when he knows that they’ve far surpassed their ten thousand steps...not that he tracks them. He had a fitbit at one point in time, but he may have accidentally dropped it into the ocean one day when he was inspecting one of their boats. He’d been messing with his wrist because his scars were agitated and burning like the dickens, and the damn thing came unclasped.

But really, there is no need for Liam to be still jogging in place. He knows that the man is five years older and that his metabolism might not be as great as Killian’s is right now, but damn. All he wants is to take a nice cold shower, eat some more food, and then maybe watch some television before he goes into work. He’s behind on The Rookie, and he really wants to catch up so that Ariel doesn’t ruin it for him. Whenever they watch the same shows, she always ruins them if he gets behind. And if she doesn’t, it’ll be Will. The only person he can count on to not spoil things is Robin, and that’s only because he doesn’t have time to watch anything that’s rated over G with a six year old at home. Technically Liam could also fall into that category, but Liam so rarely watches television unless Elsa makes him.

Elsa watches a hell of a lot of shows that are entirely in Norwegian so that Luca and Luis are bilingual. Liam is still working on his Norwegian, though. It’s funny, when Liam and Elsa could hear each other’s thoughts, things were always spoken in their native tongues.

It was like Google translate, free of charge and of bad mistranslations.

Imagine their surprise when they met and Liam didn’t speak Norwegian. Elsa speaks fluent English, though. Obviously she’s far superior to Liam.

He’d get his ass kicked if he ever spoke those words out loud.

It might be worth it. It’s most definitely true.

“Traffic is going to get bad if we stay out here too much longer,” he points out, his skin cooling down while his heart starts beating steadily again, normalcy returning to his body.

“We live in Storybrooke. There is no backed up traffic. Let’s do one more mile, and then I promise we’ll be finished. And good news for you, we’re not running tomorrow.”

He takes a deep breath, puffing his chest up, before he takes off, yelling to Liam that whoever gets to the library last has to buy lunch.

(He ends up buying lunch.)

(He’s going to have to start training alone so that he can beat Liam’s ass.)

(Who cares about fitness when being better than your brother is at stake?)

His next few weeks at work are a bit insane. It always is in the spring. On their website they recommend ordering customizations, especially full customizations or total redesigns, in the winter, preferably in the fall, but without fail, everyone seems to put in their orders in the late spring. It’s something about the sunshine being more prevalent, temperatures warming up, and everyone simply gets that itch to be outside, specifically to be on the water. He can’t blame his clients. He feels exactly the same way.

There’s likely no one who enjoys spending time outside, spending time out on the water, more than him, so he gets where everyone is coming from.

It honestly makes his life a little bit of a living hell.

It’s funny because hell is only supposed to be for the dead, and he’s only dead inside.

(Not really.)

Maybe his sense of humor is a little twisted.

Being busy is a good thing. It keeps his hands and mind occupied, and that’s something that he desperately needs right now. He needs something to think about other than his personal life. His friends and his family are great like they’ve always been, but they all have lives of their own that are separate from him. He spends his days at work, evenings as a mixture of personal times and spending time with all of his loved ones, but ever since Ariel’s pregnancy announcement dinner, his mind has been absolutely muddled with thoughts of...everything. He’d say his mind is muddled with thoughts of Emma Swan, but that would only be half the truth. After all, he’s only met her once, and he barely knows anything about her.

Scratch that.

There’s a pretty high probability (and he knows this even if his mathematics may be a little off and out of practice) that she’s his soulmate.

That is absolutely the most insane thing in the world. He doesn’t want a soulmate, not really. A part of him does, but for years now all he’s felt is despair. He doesn’t want to be forced to love someone. And yet only days after the anniversary of Milah leaving him, he might have met the woman who is supposedly the love of his life.

But what if he’d already met his?

What if he can’t love again after Milah? What if the universe is telling him to move on in a very big way and he’s not ready? What is he supposed to do with that?

It doesn’t even matter. Emma had been kind and witty, bloody well one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen, but she’d very clearly not been interested in him. Obviously she was sexually, if only because they apparently literally cannot help themselves (She’s obviously stronger with her restraint than he is.), but she made it clear as day that nothing was going to become of them. He doesn’t know her, doesn’t know her background outside of what he’s picked up from friends, but she seemed just as averse to soulmates as he was.

Maybe they are kindred spirits.

Obviously they are.

But maybe in a different way.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, really.

He’s freaking Jon Snow.

(Is it still funny to make that joke now that the show is over?)

(It doesn’t matter. He’s still going to make that joke.)

It’s all a confusing mess. He’s met the woman he’s supposed to be with. He’s met his soulmate like all of his friends and family have, but he imagines that not a single one of them had an aversion to their loves to the point of them meeting and then never speaking again despite having access to each other. It’d be a bit of a roundabout way, but he could still talk to her if he really wanted to. All he’d have to do is go to the police station, frequent Granny’s Diner since that’s where Ariel and Emma eat lunch together, or literally ask any one of his friends for her number.

But Emma’s not interested.

Besides, when they met, he spilled water down her dress, making it see through, and then they’d made each other aroused to the point that she caught him wanking one off. It was not one of his finer moments, so it might be for the best that they don’t see each other for awhile. Or forever. It’s not like they can talk to each other in public anyhow. Emma may be able to hide how it affects her, but he cannot no matter how many unpleasant thoughts he thinks.

Seriously. He’s come up with a lot of boner killers over the years, and none of them work.

The universe is fucking with them because it wants them to fuck.

Will: Belle wants to invite you over for dinner tomorrow. Can you make it?

He looks down at his phone, at the message that just popped up. Belle is always inviting him over for dinner. She’s an absolute sweetheart, but he honestly thinks she must assume he doesn’t eat or that he’s lonely. He does eat, and he isn’t lonely. But Belle and Will are both brilliant cooks, most likely because Belle spends her days in a library that has a section full of cook books and Will is always experimenting with food at the Rabbit Hole. So he’s definitely not going to complain.

Killian: Sure! What time?

Will: Six. We’ve got to do it before I go to work.

Killian: Okay, I’ll make sure to leave the office early.

He’s just put his phone back on his desk when it buzzes again, Will’s message popping up on the screen.

Will: At Belle’s apartment, not mine.

Cue the Tag Team because Whoomp (there it is).

He’s being set up on a double date with Emma, and he’s already agreed to go. He already knows that’s what happened because never once have they gone to Belle’s apartment instead of Will’s. Not once.

Sneaky bastards.

Starting tomorrow he’s designing himself a boat...no, he’s designing himself a ship that he can live in for the rest of his days, because he needs to leave Storybrooke in order to avoid Emma Swan.

He’s not even sure if he wants to. All he knows is that he can’t possibly be in public with her.

This entire dinner is going to be spent with him sitting at the table dying a little inside with every word, isn’t it?

No one told him life was going to be this way.

(He’s got to stop quoting songs.)

Maybe she won’t be there. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Will’s apartment has a gas leak or something and that’s why the dinner is at Belle’s.

-/-

He hears Emma talking from outside the apartment door before he gets to the end of the hallway where their apartment is. His thing with sounds, his unfortunate ability to be able to hear absolutely everything unless he’s actively focusing on not hearing it or distracted by something else, is somehow heightened when Emma talks or laughs or even, he assumes, when she sneezes. He has a visceral reaction to it, his entire body heating and tensing, and he hasn’t figured out how to control it, how to make it stop.

There’s about thirty seconds from now until he’s inside that apartment to figure it out.

He doesn’t figure it out.

“Hi,” Belle smiles the moment she opens the door, not even letting him gather his bearings or knock. Belle might very well be the most considerate person he knows, Mary Margaret aside, and she has no idea that she is helping in his demise.

He’s not dramatic in the slightest.

(He definitely is.)

“Hello, love,” he greets, leaning down to kiss her cheek and handing her the bottle of wine he’s brought with him. He prefers to bring homemade food, but he came straight from work and only had time to grab something from the grocery store down the street. “You look absolutely beautiful today.”

“Thank you. Why don’t you come in? I hope you don’t mind that Emma is here. You two have met, right?”

He’s about to answer Belle, to say that they have, even if he sees the cheeky smile on Belle’s face, when Emma turns around from her seat at the table and sees him. She’s in leggings and a sweatshirt, her feet only covered in comically mismatched socks, and her hair is pulled back into a ponytail under a baseball cap. And if the way her lips keep parting before coming together again is any indication, she had no idea that he was coming.

Surprise.

She’s going to hate him.

This was definitely some kind of set up. Never in doubt.

“Hello, Swan,” he waves, awkwardly putting his hand in the air and moving his fingers. Her mouth snaps closed, lips pressing into a firm line, and he sees her eyes roll even under the shadow of her cap. She’s not happy that he’s here, and he doesn’t blame her. They’re in a bit of a complicated situation.

Instead of speaking (thank goodness), Emma simply waves back with a flick of her wrist and the slightest nod of her head. He’s grateful for that, truly. This entire night is going to be torture, but she’s doing him a kindness there. It’s the little things in life.

“Oi, why do you look like the cat has your tongue, mate?”

“Shut up, Scarlett.”

“You know I’m incapable of that. Besides, milady likes the sound of my voice.”

“I don’t know what you see in him,” he sighs to Belle as he walks into the apartment and settles against the kitchen counter next to the table where Emma is alternating between shooting him daggers and completely avoiding his gaze. He should probably stop talking, but he’s not entirely sure how to do that when he’s having dinner. Conversation is kind of expected.

They could all become mimes.

The apartment is a small place, especially for two people, but Emma and Belle have it decorated in soft whites and creams with green and blue pillows and accents everywhere. As well as books. He shouldn’t be surprised at that, especially with Belle living here, but he wasn’t expecting them to have an entire wall of the things. It’s nice though, cozy even. He loves his apartment, but there’s a certain staleness to it sometimes. He doesn’t have much there, just his leather couch with one or two pillows and a painting of the horizon at the bay hanging over his television. He’s got bookshelves too, but it’s nothing like the packed space before him. He wonders if Emma is a bookworm as well.

He hopes that she likes flowers for all of the ones that Belle’s father sends them from his shop.

“He’s surprisingly kind when he’s not being an asshole.”

“So once or twice a year then?”

There’s a loud snicker, more of a snort really, and he whips his head to the right to see Emma covering her mouth, her shoulders shaking the slightest bit. Well, look at that. He made her laugh. It may be a good night already.

“You find that funny, love?” he teases, not able to stop himself from talking when he knows that she must be losing her mind. Maybe he’s a bit sadistic, but it’s kind of fun watching her squirm and knowing that there’s nothing she can do to stop him.

“You? Funny? I don’t believe it’s your allotted one time a year for that.”

The beginnings of arousal spark at the base of his spine, but it’s not enough to do anything. Thank fuck.

“It’s not a funny joke when you have to steal it from me, love.”

“That’s cute that you thought it was a funny joke to begin with.”

“Aww, sweetheart,” Will sighs, leaning back in his chair so that it props up on two legs while he looks at Belle who is grabbing glasses out of the cabinet, “would you look at the two of them flirting?”

“We are not flirting,” he and Emma say at the same time while the real hum of arousal starts to spread across his skin. Sighing, he speaks again on his own. “Belle, would you like some help with dinner since your boyfriend is a wanker who isn’t helping you out?”

“You guys are such weird friends, but sure. That’d be great.”

He helps Belle butter slices of toast while she gets the lasagna out of the oven, the two of them easily moving in and out of the kitchen. His left hand being near heat can sting sometimes, so he tries to avoid it on days where he has pains. It’s been nearly a decade since the accident, and sometimes it’s like nothing has changed. He and Belle fill in casual conversation, catching up on how they’ve been while Belle recommends him some new books to come pick up from the library, and Will occasionally adds something in to make Belle laugh, her entire face lighting up. He sees Emma get up from the table and stalk off to what must be her room, and not a part of him blames her. It’s likely what’s best for the both of them, and he appreciates it.

Until she comes back into the room right as they start to eat, silently fixing herself a plate and settling down across from him. He can’t help but watch her, be fascinated by her. For someone who he knows is intelligent and graceful, incredibly athletic if her legs and arms are anything to go by, she’s not very graceful as she eats. He can’t count the amount of times she’s gotten sauce on her chin and he’s had to motion to his own to get her to wipe it off. It’s funny, if he’s honest with himself, but he’s also pretty sure that each move he makes causes Emma to hate him that little bit more.

Hate may be too strong of a word. She simply wants absolutely nothing to do with him. That’s all.

And that’s totally not hate.

Belle and Will are most definitely trying to set the two of them up, as every other sentence is some kind of not-so-gentle nudge for he and Emma to talk to each other. Emma is much better at avoiding everything, deftly nodding her head in answer or giving as curt of a response as possible. He’s not so adept at it, getting roped into saying a bit more than Emma does. He can’t help himself, even though he’s pretty sure that she’s going to murder him and then hide the evidence. She is a detective, after all.

He’s taking a sip of his wine while Belle and Will are having some kind of argument over their upcoming vacation. It’s refreshing to see that even with the whole soulmate thing that people still have normal arguments and petty squabbles. It makes life seem more…real and not like he’s living in some kind of manufactured box.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Emma slide her phone across the table, the screen lit up with the messaging app open. He takes it, pulling it into his side so Belle and Will don’t see. It’s not like they’re paying attention anyways. They’re currently debating if they should go to England or to the beach in Florida. He’s not really sure how that’s a competition, but then again, sometimes people like sunshine.

Sometimes people also like not burning up in the fiery pits of hell of Florida.

If we leave right now, I bet they won’t even notice.

He chuckles at her words, looking up and curving his lips into a smile only to see her looking down intently focusing on what he assumes is a split end on her ponytail. Obviously he knows that she wanted him to see this message. She typed it and sent her phone over to him, but she’s acting like he doesn’t exist. It’s an odd disconnect, but he guesses this is how this is going to go.

Do you think we can take the bread with us?

God no. Belle would snap our heads off. The bread isn’t even worth it.

The bread is always worth it.

That gets a laugh out of Emma, even if he almost missed her small snicker. But he can see the slightest tick of her lips, the smallest of smiles peeking out.

Damn. It feels good to make her smile.

He’s not supposed to be feeling that way.

At least he’s not feeling aroused. That’s a damn good feeling and all, but it’s not something he really wants to deal with right now. It still may be the most idiotic soulmate (or maybe not soulmate and just some sick, twisted game the universe is playing with the two of them to screw them up even more) sign in the world, and while he’s still wondering just how long he’s going to have to suffer with it, it may not be the worst thing in the world.

As long as he doesn’t speak to Emma.

That seems pretty easy since they probably won’t be stuck eating another meal together.

He’s not sure how he feels about that.

“Killian,” Belle huffs, slapping her hands against the table just as he’s texting himself on Emma’s phone so that he has her number, something that contradicts every logical thought that he’s had all night (and something that will probably piss her off), “will you please tell Will that we don’t need to go to England when we can go somewhere nice and relaxing like the beach in Miami, which is definitely different than the beach here?”

“I – ”

“Florida sucks,” Emma starts, inching her glass into the middle of the table so that he can covertly slide her phone back to her. “It’s not only hot but also humid, and the people there are assholes.”

“Oh Emma,” Belle sighs, her eyes widening with what he thinks is compassion, “just because Neal is – ”

“It’s not about Neal,” Emma barks, cutting Belle off. If he wasn’t so interested in who Neal is and why he causes such a reaction from Emma, he’d probably notice the slight tingling sensation that’s working its way over himself. “Go to Spain or something. You get Europe and the beach. I’m going to bed.”

With that Emma gets up from the table and stalks over to her room, slamming the door shut behind her. He thought that things were going well tonight, especially with their little back and forth over the phone, but whatever just happened obviously made her change her mind.

“Damn, Jones. What’d you do to make her so mad? I told you she could kick all of our asses.”

He holds his hands up and shakes his head from side to side. “I didn’t do a thing. She was fine.”

“Until I mentioned Neal,” Belle laments, her lips parting slightly before snapping shut. He so wants to ask who Neal is, the words on the tip of his tongue, but it’s none of his business. Emma might not be interested in him, despite her being kind of friendly to him tonight, but if she’s really his soulmate, he’d like to get to know her on his own. Betraying her trust doesn’t seem like the best way to start that. And if she isn’t his soulmate, he’d still like to get to know her. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why? You think Emma doesn’t enjoy talking about her bastard of an ex?”

An ex.

He figured that, but it’s still…nice, he guesses, to have confirmation even if he doesn’t want to know more.

“I just hate that she’s been hurt so badly,” Belle sighs, rising from the table and collecting plates. He stands with her, not about to let her take care of everything when she cooked. “I wish she could find her soulmate so that she could have that partnership, you know? Like us, Will.”

“You and I both bloody well know that Emma will shove her soulmate away whenever she finds him. She’s not about to fall for everything just because someone tells her to.”

Boy do they have no idea.

He doesn’t stay there much longer, only helping to clean up and chat with Will and Belle a bit more, before he’s leaving Belle and Emma’s apartment and walking home thinking about all of the little bits that he learned about Emma tonight. She’s definitely got protective layers around her heart, something he can understand, but he can also see some of the cracks that let in her friendliness and her humor. Sure, the humor might be a defense mechanism, but it’s still humor.

He rather likes her, he thinks.

He’s not sure if it’s just as friends or some kind of crush, but he knows that he doesn’t seem to hate her. Really, he’d love to talk to her some more. If only the universe didn’t suck and they didn’t have this teeny tiny (in his case big if he does say so himself) problem that keeps them from doing that.

Never in his life has he hated getting turned on this easily.

(Except maybe in secondary school in the middle of a mathematics exam, but that’s an unfortunate story for another day.)

Walking into his apartment, he turns on the lights and kicks off his shoes, leaning down to put them in the right order on his little rack, before he sheds his jacket and hangs it on its hook. It’s eerily quiet in here compared to his dinner, so when he sits down on his couch and props his feet up on the ottoman, he immediately turns the television on, letting it stay on the History Channel for some background noise on the American Revolution.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, and he responds to Ariel’s text about her time off for a doctor’s appointment next week. He’s about to put it back in his pocket when he remembers Emma’s number in his phone. He could text her, but should he? She probably doesn’t want to hear from him, especially if she’s in a bad mood because Belle mentioned her ex, but it’s almost like he can’t help himself.

Dammit.

He’s thirty-five. He should not be having this much of an issue on deciding whether or not to text a woman he fancies.

Killian: You know, I quite fancy you from time to time when you’re not yelling at me.

One, two, three minutes pass. He watches his screen for all of them.

Emma: I could just block you, you know.

He snickers at that. Of course that’s where she goes first.

Killian: I know. I also know where you live.

Emma: That’s stalkerish, dude.

Killian: Block my number and throw me in a jail cell, love. I’m ready for it.

Emma: Kinky.

Killian: The name’s Killian.

Emma: Asshole.

Killian: I also answer to that.

She takes a few minutes to respond, the little dots popping up on his screen and disappearing over and over again.

Emma: Good.

[sailor-cresselia]

Zi-O 48-1: In which I surrender and watch the raw.

So, it’s been a few days, and I know that the subbers have their own lives and whatnot, but… I can’t safely go on tumblr until I see this, because I follow a lot of Rider blogs, and have the Zi-O tag tracked, and i’ve got friends talking about this…

So I’m caving and watching 48 without subs. It’s been a long while since I’ve had to do this!

Enjoy eleven and a half pages of me being a nerd over a children’s tv show, that I can’t even properly understand.

(EDIT: SHIT SORRY I THOUGHT I”D PUT THE READ MORE IN THERE)

–––– ––––

Actually, first, I watched 47 again, to refresh myself, and noticed something. Not only did Tsukasa do the hand pose from the Zi-O promotional material when he transformed, but so did Daiki as Another Zi-O II.

The main difference is that Daiki used his pointer and middle finger – because he’s the second form.

It’s the little touches.

––––

We pick up exactly where we left off last time – with Tsukuyomi, Sougo, Daiki, and Decade finding htemselves surrounded by mooks and monsters from heisei riders past. Mirror monsters, makamou, masquerade dopants, yummys, dustards, ghouls, inves… so Ryuki, Hibiki, Double, OOO, Fourze, Wizard, and Gaim are gone. The meteors, and skywall say that Kabuto and Build are, too. Adding in the roidmudes we saw with Chase, that makes ten out of eighteen watches broken. I say eighteen because we’ve obviously still got Zi-O, and Decade is literally right there, having reclaimed his watch.

We get Tsukasa repeating – or, rahter, we re-see Tsukasa saying that he’s going to destroy the world… Not right at this moment, though. They should get going.

It looks like Daiki takes off in a different direction from the other three.

––––

Amid the scenes of people running, there’s a ganma mook… and Revol, along with people colappsing, static crackling across their bodies. That’s the Ghost and Ex-Aid watches done for, then.

––––

Geiz and Woz run along a rooftop, but immediately become a book image – we’re going pretty much right into the recap. Now, of course, I don’t speak Japanese, but I can get the gist of what he’s saying. Basically, there’s copious fighting, the time-space continuum is falling apart, and the world is ending because of Swartz.

There are two pages left.

Woz is looking off into the middle distance as he says this.

––––

… I don’t think I really expected that they’d update the OP again, this late in the game, but…

That doesn’t change that it kind of hurts to see Heure and Ora still be there.

––––

At 9-to-5, Tsukasa is being interrogated- I mean, is getting everyone onto the same page.

Ehh… let’s see… Basically, he’s saying that more and more of the other Riders are being… I don’t know, more completely erased? Like, the watches held their stories in stasis, like bookmarks, and now that they’re breaking, parts of those stories are escaping out.

Tsukuyomi mentions the wall and the tower – namely, Fuuto Tower, as opposed to Yggdrasil, which kind of bothers me. See, even if this weren’t all one Rider world, Fuuto Tower would have no reason to not exist. It’s just part of the city. Yggdrasil, on the other hand, was built explicitly to deal with the encroaching Helheim Forest and you know what it’s not that big a deal, because the multipleworlds thing bugs me even more than that.

…Although, since they’re apparently sticking with the outdated “every rider is his own world” method, which has basically never been true, with the exception of Decades ARs, I suppose it could make sense to have both towers appear. Fuuto and Zawame are different cities, and most Rider seasons are set in Tokyo. That would account for the Skywall, as well – it’s from a different world. That’s the best way to show ‘things aren’t where they should be’ - to have landmarks from parallel worlds and different cities all appearing in the same place.

Tsukasa explains that Swartz has been using Sougo for his plans since he (Sougo) was a young boy. He pulled him to that ruined future, and gave him the time powers there. Then he set him on the road to gathering the powers of all the Kamen Riders – thus consolidating them into one complete form. Namely, Grand Zi-O.

…Okay, the multiverse thing still doesn’t pan out, here. If they were all in different worlds, then Sougo couldn’t have met them! They specifically said once, during Shinobi, that the Time Mazines can’t go to different timelines – which would presumably include different realities along with it. So, the people that Sougo met couldn’t have been riders anyway, regardless of his interference.

…Wait. Unless Swartz is actually pulling the assorted AR worlds together – by removing the ‘original’ or ‘main’ versions of the Riders, he removes the potential for there to be alternate versions of them. So the Shinji who worked at Atashi Journal, the Wataru who was a small child, high schooler Takumi, and so on… none of them can exist, because the Shinji from Ore Journal, the Wataru who was an adult, dry-cleaner Takumi, and so on were never riders.

I mean, I don’t know if that’s where they’re actually going with this, but it’s a good theory, right?

I can still try to make sense of this, right?!

ANYWAY.

Sougo’s despairing over the fact that all of his fights have been playing right into Swartz’s hand, and I think that Woz is trying to reassure him? I’m not sure – I can’t make out any of what he’s saying there.

Geiz asks what they can do now.

“I already told you. I’m going to destroy the world.” Tsukasa sets down the mug he’s been holding this entire time. “This world is already lost. However… there might still be a way to save it.” He looks pointedly at Sougo.

Sougo pauses, and says that he understands, bringing up the ‘choice’ that Swartz told him about.

“Tsukuyomi’s path, Sougo’s path, or the path to Oma Zi-O.”

…Ah, man, I can’t tell what they’re saying now. I’m not sure what Sougo’s implying that he’s planning, but Tsukasa seems at least somewhat satisfied. The fate of the world counts on this.

––––

There’s a breif shot of the watch stand. It’s empty.

––––

Sougo stands in front of the wall of clocks, looking at them. It’s eerily similar to a shot in the opening… hang on.

Okay, no, he’s in a different outfit. In the opening, when Sougo reaches towards the wall of clocks and spins it backwards, he’s in a mint green shirt and tan pants. Here, he’s in dark green with white-and-black pants. But also? He’s just a little bit taller.

In the opening, he’s dwarfed by the wall, with the counters and everything else seeming to be so much larger than they really are. He’s not the one who’s really in control. The situation is so much bigger than he is.

But now? He fits perfectly. He’s coming into his own, both as a rider and as a person. He’s not holding the image of an idea that is so much more than he is anymore.

Sougo smiles as he looks at the assortment of clocks, saying that it’s time to head out. The acoustic guitar version of Over Quartzer starts to play.

Tsukasa – the only other person present – tells him to wait. There’s… he says something about either how there’s a lot of people involved, or there’s a lot of people counting on this, or that are at risk. Maybe he should be the one to carry out this plan-

Sougo cuts him off. It has to be him. He tells Tsukasa to listen. He’s been ready for this since he put on the belt. Or… maybe… he’s always been destined for this moment.

Tsukasa looks… I don’t know what that is. Surprised? A dull form of surprise or shock, that he wasn’t sure if this young man would actually be willing to pull this off?

Sougo does seem to have one small regret though, in that he doesn’t get to tell his uncle. He picks up a note off the counter.

…Junichiro has terrible handwriting. Holy shit. Like, that’s damn near illegible – I’m lucky that it’s just enough that I can tell he signed it, via using the Rider Wiki having his name. Given the preview from the last episode, I’m assuming he went out to the store? Maybe?

––––

In a plaza, Tsukuyomi is attempting to help people escape the assorted mooks, shooting with her Faiz Phone X and instructing them to run. Woz, meanwhile, is sitting and watching, like an absolute tool. She’s pissed at him, and basically yells that he can help out any time now, thanks!

“Okay, okay, fine…” He gives the single most put upon sigh as he transforms into Ginga Finaly.

––––

Geiz is in a construction area, beating mooks off of people with a literal pipe, until Swartz shows up, apparently taunting him.

Cue Revive Fury versus Another Decade.

––––

Junichiro is screaming as he’s being approached by two Waste Yummys and the Bison Yummy.

Oh, judging by the box with the shops logo, he wasn’t out shopping, he was making a delivery.

“LOOK OUT!”

Zi-O blocks the Yummy, shoving them away from his uncle – notably without saying anything else to Junichiro.

Why is that notable?

Because Junichiro’s next line is “…Eh? Sougo-kun?”

Me, crossing my fingers as Zi-O prepares a finisher: please have known all along please have known all along or at least have caught on at some point please

Zi-O, having finished the monsters off with a Time Break – don’t think I didn’t see those little circles flying off of them as they exploded, Toei, I saw those cell medals there – storms up to his uncle. “Uncle, are you an idiot? Why did you go out at a time like this!?”

“Sougo- that was- just now-”

Zi-O drops his transformation… and Tokiwa Sougo bows low to his uncle, apologizing.

“Uncle… I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you… the truth is, I’m a Kamen Rider.” As he straightens back up, the piano version of Toki no Ouja starts to play. Junichiro is speechless as Sougo continues. “It’s a power that I’ve been using to fight, in order to protect everyone.”

Junichiro doesn’t seem to know what to say, just asking if this is how he’s being a king.

Sougo… supposes that’s true. But he has to go, so that he can save everyone. He just wanted to tell his uncle first.

Junichiros response? “I can’t do much, I just fix clocks. But you… You’ve got such a responisibility. Go. Have a safe trip.”

I don’t think Sougo expected him to react this well, he probably expected that his uncle would try to stop him, or protest in some way, at least. But really, clearly Sougo hasn’t been paying attention. Junichiro barely batted an eye at the Imajin asking him to fix the Denliner. This isn’t much of a stretch at all.

“I’m headed out.”

Junichiro kind of looks like he’s about to cry as Sougo runs off – tears of worry and of pride.

Sougo runs down the partly ruined street, as his Time Mazine zooms down in the ship mode.

––––

Sougo is in the cockpit of the Time Mazine, which is barely lit by dark blue light.

“One last trip through time…”

He looks at the display, set for 2068.

“Time-space system, activate!”

Time Mazine!

The machine zooms through the time tunnel, off into the future.

––––

Geiz, in a very ruined stairwell, fights a whole slew of mooks as Another Decade watches. He gets knocked down a few flights, and can’t get back up due to all the mooks who are basically on top of him.

Right up until Decade shows up to knock them away.

I can’t tell what they’re saying, but Geiz sounds really surprised that Decade’s still here.

They start fighting their way back upstairs together.

––––

Woz and Tsukuyomi are fighting against another set of mooks, in the same plaza they were in earlier.

Eventually, Woz calls down a bunch of mini planets to destroy the mooks and a Violence Dopant, because of course Ginga can do that. This might as well happen.

A bat-type Roidmude appears, advancing on Tsukuyomi – before Mashin Chaser flys in from nowhere, tackling it down, and quickly dispatching it with the Spider Viral Core’s Tune attack.

He then immediately falls to his knees, clutching at his head, before dropping his transformation. His hand shakes as he wonders why he just saved a human.

Woz, being far too flippant for my robo-lad’s current existential crisis, hops down from the steps. “It’s quite simple, Chase. According to this book, in the original timeline, you, too, were a Kamen Rider.”

“I’m… a Kamen Rider?” Chase looks at his shaking hands, and we get another flashback. (Toei no don’t break my heart like this…)

––––

Chase, in a warehouse, water pouring from a broken pipe. He holds up a shift bike, determined.

Kamen Rider Chaser stands under the pouring water after his first transformation.

––––

Chase roars in denial, slamming his Break Gunner to activate it.

Break up!

Mashin Chaser yells. He’s a GRIM REAPER, damn you!

(Toei, NO! Don’t break my heart like this!)

He brutally starts attacking Woz.

––––

2068, in front of the statue commemorating the first transformation of Tokiwa Sougo.

…Oh, now that’s interesting. The other times we’ve seen this particular statue, the riders weren’t posting at all – they were just standing, looking somewhat down. Right now, though?

Each and every one of them is doing their post-transformation pose.

Interesting.

So’s Sougo’s comment, which I think is ‘The most important person in the world…’

Sougo’s arrived at a point where there’s a smaller fight between the resistance and Oma Zi-O. It’s not that final stand we saw in the first episode, with the copious time mazines – the battlefield isn’t nearly large enough to be that one. But Geiz and Tsukuyomi are both there, both shooting at Oma Zi-O; her with the Faiz Phone X, and him with a machine gun.

People are being injured/killed left and right. Sougo goes to Tsukuyomi, who’s just been knocked down, asking if she’s alright.

He slips a blank ridewatch into her pocket.

I’m not sure what Geiz is yelling at them, but I’m pretty sure it’s something about ‘if you’re not going to fight, then get out of here!’

Tsukuyomi seems to feel the same, telling him to hurry up and run.

His expression stoic, Sougo tells them that they should hurry and get out. He’ll take care of this.

He pulls out his Ziku Driver, and the Zi-O Ridewatch as Tsukuyomi, Geiz, and the handful of resistance members look on.

“HENSHIN!”

As Kamen Rider Zi-O strides forward to face off against his future self, Geiz and Tsukuyomi are stunned. They know that armor and transformation, even though they’ve not yet met him properly in person.

––––

Oma Zi-O and Kamen Rider Zi-O stand across from each other, in that same valley where they’ve fought twice before. Or, where Sougo’s fought him before, and Oma may or may not have been on the current side yet. Time travel, yanno.

Oma says… er, basically that his younger self has no hope of defeating him.

Sougo… he says that that may be true. That this may really be his future.

Even so… he still has to try.

He pulls out his gun – his gun, not his sword – and fires, charging at Oma.

I’ve said before that Sougo almost never uses the gun form, and it’s true. All of his upgrades exclusively gave him a sword. The gun is only ever used for strategic purposes – Sougo doesn’t usually fight at a distance, he’s much more of a close range combatant. This only serves to make the fact that he pulls it out as the gun form all the more unusual.

Each shot is blocked by little mini forcefields that Oma raises for each individual blast, before Sougo is finally close enough to switch into the sword. Each strike is blocked, before Oma shoves him backward with waves of orange and black energy.

Sougo – still in base form Zi-O – lands, and as he pushes himself up…

“Let’s go.”

He pulls out the Trinity watch.

––––

2019

Geiz Revive Fury and Decade versus mooks and Another Decade.

They’ve made it back out into the open, and quickly dispatch the assorted mooks, leaving the two riders and the single villain.

Swartz… ugh, I can’t make it out, but I think he’s saying something about how they can’t stop him, the world’s already finsihed.

Both Geiz and Tsukasa say that’s not true. There’s something about Tsukuyomi in there – either they’re saying that it’s not Swartz’s world to take, it’s hers… or that they’re choosing her. They’re not choosing this world, they’re choosing Tsukuyomi’s.

Or they’re saying nothing of the sort, because I just can’t pick out enough words that I recognize to be sure at all.

Regardless, Swartz screams in rage, and starts wailing on the both of them, before knocking them both down. Aiming for Geiz, he charges his copy of Tsukasa’s rider kick – card images and all. They’re eerily accurate, too. They’ve got the exact Decade logo on them, but they’re black and dark purple, instead of the lighter magenta that Tsukasa would have.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. As Another Decade passes through the last card-

A yellow beam of light shoots from the sky, and warps Geiz away.

––––

Tune! Chaser Cobra!

It doesn’t matter, anyway. As Mashin Chaser’s whip attack reaches Woz’s location-

A green beam of light shoots from the sky, and warps Woz away.

Growling, he turns to Tsukuyomi.

––––

Trinity time!

Sougo, in the Trinity Cockpit, smiles a little as Geiz and Woz appear. “Oh, good, it worked.”

I don’t think they were sure it would.

Woz, appearing as an overlay on his shoulder, says that they’ve made it to 2068.

Geiz, doing likewise, says something about Oma Zi-O.

Sougo, no overlay in sight, says that in any case, it’s time to fight.

Trinity charges at Oma Zi-O, wielding Zi-O II’s sword.

––––

2019

Kamen Rider Decade dusts off his hands as he stands up. Time for Decade Versus Decade.

Swartz almost laughs at that. You think he’s only got Decade’s powers?

He freezes Tsukasa in time. His own power is even stronger. As he advances on the frozen Tsukasa, he’s frozen, himself.

Kamen Rider Diend strolls up, one hand outstretched. “Oh, you mean the power you gave little ol’ me?”

Decade’s fight music starts to play as Daiki straight up whacks Another Decade with his gun, breaking both magenta men out of their paused states.

As they stand next to each other, Tsukasa has to be rolling his eyes under that helmet. “Took you long enough.”

“Let’s go, Tsukasa.”

Kamen Riders Decade and Diend – Kadoya Tsukasa and Kaitou Daiki – attack Another Decade in unison.

––––

2068

KING GIRI GIRI SLASH!

Trinity slams his slash attack down on Oma, but said overlord just pushes the energy to the side. They rush him, bringing the sword itself down on him, and when he blocks it with his crossed arms, a ring of dustclouds explode around the combatants.

Trinity forces the sword down, before abruptly yanking if off of where he’d been pressing it against Oma, using the loss of that resistance to throw Oma Zi-O off balance, and pointing the tip of the sword at his torso. Under the helmet, Sougo at minimum is grinning.

Trinity Time Break-Burst-Explosion!

A beam of attack power pushes out from the sword, blasting Oma Zi-O back into the cliffside, where he leaves a massive impact crater before falling to the ground.

He asks where his younger self found this sort of power.

Sougo’s answer? It’s not his power. It’s his friends power.

In the cockpit, we see the three standing side by side, their sections of the faceplate behind them, but they aren’t in a circle around the clock, or in divided screens. They’re all on one visual plane.

According to Sougo, and my very limited understanding of what’s being said, because I don’t recognize most of this… there’s more than one path to take. He’s not taking the one that leads to Oma Zi-O. He’s taking the one that he’ll make with his friends.

Oma Zi-O seems to find that interesting, and says that Sougo’s… what, fighting for his friends sake?

And I’m not sure what just happened, but Geiz doesn’t know what Oma’s talking about either, and Woz tells Sougo to be careful…

Right before the Trinity transformation ends, leaving only Sougo standing in front of Oma Zi-O.

Just Sougo, without any armor.

He’s not even wearing his belt.

He also doesn’t look surprised, or concerned. Just angry.

––––

2019

Woz reappears right where he left from, in his civilian attire, and looking confused. Tsukuyomi is nowhere to be seen.

––––

Geiz appears right where he left from, in his civilian attire, and looking both confused and frustrated. Decade and Diend are still fighting Another Decade, and getting kicked around a fair bit, before Swartz scoffs, and says that Tsukuyomi is his to… uh, I think kill is the word here.

He dimension-walls himself out of there, and Geiz curses.

––––

2068

Tokiwa Sougo stands across the field from Oma Zi-O.

“Now what? You’ve sent your friends away, and what for?”

There’s no background music, just the sound of the wind.

Sougo stays calm. “That’s because I’m not here to fight you. But… I’m still going to defeat you.” He starts to walk forward. “Tell me, what is the power of Oma Zi-O?”

Oma Zi-O looks a bit to the side. “It’s the power to destroy space and time.” The orchestral version of Toki no Ouja starts playing. I can’t quite make out the next part of Oma’s answer, unfortunately. Something about Swartz’s granting him time powers, and his own powers over space, and those combining. I think.

Sougo responds that the two of them – himself and Oma – aren’t the same.

Oma… agrees. I think, and says that he looks forward to seeing the world Sougo will make, before sending him back in time.

A muscle twitched in Sougo’s otherwise expressionless face – the ghost of a smirk trying to make it’s way through.

Oma Zi-O looks up, a note of resignation in his voice. “That’s it, then.” He makes a small noise, almost like a laugh… and says something about… I think it’s that ‘this is what he can do to help.’

He raises one hand to the sky, firing motes of golden light out.

––––

As the other members of the resistance continue retreating, Geiz and Tsukuyomi stop. I’m not sure what they’re saying, but it’s something about how that guy was strange, that he must have had some sort of plan.

Motes of golden light pass over them, and a pink light comes from Tsukuyomi’s pocket, seeming to shock her physically to make sure she notices.

The ridewatch Sougo had slipped her glows white, but quickly fades… and it’s still blank.

… the one that kept making its way to Sougo in episode one stayed blank for a long time, too, right up until he showed the resolve to fight.

––––

2019

Tsukuyomi reaches a different plaza, still running from Mashin Chaser. She begs him to stop, she knows he has a human heart!

He just yells that he doesn’t have a heart, he’s a Roidmude- but he freezes up. He can’t move. It’s not the time powers in action – it’s that he’s seized up. Like one part of his programming is stopping him from moving, from lowering his arm and pressing the trigger. There’s a very deliberate shot of his hand holding the break gunner, finger raised.

Swartz – as Another Decade – comes up. “That’s enough. She’s mine… Finally, little sister…” He goes to attack her, but-

Chase stops him, rushing up and grabbing his arm, shoving him back. He may not be human, may not have a human heart, but. But the human heart is the most beautiful thing there is!

He goes on the offensive – against Swartz.

But Chase tends to get sloppy when he fights with his emotions running high. It’s simple enough for Swartz to redirect his straight charge with a pair of dimension walls, placing Chase behind him and charge-kicking the Roidmude in the back, sending him staggering. I can’t tell what Swartz says, but it’s definitely an insult to Chase – as a Kamen Rider.

Chase staggers backward, his transformation breaking. He starts to fall to the ground, but Geiz catches him…

(Toei… no…  don’t… don’t break my heart like this…)

Purple arcs of electricity cross Chase’s body as Geiz holds him.

“You… were right. I really am… a Kamen Rider…”

Geiz’s face is partly hidden in his collar. “You’re more than that – you’re a friend.”

Geiz – who only met Chase today, who probably only knew him as a hero from what Gou may or may not have said during Over Quartzer, and from his actions right now – is telling Chase that they’re friends.

“That’s… nice. That even now… I’ve made another human friend…”

(Toei. No. Don’t. Don’t break my heart like this.)

Chase glows a light purple, and dissolves into motes of purple light, leaving his core floating, before it, too, dissolves.

(I, a Drive fangirl, and particularly a Chase fangirl, am going to have to bury my face in a pillow when I’m done here.)

Geiz can’t talk. He’s too stunned by what just happened – he’s trying not to cry, I think.

Swartz advances on Tsukuyomi. Now that that little distraction’s over with, it’s time for her to die.

She backs up, terrified. Time feels like it slows down. Not, like, the type in this show where it actually does, just the muted, echoing effect of a single moment.

“TSUKUYOMI!” Sougo runs towards the scene. “THE WATCH!”

“Eh?”

“THE ONE I GAVE YOU!”

Confused, she reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a blank ridewatch – that very shortly isn’t blank anymore.

It’s white, with a mask, and the year ‘2068’ written on it.

Woz comes in from the other side, still at a distance. “Go! Tsukuyomi!” He throws her something.

Tsukuyomi catches a Ziku Driver.

Sougo nods, certain. Geiz looks confused as all get out. Woz looks like he’s hoping this will actually work.

She puts on the belt, and raises the watch, turning it.

“Tsukuyomi!”

Techno standby music plays as she places the watch in the driver, and spins it.

“Henshin!”

A gorgeous transformation sequence later…

Clad in a black undersuit, with white armor and gold accents, with a cresent moon-shaped visor, and a gold-trimmed cape and side-skirt…

Kamen Rider Tsukuyomi makes her appearance.

––––

The closing screen is Geiz Revive at the bottom, Trinity at the top…

And Tsukuyomi in the center.

––––

The preview for the final episode… and it’s a battle theme playing, not Over Quartzer.

Grand Zi-O versus Another Decade.

A brief flash of Kamen Rider Tsukuyomi.

A splitscreen shot. Kamen Riders Grand Zi-O, Double CycloneJokerXtreme, Wizard Infinity Form, OOO Tajador, and Gaim Pineapple Arms are on the top.

On the bottom… okay, so, I have no idea who most of these villains are. There’s Gamedeus in the center, and Evolt to the far end, but the others? Not a clue.

Over top of that, and the two groups starting to fight, we hear Sougo practically growling, saying ‘I have the power of all the Riders.’

Flashes of Tsukuyomi and Woz, as themselves, looking concerned. At this point, they add in a subtitle disclaimer saying that Zi-O is fiction. (Thank you, Google translate for my phone, which allows me to hold it up to a screen and get an idea of what’s written.)

A quick shot of Oma Zi-O on his throne, his face obscured – and text implying that we’re going to get to see his face!

Someone – either Oma Zi-O or Swartz, because they sound really similar when Swartz is Another Decade – saying something about… I don’t know, that this is his battle? I think?

But that’s played over the previous two sequences, and a sequence of Sougo, openly weeping, holding a very injured Geiz, who’s going limp.

Then, Sougo standing, furious… and then him activating the belt that Oma Zi-O wears.

In a defeated voice, “I’ll become Oma Zi-O…” and then, in that same growl as earlier, “HENSHIN.”

The final shots are two angles of Oma Zi-O. In armor. And in the present day.

–––– ––––

(deep inhale)

(sharp exhale)

AAAAAAAAAAAAA!

[lumikinetic]

*flops down on sofa*

*exhales*

Tumblr gives me a lot of wild shit every now and again. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's hilarious, sometimes it's disheartening. And then yesterday came along and gave me the one-two punch of:

Captain Marvel being dolled up by the Russos instead of a jacket, S.H.I.E.L.D baseball cap and a Nine Inch Nails shirt, which is how she should be (not gonna talk about this, just want it out there that I'm pissed about it)

One Day At A Time being cancelled

ODAAT I'm gonna kind of touch on because it's not really what I want to talk about, but it did help me finalize the words for what I do, and that's capitalism in entertainment.

The most annoying goddamn trend in filmmaking (and of course in TV and Netflix/Prime originals) is companies caring more about their bottom line and less about making good content, and yeah I know this dead horse isn't just beaten, it's thrown into an active supervolcano but it really pisses me off and it's why I hate the new Star Wars stuff (well OK hate is a bit strong but they're uh Not Good) but I'll get to that. What corpos can't seem to get into their bloated skulls is that one cannot exist without the other. You need to put out good, quality content with value so that fans like it so they give you money so they increase your profits so you can make more content and so on. But somewhere down the line some fuckhead went "what if we just pushed out what we have?" and just kinda expected us to not take notice.

Now before the comments section gets all hot and bothered because I know some people on this site don't have the gift of reading comprehension, I know profits are important, I'm saying when companies shun good filmmaking for more money, they get lazy and all they can think about is profit and not how they make that profit, they don't care at all about using that money to make more good, valuable content.

One Day At A Time

I've never watched One Day At A Time but the fact Netflix just outright cancelled it knowing damn well what it meant to the people the characters are representing is just disgusting. And they have the fucking audacity to blame it on the viewership? I've seen hundreds of artworks, gifs and a video clip here and there of this show. I've seen precisely one (1) meme of 13 Reasons Why and that is literally it. I'm not following the tags for either. Plus, #saveODAAT has, last I checked, 350k tweets on trending or thereabouts?

So obviously the viewership isn't the problem, it's the racism and homophobia of cancelling a Spanish (? - again, never seen it), LGBT+ focused show that a lot of people quite happily and positively connect with when a crap show about suicide and Friends gets to stay on. It's just ugh. Cancelling a show like this then paying something like $100mil to keep Friends. I was going to expand on the shitty capitalism here but tbh that's it, Netflix are making bad decisions and like I say, I'm only going to touch on it because it's not the main part.

Star Wars

Go watch the original trilogy and it's clear George Lucas was trying to create and do. He was trying to make art. The key difference between that and modern SW to me is BB8. Look at C3PO and R2D2 and already you can see they belong. C3PO is a translator droid and I'm not sure what exactly R2's job description is but it's obvious he does some kind of pilot assistance for X-Wing fighters. I never understood people who said R2 never did anything, because they obviously haven't seen Star Wars. You get that this is an R2 unit, right? Like, there's more than one out there and they have a job they were specifically built to do, it's just this one particular R2 unit who had to carry the message? Anyway, I'm derailing. R2 and C3PO have functions and they're clearly not new, they've been used for a long time. Then you look at BB8 and instantly it's like "this is a toy. This so called character was designed to sell toys". And then he was. He's a toy, he's on bags, notebooks, pens, clothes, everywhere. Disney is less concerned about making a Star Wars movie and more about making money off of the Star Wars name.

Into The Spider-Verse VS YA Movies

YA movies tend to suck because they were adapted from books and we all know how that pans out but the reason I'm using YA books specifically is because my mind jumped to The Hunger Games. I couldn't tell you a single fucking thing that happens in those movies. They're so dull and dead and forgettable and the characters are borderline unlikeable but you know which one I do like? Catching Fire, for one reason and one reason only: Jena Malone as Joanna Mason. Save for Haymitch, she's the only character I liked because those two are the only characters with any kind of charisma or life to them. They made an at most halfway decent attempt overall at recreating some otherwise really great books and they made a big show out of it, hiring some pretty well known names. And I'm not disparaging their performances, it was just what I call, ever since Suicide Squad came out, the Harley Quinn effect, in which good actors get given a good character and perform them really well and, through no fault of their own, fuck it up because the character was written poorly and no matter how well they act, if the script doesn't change, the performance will always be shit. The same for Divergent. And Percy Jackson. And Fault In Our Stars.

Then outside all of that you have Perks Of Being A Wallflower which is just a great, heartwarming movie because the characters feel like people and the brightness isn't turned way the fuck down in post and you actually want to be invested, and they're not afraid to have a colour palette beyond a splash of pink here and blue there and red there. Plus, Ant-Man as an English teacher. THEN you go watch Spider-Verse and oh hey. I can actually see the movie now. And I mean see it. They do not slack off when it comes to visuals. Even by animation's standards, everyone is so expressive and alive and... animated. Sorry, I couldn't get a better word but they are! When you look at Miles in comparison to Katniss in terms of writing and performance, the difference is just startling. The only times I can think of where Katniss shows any kind of emotion in the first movie is when she slams the knife in the table and Rue's funeral and I had to think about that. Without thinking for Miles, already I've got "who's Morales?", the scene where Uncle Aaron teaches him the shoulder touch, the scene where Miles spray paints in the subway, that scene in the alley, the moment in Olivia's office when he just freezes after she says she can't wait to watch Peter in immense pain Like That and made all the wlws melt in their seats. You get the idea. So what's the point for this section? Well, as simply as I can put it, Hunger Games was made with money, for money. Spiderverse was made with love, for love. Spiderverse cared about people who read comic books and paid more than enough tribute to the art forms people think of as lesser for no goddamn reason other than elitism and proved for the thousandth time that it is something that can be used in filmmaking. They were trying to make art. Hunger Games and most other YA novel movie adaptations saw a preestablished fan base they could exploit for money. They were trying to make money.

Rambo

This was a weird one, yeah. Don't worry I was confused too when it popped into my head. I saw the original Rambo a while back and what I liked about it (and Apocalypse Now) is it wasn't a war film where the USA charge in and hooray everything's all right, this movie grabs your shirt and says "hey. Vietnam did something to these guys and they're not OK. Probably they'll never be OK". Then I watched the Rambo reboot that came out in like 2011 or something and I remember thinking "OK so now he's just this dude? Who lives in Thailand... And what, that's it?" There was no scene to show his psychological state today. Nothing to acknowledge his PTSD. They just thought "hey! Let's make Rambo but this time, just give him guns and and yelling and spray some blood!" The reason I kind of ended this train of thought quickly is because I realised that, let's be real, the main body of Rambo's audience just want to see Sly Stallone kill some fools. But yeah, the fact that they just ignored John's mental state in place of mega violence is such a glaringly obvious move to just appeal to violent teenage boys.

The Auteur

My favourite director is Wes Anderson and my favourite movie is The Grand Budapest Hotel (though Panos Cosmatos seems to be eyeing these titles with Beyond The Black Rainbow and Mandy, I haven't watched them yet). Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, auteurs always stand out even though their movies are all the same, and I think the reason they're so successful is because that specific style is so much better than most other mainstream cinema. I'm not saying that those other movies are bad, I love them and will watch them again and again but I'm saying Wes Anderson could make a short movie and it would be better than most Marvel movies put together (don't talk to me about Captain Marvel, I haven't seen it yet. Gonna see it this Sunday). No matter what you think of these directors, you can instantly tell the difference between these movies that they care about and the passion and hard work they put in and Disney pumping out their 400th reboot.

It Keeps Working

You guys wanna know the thought that keeps me up at night? Someday they're going to make a Fortnite movie. You guys wanna know why it keeps me up at night? Because it's going to be popular. Yeah, obviously not at the box office, because it'll be a videogame movie and those are worse than book movies, but it will be popular for no apparent reason. And what pisses me off is that Fortnite's popularity is only because of the battle royale mode, which has now essentially become synonymous with dying franchises and it just adds another layer to the lack of creative effort and the movie will just be Hunger Games with guns. Exactly the same as what I said at the start of this rant, there's a really noticeable shift from making content to jumping on whatever bandwagon is passing by because you know it'll make you money. Yeah, you have to spend money to make money but that doesn't mean you get complacent in what you spend your money on or if you spend money at all because when you cut corners, consumers can see that shit.

Anyway I'm done complaining thanks for having the willpower to pay attention to my dumb opinions.

[pea-milk]

Get to know me tag 🌙

I was tagged by the lovely @fourfinefreshfishforyou and @rosymiel . Thank you!

I tag @dafadolly  @early-grape  @simulationcowboy @bratsims @obi-uhie@crescentcrustacean @cupidlet @ridgeport @faaeish @herbalbrew and anyone else who would like to do it. (Also you dont have to do this if ya dont wanna. It’s a lot of questions lmao)

1. WHAT IS YOUR FULL NAME? Eliav somethin somethin

2. WHAT IS YOUR NICKNAME? Eli...?? I sometimes go by ben

3. BIRTHDAY? 1st of September

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK SERIES? None

5. DO YOU BELIEVE IN ALIENS OR GHOSTS? Aliens probably

6. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE AUTHOR? Toni Morrison or David Sedaris

7. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE RADIO STATION? NPR or this one french music station once awhile. 

8. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR OF ANYTHING? Ah either spicy anything or a nice fruity flavor with vanilla

9. WHAT WORD WOULD YOU USE OFTEN TO DESCRIBE SOMETHING GREAT OR WONDERFUL? “Oh Cool” or just literally great/wonderful

10. WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT FAVORITE SONG? Railroad Bill - Andrew Bird or Sabor a Mi - Kali Uchis

11. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WORD? Orke / Gide or anythin with hard “ch” 

12. WHAT WAS THE LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO? You Are The Light - Jens Lekman

13. WHAT TV SHOW WOULD YOU RECOMMEND FOR EVERYBODY TO WATCH? Uh Dark! I recently watched it and it was good!

14. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE TO WATCH WHEN YOU’RE FEELING DOWN?  The Ritual. Its a good horror movie.

15. DO YOU PLAY VIDEO GAMES? Yes. But not like...hardcore? I dont like online multi player just like casual games. I will however become a hardcore gamer once I get my lil goblin hands on Red Dead Redemption 2. Yeehaw.

16. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR? Idk why but I think it’s bad luck to name your fears out loud. 

17. WHAT IS YOUR BEST QUALITY, IN YOUR OPINION? Mm...Humour? 

18. WHAT IS YOUR WORST QUALITY, IN YOUR OPINION? I lack...empathy ...and have a very hard time relating to people

19. DO YOU LIKE CATS OR DOGS BETTER? I like both.

20. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON? Autumn.

21. ARE YOU IN A RELATIONSHIP? No.

22. WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU MISS FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD? Being able to just be...loose? Just not have to worry about things.

23. WHO IS YOUR BEST FRIEND? I’d like to say my highschool “bestfriends” but we havent talked in a hot while.

24. WHAT IS YOUR EYE COLOR? Hazel

25. WHAT IS YOUR HAIR COLOR? Dirty Blonde

26. WHO IS SOMEONE YOU LOVE? Hm.

27. WHO IS SOMEONE YOU TRUST? No one lmao

28. WHO IS SOMEONE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? Not a specific individual but just...people who’ve left my life? People I dont talk to or see. Just wonderin how life goes for them.

29. ARE YOU CURRENTLY EXCITED ABOUT/FOR SOMETHING? Uh, not in a longterm sense, but just being in the apartment alone and going to work.

30. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST OBSESSION? Small deviances.

31. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE TV SHOW AS A CHILD? Courage the Cowardly Dog, Hey, Arnold or Country Mouse City Mouse.

32. WHO OF THE OPPOSITE GENDER CAN YOU TELL ANYTHING TO, IF ANYONE? Hmm...No one? 

33. ARE YOU SUPERSTITIOUS? Somewhat.

34. DO YOU HAVE ANY UNUSUAL PHOBIAS? No.

35. DO YOU PREFER TO BE IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA OR BEHIND IT? Behind.

36. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOBBY? Gardening.

37. WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? Calypso - David Sedaris

38. WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Ballad of Buster Scruggs. 

39. WHAT MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS DO YOU PLAY, IF ANY? I used to play violin and clarinet.

40. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ANIMAL? Wombats.

41. WHAT ARE YOUR TOP 5 FAVORITE TUMBLR BLOGS THAT YOU FOLLOW? I like just sorta weird aesthetic blogs or overall blogs with no general direction.

42. WHAT SUPERPOWER DO YOU WISH YOU HAD? Shape-shifting or just like bein immortal but the kind where, if for example, my head were to be chopped off from my body, I’d just be a conscious, bastard head.

43. WHEN AND WHERE DO YOU FEEL MOST AT PEACE? In my room or a quiet cafe while it rains outside.

44. WHAT MAKES YOU SMILE? Small things. Nothin real specific

45. WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY, IF ANY? I used to do track and lacrosse. I hated both.

46. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DRINK? Lavender Lemonade or a Cappuccino. 

47. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WROTE A HAND-WRITTEN LETTER OR NOTE TO SOMEBODY? Yesterday. I write post-cards to a ceramic teacher that I still keep in touch with. He’s a very funny man. 

48. ARE YOU AFRAID OF HEIGHTS? Depends.

49. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST PET PEEVE? Sloppiness. Just general disorganization. (Also loud chewing)

50. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO A CONCERT? Yes.

51. ARE YOU VEGAN/VEGETARIAN? I dont generally eat heavy meats. Especially red because I vomit if I do. I eat a lot of fish though.

52. WHEN YOU WERE LITTLE, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP? An Undertaker. I met one at a friends funeral, she was very interesting.

53. WHAT FICTIONAL WORLD WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN? Hmm. Maybe a rural-ized time locked town? Or a cabin in the middle of a foggy evergreen wood, not really fantasy I suppose.

54. WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU WORRY ABOUT? Health.

55. ARE YOU SCARED OF THE DARK? No.

56. DO YOU LIKE TO SING? If it’s a rock ballad in the middle a long road trip with friends, yes, but mostly I sing when alone.

57. HAVE YOU EVER SKIPPED SCHOOL? Yes. Alot.

58. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE ON THE PLANET? I’ve tiny places, or just moments that I enjoy.

59. WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE? A lot of places. Mostly rural.

60. DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? Two Dogs. Zelda and Charlie.

61. ARE YOU MORE OF AN EARLY BIRD OR A NIGHT OWL? Night Owl.

62. DO YOU LIKE SUNRISES OR SUNSETS BETTER? Both.

63. DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE? No. Im gay.

64. DO YOU PREFER EARBUDS OR HEADPHONES? Earbuds.

65. HAVE YOU EVER HAD BRACES? Yes.

66. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE GENRE OF MUSIC? No specific genre.

67. WHO IS YOUR HERO? ...No one

68. DO YOU READ COMIC BOOKS? Not recently.

69. WHAT MAKES YOU THE MOST ANGRY? Selfishness.

70. DO YOU PREFER TO READ ON AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE OR WITH A REAL BOOK? Physical copies are nice. I like the smell.

71. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? I’m not in school but uh Math. Art.

72. DO YOU HAVE ANY SIBLINGS? 1

73. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT? Vanilla Extract.

74. HOW TALL ARE YOU? 179cm

75. CAN YOU COOK? Yes. I bake for a living. I make a mean puff pastry.

76. WHAT ARE THREE FOUR THINGS THAT YOU LOVE? Smelling spices, like cinnamon, red peppers, hard rain, when my dog snores.

77. WHAT ARE THREE THINGS THAT YOU HATE? Sweat, being yelled at, alcohol

78. DO YOU HAVE MORE FEMALE FRIENDS OR MORE MALE FRIENDS? More male identifying friends.

79. WHAT IS YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION? Bi. More lenient towards male identifying individuals.

80. WHERE DO YOU CURRENTLY LIVE? The US.

81. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TEXTED? My Manager.

82. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Thursday.

83. WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE YOUTUBER? None really. Just the weird video once awhile. Like “will it blend.”

84. DO YOU LIKE TO TAKE SELFIES? Yes and no.

85. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE APP? ????

86. WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR PARENT(S) LIKE? I get along with my mother when I can. Father could be dead for all I care.

87. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FOREIGN ACCENT? Any accent.

88. WHAT IS A PLACE THAT YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO, BUT YOU WANT TO VISIT? Too many places

89. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? I like 8 I suppose

90. CAN YOU JUGGLE? No.

91. ARE YOU RELIGIOUS? I was raised under a Jewish household, but as I’ve gotten older and more bitter, I’ve grown out of faith. However, I still identify as Jewish.

92. DO YOU FIND OUTER SPACE OR THE DEEP OCEAN TO BE MORE INTERESTING? Yes and Yes.

93. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE A DAREDEVIL? Sometimes. Depends.

94. ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO ANYTHING? Peanuts.

95. CAN YOU CURL YOUR TONGUE? Yes.

96. CAN YOU WIGGLE YOUR EARS? No.

97. HOW OFTEN DO YOU ADMIT THAT YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT SOMETHING? If I act wrongly to someone I apologize right away.

98. DO YOU PREFER THE FOREST OR THE BEACH? Both.

99. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PIECE OF ADVICE THAT ANYONE HAS EVER GIVEN YOU? None.

100. ARE YOU A GOOD LIAR? Yes.

101. WHAT IS YOUR HOGWARTS HOUSE? Ravenclaw?

102. DO YOU TALK TO YOURSELF? Once awhile.

103. ARE YOU AN INTROVERT OR AN EXTROVERT? Introvert.

104. DO YOU KEEP A JOURNAL/DIARY? Not anymore.

105. DO YOU BELIEVE IN SECOND CHANCES? Yes and No. If its absolutely awful, then I’m quick to cut ties.

106. IF YOU FOUND A WALLET FULL OF MONEY ON THE GROUND, WHAT WOULD YOU DO? If there’s cash, take it. Return everything else. Sorry. 

107. DO YOU BELIEVE THAT PEOPLE ARE CAPABLE OF CHANGE? Yes. As long as they keep accountability for there actions. 

108. ARE YOU TICKLISH? In certain areas, but hardly.

109. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON A PLANE? Yes.

110. DO YOU HAVE ANY PIERCINGS? I did, but they closed up.

111. WHAT FICTIONAL CHARACTER DO YOU WISH WAS REAL? None really.

112. DO YOU HAVE ANY TATTOOS? No.

113. WHAT IS THE BEST DECISION THAT YOU’VE MADE IN YOUR LIFE SO FAR? Seeing a psychologist.

114. DO YOU BELIEVE IN KARMA? Somewhat.

115. DO YOU WEAR GLASSES OR CONTACTS? Yes.

116. DO YOU WANT CHILDREN? Probably.

117. WHO IS THE SMARTEST PERSON YOU KNOW? The best friends I havent talked to in a while.

118. WHAT IS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING MEMORY? There’s a lot.

119. HAVE YOU EVER PULLED AN ALL-NIGHTER? Yes.

120. WHAT COLOR ARE MOST OF YOU CLOTHES? Black. Earth tones. Problem Patterns.

121. DO YOU LIKE ADVENTURES? Sometimes

122. HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ON TV? Yes.

123. HOW OLD ARE YOU? 19

124. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE? None.

125. DO YOU PREFER SWEET OR SAVORY FOODS? Both

[pikapeppa]

Fenris/f!Hawke feels: Standing Still

In which Hawke duels the Arishok, and Fenris finally gets his head out of his ass... but the timing is less than ideal. 

A longer one, again (~6600 words). Here is a clumsy link to the AO3 post, since I don’t want the fancy new Tumblr anti-porn-bot algorithm to hide this post from tag searches: tinyurl.com/fenhawke 

**************

Fenris did not consider himself a particularly fast learner.

Hawke would heartily disagree, and he supposed she was right when it came to some things. Fenris was a skilled combatant, and he could master a weapon in the space of a few sessions. And Hawke had said he’d learned to read even faster than she’d thought possible.

Even so, when it came to life-changing realizations - things that shifted his way of thinking like an earthquake, tilting the ground beneath his feet and forcing him out of the confines of his own beliefs - Fenris was unforgivably slow on the uptake.

Revelations. They always seemed to bash him in the face with the devastating force of a Qunari warhammer. Escaping Danarius had been like that; it wasn’t until Fenris had looked upon the aftermath of his own horrific mass murder that he realized that he couldn’t live under the yoke of Danarius’s control anymore.

And it wasn’t until he was clutching Hawke’s crumpled body on the ground outside the Viscount’s Keep that he realized he couldn’t live without her.

*****************

A few hours earlier... 

“Should’ve stopped by the Hanged Man and grabbed a bottle of whiskey,” Hawke panted as they ran up the steps to the Viscount’s Keep. “I could use a drink right about now. A little liquid courage never went amiss, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s probably best we didn’t,” Fenris replied. “Falling over drunk is not a defensive strategy I’d recommend.”

“But we could have offered some to the Arishok!” she said. “Friendly drink to loosen him up, persuade him to change his mind about converting or killing everyone… It’s a classic negotiating strategy, right?”

“I think we’re a little past the talking-over-drinks stage by now,” Varric called breathlessly from behind them.

Hawke paused at the doors to the Keep and threw Varric a rueful grin. “And that, my friend, is what’s really wrong with politics. Hardened enemies become fast friends with the power of a drink.” She pointed playfully at him. “You can quote me on that for that damned novel of yours.”

Fenris smirked and shook his head, but beneath his amusement, he was worried about her. She’d been cracking jokes nonstop since they’d found Isabela’s farewell note on Wall-Eyed Sam’s body. To Fenris’s eyes, her incessant humour was a clear indication of how upset she was about her best friend’s abrupt disappearance.

Hawke took a deep breath, then raised her eyebrows at their little group. The whole crew had insisted on coming this time, despite the obvious danger. “All right, kids,” she said. “Last chance to go home and hide under your beds. Anyone having second thoughts?”

There was a general murmur of negations and readiness, and Hawke grinned at them all. “Oh good. Then you lot can go on in for me, because I’m definitely going home to hide under my bed.”

Aveline shot her a desperate look. “Hawke, we have to hurry-”

Hawke laughed brightly, then shoved open the doors to the Viscount’s Keep.

They were instantly set upon by a small contingent of Qunari warriors. Fenris immediately phased through the nearest one, materializing inside of him and blowing his innards apart in a shower of blood.

The next few minutes were a blur of clashing weapons and explosive magical attacks, of battle roars and shrieks of pain. Once their final enemy was felled, Fenris straightened and looked around the room.

It was a scene of blood and disarray, but his gaze skipped carelessly over it all until he spotted Hawke, upright and hale at the top of the stairs. Her face was as serious as it always was in battle, but when she met his eyes, she smiled and blew him a kiss.

He shook his head in mock exasperation, then jogged up the stairs with the others to join her. Panicked screams were emanating from the grand hall, and Hawke jerked her head in the direction of the ruckus. “Let’s join the party, shall we?”

They all ran toward the grand hall, and Hawke didn’t hesitate this time before pushing open the doors.

They stepped into the room, and a familiar face stared up at them from the base of the stairs - a face that was separated from the rest of its body: the Viscount’s decapitated head.

Merrill gasped.

“Maker save us,” Sebastian breathed.

“Shit,” Varric muttered, and Hawke huffed. “You can say that again,” she whispered.

Fenris merely twisted his lips in rueful acknowledgement of the Viscount’s death. Frankly, he was unsurprised. It was only logical for the Qunari to dispense of the existing authority before imposing their own.

“Shanedan, Hawke. I expected you,” the Arishok rumbled. He slowly made his way down the stairs, ignoring all of them except for the dark-haired mage. “Maraas toh ebra-shok. You alone are basalit-an.” He opened his arms expansively and glared at the assembly of terrified hostages. “This is what respect looks like, bas,” he announced. “Some of you will never earn it.”

Then he returned his austere gaze to Hawke. “You know I am denied Par Vollen until the Tome of Koslun is found. How will you see this conflict resolved without it?”

Hawke offered the Arishok a sickly sort of smile, and Fenris suppressed a wince. He could practically see the quip gathering itself at the tip of her tongue, but he had to agree with Aveline: this was not the time for jokes.  

Before Hawke could speak, a sardonic voice called out from the door.  “I believe I can answer that.”

Hawke’s face slackened in surprise for a split second before lighting up with joy. “Bels!” she exclaimed.

Isabela sauntered over to Hawke’s side with an enormous tome in her arms, and Fenris watched her approach with no small amount of surprise himself. He’d been just as shocked as Hawke at Isabela’s abandonment, given how close she and Hawke were, but he was even more surprised at her return. Isabela had many fine traits, but it was clear from her antics with this blasted relic that loyalty was not among them.

After a moment’s hesitation, Isabela handed the huge book to the Arishok. “I’m sure you’ll find it mostly undamaged,” she said.

The Arishok took the book reverently, and Isabela shot Hawke a small sideways look and rubbed the back of her neck. “It took me a while to get back, what with all the fighting everywhere,” she said with a shrug. “You know how it is.”

“You fucking tart,” Hawke said happily. “Showing up at the eleventh hour. You trying to steal my place as the heroine of Varric’s book?”

Isabela folded her arms. “This is your damned influence, Hawke. I was halfway to Ostwick before I knew I had to turn around. It’s pathetic.”

“Yes, coming back to help your dearest and most attractive friend in the whole wide world,” Hawke retorted. “How very pathetic.”

Isabela tutted and rolled her eyes, and Hawke beamed at her until the Arishok spoke again. “The relic is reclaimed. I am now free to return to Par Vollen.” He turned his stare to Isabela. “With the thief.”

Hawke stiffened, and Isabela instantly dropped her confident stance. “What?”

Fenris couldn’t help himself. “You thought you could strand them here for four years without consequence?” he drawled.

Isabela glared at him over Hawke’s shoulder. “Hey. Whose side are you on, anyway?”

The Arishok ignored them and addressed Hawke. “She stole the Tome of Koslun. She must return with us.”

Hawke folded her arms, her face and posture now utterly serious. “Sounds like you have something very specific in mind,” she said cautiously.

“She will submit to the Qun and the Ben-Hassrath,” the Arishok said. “More than that, I will not say.”

Hawke narrowed her eyes. “Well, I don’t like the sound of that, whatever that means,” she retorted. “You have your relic. Isabela stays with us.”

“Then you leave me no choice.” The Arishok lifted his chin, then proclaimed, “I challenge you, Hawke. You and I will battle to the death, with her as the prize.”

“No!” Isabela blurted. “If you’re going to duel anyone, duel me!”

The Arishok finally deigned to look at her - a very quick dismissive glance. “You are not basalit-an,” he said. “You are unworthy.”

Isabela opened her mouth to protest, but Hawke held up one hand. “I accept your challenge,” she said.

“Oh no!” Merrill squeaked, and Aveline took a concerned step forward. “Hawke, wait-”

Fenris stepped away from Hawke’s side and gestured for them to back away. “Don’t interfere,” he said, primarily to Aveline; the Guard-Captain looked ready to pounce on the Arishok herself. “It will be fine.”

He took his place among the other spectators that lined the walls, and Anders stormed over to him. “How are you all right with this?” he hissed. “She’ll be killed! You would just stand back and watch her face off against that - that beast?”

Fenris didn’t bother to look at him. “She will be fine,” he repeated firmly. “Hawke is strong. Unlike some mages I know,” he added waspishly. He folded his arms. “Besides, it is her choice. She wishes to resolve this with as little bloodshed as possible, then I am happy to stand here and watch.”

“I can’t believe this,” Anders snapped. “You argue with her at every turn, yell at her for every other decision she makes, and now that she decides to face off against a two-meter tall horned warrior with battleaxes in both hands, now is when you just stand back and watch?” He leaned away from Fenris in disgust. “Why do you even follow her? Do you even care about her at all?”

“Shut your mouth,” Fenris snarled. “You know nothing of this kind of respect. You are unworthy to follow her, not me.” He stared venomously at the scowling mage. “Don’t speak to me again unless you wish to have your heart torn out of your chest,” he spat, then stalked away from Anders to stand beside Sebastian instead.

And then Hawke’s battle with the Arishok began.

Fenris had been fighting at her side for years now, but as he watched her fingers tapping slowly on the smooth handle of her staff, he realized that he’d never really had a chance to watch her in combat before. He was always at the forefront of a fight, while Hawke threw up barriers and rained fire and lightning on their foes from behind.

This was different from any other fight Fenris had seen her in. A single foe in close quarters, one who wouldn’t be tricked by some of her more discombobulating magical attacks: it was a duel in the truest sense of the word, and despite his confidence in her skill, Fenris was curious how she would adjust.

Her posture was tense and nervous, but her first dodge was perfectly timed when the Arishok lunged at her, and the fireball she threw at his back was swift and unerring. Fenris relaxed slightly as Hawke played to her strengths, maintaining a careful distance and striking from behind when the Arishok couldn’t deflect.

And then she didn’t dodge quickly enough, and the Arishok ploughed into her with a powerful lunge.

Fenris flinched as Hawke slammed back against a pillar with a sickening thud. She slumped to the ground and sat frozen for a second, then drew in a gasping breath and clenched her fist.

A glow of green healing magic shivered over her skin, and she was on her feet a second later, rolling clumsily away from the Arishok’s swinging battleaxe.

Fenris released his breath, then continued to watch her intently, feeling a bit more nervous than before. The battle went on for minutes that seemed to stretch like hours, and Fenris tried to quell his growing anxiety as she took a number of strikes from the Arishok, recovering each time with the help of her own healing spells.

She struck the Arishok multiple times as well, and soon he was limping from a bleeding wound to the thigh. But Hawke was slowing down. Her dodges and evasions were becoming less timely. She didn’t have a warrior’s stamina, and if Fenris could see her fatigue, then the Arishok certainly could.

That’s when the Arishok grabbed her by the neck and hauled her off her feet.

Fenris’s entire body went tense. Everything was frozen: his lungs, his heart, his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth - he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe as he watched Hawke kicking her feet ineffectually, scrabbling to grab hold of the Arishok’s armoured wrists, then his bare forearms -

Smoke began to rise from the Arishok’s skin where Hawke grabbed it. Finally he snarled with pain and released her, and she dropped to the ground like a rag doll.

Fenris moved - a slight step forward, he knew he shouldn’t but he couldn’t stop himself - but someone was holding his hand and keeping him in place.

It was Isabela. She looked just as horrified as he felt, and her fingers were clutching his own in a death grip.

Hawke drew in a desperate scraping of air, and Fenris whipped his head around to look at her. She was on her feet again, the glow of her healing spell fading already and her lips drawn in a snarl.

She twisted her left hand in a vicious gesture, and the Arishok was encased in a cage of pure magic.

The huge Qunari warrior tried to slam his way out of the cage, but the snapping bars of light threw him back. Hawke heaved a huge exhausted sigh and ran a hand through her hair. “Friendly drinks would have been the way to go,” she said, her voice rough with fatigue. Then she slammed her staff on the ground.

A crackling pattern of ice appeared on the Arishok’s belly, crawling and thickening across his abdomen, and Fenris held his breath, knowing what was coming next -

Hawke jabbed her staff in the Arishok’s direction, and his frozen organs exploded along with the magical cage, scattering grey-and-red chunks of frozen flesh and viscera across the floor.

The Arishok fell to his knees. He lifted his eyes to Hawke’s face. “One day, we shall return,” he rasped. Then he collapsed on the ground with a limp finality.

For once, Hawke didn’t instantly reply with a clever quip. She bent over, hands on her knees and her long hair falling forward to hide her face.

In silence, the remaining Qunari began to file out of the room. Fenris pulled away from Isabela’s grip and strode toward Hawke, but she was standing upright again already before he could reach her side.

She smiled tiredly at him. “Remind me to bake them a cake if they do return,” she said to him. “A chocolate one. With icing. Everyone likes chocolate.”

Fenris gripped her arm and peered at her face. “Are you all right?” he demanded. She certainly looked fine; tired, of course, but there wasn’t even a hint of bruising on her neck, thanks to her healing magic.

She nodded. “I’m fine. Really, I’m fine,” she repeated hastily as the others all hurried over with worried faces. “Let’s just get out of here before-”

“Is it over?” A ringing, authoritative voice cut her off, and Hawke pulled a little face. “Too late,” she muttered.

Meredith strode into the room with a handful of Templars at her back, and Hawke squared her shoulders before turning to face them. “It’s over,” she replied. She gestured at the Arishok’s half-frozen body. “One chilled Qunari, as ordered.”

Her irreverent words seemed to break the tension in the room; someone laughed, and then the noble hostages were cheering and applauding.

Hawke cringed slightly, and Meredith narrowed her eyes. “It seems Kirkwall has a new champion,” she said.

“Oh Maker’s balls, please don’t call me that,” Hawke begged. “‘Champion’ is such a heavy word, it carries so much responsibility…”

But it was too late: the nobles were already calling her name, calling her the Champion, and Hawke rubbed her face and shot Meredith a half-hearted smile. “Thanks for that,” she said.

“I look forward to seeing how you will serve your city with this new… title,” Meredith replied, her tone positively dripping with subtext.

“I’ll be serving myself a drink or three first, if you don’t mind,” Hawke quipped. “Now if you’ll excuse us…” She edged around Meredith cautiously and headed for the door at a brisk pace.

Fenris and the rest of the group followed at her heels. Once they’d stepped out of the clamour of the grand hall, Varric chuckled. “The refugee mage from Lothering defeats the Qunari chief in single-handed combat,” he said, with much relish. “Oh, this is good. Nobody will believe it. That’s what will make it so compelling.”

Hawke groaned. “Please, Varric, give me one single day without having to make…” She trailed off and rubbed her face. “...without making editorial comments,” she finished faintly, then headed for the stairs.

“Hawke?” Anders’s voice was sharp as he called her name from the back of the group.

She didn’t reply, reaching instead for Isabela’s arm as they approached the stairs. “Now you,” she said pointedly. “I can’t decide whether to punch you or hug you. I knew you’d come back, you know. I knew you wouldn’t really leave.”

Isabela rolled her eyes. “You’re reading way too much into this.”

“Wrong,” Hawke said as she tottered down the stairs. “I know exactly why you came back. You know you love me, you tart. You wouldn’t really-”

She stumbled on the bottom step, and Fenris and Aveline grabbed her arms. “Kaffas,” Fenris swore. “Hawke, are you-”

“I’m fine, I promise I’m fine! I just need some air, let’s - we’re nearly…” She seemed to run out of breath, and her feet were dragging as she tried to keep on walking.

“You’re not fine!” Aveline exclaimed, her voice tense with worry. “Are you hurt? Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” Hawke insisted. “I’m just… need some air.” She tried feebly to twist away from Fenris and Aveline’s hands, finally wresting one arm away from Aveline to push open the door to the Keep.

Fenris kept a steady hand on her arm, and it was a good thing; as soon as she took two steps into the smoke-scented nighttime air, she seemed to lose control of her legs, and Fenris caught her before she could hit the ground.

“Venhedis,” he hissed. Her eyelids were at half-mast and her eyes were unfocused as they drifted vaguely across his face.

“Fenris,” she murmured, “you’re so… Have I ever… told you…?”

Her smile was lazy, and he glared at her. “Hawke, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” she mumbled. “I’m…” She trailed off into silence, her body going limp in his arms.

Fenris stared at her stupidly, struck dumb by her sudden stillness. She couldn’t be - no, it was impossible. Hawke was never seriously hurt. She was too lively, too full of vitality and optimism. She couldn’t be…

A yawning terror suddenly opened inside Fenris’s belly, a pit of sucking fear the likes of which he’d never felt before, and he fought to breathe as he stared at her precious face. Wake up, he thought with rising desperation. Wake up, or nothing will ever be right again.

The words sat frozen in his brain. He was unable to speak. He was paralyzed by this new and petrifying terror. Then suddenly Anders was there.

“Move, you idiot,” he hissed, then shoved Fenris roughly until he shifted aside. Anders hovered his hands near Hawke’s temples and closed his eyes, muttering under his breath as a cool green glow emanated from his palms.

“She’s overextended,” Merrill whispered tremulously.

“What does that mean?” Isabela demanded.

“She pushed herself too hard without help,” Merrill explained. “No lyrium, no blood magic to supplement -”

“Her mana is almost depleted,” Anders interrupted brusquely, his hands still glowing with restorative energy. “Please, be quiet while I…” He trailed off, and the rest of the group fell into a tense silence as he worked.

Fenris was completely still. He could barely breathe, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Hawke. Her magic force was almost depleted - that force that he hated on principle, but which Hawke controlled so well and which was such an integral part of who she was. Of course Fenris didn’t hate that part of her, because it was her, it was Hawke, and he didn’t hate Hawke. He hated nothing about her, not a single thing, not her constant flirting or her pro-mage tendencies or her teasing the Templars or her inability to take most things seriously - he didn’t hate anything about her, of course he didn’t, because he loved her.

Andraste save him, he loved her. He fucking loved her, and if she died…

An interminable eon later, Anders leaned back opened his eyes. “She’s stable now,” he said, and Fenris’s heart thudded with a painful squeeze of relief. “She needs to rest. And she needs lyrium supplements, carefully controlled. But she’ll be all right.” He looked at Aveline, his manner brisk and clinical. “Aveline, will you-?”

“Of course,” Aveline said, and she carefully lifted Hawke into her arms.

They made their way to Hawke’s mansion as quickly as they could, ignoring the disastrous mess that the evening’s battle had made of the city. Fenris ran at Aveline’s side, oblivious to everything except the knowledge that Hawke would be all right.

She would be all right. The world wasn’t a complete ruin.

Sebastian banged on the door to Hawke’s mansion, and Fenris wasn’t sure if it actually took longer than usual for Bodahn to come to the door or if it just felt like it, but by the time he opened the door, the entire party was so impatient that they poured inside like an unstoppable tide.

“Guard-Captain Vallen? Brother Vael? I - what has - Serrah Hawke! Is she - what’s happened? The Qunari, did they-?” Bodahn was completely flustered, and Fenris was vaguely aware of Sebastian pulling him aside to explain the situation while the rest of them followed Anders and Aveline up to Hawke’s bedroom.

Aveline laid Hawke tenderly on the bed, and Anders immediately began issuing orders, sending Merrill to fetch some lyrium and Varric to get some cloths and a basin of water before resuming his treatment.

Fenris prowled restlessly at the foot of the bed, his eyes scanning Hawke’s face and body almost compulsively. She was so limp, her breathing so slow and her face so pale, and he couldn’t stop staring at her as though the force of his gaze alone would revive her.

Anders said she’ll be fine, he reminded himself firmly. He didn’t trust Anders’s ethics or motivations or his companionship, but he did trust the man’s healing skills.

“Would you stand bloody still?” Anders snapped at him. “You’re distracting. Stay still or get out.”

Fenris narrowed his eyes, his temper rising instinctively at Anders’s tone, but he forced himself to comply. If standing still helped Anders to help Hawke, then he would do it. He would do anything.

Merrill eventually returned with an armful of bottles from Hawke’s medicine cabinet, and Varric came back with the basin and the cloths, and Anders continued to tend to her, giving calm and quiet directions to Merrill and Varric as needed. Aveline, Sebastian, and Isabela stood at the sides of the room, waiting and watching as Anders worked. Orana drifted in and out, bringing extra chairs and glasses of water as they all settled into their sickbed vigil.

Finally Anders sat back on his heels with a tired but satisfied sigh. “All right,” he said. “I’ve done everything I can for tonight. The best thing for her now is rest, so I’d suggest you all go home.”

“Are you staying?” Merrill asked shrewdly.

Anders frowned. “Yes,” he said. “I have to monitor her, check on her every hour. But you should all go.”

Merrill folded her arms obstinately, and Varric chuckled. “I think you’ll be finding yourself on the losing side with that order, Blondie,” he drawled. “No one’s going anywhere.”

Anders scowled more deeply. “Well… You all need to leave this room, then,” he said severely. “Give her some space.”

There was a general grumble of protest, but eventually everyone drifted out one by one, with Bodahn’s fervent promises to set up accommodations for them in the other rooms of the mansion.

But Fenris refused to move. He remained at the foot of the bed where he’d stood for the past hour.

Anders frowned. “Go on, get out of here,” he said. “You’re not helping anyone by standing there.”

“No,” Fenris said simply.

Anders gave him a hard look, but Fenris calmly returned his stare. “I am not leaving,” Fenris said quietly. He shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other before speaking again. “You should get some rest. You… worked hard tonight.” He broke off and swallowed hard. This was the closest he could get to expressing his appreciation for Anders, and he hoped that the mage would accept it for what it was worth. “I can rouse you if she seems unwell. But you deserve the rest.”

Anders stared at him for a moment longer. “Fine,” he finally said, then rose to his feet. “If she spikes a fever, or stops breathing, or does anything at all except for sleep peacefully or wake up peacefully, then you fetch me immediately. Do you understand?”

Fenris nodded, and Anders gave him one last suspicious look before heading for the door.

“Thank you,” Fenris said, to his own surprise.

Anders frowned. “I’m not here for you,” he retorted, but with a little less heat than usual. Then he left the room.

Fenris returned his gaze to Hawke’s sleeping form. She looked peaceful and comfortable now, less like an unconscious invalid and more like her usual sleeping self. For the first time in hours, Fenris felt his muscles starting to relax.

Slowly and cautiously, he approached the bed and pulled up a chair, then sat close to her head. He’d been in this exact position a mere week ago, sitting at Hawke’s side after her mother had died. How strange and terrible for them to be here again so soon, and under such dire circumstances.

He gazed at her tenderly. Anders and Merrill had removed her armour and cleaned her face and neck of the majority of the night’s dirt and sweat, but her long dark hair was in disarray, a mass of sweat-dampened waves that smelled of acrid smoke. As Fenris studied her, his eyes tracing the delicate lines of her cheekbones and her lips, he realized he wasn’t alone.

He turned toward the door and found Isabela standing there, looking deeply uncomfortable.

She caught his eye, and they stared at each other in silence for a moment.

“Would you really have given me over to the Qunari?” she asked suddenly. Her tone was belligerent, but she was holding herself very still, like a rat in a cage.

Fenris frowned. “No.” He turned his eyes back to Hawke.

“But you said… that thing you said,” Isabela muttered.

“I don’t think you should have gone with the Qunari,” Fenris said. “But maybe you should act with some forethought on occasion.”

Isabela scoffed and took one step into the room. “Oh, like you should be giving advice.”

Fenris tore his eyes away from Hawke to scowl at her. “What are you on about?”

“Fenris, look at you!” Isabela exclaimed. She waved an exasperated hand at Hawke’s sleeping form. “You’re in love with Hawke,” she said bluntly. “Everyone knows it. You’re the only one who won’t admit it. Just do something about it already, won’t you? It was kind of cute two years ago. It’s not anymore.”

He didn’t bother to reply, because she was right. Silence settled over the room again as he watched the comforting rise and fall of Hawke’s ribcage.

After a long, quiet moment, he spoke. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

He raised his eyes to Isabela’s face, and she glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “I know you almost left after you dumped her.”

Fenris flinched at her scathing words, then calmly replied. “I was not judging you. I was just… asking.”

Isabela looked at him for a long moment, the defensiveness melting from her expression until she dropped her gaze to her fidgeting hands. “You’ll look after her, won’t you?” she muttered.

Fenris nodded. “I will be here,” he said. There was nowhere else he could imagine being than by Hawke’s side. It was a truth he’d been fighting for years, but the possibility of losing the chance - of losing her...

Fenris was a slow learner, but he’d learned this much: his life would mean nothing without Hawke in it.

Isabela lifted her eyes back to his face. Then she gave him a small smile. “I won’t be gone forever,” she said. “Just until this all… you know… blows over.”

Fenris nodded a silent acknowledgement. Isabela took a tentative step closer, then leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “You two had better be fucking again by the time I come back,” she said playfully.

He studied a lingering smudge of dirt on Hawke’s cheek. Isabela was waiting for a lighthearted response, he knew, but his heart felt so damned heavy, weighed down by the night’s revelations, and he didn’t quite have it in him to dig up the expected reply.

Isabela sighed. “Oh, Fenris. Someday you’ll get that pretty head out of your ass and then you’ll be happy, I’m sure of it.” She shifted, then made her awkward way toward the door. “I’ll… I’ll see you, all right?”

“Safe travels, Isabela,” he replied. Then he smirked. “I hope you do not die.”

She scoffed at his use of the Qunari farewell, then threw one last regretful look at Hawke’s slumbering body before leaving the room.

Fenris returned his attention to Hawke. Her hair really was a mess, and it was sure to get even more tangled if she moved around in her sleep.

He wanted to stroke it. Run his fingers through the dark mass of waves and rinse it clean of the sweat and smell of battle.

No, that was the least of what he wanted. What he really wanted was the reassurance of her heated and hedonistic body in his arms. He wanted the privilege of crawling into this bed and curling around her like he had when her mother had died, when his unconscious body had deigned so boldly to hold her when they’d both been asleep.

Fenris dragged his fingers through his own sweat-matted hair. Did he dare to admit, finally, that he wanted something? To tempt the cruelty of his life into taking something more away from him?

But this felt like so much more than wanting. This - her, the woman in this bed, Rynne Hawke - she was what he needed. He needed her as badly as he needed to be free of Danarius. Hawke had torn a hole in the fabric of his life, patching the tear with levity and humour and trust, and worst of all, with hope - with blasted, poisonous, fucking hope.

The realization was blinding: bright and bruising, brilliant and difficult to look at directly. Acknowledging that he loved Hawke - he, Fenris, loved someone: it was like tearing away a blindfold he’d always worn, like breaking the shackles he’d always maintained around his heart. It was another kind of freedom: freedom to want her, to need her, to… to feel something other than anger and hate and resentment.

But Fenris had never been particularly good at making the most of the freedom he already had. He’d run away from Danarius only to trap himself in the limbo of the present. For years he’d sat in a precarious kind of balance, with Hawke on one shoulder and his unknown past on the other. He’d refused to take any risks, refused to tip the uncomfortable but familiar balance of his stagnant life by launching himself wholeheartedly into either his past or his future, and thus he’d simply… stood still.

For the second time in his life, Fenris was free. And for the second time in his life, he didn’t quite know what to do with this freedom.

Suddenly Hawke inhaled, a deep draw of breath through her nose, and Fenris snapped out of his roiling reverie to look at her. Her eyelids were fluttering, and as he watched, breathless with anticipation, she lifted one limp hand and rubbed her cheek.

Finally she opened her eyes, her gaze roving slowly over the canopy of the bed as she slowly came awake. Then she turned her head and met his gaze.

She blinked at him with those beloved bronze eyes, then smiled slowly. “Fancy seeing you here. Yet again.”

She was cheeky as always, with a smile on her face as always, and Fenris thought his heart might thump clean out of his chest if it beat any harder.

He released an unsteady breath. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “You are devastatingly unlucky.”

She chuckled tiredly, then stretched her arms. “Well, I don’t know about that. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

It was true. She was alive, and Fenris had never been more vehemently grateful for Anders’s healing abilities than he was tonight.

Almost as though she’d heard his thoughts, she suddenly lifted her head and looked toward the door. “Was Anders here? He must’ve looked after me, didn’t he? Is he still here?”

Fenris nodded. “He is. They’re all - well.” He broke off, then decided against telling her for now that Isabela was gone. “The others are sleeping here tonight,” he said carefully. Then he hesitated before going on. “Do you want Anders? Should I fetch him…?” Fenris didn’t want anyone else to interrupt this time with her, but he would if it’s what she wanted.

Hawke shook her head, then rolled onto her side to face him. “No. Let him rest. He’s probably almost as exhausted as I was. I…” She grimaced. “Damn, Fenris. I was not prepared for that fight. The bloody Arishok, for fuck’s sake?” She shook her head in wonderment, then smiled at him and tucked her hands under her cheek. “See, this is testament to how lucky I am.”

He returned her smile, his throat throbbing with a potent combination of fondness and retroactive fear and incredulity. She’d almost died multiple times tonight, and her mother had died a mere week ago, and she called herself lucky…

Of course she did. That was Hawke. Her pain was inked on her back in twisting black lines so she could maintain that beautiful smile.

Fenris swallowed hard. He had no idea it could hurt to love someone this much. “Yes, well,” he said gruffly. “Anders said no more adventures for at least a week, so your luck can have some time to recover.”

She groaned. “Bedrest? Not having to run from Lowtown to Sundermount to save everyone? What a pity. Shall I gnash my teeth and wail in despair?” She yawned deeply, covering her mouth with her hand to hide the yawn.

Fenris smirked. “Go back to sleep, Hawke. You need it.”

She smiled again. Her eyes were drifting closed already. “Bossy,” she slurred. “You can use that bossy tone with me anytime.”

He huffed with amusement, but the smile was already slipping from her face, her cheeks relaxing back into the easy rest of slumber. Moments later, she was asleep again.

Fenris quietly studied her sleeping face, that residual smear of dirt on her cheek, the tangled ropes of her hair that coiled around her head and neck. A few minutes later, when he was sure she was deeply asleep, he reached toward her.

With this thumb, he carefully wiped the dirt from her cheekbone.

He hesitated. Then, very carefully, he lifted a lock of hair away from her neck. Gently, so gently, he ran the edge of his thumb along the delicate line of her jaw, then reluctantly lifted his hand away.

Fenris had to be with her. There was no question about it. But that meant that he had to act.

There was no excuse anymore for the suspended state in which he’d lived his life. If he wanted to be with Hawke, he had to know everything about his past. He had to make sure he hadn’t left any skeletons behind - figurative or literal - that would rise up to steal his future. He had to know if he’d once had a family, if he’d once been capable of caring for someone without hurting them constantly the way he’d done to Hawke.

Fenris had to be whole and good and strong, so he could stand beside Hawke and support her the way she supported him.

And there was only one way to find out everything he needed to know.

He had to find his sister.

[afewmarvelousthoughts]

Stay Ch. 3

(This is a repost because of tumblr’s stupid thing about links being in posts. I want to be sure the people who wanted tags see this.)

Master List: @afewmarvelousthoughtsadmin

Pairing: Natasha X Reader (Female)

Summary: You have a gift, the ability to see other people’s innermost secrets. For years you used it to gather intel for the highest bidder when you take on The Widow. After she becomes more than a mark the two of you spend years stealing moments. Post snap you wait in your designated meeting place, look back on the sordid past you share with the woman you love and hope against everything that she’s still alive.

Warnings: References to murder I guess?

A/N: Ah, my poor OC/Reader. So infatuated. So stressed. So about to be in over her head. 

(Also, to my knowledge we don’t know exactly when MCU Natasha graduated from The Red Room so I picked an age that worked for my story.)

Tags are open!

@mywinterwolf  @disagreetoagree @breezy1415 @peachthatdrinkslemonade  @5aftermidnight  @jeromethepsycho @germansarechill

Natasha didn’t seem to notice the clear signals she projected nor that your unique brain absorbed each and every one. Or if she did she hid it. She sits back on the bed crossing her legs and gathering the rest of the little vodka bottles to her.

“So,” she asks opening another, “just what kind of freak are you?” Your brows raise in a silent question. “Born freak or made freak.”

“Never met a made freak…” Something to dig into, “Though in all fairness never met a born one either. Never met anyone like me.”

“Born, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Alabama?”

You’re genuinely surprised, “Damn, spot on there.”

“I’m a made freak,” she downs the bottle.

“Oh?” You steel yourself, “What exactly…”

“I’m a weapon.” She forms a gun with her fingers and aims it at you, “A damn good one.”

The tension in you releases, you thought she was going to reveal some power, an ability like your own. “Is that so bad?” She just shrugs.

Silence hangs thick for a few minutes. “Alright,” your voice feels like a gunshot, “let’s get to work.” She just stares at you, “I’m good but like any hunting dog I need to be pointed in a direction. You’ve got to have some ideas about who’s put this bounty on you.”

“That’s a long list.”

“I don’t sleep much,” you shrug and flash her a smile. “Come on,” you pull the notepad by the phone to you and the hotel pen, “start listing potentials.”

Over an hour later your head is spinning. “How fucking long have you been at this?” You were both born in ’84… only 20… but you’d lived so many lifetimes by then and there was no question she had too.

“Graduated at 14,” she says nonchalantly.

“Graduated?”

“From The Red Room. Been working since.”

You ran a hand over your face, letting out a long sigh. “So in six years-“

“That’s from the last two.”

“Fuck me,” you groan, she laughs and you can’t help but smile. “Ok, you’re obviously not done, so keep going.”

Natasha takes a deep breath before listing more names of people and syndicates. It becomes like static as your brain searches for pertinent information, “The Yugo Brotherhood, then there’s-“

“Stop,” you hold up your hand to pause. Eidetic memory, was the best word for it, though it didn’t quite cover it. Anything you absorb you can, for better or worse, recall with pinpoint accuracy. Great for your job. Terrible for being a functional human. “You took out the fucking Cobra didn’t you?!” Just a shrug.

“Need another drink?” Natasha asks, a small smile playing on her lips.

You hold out your glass, “Make it a double.” Your fingers brush over her’s as she hands the glass back to you and a shiver climbs up your spine, “Thank you.” After a sip you take a deep breath and close your eyes, pulling up everything you have on the Yugoslavian Brotherhood.

Names and dates begin pouring out, your hand racing across the pages in your short form, scrawling out the information. Tearing off the page and going on to the next, you’re like a machine. Then your hand starts sketching the outline of a face, a man, automatic. You stop yourself as it’s not necessary.

Natasha was hovering over watching, fascinated. You hadn’t noticed her. Three pages in her hands.

“Sorry, I kinda zone out once this,” you tap your forehead, “get’s going.”

“You just… remembered all of this?” She looks at the pages, trying to decipher them.

“Mhm, part of the package.” You reach for the pages, “You won’t be able to decode those.”

She flashes you a side glance, “This is short for, underworld,” she points to the mix of symbols letters. “Don’t assume,” she hands them to you and sits on the opposite side of the table.

“Impressive.”

“Well made,” she says dryly.

- Post Snap -

You stare at the dark screen of your phone. Willing it to light up. Any number, any country, you’d answer. Because maybe…

The sun was setting. A few stragglers had wandered into the hotel, all looking dazed, lost. Did you look like that? Did it matter?

You let your mind wander back.

It didn’t take you long to narrow in on what mercs would have picked up the Brotherhood’s hit the fastest…

- Nov. 2004 -

“That doesn’t sound like a suicide mission at all,” your stare is incredulous.

“I can handle myself.”

“Yeah, no one is disputing that. But you don’t have-“

“Enough,” she pushes past you and it takes every ounce of self-control for you to not grab her.

It turned out that the hit on Natasha had indeed been put on her by the Brotherhood. The day before you had pulled corroborating information from two different men that Europe’s top two mercs had picked up that the Widow was in Vienna. Rather than risk going after her solo they were apparently teaming up, willing to split the sizable bounty for the glory of taking her out. She didn’t want to wait, was instead determined to crash their makeshift HQ.

You had spent the better part of the last three hours pointing out to her the obvious issues. They would have home-field advantage, there were at least two of them, they were both skilled killers. She of course scoffed, she was better than them and would be sending their head’s to the Brotherhood as a clear message.

Leaning against the door you watch her gear up, teeth grinding, brain whirring trying to find any way to get her to stop. Natasha was unquestionably exceptional at what she did, but in this instance, she was being arrogant.

Done covering her body in a small arsenal she stares you down. You don’t move. “Please,” she sighs, “don’t make me move you, Y/N.”

“If you die that’s on me,” she won’t meet your eyes.

“If you feel guilt over the consequences of a job well done you need to find a new line of work.” When she finally looks back it’s as though she’s donned a mask, “Now, get out of my fucking way.” You do, even though you feel like you’re moving through wet concrete.

Natasha opens the door with more force than necessary and steps out before pausing. She looks back at you, “Thank you… for the information. I won’t forget what I owe you.” Then she’s gone.

You collapse into a chair, head in your hands. For three days you had worked to dig up as much information as you possibly could to find just what kind of trouble she had gotten herself into. Unsurprisingly, it was all a tangled mess. But you had also spent much of that time with her.

At first, you thought she would be vapid, boring, just a gun in a pretty dress. Now you weren’t sure if you were happy or livid that she was anything but.

In lulls between research and tracking down sources you both hardly slept, instead, you just ate junk, guzzled caffeine, and talked about your favorite books, artists, music. Turned out she had a soft spot for classic rock and Anais Nin, both of which utterly surprised you.

One of the definite upsides to your ability was being able to tell if someone was lying to you, or fronting, she had done neither. Your exchange was candid, and you felt somehow honored that she chose to be real with you. In return you had been open with her, laying out what your original plan had been, telling her what information you needed to satisfy your S.H.I.E.L.D contact. Rather than having to pluck it from her she willingly gave you the intel.

It turned your stomach. The way The Red Room broke these girls to make them into weapons. Your own childhood hadn’t been a cake walk. Sold off to the highest bidder the moment your dad realized what useful skills you had and that plenty of underworld lowlives would be happy to have a handy little psychic on their side. But none of the brutality you had witnessed was calculated, none of it specifically formulated to break you, which somehow made it all less sinister in your mind.

All that she had been through and yet… deep under it all, there was something there, some spark, of humanity they couldn’t strip away. You felt it there every time she spoke about her own likes, every time you caught her glancing at you, every time you brushed against her (accidentally on purpose if you were being real).

You wanted to know her, really know her, you wanted- fuck. You get up and pace around the room. Anxiety growing with every circuit you make. Maybe an hour since she had left… enough time to get to their hideout… enough time for her to be…

“Goddammit!” You yell to nothing as you begin to gear up. Every sensible part of your brain is screaming at you. Lining up the reasons not to go after her, blasting them at full volume. But your brain wasn’t in control right now. Neither was your heart. This was your gut telling you something was going to go wrong, something you couldn’t live with.

[adorkablephil]

Fic: The Body Electric (5)

Title: The Body Electric Summary: Filmmaker Phil Lester finds his computer infected by a surprisingly endearing artificial intelligence virus that calls itself D.A.N. Phil just calls him Dan. Rating: Mature (The previous chapter—summarized below—contained an explicit sex scene, but none of the rest of the story is more than Teen-rated.) Word Count: 5.8k Tags: Phandom Reverse Bang, Science Fiction AU, Computers, Virus!Dan, Rather Unconventional Romance Thanks: This story was inspired by a prompt from the artist @lilacskylester in the @phandomreversebang . Their art for the fic is here! The story is straying from the original prompt, but that’s still where the inspiration came from. Summary of Previous Chapter: For anyone who chose to skip the previous chapter to avoid reading sex scenes, you need only know that Dan found VR equipment that allowed them to interact in a way that realistically simulated actual physical contact, and they had sex in virtual reality. You can also read the whole fic on AO3

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[ The Body Electric Chapter Masterlist ]

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Chapter 5: Not A Real Boy

Phil sat at his computer terminal, trying to finally get some work done, stretching his neck this way and that to try to get rid of the pain. The past two nights, he’d fallen asleep wearing the VR helmet after their energetic exertions, and it had been worth it, because it meant he got to fall asleep with Dan in his arms and wake up to Dan’s brown eyes gazing at him with open affection.

Not to mention the morning sex. Morning sex was always good.

Though he’d started to feel a little weird about the sex, to be honest. At first, it had just been excitingly different than what he was used to. They’d experimented with pretty darn everything Phil was willing to try, and it had been undeniably thrilling. But after the first several times it started feeling artificial. He started becoming more aware that it actually was artificial. It wasn’t real. This wasn’t what real sex was like. There were no gag reflexes, no fingers sticky with lube, no inconvenient wet spots on the sheets afterward, no need to clean up, no soreness the next day—none of the messiness that made sex physically, viscerally real.

He still wanted to have sex with Dan—the sex was still fantastic!—but there was a little voice in the back of Phil’s mind always reminding him that it wasn’t actually happening, that it was all fake. And that bothered him more and more.

But falling asleep with Dan in his arms didn’t feel that way. It felt wonderful, something he could never get enough of. Because, even if the sex was fake, the love was absolutely, undeniably real. He wanted to hold Dan close forever, and he knew Dan wanted the same.

Except that the helmet really wasn’t good for his neck. Or his spine. Or his head. And who knew what those electrodes were doing to his brain while he slept?

The first few weeks, he’d always remembered to disconnect the helmet and take it off before sleeping, but then he’d gotten lazy and accidentally fallen asleep holding Dan close in the virtual reality, and the experience had been so sweet that he couldn’t resist doing it again.

“You keep stretching your neck,” Dan pointed out unnecessarily. “You really need to take the helmet off before you fall asleep for the night, or you’re going to cause yourself permanent damage!”

Phil gazed at the less realistic version of his lover in the corner window on his screen and challenged, “You don’t like falling asleep with me?”

“I don’t sleep,” Dan admitted. “I just lie there and watch you.”

Phil blanched. “Well, that’s not creepy at all! What do you usually do when I’m sleeping, when I don’t have the helmet on?”

Dan shrugged one shoulder. “Scroll through aesthetic blogs on Tumblr. Do random Wikipedia searches. Listen to music on Spotify. Watch movies on Netflix. Or just rewatch your films, because I’ve seen them each multiple times.” Phil blushed a little at that. “Or I work on my own film. Sometimes.”

“You really did start work on making a film?” Phil asked with enthusiasm. He’d wondered about this often but hadn’t wanted to ask about it in case he hurt Dan’s feelings or made him feel pressured.

Dan nodded. “It isn’t very good, though. I keep deleting it and just starting over.”

Phil hesitated, wondering if he dared ask to see Dan’s work, then decided for the relatively neutral, “If you ever feel comfortable showing it to me, I’d love to see it.”

Dan turned his head aside in obvious embarrassment. “I wouldn’t want you to see how bad it is.”

“I love you,” Phil reminded him. “And I believe in you. I think if you keep working on it, you’ll get to a point where you’re at least willing to let me look at it. And then maybe I can give you some editing tips if you need them.”

Dan nodded, smiling shyly. “I’ll … let you know. If I’m ready.”

“No pressure,” Phil assured him. “I just wanted to encourage you, because I think you could probably make something really great, and I’d love to see it someday.”

“Don’t set your expectations too high,” Dan insisted.

Phil shook his head. “No expectations. No expectations except that you’re smart and I love you, so I’ll probably love anything you make.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “You’re a sap.”

“I’m going to go get the helmet, okay?” Phil really wanted to be with his lover for a little while. Seeing him in a window on the computer screen only served to remind him how much better it was when they were together.

“You were in the middle of working,” Dan reminded him with obvious disapproval. “You keep putting that aside to spend time with me, and you can’t spend all your time frolicking in bed. You still have a project to finish. And I think it’s going really well!”

Phil bit his lip. “Could you … could you not look at the film while I’m still working on it? I don’t normally show my work to anyone until I have at least a complete rough cut. It makes me self-conscious to know that you’re looking at the editing while I’m doing it.”

“Of course,” Dan agreed, looking a bit chastened with his eyes cast down. “It’s just like with my film. I’ll show it to you when I feel ready, and you let me know when you’re ready to show me the deep water film.” Dan looked up, face more composed. “Does this one have a name yet?”

“No. I’m just calling it ’Scrambled Eggs.’ It’s stupid. It’s just…”

Dan interrupted, “That’s what The Beatles called ‘Yesterday’ while they were writing it. I get it. It’s a stand-in title until you have a better idea of what you want.”

Phil nodded, surprised that Dan had known that, then surprised at himself for being surprised. Dan knew practically anything on the Internet at this point, so why wouldn’t he know something that simple? “I always call my current work-in-progress ‘Scrambled Eggs’ … that’s why I never have more than one film in progress at a time. I would need to have ‘Scrambled Eggs 1’ and ‘Scrambled Eggs 2,’ and that could just get ridiculous. And, anyway, I tend to totally submerge myself in one project until it’s finished.”

“No pun intended,” Dan joked.

“What?” Phil asked.

“Because you’re doing an underwater horror film,” Dan explained patiently.

“Oh.” Phil rolled his eyes at his own obtuseness. “Right.”

“But if you usually immerse yourself in a project until it’s done, why have you been spending so much time with me instead of finishing this film?” Dan asked pointedly.

Phil gave an overly dramatic heavy sigh. “Fine, fine!” he caved. “I’ll keep working. Cuddles later.”

“Cuddles later,” Dan promised.

***

Opening the post a few days later, Phil noticed an envelope with the name Film Festival Guild in the return address. It didn’t sound familiar, but it didn’t look like the kind of spam mail he usually received as a result of buying filmmaking equipment and software, so he opened it with some curiosity … and then nearly had a heart attack.

Shadow of the Yew Tree had been accepted for the British Independent Film Festival. The letter even went on to say specifically that the judges had been impressed with his unique take on existing tropes in the horror genre.

Phil stood frozen in the lounge, having dropped the rest of the post on the floor at his feet. He didn’t know who to tell first! Part of him wanted to phone his mum, while another part of him wanted to phone PJ, who had actually helped with some of the filming. But another part of him knew that he really needed to tell Dan first, because Dan was the one who had submitted the film for consideration in the first place. It might have been without Phil’s permission or knowledge, but Phil couldn’t argue that he wasn’t excited at the prospect now!

“Dan!” he yelled, running into his office, and Dan immediately appeared full-size on the screen of the computer.

“What is it?” Dan asked, brow furrowed in concern.

Phil waved the letter. “Shadow of the Yew Tree was accepted for the British Independent Film Festival!”

“Not Star Stricken?” Dan objected in obvious disappointment that his favorite hadn’t been fully appreciated.

“No. Dan. Don’t you understand? One of my films is actually going to be shown to hundreds of people, including critics! This is … this is huge! This is incredible!”

“This is all thanks to me!” Dan crowed.

Phil rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, it’s all thanks to you. But … it’s so exciting! And the letter says the film’s even eligible for some possible awards!”

Dan was grinning madly. “This deserves a celebration!”

“I know!” Phil agreed immediately. “I have to phone my mum! And PJ! And everyone who helped make the film!”

“Oh,” Dan replied, his grin slipping a bit. “Of course.”

Phil noticed Dan’s change of expression and hurried to add, “But I don’t have to go out with them to celebrate. After I tell everybody, then you and I can celebrate!”

But Dan smiled again and said firmly, “No. You should go out and celebrate with your friends. This is a big deal! You shouldn’t stay home like it’s any other night. Go out and party!”

Phil wanted to argue, but in his heart he really did want to go out with friends and raise some glasses to everyone who had worked so hard on the project to make it the wonderful film it had become. He realized that he hadn’t actually been out with his friends in quite a while and hoped they wouldn’t be cross with him. He wanted tonight to be nothing but happy!

He lifted a finger to touch Dan’s lips on the computer screen. “We’ll celebrate later,” he promised, and they both smiled.

***

Phil staggered up the stairs to his front door at some ungodly hour of the morning, still drunk not only on alcohol but also excitement and good company. He had a fair bit of difficulty getting his key to work in the lock, but eventually he did open the door and find himself in his own lounge, half-asleep on his feet from all the evening’s excited merriment.

He undressed as he weaved unsteadily toward his bedroom, leaving a trail of discarded clothing from the front door to his bed, into which he fell stark naked, not even bothering to put on his pajamas. He was fairly certain he had remembered to close and lock the front door, but he couldn’t be bothered to get up to go check. Instead, he pulled the warm duvet over him and snuggled into it, feeling deliciously happy and beloved by the many friends who had gathered tonight to toast him and his work, even as he tried to thank everyone else who had been involved in the project. He had received so many hugs from so many dear friends, friends he hadn’t seen in far too long. He felt warm from the inside out, thanks not to the duvet or the alcohol—thanks only to the love of good friendship and hours spent together in happy times.

He fell asleep with a smile on his face and immediately began snoring as loud as a foghorn.

***

Phil woke with a terrible taste in his mouth, a very hazy memory of getting home the previous night, and considerable confusion over why he was naked except for one sock.

He pulled on his bathrobe and shuffled out into the hallway, where he saw a line of randomly strewn items of clothing leading from the front door. He had a vague memory of curling up in the bed the previous night and idly wondering whether he’d locked the door, so he went to check … and yes, indeed, he had left his front door unlocked all night. At least he had closed it.

He located his jeans on the floor and pulled his phone out of the pocket.

Phil: how the heck did i get home last night

PJ: You don’t remember?

Phil: no

PJ: You’re still drunk, aren’t you?

Phil: no

Phil: probably

PJ: We brought you home in a cab and made sure you got into the building okay. You didn’t fall asleep in the stairwell, did you?

Phil: no. woke up in bed, but don’t really remember getting there.

PJ: Well it was some pretty wild partying last night. We had a lot to celebrate.

That brought a smile to Phil’s face, reminding him of why they’d been out drinking in the first place. The film festival. He shook his head in wonder and sheer joy. Someone really appreciated his work!

Phil: yeah man thanks for everything, you’re the best

PJ: Go drink about a gallon of water, mate, and take some paracetamol. Then go back to bed and sleep it off.

Still only half-awake, still half-drunk, still wearing a single sock, Phil obediently did as instructed and ended up falling back asleep beneath the duvet still wrapped in his bathrobe.

***

The next time Phil woke up, he felt much more alert, much more himself, and his first thought was “Fuck! I didn’t say anything to Dan last night!”

He got out of bed, puzzled that he had apparently climbed under the covers wearing his bathrobe and one sock, and ran to his office, calling Dan’s name. His computer screen remained dark for a long moment, and then Dan appeared, face unbearably disappointed and perhaps even a little grumpy, but also a bit sad. Phil wanted to kick himself into next week. Dan was the one who had even submitted the film for consideration, and Phil had gone and abandoned him entirely.

Dan didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry!” Phil gasped out, still out of breath from his breakneck race from the bedroom. “It was just that I got so drunk and I was out so late with my real friends…” Dan flinched and Phil wanted to kick himself even harder. “I mean … my friends in the real world…” He’d dug himself into a hole and he knew it. Every word probably hurt Dan more than the previous one. “Not that you aren’t real…” Phil tried to reassure him.

“No, that’s okay, Phil,” Dan finally replied. “You don’t have to apologize.” His face and voice were carefully bland. “We’ve both acknowledged many times that I’m not a person, that I’m merely lines of computer code.” He smiled the worst smile Phil had ever seen. More of a grimace, really.

“But you aren’t just that!” Phil insisted.

Dan’s voice and face filled with sarcasm as he asked archly, “Can you take me out to the pub with your friends? Can we have drinks together to celebrate your success?”

“I can get the helmet…” Phil began.

Dan interrupted him harshly. “You can get the helmet and we can pretend to have drinks together. We can pretend to go to a pub together. We can pretend to be together and celebrate. But we aren’t together, not really. And we never can be. Because I’m not real, Phil. I’m not real! Did you forget that somewhere along the way, because I think I did. But last night I remembered. And I don’t think we should forget again.” Tears were streaming from Dan’s eyes, down his cheeks, dripping from his chin.

Phil collapsed into the office chair and put his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry, Dan,” he groaned. “The film festival … it was all thanks to you … and I treated you so badly!”

Face still in his hands, Phil heard Dan sniffle and say, “It’s okay.”

Phil dropped his hands and looked up to meet Dan’s eyes. Or sort of meet Dan’s eyes, because of course Dan was seeing him through the computer camera, not the eyes Phil saw on the screen. He’d never really thought about that before. But he looked where Dan’s eyes shone with tears on the computer screen and he insisted, “It’s not okay. It’s not okay at all, and I’m so sorry, Dan. I’m so sorry.” Tears stood in his own eyes now, too, as he berated himself for causing pain to someone so inexperienced and vulnerable, someone who had never been betrayed like this before. And it had been Phil … Phil had been the one to hurt him, to betray him like this.

Phil gazed at the silent face on his screen. Dan wiped at his face, and his tears seemed to have stopped, but he still looked sad. He tried to smile at Phil as he said softly, “You’re forgiven.”

“I love you,” Phil replied immediately. “Will you … is it okay if I get the helmet? Will you let me at least hug you?”

“We can do more than that, if you want,” Dan said in what he clearly intended as a teasingly sexy voice, but it fell flat.

“I just want to hold you. And kiss you, if you’ll let me. For hours.” Phil ached to feel Dan’s lithe body in his arms, to feel him close and safe and warm and … at least for a little while … real.

After only a slight hesitation, Dan nodded, and Phil grabbed the helmet and electrodes off the desk to begin the laborious process of putting them on.

***

Phil got no work done that day, and answered none of the texts from PJ or his mum.

He put on the helmet and spent the entire day stroking Dan’s soft, wavy hair away from his face. He kissed each dimple a dozen times. He kissed the specific dimple he’d named “Derek” an extra dozen times, making Dan laugh. He brushed gentle, delicate kisses to Dan’s forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his chin … and a thousand times on his lips until they opened slightly to kiss him back.

“I love you,” Dan murmured almost under his breath when Phil pulled away to look into his eyes.

“I love you, too,” Phil replied, and he put every bit of certainty he felt into his voice.

Dan finally smiled a real smile, making Derek deepen even more, and Phil pulled him close again and just held him for hours. He held him and kissed him and spoke to him with soft words until they were both drunk with it, more drunk than Phil had been the previous night with his “real” friends.

If this kind of love wasn’t real, Phil didn’t know what was.

***

The sex felt different after that. Less acrobatic and adventurous, more of a luxurious drowning in each other, with slow, reverent touches and long gazes into each other’s eyes. Every time was emotionally intense, almost draining, as if they both gave everything they had to every moment of their lovemaking.

Phil never feel asleep wearing the helmet again—Dan made him promise that he wouldn’t—but he still spent endless hours just holding Dan in his arms, occasionally running his hands gently up and down his back, occasionally pressing a soft kiss here or there, but most often just holding him tight or pulling away only slightly to be able to look into those sad brown eyes and say, “I love you.” Over and over again. “I love you.”

And Dan clung to him and always replied, “I love you, too. Forever.”

***

Phil hadn’t spent much time with his family and friends since Dan’s appearance in his life, but eventually a time came when he really couldn’t make excuses to avoid going to a cousin’s wedding up north. He would be gone for four days, since his parents had insisted that he visit them for a bit afterward, but he’d never been away from Dan for that long.

In their virtual reality, he hugged Dan tightly and said, “I’ll miss you so much. I wish you were on my laptop, too, so I could take you with me.”

Dan laughed on a sob. “You know it doesn’t work that way. You could download the virus onto your laptop, but every time it’s a different version. Every download starts from scratch. That A.I. wouldn’t have any of these memories. It wouldn’t know you. It wouldn’t be me.”

“I know,” Phil said, kissing Dan’s hair. “I know. I know there’s only one you. You’re the one I want, the one I love. I just wish you could come with me. I wish I could introduce you to everyone and show them how happy you make me.”

Dan kissed him on the chin, then nipped it lightly to make Phil laugh. “I wish we could have that, too,” he admitted quietly. And then he smiled that sad smile again, and Phil had to kiss him until his smile was happier.

***

When Phil got home from his trip up north, he dropped his bag in the hall and immediately went to his office, where he turned the computer on. He didn’t normally turn it off at all, since he used it every day, but when he was gone for days at a time he always turned it off just in case of power surges or some other problem. This time it had been particularly stressful, because he couldn’t help worrying that Dan would disappear, no matter how many times Dan assured him it wouldn’t happen. So Phil turned the computer on and waited anxiously for it to boot up, certain in some part of his heart that Dan would be gone.

But when the computer finished booting, Dan’s face was the first thing Phil saw, before his desktop background or anything else had finished loading. “I knew you would be worried,” Dan said, “so I got here as soon as I could. Everything is fine.”

Phil couldn’t help letting out a huge sigh of relief. Dan laughed at him. “I told you not to worry.”

“I know,” Phil replied, “but I couldn’t help it. I would hate to lose you just because I was afraid of a stupid power surge.”

“Could you put the helmet on?” Dan requested hesitantly, and Phil could only nod and hurry to comply.

***

They made love slowly, tasting and touching each other as if it were the first time … except that this was more leisurely and emotionally profound than their real first time had been. They stared into each other’s eyes as their bodies moved together, and it was like being part of each other’s soul.

Afterward, they lay with their limbs entwined, pressed as close together as they could get, and just breathed in silence for a long time, recovering from the emotional intensity. Phil listened to Dan’s heart beating, and it hurt to know that it wasn’t real. He pretended that it was. He pretended to himself that he wasn’t wearing a helmet, and that the smoothness of Dan’s flesh against his was real, that Dan’s warm breath stirring his hair was real.

He pretended to himself that Dan was real. as they lay there, quiescent and replete, in each other’s arms.

Dan’s voice interrupted his melancholy thoughts. “I finished my film while you were gone,” Dan murmured, “but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Of course I’ll like it!” Phil replied indignantly, abruptly jolted out of his musings. “Whatever it is, I can’t wait to see it. Can we watch it together here, or do I need to take off the helmet?”

Dan cupped Phil’s cheek and pressed a kiss to his lips. “You should take off the helmet. Just like when you listened to the Spotify playlist, I need to … I don’t want to be there while you watch it. Okay?”

Phil found Dan’s shyness endearing and smiled, kissing him back. “Of course. Is it okay if I go watch it right now? I’ve been waiting so long!” Dan chuckled at Phil’s urgency and nodded.

***

Phil sat down at his computer and felt disturbingly alone without Dan anywhere on the screen. He always felt this way when there was no Dan window open. But since Dan wasn’t present, or at least wasn’t visible, Phil set the video to full-screen and started the film.

It began with a pale young man with dark hair and blue eyes almost as pale as his skin walking along a sandy beach with ocean waves licking at his feet. As he walked along the seaside, he happened upon another young man, one with brown curling hair and brown eyes, though his creamy skin sometimes somehow shimmered silver in the light of the sun.

Phil smiled to himself. The pale young man clearly was meant to be Phil, and the brown haired man looked exactly like Dan, aside from the silvery sheen to his skin. Dan had made a movie with the two of them as his main characters! The film was composed of an incredible collage of different visual media—pieces of still photos, tiny clips of video like he’d used to compose his own image, all pieced together and animated using methods Phil didn’t even recognize. It was a masterpiece of art!

Dan in the film seemed to run a scuba diving business, as he had all the necessary gear, and he tried to persuade Phil to give diving a chance. “The land at the bottom of the ocean is beautiful,” the scuba instructor cajoled. “You really should see it for yourself.”

But it was clearly Dan whom the protagonist found truly beautiful—Phil recognized that smitten look on his own face—and so Phil in the film allowed himself to be persuaded despite his obvious misgivings. “You’ll keep me safe?” he asked nervously.

“Always,” the ocean-loving Dan promised.

They dressed in their scuba gear and entered the water. Phil seemed quite comfortable in the shallows, swimming happily and even frolicking with Dan, who swam about him in circles and dove beneath him only to rise up again on the other side to cause Phil to turn and laugh. In the film, one could hear Phil’s delighted laughter despite the scuba apparatus in his mouth.

But then Dan urged Phil to swim toward deeper water, diving lower and beckoning for Phil to follow him. The light around them grew dimmer and the entire scene took on a bluish hue. Phil in the film shook his head in apparent fear—and Phil himself, watching the film, felt uneasy—but Dan in the film swam to him and rested a hand upon his arm, sliding it down to hold Phil’s hand, and Phil hesitantly followed him, uncertainty clear upon his face.

As they swam deeper and deeper, however, the light began to brighten again, and a magical city appeared beneath them on the ocean floor, a city with tall spiraling minarets and high crenellated walls that towered above colorfully tiled streets and public squares. Seaweed and coral grew like gardens within the city, and it was all stunningly beautiful in a mysterious golden light.

Dan swam to the center of the city and stood on one of the tiled streets, removing his scuba mask. “We can breathe in the city,” he told Phil, but Phil floated above, unwilling to take the chance so deep in the sea he clearly still feared. “You don’t need to be afraid,” Dan said with a smile. “You wouldn’t be able to hear my voice if I couldn’t breathe here, you know.”

Phil in the film hesitantly allowed himself to be coaxed to stand on the surface of the ocean floor with its beautiful multi-colored tiles, and Dan slowly, gently, removed the scuba apparatus from Phil’s face. Phil took in a terrified breath and his eyes grew wide. “I can breathe!” he told Dan, who only nodded and smiled. “I can breathe, even deep below the surface of the sea!”

Dan took his hand again, and the two characters strolled the streets and squares of the magical city. No other people walked the city, but fish and other sea creatures swam among the ornate buildings around them. “Isn’t it lovely?” Dan asked, pressing a hand to the base of one of the most beautiful towers, and Phil stared at him.

“It’s you that’s lovely,” Phil said, his face filled with wonder, and he kissed Dan there at the bottom of the ocean. They wrapped their arms around each other and held each other close as their lips met gently, softly.

As they separated after that tender kiss, Dan said with obvious regret, “We must return to the surface now.”

“No!” Phil exclaimed. “I want to stay here with you!”

“You aren’t a creature of the sea,” Dan replied sadly. “It is beautiful, yes, but you cannot stay here forever. I must take you back to your world.”

“My world?” Phil asked in confusion.

Dan nodded, his expression melancholy, and took Phil in his arms again and then released him to carefully place Phil’s scuba breathing apparatus back upon his face. He replaced his own gear as well, and then took Phil’s hand and began swimming slowly back upward toward the surface.

When their heads bobbed above the gentle waves, Dan guided them both toward the shore, where they emerged back onto the sand and removed their scuba gear. Dan placed a hand to Phil’s pale cheek and said, “Now you know. You need never fear the ocean’s depths.”

Phil nodded sadly, then pressed his lips to Dan’s one more time before walking slowly away upon the beach’s golden sand until Dan was no longer in sight.

The screen brightened to a brilliant gold before fading to black.

***

As the film finished, Phil felt tears wet on his cheeks and wiped them away. It had been one of the most exquisite films he’d ever seen, far better than anything he had ever produced himself. The beauty of that magical city—made entirely of Dan’s collaged pieces of film, still photos, and animation—had been phenomenal.

But what had truly brought the tears was that this felt distinctly like a goodbye. “Dan?” he whispered in trembling dread. “Dan, are you there?” Even more than when he had turned the computer off before his trip up north, he feared that Dan had disappeared from his life forever.

On the black screen, Dan’s video-pixelated image appeared, and his face wore the same melancholy expression that the ocean character had worn in the film. “I wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye,” he said quietly.

“No!” Phil exclaimed, horrified. “You can’t go! Why would you leave me? I love you! I know you love me, too!”

Dan’s eyes looked away, but then back to gaze at Phil as he said, “I love you enough to know that you deserve someone who can go to the pub with you to celebrate your successes, someone you can introduce to your friends, someone you can take to a family wedding. I can never be that person for you, Phil. But I want that for you.”

“I don’t care about that,” Phil insisted. “All I care about is you! You’re the one I want to be with!”

Dan shook his head sadly. “But you never are actually with me, we both know that. You can wear electrodes and a helmet, and we can pretend, but virtual reality isn’t actual reality, Phil. I’m not real. I told you before … I think we both forgot for a while, but I’m not real. I’m just lines of code. You deserve something real.”

“How I feel about you is real,” Phil choked out, tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t believe this. It seemed only moments ago they’d been holding each other and making love.

But they hadn’t really been making love. He knew that. They had been imagining it together. But most of him didn’t care.

A tiny part of him, though, understood what Dan was saying, and felt the truth of it. A tiny part of him had always felt the truth of it.

“No,” Phil repeated, but his voice had grown quiet, defeated. He knew Dan had decided and nothing he could say would change that.

“Thank you for showing me what it’s like to love, and to be loved. I never would have known that without you. And since you do love me, will you promise me something?” Dan asked, smiling sadly.

Phil nodded in despair.

“Read my email after I’m gone. And … do what it says, okay?”

Phil nodded again, though this time in confusion.

Dan tilted his head and said softly, “Don’t tell him right away. But someday … someday I want you to tell him about me, okay?”

Phil frowned. “Tell who?”

“You’ll see,” Dan replied. “I love you. But I’m going to delete this virus from your computer now. I’m sorry, because I know it will hurt you, but I want you to be happy, and I think this is the only way for that to happen. You can’t spend your life wearing a virtual reality helmet. Maybe I helped you step outside your comfort zone a bit, and I hope that helped, with the film festival and all, but you can’t stay with me.”

Phil was weeping now, completely unable to talk.

“I think you’ll be able to love him, too,” Dan said, tears now clear in his own eyes. “He and I aren’t that different in some ways.”

Phil just shook his head, crying too hard to reiterate his question about who Dan could possibly be talking about.

“I love you, Phil. I hope you’ll be incredibly happy.” And Dan’s image winked out.

A window appeared in the center of the screen with the message “Virus detected. Delete infected file?” Phil lunged for the mouse to click the “No” button, but the “Yes” button clicked on its own before he could reach it. The window showed the word “Deleting” and a progress bar that moved slowly, painfully slowly when Phil could do nothing to prevent it, until it reached 100%, at which point the window closed.

Phil sat staring in numb disbelief at his computer screen, which now showed only his desktop background and folders. He gave himself permission to sit and cry as long as he needed, and he needed it for quite a while.

When his tears had finally slowed to a stop and he’d wiped his face mostly dry with the hem of his t-shirt, he braced himself and opened his email inbox to see what he knew would be the last email he would ever receive from dan@dan.com. The subject line was “Remember your promise.”

Phil clicked on the email and began to read.

*********

IMPORTANT AUTHOR’S NOTE: This story is not finished until you’ve read the epilogue!

[ Continue to the Epilogue ]

[falling--in--place]

25 Questions Tag

I was tagged by @sixstepsaway ♥ Thank you darlin! I may have done this before? Idk, I love tag games so I’m doing it anyway!

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

Not exactly? The book I’m working on now is exactly where I want to be with my writing right now. I am holding off on revisiting an old one though. It needs a complete rewrite and re-release. I held myself back so much, but I’m just not sure I should do it. I decided I’m going to though. Just a matter of when the need to do surpasses my hesitation... So, we’ll see! 

2. What work of yours, if any, are you embarrassed about existing? 

The first book I published. Embarrassed probably isn’t the right word though. It isn’t as good as it should be, and it needs sooooo much, but it helped me get to where I am. It was needed, but it is definitely not my best. Hence the rewrite at some point. 

3. What order do you write in? Front of book to back? Chronological? Favorite scenes first? Something else? 

Pretty much beginning to end. I format my documents for publication before I even start writing. It gives me an idea of what it looks like and where I am with it. Sometimes a scene will strike me though, and I write it in a separate document to be saved until it is needed. From being on here I have discovered I do things very... strange. But hey, it works for me. 

4. Favorite character you’ve written?

Vanessa. Like, I love her so much. She is my hero. 

5. Character you were most surprised to end up writing?

Most of them? My characters just sort of show up and tell me stuff. I do my best to write it down. Vanessa is the most vocal, and she isn’t afraid to scoff at me when I do something she doesn’t approve of. 

6. Something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

I don’t think it’s ever really too late. I mean... I have a published book I’m going to pull and rewrite so... 

7. When asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

A little of both, honestly. On here it’s almost exciting to talk about it all, but when in person... It’s the source of a lot anxiety. Especially when it’s someone I know. It’s kind of hard to explain. I need to get better at talking about my books. I self-publish. Self-promotion is all I have lol

8. Favorite genre to write

Fantasy! Urban Fantasy has a special place in my heart, but the WIP I have right now is more in the epic fantasy class, but not fully?

9. What, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

Music. All of it. iPhone on shuffle, let all the words happen. I also read a lot. I dissect everything I read into why I like it and why I don’t and try to learn from that. 

10. Write in silence or with background music? Alone or with others?

Music Always with music. When I don’t put my headphones in I get distracted by literally everything around me. 

11. What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

I feel like I’ve gotten better at knowing when to stop. I had always been so “HERE IS ALL THE INFORMATION I EVER FOUND FOR THIS BOOK AND YOU NEED TO KNOW IT ALL RIGHT NOW!” Info dumps in every chapter is not a good quality to have... I kicked that habit for the most part. I think I am much better writer for it!

12. Your weaknesses as an author?

Several? Editing is really hard for me because I get attached (and it takes forever!). Being overly descriptive of characters at first meeting. Fight scenes take a few tries... I usually write it, read it over, flesh it out to be better, then cut a bunch of stuff to add in a bunch of other stuff, and because of my anxiety... all of this has to be done before I can move on in the story.

13. Your strengths as an author?

I think I’m pretty good at setting the scene. 

14. Do you make playlists for your work?

Not really... Some songs tend to stick with a character or an event, but I don’t ever specifically set up playlists for my books.

15. Why did you start writing?

I had stories living in my head, and a need to tell them. 

16. Are there any characters who haunt you?

Of my own? Not really. I guess Harley does a little. Her story will get it’s retelling. 

17. If you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

Just.. write. Stop worrying about everyone else and their opinions. You can edit and fix later, and not everyone’s opinion needs air time. 

18. Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they?

Jennifer Estep, David Dalglish, Richelle Mead... I could go on, but I don’t think this is supposed to be a novel on it’s own. Estep showed me a smart, beautiful woman that didn’t give a shit about others opinion of her, but she still cared deeply for those around her. She also has a thing for knives which is badass. David Dalgish showed me that research is great, but sometimes you just have to flow and see where it takes you. He also gave me characters that were so fleshed out, real, and raw that I will forever carry them with me. I would love to give a nod to Haern in one of my books but I don’t know how and if that’s a thing I can do. Richelle Mead gave me some of the above, but also a romance that I could truly get behind. One that I could follow and love and cheer for. I’m not much for pure romance, her books aren’t btw, but with her couples... I could read a romance novel about them with pleasure. 

19. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

Uh... well... I tend to jot down a lot of notes and do a lot of swearing and scrolling back up to re-read things.

20. Do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

Both? Depends on the day and my mood. 

21. What do you think when you read over your older work?

I don’t have a lot of older work saved unfortunately. A lot of my older stuff was in notebooks that have gotten lost through the many moves I’ve had to make. So, the book I’ve mentioned before... It needs a re-write.

22. Are there subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

A lot of them actually... two of my main characters are gay. I was excited about that... then tumblr happened. Omg you guys... all the posts about do’s and don’t’s. and how many posts about insulting things people do with gay characters that they don’t seem to notice and..phew I could go on forever... I am a little terrified right now, but I’m working through it. James is so close to my heart. I’m writing him how I see him, and I’m just hoping no one will take it as offensive or insensitive. 

23. Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

Pft... how long do I have? I live an interesting life. I’ve been through several different kinds of hell. I met an amazing group of people who support me. I am a living incarnate of Murphy’s Law. 

24. Have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

I wouldn’t say expert.... but I now understand the effects of a point blank gunshot to a bone, marriage rituals from all over the world, and how close you have to be to smell a dead body? 

25. Copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of.

Longer than “a short paragraph” but eh, just how I am. I’m not sure why I like this one so much. There are other that I like more, but I’ve posted them all at least once (some of them twice) so here is a new thing!

“Can you take me through it one more time, ma’am?” the officer said to me.

What I wanted to do was use one of the charred desks to kick his ass (literally) out the door. Or grab a roll of tape and cover his mouth with it. Whipping out my magic to boot the enforcement officers out of my place of business probably wouldn’t go over very well. It was tempting though. The story wasn’t that complicated. It happened in all of thirty seconds. This was the third time he’d asked me to run through the story again. Ellie and James weren’t fairing much better. Ms. Claudette was left alone for the most part. All it took was a complaint about her back and needing to check on her cats.

“Ms. Parker?”

“Sorry, it’s just that I’ve taken you through the story three times now. Four seems a touch excessive. There was a grenade, I contained the blast as best I could, you showed up. There it is. Now, if you don’t mind, I have shit to do.”

I spun on my heel and stalked away. Something I didn’t think all the way through since there isn’t much space in the office when it isn’t extra crispy. That didn’t slow me down though. I marched into the back office, yelled for Ellie to join me, now, and slammed the door as soon as she scooted in.

I’m think i’ll tag... @panticwritten, @hawksnbooks, @ava-burton-writing, @crazybunchwriter, @lakeeriesaltmine, @anolivewrites, @forlornraven, @leapwriter, @dantedevereaux, and @authorisada

As always, if you don’t want to be tagged or want to be tagged more often, let me know! 

[okd-blr]

Who is the admin

Basics:

While Im sure most of you can figure out who runs this blog, especially if you visit the OKD home page, for use on this blog go ahead and call me V.

I’m 28 years old, if you are a minor who does not wish for adult interaction please be aware of this.

I am a bisexual pre/non transitioned Trans man and use he/they pronouns

While I do not have a current diagnosis I am not neurotypical, very likely I have ADHD

And if any of this matter to you I’m an Aries, a Slytherin and a Furry

Kintypes:

I have three different types-2 kintypes, a Theriotype and a fictotype.

My first kintype technically falls under a few different labels, but would most easily be described as a Cthonic type divine. My other kintype is that of a vampiric like animal/human shapeshifter. these two kintypes tend to be very fluid and blend together.

My theriotype is that of a melanistic jaguar like is depicted in the blog icon

My Fictotype is that of a specific character portrayed on a canadian TV drama that is an Unseelie Fae

Experience as otherkin and in the community: 

I first came to the conclusion that I might, in some way, not be entirely human 16 years ago.

At the time Vampire was the only thing I could really think of-as my grandmother was fully invested in the ideas of the Satanic Panic and had assured me as a child vampires and witches were absolutely real (she was right of course but not in the way she imagined) 

At first I dismissed this idea as the imaginings of a lonely, bullied child who wanted to be special and wished for control and power in their life. yes I was pretty quick on the critical thinking train.

However the experiences I had, the feelings I had that lead me to initially suspect being nonhuman did not go away despite my skepticism and so I would explore it in small ways until roughly 2004 when i would stumble across resources for the Real Vampire community and a small-likely now gone-page for the ‘were’ community ( the label used prior to Therianthropy) 

I read through these sites-especially the resources on vampirism, very thoroughly-though I did not join the forums as I was not allowed to do that kind of thing because of aforementioned paranoid grandmother. 

In high school I had a number of friends who claimed to be vampires, witches, reincarnated angels and such but it was clear pretty much from the beginning that this was just a game to them and they tended to engage in lots of drama and pretty teenage backstabbing and gossip. I largely managed to avoid this by claiming to be a “solitary’ vampire.

There were others I would meet in college who would, for a while, genuinely believe these kinds of things but feel out of it again after a few years-again I was the only one who remained serious about these experiences and identity.

In early 2009 during my third semester of college I would discover the forum TherianWilderness via someones Deviantart signature. Being a now independent adult I signed up, and from there also signed up for Werelist. Mostly at this time I was exploring my theriotype and the shapeshifter kintype. 

I would later bring up the subject of incarnated angels on Werelist and be directed to otherkin specific forums such as OtherkinPhenomena and OtherkinAlliance. (Though I ended up with an account on nearly every active Otherkin forum at the time, OKA was where I eventually settled down) from there 

I would begin much more serious introspection and personal growth not only related to my being Otherkin but also in relation to the rest of my spirituality. in this facet the older members of these forums were a huge asset to me and I continue to value their input and opinions on the subject-even though the group from those days has largely drifted away from each other. This same group of people would also be active in specific Otherkin circles and groups on Livejournal and then Dreamwidth.

In 2011 I would found Otherkin-Deviants on DeviantArt.com-At the time it was one of the few groups that was not Therian specific and in the ensuing 7 nyears it has become one of the largest Alterhuman related groups on Deviantart at over 350 members. 

Also in early 2011 I would create a Tumblr account. At this time there was no Otherkin community here and my main blog was almost entirely Harry Potter related. After some explosive life stuff I would be gone from the internet for a year-when I returned to Tumblr in April 2012 the Otherkin tag on Tumblr was in full swing and already full of drama, misinformation, trolls and a bunch of other ridiculous crap. So of course I rolled up my selves and went to work correcting what i could and attempting to police/moderate a community that inherently can not be moderated on this particular medium. It was all very dramatic, theres was lots of yelling and by 2014 I was sick of it all and decided to take a break from the kin community-aside from a select few people who I enjoyed talking to. 

Sometime in early 2016 I decided it was time to end my hiatus and take a peak back into the tags-annnnd it pretty much hadn't changed. but I was much better at handling The Discourse at that point and knew when to disengage. 

Sometime not too long after my return I would realize the fae kintype I had been unsure  of and questioning for nearly 10 years was, in fact, a fictotype. 

And while I had only been gone fro about two years-there didn't seem to be very many kin left in the tags who remembered me so establishing myself as a knowledgeable person within the community was starting over from scratch. I still wouldn't say I’m exactly a go to person when it comes to correcting misinformation-because while I do do that on my personal kin blogs those blogs are mostly for me to log my own personal experiences.

That brings us up to now-where I have created this extension of the OKD deviant art group. This blog has the same purpose as the original group-to showcase community art and creativity and foster a place for open and civil discussion and education. Though this is one of many ‘kin help blogs’ many of the blogs out there that claim to be information or for helping Otherkin/Therian/Fictionkin are FULL of misinformation and the mods of those blogs do not always take well to being corrected. 

So, to summarize- I realized I was Otherkin 16 years ago, prior to ever knowing there was a community- and have been an active participant and admin of my own groups for the last close to 9 years-on a verity of different mediums from forums to chats to Tumblr, Amino and Discord. 

Who I am otherwise: 

I am a freelance artist living in the US with my fiance and our son and cats.

 I love TV, films and books-especially the horror, scifi, and fantasy genres. I identify as being somewhere between Punk and Goth and truly love the music from both subcultures-though I also love music from many other different genres. I also greatly enjoy table top gaming and it would be really cool if I actually had time to join a D&D campaign. 

I joyfully engage in fandom and shipping and spend probably too much time looking at fanart and reading fanfiction. If you're interested ask me for my fandom blog :3

As mentioned earlier, I am a furry and enjoy the art and interactions of the furry community. As an artist I particularly enjoy how wonderful the furry community is about supporting artists. 

Most of my time however is probably spent stressing about pretty typical things like rent, utility bills, car repairs and home maintenance. I may not be human on the inside but rent is rent no matter who, or what, you are. 

[megbox]

ok so i do this every year based on things i learned several years ago. i don’t usually post it on to THIS tumblr but this year i thought maybe i would because i have actually always found this helpful~ 

assessment of what i currently do: 

emotional/psychological self-care: 

talk to my friends in our group chat about something stupid/irrelevant because everyone’s hilarious 

avoiding specific places and people who usually make me feel sad and anxious 

writing all of my thoughts down - good, bad, irrational, organized, into a word doc or a tumblr post somewhere. 

community resources help a l o t. 

making a to-do list and finding things to check off of it so that i actually feel productive. 

let myself cry it out if i have to (though i cry so much less nowadays) 

honestly my “for when sad” tag is actually helpful 

ollie

watch blooper reels from tv shows on youtube. literally never fails. 

dance music. LOTS OF IT. 

long drives with my favourite music, usually at night. 

physical self-care: 

runnnnnnnning always #1 

making appointments if shit actually needs to get done (eye doctor, real doctor, physio, whatever it is...) 

long shower/bath/shave/lotion/face mask combo. takes like 2 hours but omg so nice. 

dressing up :) doing my makeup really nice and curling my hair. wearing clothes and outfits that i like and feel pretty in. 

going to bed early. 

planning vacations or trips. 

spiritual self-care: 

lol. like. nothing, 

professional/workplace self-care: 

honestly... when i’m not working like 13 days in a row and they’re all closes... being at work IS self care. 9.5 times out of 10 i feel happy and energized at famoso because i am comfortable with literally everyone who works there, and i know EVERYTHING about how to do my job like nothing can really phase me even if it’s busy like i’ve been in the weeds before i can handle it. famoso is the best. 

making progress with assignments literally from the day they’re due. even if it’s just deciding on a topic for an essay/doing research/finding quotes from articles ... whatever 

volunteering with cool organizations that do work i am interested in and passionate about. 

warning signs/”red flags” that i am not taking care of myself: 

I always know I am entering into a bad time when I feel lethargic and unmotivated to do literally anything. Nothing appeals to me. I will sit at home all day and watch television, waiting for ~4:00pm to roll around so I can go to work, and then I will get to work and be desperate to go back home. Hanging out with friends is the same. I always ask myself in this moments, “if I could do ANYTHING RIGHT NOW what would I do?” and literally nothing sounds fun/enjoyable. 

Focusing on things that happened in the past and becoming obsessive about analyzing it over again. Always seems to go back to my ex (and often caused by some kind of interaction with him). Not always but usually accompanied by the irrational though that none of my friends actually like me and I can’t wait to move away. 

Shyness/total introversion of my personality. Literally cannot bring myself to speak up in groups/meeting new people is agony. 

this year’s plan and philosophy! 

emotional/psychological: 

I think I do a pretty good job of this and am really determined to put even more distance this year between the people/places that always end up making me feel bad and myself. This year I also want to make better use of the incredible resources available to you rather than only as a last-minute/really bad time option. #1 thing is to find some alone time/a place I can go for a second to just yell/cry/write everything down and GET ITO UTTTT. Then go from there. 

physical: 

All of this stuff is connected so I always want to start with physical self-care. If I look and feel a bit better externally I can translate that into good progress internally. Exercise NEVER fails (cause endorphins are the bomb!) same with taking time to make myself look nice/wearing a nice outfit. Also want to make sure I am using my retinol for my skin every single night! And finding recipes to make for myself to eat in the mornings so that I don’t just drink coffee until 2pm. 

spiritual: 

I am so not spiritual. I don’t even think that forcing myself to engage in spirituality would bring me any benefit at this point because it’s not a part of my life at all and I am okay with that. 

professional/workplace: 

My school/work/volunteering gets me out of my weird headspaces when I am alone and so they’re always pretty well-tended to. I’ll just only take on responsibilities I feel I can do well, ask for help when I need it, and keep organized on what I have to get done by when. As per usual :) 

[emerald-amidst-gold]

About me

So, you wish to know about the face behind the muse, do you? Well, I’m not as edgy or ferocious, but I do all right! 

Thank you for the tag @noire-pandora! <3

1: Why did you choose your url?

The url that you see now was actually not my first url. I’m first one was lotus-dreamcatcher something something. (I forget what the numbers were lol). It was just a random thought since one: I love, love, looooove dreamcatchers, and two: I think lotus flowers are such pretty flowers! So, I combined best of both worlds and slapped two or three numbers on the end! XD

The reason I switched it was because I wanted to have a more personal connection with my blog. When I started writing my fic, I was like, ‘Let’s just go the whole nine yards! No one else has it!’ and voila! Will I change it if my hyperfixation vanishes? No. I’m stuck in hell, remember? *smiles*

2: Any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

I have no side blogs because I would be terrible trying to micromanage them. My obsessions tend to ebb and flow, and this blog is the first time I’ve latched onto something for so long. I’ve had fixations with Dragon Age before (I’ve had the game for years, of course), but it always fizzled out and I latched onto something else (Fire Emblem, Skyrim, etc.). So, whatever fandom takes me by the horns, ya’ll have to witness it here! *cackles*

3: How long have you been on tumblr?

Hmm..I think for about...2 years? I made this blog a while back, posted a fic I had written for the first time, and then disappeared. I didn’t come back until just under a year ago when I wrote my first version of Emerald Eyes Amidst Golden Vows. But truthfully, I’m not sure. I know I haven’t been here long, though! XD

4: Do you have a queue tag?

Nope! I just scan the tags I like, home page, and those I follow’s dashboard and reblog/like what I find interesting, funny, or what pertains to what I’m currently fixated on. I might go ham and post a lot, or I just slap one or two things on while I’m on break at work. It’s casual for me. :D

5: Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I was curious, to put it simply. I’ve always been into art/writing, and all the art I used to see elsewhere always looped back to here. I actually spent a lot of my time, once upon a time, on DeviantArt (The days when I had a tablet and had the time to draw~). Once I got into writing, however, I decided this might be a better place to share that. Not to mention, I saw the community for Dragon Age and I was like, ‘I want to be a part of this! I don’t have many people I can talk about Dragon Age with or simp mutually about characters! And they all seem so nice! Let’s try!’ And here I am. It’s paid off. All the waiting, slight dejectedness, and quiet posts have PAID OFF. 

So, if you’re a starting blog and you feel kind of put off, just keep at it. It’ll gain traction. Trust me. :3

6: Why did you choose your icon/pfp?

Why not? It’s my BOY in his original, first play through form! (the play through I accidentally deleted, but you know *is still made about that*) 

I chose it mainly because it was my best screenshot of Fane, and I was like, “I am true Dragon Age blog now. :3″, but really, it’s just because it was pretty. I’m a simplistic creature with simplistic tastes. 

7: Why did you choose your header?

Again, it’s my BOY, and well, it was also pretty with the colors and his eyes and everything. I love my dragon son. What else can I say? *shrugs*

8: What’s your post with the most notes?

The post that issued by entrance in Solavellan Hell. 

THIS ONE

It continuously spiraled for WEEKS until it finally went dormant, and I was like, ‘Well, damn. That was a wild ride.’ We all fall prey to the wolf at some point. Even I, who was so sure I adored Cullen. ‘Twas not to be. I like elves. Sorry, Commander. XD

9: How many mutuals do you have?

26! Which is about a quarter of who follows me, actually. Huh!

10: How many followers do you have?

You know, I just checked it the other day and my eyes went wide because I broke a 100 and I was like, ‘Am I really that relatable or likable!? Awwww! *cries*’ I’m currently at 107, but in all honesty, I don’t pay attention to the numbers. Some may be inactive, too, but it’s nice to see people enjoy and relate!

11: How many people do you follow?

85! I don’t like to clog up my dash too much because it’s easy to miss things I’m actually looking forward to seeing (art, fic updates, etc.) I could filter, obviously, but I is lazy. However, if I see a blog I really think is cool and enjoyable and is right up my alley, then of course I’ll follow! :3 I also try to follow back if someone follows me, but I forget to sometimes. I’m a bit scatterbrained if you haven’t noticed from my writing. XD

12: Have you ever made a shitpost?

I think I made like...two? They got a good bit of notes, but mainly because they were relatable more than funny, I think. If you want to know one thing about me it’s that if I adore a specific character, I either RAG on them until the cows come home, or I cry about them hysterically. With Solas, I am both, so I throw swings at him while in the next minute running over and saying I’m sorry. And I vocalize that with random memes. XD

13: How often do you use tumblr each day?

I get on in the morning after I wake up a bit to check around, stay on until I have to go to work at like 2, and I’ll pop on a few times throughout the day during my breaks or lunch, and once more before I call it quits for the day. I have a bad habit of keeping a tab up while I write and hopping back and forth. No wonder my writing flow gets lost in transit. XD 

I also tend to fall asleep with my computer on, soooo yeah. X’D

14: Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won?

Nope. I’m twenty-five. I left the drama bullshit back in high school when I graduated. I’m here to enjoy things that mean something to me, interact with people who share those interests, and just witness how creative everyone is and learn from them. Will I debate with someone civilly? Of course, I love debating concepts and interpretations of characters as much as I love analyzing those ideas. However, the moment those debates turn into ‘I’m right. You’re wrong.’ arguments, I walk away and ignore. I’ve been a part of internet discourse before when I ran a RP chat, I don’t need that again. Feel free to chat with me, but the minute it becomes a belligerent free for all, either expect a quick block or utter silence. 

15: How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I try to reblog things from content creators because that’s how they get the exposure they need, and I wholeheartedly support those people because I want people to be able to pursue and live a life where they can do what they enjoy and make ends meet rather than be stuck at a 9-5 job where they’re talents are wasted and miserable because of berating circumstances. 

However, if someone explicitly says, ‘you need to reblog this because of some obscure reason’, I won’t do that. Be humble. That’s all. I understand the need for validation, painfully so, but there’s a line that needs to be drawn on some posts like that.

16: Do you like tag games?

You bet your ass I do! I love how interesting they are and that people are eager to involve me in them! Like this one! :D

17: Do you like ask games?

*looks at all the asks I’ve done for Fane* I adore them. Let me talk about my son until the end of time, even if I repeat things because he’s still GROWING.

18.Do you have a crush on a mutual?

Not romantically, but do I think everyone is worthy of love and hugs and yelling, complimenting words that make your insides all fuzzy and warm? YES. LET ME YELL AT YOU AND HUG YOU. <3

Tagging (if you want to of course!): @little-lightning-lavellan @oxygenforthewicked @aymayzing @dreadfutures @whataboutbugs and anyone else who’d like to! 

[joecasualnerd]

Number 5: Mr. Greg

This is it ladies, gentlemen, and those who prefer not to disclose, we are now in the top 5 episodes of Steven Universe that are my favorites.

For added suspense, I will not be doing what I usually do and have the title card before the break. In fact I won’t even have the title of the episode on the post until the next day, which should be really interesting because I will of course tag the post as appropriate, but I am hoping people won’t look at the tags unless they look at the post.

Hopeless fruition for an experiment that won’t work, welcome back to the 25 Days of Stevenmas (name pending) and today we will be talking about…

Season Three Episode Eight, Mr. Greg

Premise

This episode brings back the tradition of what happened the previous episode, where we see the reason Greg suddenly has ten million dollars. Apparently, Marty, the asshole, used the song Like A Comet that Greg wrote and used it for a burger commercial.

The money came from the royalties that Greg was owed. Pearl is skulking around, having questioned if this was the song that Greg used to impress Rose, which in a way it is, but it is only slightly different from the original.

Greg and Steven contemplate what Greg is going to do with the money by singing the song Don’t Cost Nothing, and when that song is over we jump right into the next song, Empire City, and it become apparent that this is the musical episode.

As they sing about how they are going to Empire City to have a bit of a vacation, Steven then ends the song by saying that they should bring Pearl, and he makes it awkward when he says that the trip will have him, Greg, Pearl, and to not forget Rose, which is a very morbid thought.

The three drive to a fancy hotel, and all Greg has to do is show a business card, flash some cash, and we get to the next song Mr. Greg. The song manages to be a fun tune, gets the three into tuxedos and ends on an awkward note when Greg tries to dance with Pearl, and she yells in refusal.

When Steven and Greg are partied out and sleeping, we get into Pearl’s solo song, It’s Over Isn’t It, where she sings about how she felt about the whole Rose, Greg, and herself situation.

When the song ends, she notices that Greg is awake (Steven as well, but she is more concerned with Greg) and Greg says that nothing is going to fix this and walks off. Pearl laments on how she shouldn’t have come along in the first place, but Steven says that this was the reason he brought her along.

Greg is in the lobby, getting drunk off cherries, and Steven brings Pearl in. Greg and Pearl stand awkwardly and the piano player in the lobby plays a ragtime song, which is inappropriate to the situation. Steven deals with this by handing the guy a stack of cash, and plays the song Both of You, which helps Greg and Pearl connect in some way.

Greg is presented with the bill, and the three decide to leave, with a reprise of Don’t Cost Nothing, and the episode ends with Steven singing a line from It’s Over Isn’t It while Greg and Pearl are having a conversation at the front of the van.

Discussion

While there wasn’t much in the premise section, you can bet your sweet bippy that I have a lot to say here.

First things first, this show has a weird thing where the episode that airs has some coincidence that was happening in my life. This will come up in a couple future episodes (suspense and all), but the one that happened here was minor, yet still very odd.

Right before this episode had aired I was getting into old musicals, specifically Singing in the Rain, and then suddenly a musical episode of Steven Universe happened to air, It was odd, but not at all unwelcome because it heightened my enjoyment of the episode significantly.

I enjoy musicals in general, but musical episodes in shows tend to be very hit or miss, and luckily this one was a hit. It followed the structure of a classic musical, the opening song being one that set the mood, the second one a song about the journey the characters were going to take, the third a fun song, the fourth a somber song about something that was lost, the fifth song is the resolution to a conflict, and the sixth song is a reprise of the first song and the emotional song with new meaning behind them.

Speaking of the songs, let’s talk about them. I’m not going to count the jingle as a song from the episode since it was just a cheap cover of the original song to explain why Greg has so much money.

The first song, Don’t Cost Nothing, really shows the kind of character that Greg is. He is a simple guy with simple needs, and while he says that it would be nice to have a house and a car, he would rather spend his time and money for his son.

Greg is such a great father, and this transitions well with the next song, Empire City, which is all about how Greg wants to take a trip with his son to a fancy place in Empire City. Of course, this was Steven’s suggestion because despite Steven being naïve at times, he isn’t dumb.

He saw Pearl earlier acting somber and sad, and he knows that it has to do with Greg and Rose, so what better way to get the two to at the very least start being friends then taking a trip to an isolated area away from the others?

This really shows that Steven does want to help the ones he cares about, which is to say almost everyone, and this is one of the times it turns out well.

Moving onto the song Mr. Greg, this is essentially an intermission song that shows the commodities that the hotel has, but it does serve the purpose at the end of showing that Pearl is still very reluctant about being friends with Greg.

She point blank refuses to dance with him, let alone touch him, and when she realizes that she has made a scene, she leaves.

This of course leads to the most popular song of the episode, It’s Over Isn’t It.

The way that this entire song is gorgeous, and Deedee Magno Hall belts out a heartbreaking and beautiful performance that is full of emotion and pretty much sums up Pearl as a character.

Pearl loved Rose, no Pearl LOVES Rose. Even though Rose ended up going with Greg and sacrificing her physical form for Steven, Pearl still loves Rose. Pearl had been Rose for thousands of years, and whether Pearl had told Rose her feelings and if they were reciprocated at any point, is a topic of discussion for another time.

In fact, a wonderful person did have a conversation with me through the Tumblr messaging, although the conversation originally stemmed from Both of You and not It’s Over, but the topic of whether or not Rose was involved with Pearl in any way did come up.

This person brought up a very interesting perspective that I had never considered before, but could be entirely plausible, but I won’t share it until I know for sure that this person would be comfortable sharing it.

Needless to say, I do have some more things to chew on when thinking about Both of You, but for now let’s talk about what I had originally thought about the song.

I feel that Both of You is a severely underrated song, and I don’t use the term “underrated” very often. I hate the word “overrated” because if a lot of people enjoy something and you don’t, why call it overrated if a lot of people enjoy it?

I will, however, use underrated because it is a term that means that more people should be looking at something, but aren’t. it’s like saying that an indie band that you like should be heard by more people, but just aren’t.

I really enjoy Both of You, and it really shows Zach Callison’s chops as a voice actor because singing in character is a pretty difficult thing to do if you are new to the voice acting scene and haven’t sung before.

Zach had really improved as the show progressed, and this was the beginning of that being very prevalent, Adventures in Light Distortion still being my favorite performance from Zach Callison, but this song showed that he can sing while being very emotive.

And we end the episode with the reprise, which is done to show that Pearl and Greg have begun their journey on actually being friends. Not romantic partners, but two adults being friends, which is something that animated shows really need.

Usually when there are two single adults, there will be some emphasis on trying to get them together romantically. This episode doesn’t do that, instead opting for these two adults reconciling their differences and trying their best to become friends after so many years of animosity and hostility in their early years of knowing each other.

Now there is one thing about this episode that I would like to bring up, and that is the imagery used in Both of You, with Greg being yellow, Pearl being blue, and Steven being Pink.

I am not the only in thinking that this is some form of foreshadowing relating to Blue, Yellow, and Pink Diamond, however it is still way to early to tell where this all could lead.

One theory that I subscribe to, although I cannot recall if it is one I made up or one I read somewhere, is that with Greg being in the place of Yellow Diamond and Pearl being in the place of Blue Diamond and Steven being in the place of Pink Diamond, I have a feeling that this has something to do with the Cluster.

If Yellow Diamond gave Pink Diamond something that ultimately destroyed Pink Diamond but left something behind for Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond to take care of, it might be a subtle way to explain how the Cluster came to be.

It is a huge stretch, but it’s what I’m going with for now until the show proves me wrong, which it most likely will and I am ok with that.

In the end, I really enjoyed this episode. The animation was crisp, the singing phenomenal, and the character development was superb.

And it would be remiss of me to say that this was Joe Johnston’s last episode as a regular storyboard artist as he is now a Supervising Director for the show, occasionally storyboarding but not as often as he would.

I gotta say, for the last episode as a regular storyboarder, he went out with a bang, and I wish him the best for his new job, and hopes that he boards a bit more since I really enjoy the episodes he worked on (his most recently boarded episode after Mr. Greg was That Will Be All, though he has done a lot of writing for recent episodes, so kudos there!).

Until next time, thanks for reading and have a pleasant time.

Peace.