#who spent an entire fucking year traveling the planet and seeing the worst things she ever could and still came out a healer

[starsandsupernovae]

realized that my whole essay on why martha jones's ending in s4 of doctor who was so fucked up is gone forever since i accidentally deleted my blog years ago

[phoenixyfriend]

Thoughts on “Auntie Soka and Little Leia” now that I’ve actually got it posted:

Call it a director’s cut! The process of actually writing the thing, and also jokes made along the way. Link to the actual fic.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the energy for image descriptions, even the text screenshots. Might come back that later. Most of this was DMs with @atagotiak​.

This was an entire thing before I even started writing:

Before I decided on ages and stuff Ahsoka, to Jango, who has had zero contact with Kaminoans: Okay I know I'm a Jedi kid so you hate me but this toddler is your clone from the future. Jango, tired: What the FUCK are you talking about. Rex, barely able to talk: Don't you dare leave me with him, Commander! Ahsoka: I'm not going to leave you I just--I'm so tired I'm so fucking tired I haven't slept in five days and someone tried to kidnap Leia two days ago I am so fucking tired I need help

Ben: [twenty years of depression followed by a 'now I'm safe' breakdown over the course of weeks] Sokari: [whatever the FUCK this mess is]

When Ahsoka mentions there only being three other Jedi at the time of her death,  I was thinking Kanan, Yoda, and Obi-Wan (Leia told her about the latter two living past her). She's not counting anyone that received training after the Temple fell, and she didn’t know about Cal.

When Leia says  “I was adopted and raised by one of the founders of the rebellion, a movement built on the desire to instate freedom and democracy in a galaxy that had lost even the pretense.”

Depa: I'm no therapist but I diagnose you with "incredibly fucked up." Ahsoka: yeah, that’s fair

"Why did you pick Depa for--" She's pretty and I'm gay. Also because of the Kanan thing But mostly I'm gay "It's not a visual medi--" GAY

Empty of context beyond general post-fic AU: "Hey Sokari, we need to engage in psychological warfare against this individual and--" "I'm going to break into his office and leave a threatening note on his desk and leave no other sign that I was there. He'll see that his security is nothing and the only reason he isn't dead is because I'm too nice to kill him." "...okay, not what we were planning, but that works. Why is that your first choice?" "I really like breaking and entering, it's soothing." Ben just standing there with a bland smile like This Is Normal.

"We need someone to infiltrate a highly guarded facility in hostile territory." "So we're sending the Torrent kids?" [sigh] "We're sending the Torrent kids."

Rex and Sokari insist on both going by "Torrent" even though Rex could be a Fett. Jango really wants him to be a Fett. Rex has too many grudges to agree to being a Fett for... a while.

I really hope it's blatantly obvious that Ahsoka's not a reliable narrator for some things Ahsoka: Fett could care less if I died Jango: jfc even if you are older than me I can see you're fucked up. Drink your hot chocolate. Hells. She's got good reason to expect him to hate her as a Jedi! BUT. THAT IS NOT REFLECTIVE OF REALITY

We don’t get a lot of actual characterization for Jango, but the way I played him out here is he has never really parsed that Jedi are people before all this. It's a lot harder to treat them as a monolith when the traumatized former child soldier is having regular breakdowns in your shitty little kitchen

Fett: I respect you Ahsoka: No, don't do that

Ahsoka’s vigilantism is something that, in my mind, she's associating heavily with Zygerria and then the clones.

I figured that she never bothered to learn Quinlan’s teacher’s name but in the process of looking up some basic facts (whether he had a surname), I found that Wookiepedia was forced to give us a VERY wide range of possible death in Legends.

Please take a moment to imagine Quinlan's FACE when Ahsoka initially dismisses him. Quinlan has put a lot of effort into being rogueishly charming! It's very useful for his line of work! He knows to expect either irritation or a return flirtation when he acts like this with people his own age! Ahsoka is not flustered OR rolling her eyes and insulting him, she's just ignoring him and it's a bit of a blow to the ego

This just makes me really happy:

This was the initial comment I made, as a joke What if Maul is just. There. On one of the planets they make a pitstop at. What if Maul exists as the walking problem he is, but fifteen, and Ahsoka immediately tries to kick his ass and drag him back to Coruscant. I do not have room for this plot but What If

Despite not having room for this plot, I proceeded to write this plot.

Maul is kidnapped and it’s the best thing that ever happened to him HE'S FIFTEEN HE'S DUMB AS SHIT AND HAS A BAD ATTITUDE AND YEAH HE'S A DARKSIDER BUT HE'S FIFTEEN

Ahsoka: I sense... Maul [takes off sprinting] Rex: [immediately takes Jango's blaster and runs after her] Jango: Wait who Tholme: Who Quinlan: Who Jango: [looks at Leia] Leia: I don't know who that is either! Ahsoka, already wrestling a teenager to the ground: Oh no, you're a child, REX STUN HIM AND GRAB THE CUFFS, I'M SURE FETT OR THOLME HAS SOME

Fighting him isn't even legal, they have NO evidence of criminal wrongdoing, so first she needs to yell until he admits to something she can fight him about

Ahsoka: When I see Maul, it's on SIGHT Maul: WHO ARE YOU

Ahsoka: The Force didn't give me hands just to NOT throw them when I run into That Crafty Son Of A Bitch

Ben, when they arrive, after the tearful reunion: You... you brought Maul. Ahsoka: Well, yeah, he's fifteen and kinda dumb. I figured we could drag him here and force him into therapy, see what happens. Ben: I can't quite tell through the gag, but I think he's threatening to feed you your own spleen. Ahsoka: Lol, yeah.

Ben is absolutely on team "get Maul therapy" and will fight the Council on rehabilitating the baby Sith But also it's like. Here's your daughter! And your niece! And your daughter's QPP! Also your best friend, but baby, and his teacher, and the biological origin of a number of people you cared for deeply! AND ALSO THE GUY WHO SPENT LITERAL DECADES CRAVING YOUR DEATH, FOR SOME REASON

I just really want Ahsoka lovingly bullying Maul She gives him noogies and the horns don't protect him because girl has reinforced gloves

Maul's only allowed a low-power training saber and his fights with Sokari involve Much Taunting by her and Eventual Screaming by him, and everyone pops by to see: 1. Sokari doing the most absurd flips, for fun. 2. The bullshit that is ataru-shien reverse-grip jar'kai in the hands of someone who makes it work 3. What a Sith lightsaber form looks like 4. Just the general nonsense that is the way these two fight

Tia said “Wrt ridiculous flips. I'm remembering that time she beheaded four Kryst'ad at once.” and I just Rex brings up the quadruple beheading at one point to get someone to stop asking questions and the awkward, horrified silence almost makes him regret it. And then Sokari just snorts and makes a joke about how Rex once speared a slaver point-blank and everyone's just like hello??? "are you two okay" "no"

Maul absolutely starts crushing on Sokari after a 'sword under chin' moment and she's just very "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you're fifteen, bye" GO MAKE PUPPY EYES AT OBI-WAN OR SOMETHING

The crushes are the worst part of everything, really, she's an attractive young woman that can kick a lot of ass, and a lot of people are into that! Unfortunately, most of those people are a decade younger than she is, mentally, because all the people her actual age look at her and see a child on account of the 17yo body.

It’s almost a good thing she’s in no place mentally for a relationship.

I just want Ahsoka to wear beskar.... I think that would be Nice........

This AU is also what caused this post.

I'm deeply enamored by the idea that Ahsoka can win fights against "older" padawans pretty much unilaterally, even when they team up 2v1 And then she offers to fight 5v1 "But only if I have permission to fight dirty." Ben approves it, a horror show full of "I fought many wars and will scream in your face or kick you in the balls if that's what it takes" follows She wins. There are no permanent injuries, but her reputation certainly gets weirder. Nobody under the rank of Knight agrees to let her fight dirty again. She just lets that stand because, well, she's not actually a padawan, she's thirty-three.

I’m not going to write this but my brain was EVIL and suggested it:

IT WOULD BE REALLY SAD IDK maybe 9yo Anakin has nightmares about what's happening to baby Ahsoka because bullshit about time-traveling force bonds IDK ANYWAY he cries to Sokari about the nightmares and she's like "oh shit" and it's time to go rescue herself from motherfucker unlimited

It's either that or she's like, expecting to welcome mini-me aaaany day now, for like, several months, before she realizes Something Went Wrong. Anakin’s dreams could even start right as she’s starting to realize something’s off.

Obi-Wan has never had a padawan that doesn't at some point bite Even Luke will, when pushed

OH also once the twins get Baby's First Lightsaber (training sabers, not real kyber), Sokari begs to borrow them for a dumb joke and tells Rex to get on her shoulders for a "Grievous Greeting" and they do The Thing

Jango and Ahsoka wrt Quinlan is just “Do I need to beat him up for you” “You realize I’ve beaten up sith lords before?”

JANGO'S TRYING He's just. "Can we be friends? Can I--can I be the guy that just noticeably gets in the way of a creep on the subway so you can be more comfortable without someone making a scene? I'm fucking trying here, give me a hint."

We didn’t actually figure out Jango’s age until this point. The only reason Fett's age matters is for Quinlan making a Wild Oats quip after Jango says he didn't know about Rex until a few weeks ago, and Fett going "How old do you think I am? And how old do you think the kid is?" and Quinlan getting Very Awkward as he does the math. Rex overhears and lets Quinlan sweat for a bit before saying "I'm a genetically-modified clone someone grew in a tube, he didn't know or have reason to know until he saw me with Sokari." Which is like. Eight additional layers of WTF, obviously, but at least Jango gets to avoid awkward wild oats jokes

Like, you’d expect the rebuttal to be ‘he’s my brother just with a biiig age gap’ or ‘he’s my nephew’

I find it very unfortunate for Quinlan that I've decided his defining characteristic in this context is going to be repeatedly putting his foot in his mouth

He’s trying so hard but "That sounds like a cool thing, maybe I'll ask ab--and it's another fucking trauma."

I'm doing Ahsoka&Jango t w i c e (there’s another fic where I’m doing it)

It’s just a fun dynamic! So much resentful respect.

Like she's twenty seconds away from calling him a bitch at any given time and he's just there like "I don't like you but I do see you move like you're about to tell an entire building to get on their knees with their hands in the air and I can respect that" Also she's probably much less judgmental about using blasters than Obi-Wan is The Maul subplot actually started with me daydreaming about Ahsoka grabbing a blaster for Reasons

I like the idea of Jango just deciding the most Useful thing he can do is help teach the Smol how to fight. He's AWKWARD around Rex and Soka because he doesn't know if there's anything he CAN teach them.

I didn’t actually plan for Tholme to figure out the age thing, he just SAID it and I had to sit there like Wait.

Ahsoka, Rex & Leia: ahhh, children Tholme: you say that like you aren’t children

I liked getting to write Rex's little "I have worked with all of them, and they're all Terrible" He loves them But They once got stranded on a planet that didn’t exist and Ahsoka died and Anakin killed a god.

There was research and discussion as to whether Ahsoka could win against Tholme but seeing as she held her own against Vader, and fought Grievous at that physical age without dying, etc.... yeah, the only thing holding her back was her body not being what she was used to, and she’s had a few weeks go adjust.

“I miss being able to just jump off skyscrapers” is such a jedi thing

Jango: I'll take the gun back if he tries to leave, they can't get far before--WHAT THE FUCK He knows Jedi are scary but he’s still not really used to just how over the top ridiculous they are He knows how to deal with Jedi in battle, not Whatever The Fuck These People Are Doing

Rex isn't even a Jedi, he's just so used to working with them. “Oh yes time for free-falling without a parachute again, same shit as always.”

Tia: I’m imagining Jango freaking out and Quinlan and Tholme being like. Concerned but mostly exasperated Clearly if they’re jumping off buildings it must be serious? But jfc they could’ve maybe communicated a bit more?

Leia: I want to finish my juice Tholme: Quin, stay with her while we go figure out what those two are doing. Quinlan: Wait what

Jango: Oh now he’s jumping off a building too??? Tholme: Sokari, you are not registered! You can't legally jump out windows yet! Jango: What the hell is going on? Is this normal?

We don’t necessarily know how often Ahsoka and Maul ran into each other after Mandalore. There was the later thing on Malachor, but other than that I'm just going with the idea that they ran into each other every year or two and just went for the eyes like feral cats

Ahsoka: I need to kick ass and you're coming with me. Rex: Yeah, okay. [several minutes later] Rex: Whose ass are we kicking?

Ahsoka and Rex

Neloms aren’t a SW fruit to the best of my knowledge, I just wanted to mess around with lemons/melons

Jango: you didn’t think any of this through, did you? Rex: you were there, you know we didn’t "When the Jedi says to jump out a window, I jump out a window."

Tholme’s real composed about stalking the ancient nigh-mythical enemy of his people, very “Life is already so goddamn weird”

This fic has been so heavy on the trauma but then I introduce Maul and suddenly it's the worst kind of comedy Nobody is competent, everyone's a little dumb, the bad guy is just grocery shopping

My propensity for banter has turned this into a six-person buddy cop comedy about Maul buying grapes They spend a significant amount to time ineffectually stalking Maul before Quin suggests the sensible option Quinlan just "You remember this is my literal job and specialty right"

Ahsoka sees Maul and all her brain cells go out the window except "Fight good" Usually she doesn’t need to worry about doing things legally. Maybe she needs to worry about someone seeing her do illegal things but she spent the past 15 yrs in a place where her existing was illegal

I feel like he’s also maybe kinda wanting to reassert that yes he is competent. Bc like. Ahsoka’s been kinda condescending this whole time and also can beat everyone up so. It's not his fault that he's actually the youngest person there, but.

Jango is finding this whole being friendly to Jedi thing a lot more overwhelming than he thought it would be. And overwhelming in different ways.

Maul usually signifies things getting worse and more horrifyingly tragic but he's just a dumb teen that they needed to arrest for his own good.

Quinlan: Look, I'm useful! Ahsoka: I've been through hell, wanna hear? Quinlan: NO. I DON'T. WHY.

Quinlan: I understand the concept of joking about your traumas, I do it sometimes myself! But sith hells that’s a lot of trauma.

Quinlan just wanted her to treat him as a Competent Individual, and here she is whipping out stories about Dying and Gods and the Force insists it's the truth and he just???? And apparently emo darksider over there is a Sith. And just, sure. Why not

A lot of people’s interactions with the time travelling disaster lineage is just

Tholme and Fett arguing and  Ahsoka's just waiting for a moment to pop in with "Hey, when's the last time either of you worked with the other's culture before this mess? Yeah, that's what I thought."

Much like Leia and Ahsoka hurting each other earlier, and Tholme figuring out the de-aging, we ALSO have Fett’s confrontation with Ahsoka being something the characters just did, rather than something I planned.

FTR the only time I managed to trigger myself while writing this fic was the “your behavior isn’t actually acceptable and we’ve all been trying really hard to give you room to recover but you have to at least make an effort to not be a bitch”

Writing about people having PTSD and symptoms of such: Yay! Writing about people having PTSD and engaging in toxic behavior to cope: Shit Ahsoka had... basically my exact reaction. It's "remind yourself that you're in the wrong, that they have a point, and then be overly formal in the apology because fuck if you accidentally make them feel sorry for you when they're the injured party"

Quinlan: Can we be friends? I mean, you're an asshole, but you're really cool. Let's be friends. (He MIGHT be nursing a crush) (Neat mysterious girl who can beat him up.)

Also he realises she's probably nicer when not having a slow-motion breakdown He's like "Huh, you'll probably be less of an asshole once you've gotten therapy."

...also, she pretty and got Nice Biceps

I love writing a good mental breakdown

I was so close to including a "he tried to kill me" just early enough for Jango to wildly misinterpret as her thinking Quinlan tried to kill her. He'd have been very confused, considering Quinlan's the one that called them down in a panic and currently has Ahsoka having her massive breakdown in his lap But

Tia:  I could see Jango interpreting it as idk, Quin resembling someone or for a moment acting like someone who tried to kill her and she had a flashback or something like that

There's absolutely room for a couple reasonable interpretations there And "trapped in a flashback about someone who tried to kill her" is absolutely what's happening! Just. You know. For a different reason. Jango probably wouldn’t assume Quin would hurt her, for one thing he seems to like her, for another even if he did he’s smart enough to pick a way that wouldn’t be so likely to get him caught

I had to step back and actually say “Also I'm just. Wow. I'm really just shoveling QPP Rex&Ahsoka at full speed”

Me, a few weeks ago, joking: Two halves of the same idiot black ops specialist Me, now, entirely seriously: Two halves of the same idiot black ops specialist

Me, belatedly: Oh, Ahsoka being joyfully mean to people was a form of mania she was unconsciously using to build a barrier between herself and her impending meltdown

She went from "just died" to "in charge of Rex and Leia" in like. Two minutes.

Confession: I've been delighting in the mental image of this whole Mess leading Jango to try to retake Mandalore, and Ahsoka loans him a saber for a 1v1 to get the darksaber.

“Can’t I just fight him barehanded? That’s how I did it on Galidraan.” "But the drama, Fett!"

Probably Rex has learned how to use a saber as well, because you never know when you have to borrow a weapon

I later changed my mind to Jango asking her to help, rather than her just sneak-teaching him, but it was funny.

Background nonsense to all this is Ahsoka and Rex, despite Rex being as force-sensitive as a lump of coal, having developed a process where she can extend her sensitivity to him mind-to-mind for weird symbiotic battle trance that scares everyone around them. It’s very similar to Battle meditation.

CONTEXT FOR LEIA BEING WORRIED ABOUT THOLME HIDING THINGS: Tholme is hiding the fact that the Council reached out and told him that the people he picked up might be connected to Ben and Luke, who showed up after the Depa thing but a solid week and change before Jango's ship makes it to the Temple. They asked that he not share that information to avoid getting anyone's hopes up in case the two situations aren't related. Ben and Luke haven't shared enough information for anyone to really be sure if the other three are connected Because the info Tholme has isn't quite the info Jango has, etc. And they can't just say Ben is a future Obi-Wan over comms

I just have a lot of feelings about people trying to do something right and just. Nobody's at fault! Not really! It's just complicated!

Tia: I like how when Ahsoka isn’t doing maladaptive trauma response stuff she’s very mature. And of course she’s had to be but it’s a good like, contrast. Where when she slows down to think about things she’s very sensible

Jango just spends most of this story lowkey wanting Ahsoka to Be His Friend but there's too much baggage that he's only metaphysically responsible for

Local aroace(?) has a squish

Ahsoka: He just wants to get on my good side because of Rex. Jango: I'm pretty sure you could kill an entire army without trying but you wouldn't because you have actual morals and stuff... and when I met you it was because you were killing yourself trying to keep (what appeared to be) children safe... you seem cool please be my friend.......

Ahsoka’s #1 weakness: mountains of trauma Ahsoka’s #2 weakness: she just doesn’t get why so many people think she’s cool and want her to be their (girl)friend

Jango, a 27yo massacre survivor who's killed Jedi masters with his bare hands: [gets lectured on various government structures by a tiny girl that's missing several teeth and needs to sit on books to see the table properly]

Ahsoka was raised in a religious meritocracy but developed all her opinions during a galactic war and then became a vigilante spy, Rex comes from a military cult, Leia is from an inherited monarchy that participates in democracy, Quinlan was originally from what appears to be a dynastic dictatorship, and IDK about Tholme other than that he is also from the religious meritocracy. And in legends Quinlan came to the religious meritocracy after his aunt sacrificed his parents to a vampire cult and then forced him to experience the psychometric echoes of that. There's just. A lot going on.

Leia at least has knowledge about structure and admin in theory that isn't based in either the military or populations under 10k

Jango: I want to be your friend. Ahsoka: Sounds fake.

I am unfairly fond of "Rex destroys a conversation by bringing up his own horrifying childhood and calling it a cult"

"Why does Sokari call you 'Rex'ika'?" "Because she's older than me." "...can I--?" "No."

Nickname privileges are extended ONLY to Ahsoka and older clones. There are no more older clones, so it's just Ahsoka.

Me joking about Star Wars AUs: Would you like a crackship? Me writing actual Star Wars fic: My favorite character type is apparently “too traumatized to have a relationship” so this is at least 90% gen.

I had to pull a scene opening at one point because Ahsoka's skill with not getting shot is actually much less useful than Tholme's clearance levels.

Now I really want a team-up of Ahsoka, Rex, and Jango where they do have to get in a dogfight of the "she flies, we shoot" variety and Fett just has to scream because the speeder thing to catch Maul was one thing, but this....

Ahsoka, before TCW: I know all the traffic rules but I'm not that great at flying! Ahsoka, after TCW: I'm great at flying but if you let me behind the wheel we are absolutely getting arrested.

She went from "knows the rules but doesn't have the skills" to "has the skills but primarily in the form of not getting shot" which! Is delightful! "Bet I can get us through that alley--" "DO NOT"

Jango and Ahsoka are both just very "Is this friendship? Is this camaraderie? My heart's been fried on platonic love by so many murders that I'm not sure anymore." "I've lost a lot of friends. I kind of forgot how to make those."

I have no idea if "hasn't been closer than Alderaan except that one trip to Chandrila" is canon-compliant but ehhhhhhhh It feels plausible enough?

Belatedly realized that I could just explain my optimal Rex&Ahsoka dynamic as just... drift compatible. It's vague enough on the specifics while still digging into the meat of what they mean to each other and how they work together. The terminology is already in existence. I can just use it.

Romantic? Platonic? Familial? Doesn't matter! They're drift compatible.

They are important to each other and that is what matters

I really like the Leia&Quinlan thing. He's just like "This small child needs a friend that isn't super depressed," and decided he's going to be her friend. I keep trying to toss in "Quinlan volunteers to 'baby'sit." She's not much older and she has a Baby Brain, it works out

There's a running bet as to whether Leia will leave the Order the second she turns thirteen, or if she'll let Sokari "train" her for a few years first. And... that’s how I came up with Leia Antilles, Senator of Serenno.

They'll be bullshitting Ben as her new master to "finish out the padawanship" since they can't tell everyone she's really in her thirties and he's conveniently there and already knows everything and was half her master anyway. Like Ben was planning on taking on Luke, but Luke is "six" and even he can't swing that as old enough to be a Padawan, and it's not like Sokari will take more than a handful of years to justify knighthood, sooooooooo

[luffles424]

Lucidity (8)

☼ Pairing: BTS x reader (this chap is Taehyung x reader ft. Yoongi!)

☼ Genre: vampire!BTS, succubus!reader, smut, fluff, angst

☼ Count: 4.9K

☼ Warnings: 18+, mentions of blood, descriptions of injuries, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, overstimulation, grinding, some nipple play, big dick Tae (duh), guided sex, dom/sub undertones, voyuerism, exhibitionism, implied male masturbation, slight choking, lots of kissing, dirty talk, creampie

☼ Summary: You’ve spent years jumping from country to country, starting countless new lives. Crafting new lives is as easy as breathing for you, lies flowing easily and people are charmed with a simple bat of your eyes. When you meet a witch who offers the idea of opening a supernatural club, using your powers combined with hers to ensure safety to those who enter, you decide to join her in an adventure that is entirely new to you. But your new life in Seoul is drastically changed when you’re forced to face something you’ve spent centuries hiding from. But just because you might be running for your life again doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun along the way, right?

☼ a/n: I’m sorry this took a while! But the truth is coming! Next chap will be a flashback! As always, let me know what you think! My ask box is always open ~ 💙💙💙💙

You don’t know how long you run for. You feel well and truly like you’re drunk for the first time in centuries as the city blurs around you. Only you don’t get to enjoy the dizzying feeling, instead the lightheadedness makes it harder to navigate, tripping over your feet as you stumble, aimless in your journey to just get away. You know you can’t go home, she’ll just track you there. And while no one else lives on the same floor as you, there are plenty of people in the building, some who are very nice and you’d hate to put them in harm's way. You do your best to double back and make your trail as confusing as possible. But all the doubling back in the world will still eventually lead to her finding you. You duck through some still populated areas, trying to avoid the curious looks of the more sober people that trail over your bleeding figure. 

This is the longest you’ve ever been bleeding for. But your energy is completely spent, everything is going to just keep you upright and moving, nothing left to spare for healing. The sun is beginning to peak over the horizon and you know you need to get off the street. While people wouldn’t stop you this late at night with your injuries, people in the morning surely would. 

You find yourself in front of a building, tall and pristine. It takes you a moment to realize where you are and you almost want to scoff that of all places, you came here. You hadn’t even realized that you’d traveled so far. You hear a howl in the distance, she must be awake. You thought you had more time. Panic siezes you and you ignore how dumb of an idea this is and quickly make your way inside, navigating the halls to the familiar frosted glass door, pounding on the frame like Taria is already there. 

The door is wretched open after a long moment, Yoongi’s face twisted in annoyance before quickly morphing into surprise at the sight of you. Before he can say anything, you’re shoving him back into the room and spinning to slam the door shut. You pant as you lean against it, heartbeat pounding your eardrums as you try to reason that you’re safe for the moment. When you pull away, there’s a smeared, bloody handprint left behind. How much blood had you trailed around the city without noticing?

“Y/n?” He sounds so concerned. “Hang on, let me call Jin-”

You turn to face him, eyes frantic. “No! Don’t do that! Please you can’t, don’t let them know I’m here. This was a dumb idea anyway. I needed somewhere safe and this is just where I ended up. I-”

You stop as your gaze lands on the other body in the room. The one you hadn’t even noticed at first. Taehyung. You just really can’t catch a break. “Fuck. Shit, I’m just gonna…” You turn immediately, hand already attempting to open the door again, but the blood causes your grip to slip. 

Yoongi’s arms wrap around your middle and he lifts you away easily. You try not to think about just how easily he moved you. You weakly try to fight against him, but it only serves to exhaust you further. You sag in his arms and just try to breath. 

Yoongi pats your head gently, shushing you. You didn’t even realize you were whimpering. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re safe here. Taehyung knows already. Jimin told him. It’s okay.”

You fight for another moment, you should leave. But ultimately your injuries catch up to you and you feel consciousness slowly slipping from your grasp. Now that you’re not actively running or fearing for your life, your exhaustion crashes over you and before Yoongi can say more, you pass out. 

“Hyung… What are we gonna do?” Taehyung’s voice is quiet as Yoongi gently lays you out on the towels Taehyung placed on the couch.

Yoongi looks down at you, brushing some of your hair from your face. He sighs. “I don’t know. We have to wait for her to wake up. But given how beat up she is, that might be a while.”

“Are we really not going to tell the others?” 

“Not right now. We’ll wait for her to get up first. Find out what happened. Then we can decide from there.” Yoongi turns to look at him. “In the meantime, I have some spare clothes in my locker in the practice room, can you go grab those and some extra towels and water.” He glances at you before tacking on, “And the first aid kit. Drop those off with me and then go pick up some food? She’ll probably be hungry when she gets up.”

Taehyung looks like he wants to say more, but finally he nods, slipping out of the room quietly. 

Yoongi’s gaze slowly trails over you, taking in the extent of your injuries, at least what he can see without cleaning the blood off of you. There’s a ring of bruises around your neck, shaped suspiciously like a hand. More bruising covers your jaw, along with a thin line of split skin than has left a thin trail of red down your neck. Most of the exposed skin of your right arm and thigh are covered in the criss cross scraps of road rash and it’s coated both extremities and a good portion of your clothing wet with blood. Your palms share a similar fate, the heels of them holding the brunt of the damage. 

Yoongi wonders how angry you’ll be if he rips up your clothes to get them off of you but decides that he’ll just buy you new ones if you complain. He steps closer, trying to carefully tear the clothing so he can remove it from your body without jostling you too much. He knows you’re out cold, but he doesn’t want to risk anything at all possibly waking you when all you need it rest. 

He’s just stripped the last of your clothes from you, tossing the ruined things into a plastic bag when Taehyung returns. Taehyung’s eyes widen when he sees your undressed state, gaze quickly averting as he thrusts the requested items in Yoongi’s direction. Yoongi takes them, setting them on the coffee table. He catches Taehyung before he can retreat once more, handing him the bag of bloodied items.

“Can you destroy this too? Don’t need it getting found or sniffed out.”

Taehyung gives Yoongi a little salute and then is back out the door to carry out the rest of his duties. Yoongi pulls the coffee table closer to the couch and you and perches on the edge. Taking one of the hand towels that Taehyung had grabbed and the water, he begins slowly and carefully wiping the blood from your body. It takes longer than he expects, the irritation causing a few wounds to begin bleeding again. But once the layer of grime is cleaned from your body, Yoongi sees more bruises on your stomach and sides and he’s sure there’s probably some on your back as well. Just what had happened to you?

He dabs ointment onto the worst of the wounds, hoping it helps a little until you can feed properly and heal up. He takes a few aspirin from the med kit as well setting them beside the glass of water that waits for you. 

Staring at his clothes, he wonders if he should even bother putting them on you. They’re certainly baggy enough, but putting them on would require a lot of movement and he doesn’t want to jostle you more than necessary. But then he thinks of times he’s woken up injured and in an unfamiliar place, vulnerability already high even if he was near someone he knew. He would want to be clothed. He carefully slips his shirt onto you, which proves much more difficult given your unconsciousness. His shorts are much easier to slip on you. 

You look peaceful, so still actually that Yoongi panics for a minute thinking you’ve died and he presses his ear to your chest just to reaffirm the thumping in the air is your slow heartbeat and not someone else’s in the building. All his time on this planet, and you are by far the most enchanting, frustrating, and mysterious creature he’s ever met. He can only hope that you’ll allow him and Taehyung to help you. That you won’t push them away again. But for now, all he can do is wait for Taehyung to return and for you to wake up.

The first thing you feel when you regain consciousness is pain, radiating from multiple points on your body and you wish you had stayed unconscious instead. Sleep sounds so much preferable to trying to take inventory of what hurts and why. But now that you’re slightly more aware of your surroundings, the smell of food invades your senses and your stomach gives a loud grumble. You hear talking, though your half asleep state keeps the words from filtering through and making sense, and then there’s the soft click as a door is shut. 

It’s quiet for a moment before someone speaks. “I know you’re awake and I know you’re hungry. You need to take something for the pain anyway.” Yoongi murmurs, kneeling down next to you. 

You groan and peek one eye open to glance at him, noting the way his face is twisted with worry. Guilt twists your stomach that you’ve made a problem for him. He slips a hand beneath your head as he helps you carefully sit up then he’s turning to pick up a glass of water and some pills, offering the pills to you before helping you with the water. You gulp down as much as you can before Yoongi is gingerly pulling it away, an amused smile on his face. 

He sets the glass on the table and your gaze is drawn to the food and you suddenly feel ravenous. Yoongi hands you one of the containers. 

“You can eat. I know you’re probably hungry after whatever happened.” 

You eye him skeptically for a moment before you begin eating, quickly wolfing down one container before moving onto the next. You don’t even realize Taehyung has returned until you’ve finished most of the food, belly full almost to the point of hurting, but it at least gives your body enough energy to sit up straight without help. You look between the two of them as you drink some more water. You think you remember Yoongi mentioning Taehyung knew before you passed out, but most of your time post fight is a haze. But the fact that Taehyung is here and not upset at Yoongi or your presence means he knows something at least. 

They share a look before Yoongi speaks. “So what did happen?”

You swallow, waving the question off. “Oh, it’s fine. There was just a thing at the club. No big deal.”

Yoongi blinks at you, incredulous. “You can’t be serious? Nothing that could’ve possibly happened at the club could’ve wiped you out this much. You were practically dead when you got here. That’s not just something as simple as a ‘club thing.’ What happened?”

You look from Yoongi to Taehyung. You don’t know what, maybe you’re hoping that he’ll back you up despite having never met you formally. But he just looks at you with pleading eyes. You want to continue to deny what happened but you know that they won’t give up until you tell them the truth. And you’re too tired to try to fight it anyway. 

You sigh, head dropping back against the couch. “I was attacked. By this werewolf that I had a run in with a long time ago. I guess she thought I had died and that she didn’t need to deal with me herself. She came to Seoul to visit someone and caught wind that I’m still alive. She’s been hunting me down since.”

It’s silent for far too long and when you glance at the two men, they’re exchanging worried glances. Your gut churns with even more guilt. You shouldn’t have come here, no matter how exhausted you were. You’ve put them in danger, worse you didn’t even know until now that they had been in danger. Maybe you should’ve been the one to listen to Namjoon. You really do just hurt everyone you care for. You can’t read their expressions, but you have a feeling about what’s coming so you make it easier for them and push yourself from the couch. 

You wobble for a second and they’re both quick to rise and reach out to steady you, hands so gentle that you can feel tears well in your eyes. “Look I’m sorry for coming here. I didn’t mean to put you guys in danger. I’ll get out of here and draw her away. So you guys will be fine.”

You manage to take only one unsteady step before hands are wrapping around each wrist and you look back to see each of them holding one. 

“I don’t know what’s going on inside that head of yours, but you’re wrong. We’re worried about you and your safety. You can barely stand. You should not be out on the streets where she can find you.” Yoongi tugs gently but you refuse to move, though you both know that he could easily pull you back right now. 

You turn to look at Taehyung, who’s been quiet the whole time. He tilts his head before he tugs your arm as well until you finally give in and fall back against the couch. You don’t think you could’ve stood for much longer anyway. Taehyung’s hand slides down to encompass yours.

“What do you need?” He asks softly.

You shift uncomfortably. You need to feed. But you can’t possibly ask that of them. You’ve already asked too much as is. You wave him off. “I’m fine. Just a little more rest and I’ll be fine.” You feel so human and vulnerable right now. Being this weak around someone else would normally have you crawling in your skin, aching to get away and take care of yourself but somehow, with them, you feel safe. 

Yoongi looks unconvinced. “When was the last time you fed?”

You purse your lips in thought. “Not too long ago. Few days maybe?” When Yoongi looks like he’s going to argue, you continue. “I swear, it was really recent. But the fight… Fuck have you ever fought a werewolf? Look I’m not built to fight much of anything, let alone a werewolf who knows how to counter the few things that are at my disposal. It took everything in me to just get away. It just…” you sigh and run a hand through your hair as you close your eyes. “Drained me.”

The couch beside you dips and when you peek an eye open, you see Taehyung has sat down, close enough that your thighs brush together. He seems to hesitate for only a moment before you see something switch in him.

“Feed from me.”

You blink at him, unsure if you heard him correctly and turn to see if Yoongi is going to object or… something, you don’t know what. But Yoongi’s face is frustratingly neutral as he gazes back at you. You turn back to Taehyung and his face is firm as his hand lands on your thigh and squeezes. 

He leans closer, until your lips are just an inch apart and his eyes hold their intense gaze on yours. You swallow, suddenly overwhelmed by his scent. His eyes flicker between yours and his breath ghosts across your face as he speaks. 

“Aren’t you hungry, little demon?” 

Your breath hitches and you struggle with rational thought. All you want to do with his invitation is sit on his cock and feast. Arousal wafts off of him as he smirks and it’s making your head hazy, all thoughts not about devouring him leaving you. You try to fight it, but you’re so drained that it’s hard to resist such a pretty, willing boy. You finally resolve to wipe the smirk clean off his face; he has no idea what he’s in for.

You close the small distance, pressing your lips to his and tangle your fingers in his hair to hold him close as you lick at his lips, moaning as you feel yourself already slowly gaining energy. Pushing him back to sit flush against the couch, he goes willingly, hands digging into your thighs to help you as you plant yourself in his lap. You’re quick to lick into his mouth, chasing the small sparks of pleasure that feed and energize you. You feel slightly delirious and it takes all of your willpower not to just feed right now. But you know if you do it with his cock buried in you, on the brink of orgasm, that it’ll be so much better. More potent and sweet. The thought makes your toes curl. Taehyung already tastes so sweet. 

Taehyung seems perfectly content to let you take what you want and manipulate him as you please. You grind down, delighted to find how hard he is beneath you already and you continue to shift your hips against him, drawing small whines and groans from his throat. Wanting to draw more of those delicious noises from him, you slip your hands beneath this shirt, nails drawing lighty up his belly till they rest on the swell of his chest. Your pussy drips in your borrowed shorts as Taehyung’s hands slip beneath the fabric to squeeze at the bare skin of your thighs. 

You’re so absorbed in the kiss and the feel of him beneath your hands that it’s not until you hear the creak of a chair that you remember the two of you are not alone. Yoongi. You pull reluctantly from Taehyung’s lips and you have to quickly drag your gaze from how kiss swollen they look lest you just dive back in. Instead you shift enough to find Yoongi, slouched down in his chair and legs spread. He almost looks bored with the way his head is propped up on his hand, but the heat in his gaze and the slight tent in his pants give away his interest in what’s unfolding before him. 

When your eyes meet, he smirks. “Don’t let me interrupt, babygirl.” You go to speak but he gives you a small shake of his head and continues. “Why don’t you focus on Taehyungie, hm? Show him what he’s been missing out on.” His eyes flit behind you to Taehyung and then land back on you. “I’ll just enjoy the show.”

You hesitate for only a moment more, but Yoongi’s quirk of an eyebrow finally has you turning back to Taehyung. His gaze is dark and there’s a smirk stretching his lips once again. Well that certainly won’t do.

“Jiminie had high praise for you, you know.” He murmurs. 

You return his smirk with one of your own, leaning close until your lips just brush his. “Is that so? Do you want to see if I live up to that praise?”

Taehyung’s hands tangle in your hair, pulling your lips firmly against his with a groan. You shift closer, chest pressed to his and resume grinding, pulling the sweetest whines from his throat. 

His hands slip beneath your borrowed shirt, sliding up your belly until they cup your breasts. He kneads at the flesh, drawing a moan from you. You tear yourself away from his mouth, tugging the shirt from your body. Taehyung’s eyes drop to where his hands are, slipping down slightly so his fingers can play with your nipples. 

You hum at the feeling, head falling back as the pleasure-pain shoots through you. Warmth envelopes a nipple, Taehyung teasing the bud with his teeth. You tangle your hands in his hair, encouraging him to continue his suckling, his tongue warm and gentle countering the sharpness of his teeth. He switches to the other, laving the same attention to the bud. 

You tug at his hair, drawing a whine from his throat and he pulls away to capture your lips in another kiss. You let him, enjoying the way his tongue slips into your mouth, the way his hands flit around to touch every inch of skin they can. The longer you kiss, the less your body aches, but you know you need more.

You slip off Taehyung’s lap, quickly working to shove the shorts down your legs. “Strip.”

Taehyung works just as fast, tugging his shirt over his head and shoving his sweats down his legs. Yoongi chuckles as his frantic movements. 

“Eager, Taehyungie?” he coos. 

Taehyung glares at him but before he can respond, you cup his cheeks, effectively pulling his attention back to you. 

“I like them eager,” you peck him on the lips as you slide back into his lap, grinding your bare cunt against his cock. 

Taehyung gasps at the feeling of your wet pussy sliding along his length causing his hips to buck against you. His cock is thick and long and pretty. Everything about Taehyung is just so pretty. Under more normal circumstances, you’d love to feel the stretch of your jaw as you sucked him down, to take your time to work you both up and make you both mad with need. But that will have to wait till there’s more time. All you can focus on right now is having his dick inside of you as you suck the pleasure from him. 

You giggle. “Eager and big. My favorite.”

You reach down, hand wrapping tight around Taehyung’s cock as you position him at your entrance before sliding down his cock until your hips are flush. You moan as he stretches you. It feels perfect. Taehyung’s fingers dig into your hips.

“Holy fuck.”

“How’s she feel, Taehyungie?”

Taehyung groans beneath you, hips flexing like he wants to move but is waiting for you first. “Good. So good, hyung… She’s so wet and tight.”

You grin down at him. “It’s about to get better.”

With that, you lift your hips until just the tip of his cock remains in you and then you drop yourself back down. You start a fast pace, thighs protesting almost immediately but now that Taehyung is inside of you, that’s all you can focus on. His feet shift, planting firmer on the ground so he can meet each of your thrusts. 

“Play with her tits too, Tae. You want her to cum, don’t you?”

Taehyung nods, hands abandoning your hips to cup your breasts. His fingers tug at your nipples, pleasure coursing through your veins. You grip the back of the couch, grinding yourself on his cock. Yoongi groans behind you as he watches, the creak of the chair preceding the slick sound of skin on skin. 

“Is Taehyungie being good, babygirl?”

You nod. “He’s so good. Fills me up so well. So close already.”

“That so? You wanna cum, babygirl?” You nod frantically, working your hips faster and Yoongi chuckles. “Play with her clit, Tae. Make her cum around your cock.”

Taehyung follows the order immediately, fingers slipping between your folds to pinch your clit before circling the bud. 

“Come on babygirl, cum for us. Isn’t Taehyungie being so good?”

You shudder, Taehyung’s fingers picking up speed as he leans forward to let his teeth graze your nipple. You moan his name, back arching as the coil in your belly snaps and your pussy convulses around his cock. The world goes fuzzy for a moment as euphoric bliss floods your body. Taehyung chokes on a noise, fingers continuing to work your clit to draw your orgasm out. 

Your hands dig into his hair, pulling his head back as you lean in to press your mouth to his. Taehyung tastes potent. So on edge that desperation clings to the edges, sweetening him up even more. He’s so addicting. You lick the seam of his lips as your hips rock against him. 

“Cum for me baby,” you murmur against his lips, pairing the command with a dirty twist of your hips. 

It only takes a few more grinds before Taehyung’s fingers dig into your skin to the point of pain and a muffled moan pressed to your lips as he begins to fill you. You kiss him harder, finally letting yourself feed freely from him, his orgasm making him taste divine. He remains hard as you feed, no chance at a break as you draw his pleasure out almost torturously as you continue you to grind against him. You feel his cock twitch within you as he squirms beneath you in oversensitivity. You barely register the wetness of tears as they hit your hand, consumed as you are in the bliss you’re taking in.  

He whines against your lips as you feel vitality fill you, your aches disappearing as you begin to move more frantically against him. His nails dig into your skin and with a smothered cry, he cums again, cock twitching feebly as it dribbles more cum into your stuffed pussy. 

A hand wraps around your throat and you’re pulled away from Taehyung’s lips with a gasp. Your grind and then there’s a small squeeze that leaves you shuddering as another orgasm rips through you. The hand on your throat tugs you a little further away from Taehyung’s face and you tilt your head back to look up at Yoongi through hooded eyes.

“That’s enough, babygirl.”

You squeeze your eyes closed, taking a deep breath to try to ground yourself. Right, you only needed to feed enough to help start healing. You can’t drain Taehyung. You don’t want to get him anywhere near that and have the possibility of him turning feral. You feel a twinge of guilt when you think about how you hadn’t wanted to stop. Opening your eyes again, you glance at Taehyung. His head is tilted back against the couch as he stares up at the ceiling with hazy eyes. You hadn’t even realized how far you had gone. You’re glad Yoongi was here. God you haven’t done something like that on accident since- 

“Do you feel better, babygirl?” Yoongi asks, cutting your spiraling thoughts off before they can get worse. 

You nod and let Yoongi help you off of Taehyung’s lap and back onto the couch. 

“Jimin did not prepare me for that.” Taehyung mutters and Yoongi laughs, patting his head. 

“Imagine if she was at full strength, Tae.”

Taehyung whines, flopping down onto the couch. “Please don’t make me think about that. I can’t get hard again. I will actually die or my dick will fall off.”

Silence descends and you gather your borrowed clothes as Taehyung tugs his sweats back on. “I should probably go.” 

Yoongi gives you a flat look. “Will you stop that?”

Your lips twitch as you get dressed and shake your head. “You’ve already done so much. I don’t want to put you anymore in danger.”

Yoongi pinches the bridge of his nose and then he pushes you towards the couch again. “Sit.” When you don’t move, something dark crosses his face. “Sit. Down.”

You swallow and quickly sit down, you’ve never heard Yoongi like that before. You can’t tell if he’s angry or just really frustrated. Either way, you don’t want to see it get worse. His look is already intimidating. You’re nervous about where this might be going. But he’s done so much for you, the least you can do is sit and listen. 

“What happened between you and Namjoon?”

You tilt your head. That’s a little unexpected. You figured this would’ve been more about Taria or why you’ve distanced yourself from them all. “Well… You know the answer to that already, don’t you?”

Yoongi sighs and sits on the coffee table in front of you. You feel a little bit like a child being reprimanded now. “We know Namjoon’s side. We want to know yours.”

You look from Yoongi to Taehyung, who gives you a kind, encouraging smile despite the fact that he still looks completely fucked out. You look back at Yoongi, resigned. “You’re not going to give up until I tell you, are you?” He shakes his head, a small smile on his face. You sigh. “Fine.”

You lean back, letting the memories you’ve tried to keep buried for centuries come back. “Me and Namjoon met not too long after we were both changed. We lived together with another vampire in a nice little place just outside a village in China. Things were… really good back then.” 

A sad sigh escapes your lips as you prepare to tell them of the worst moment of your long life. The moment that’s kept you closed off from people. Kept your guard up and from letting anyone close again, at least until a bright doe eyed vampire inserted himself into your life and just wouldn’t leave, who wore down your defenses until you felt yourself helpless to do anything other than trust and care for him and everyone that he brought with. You try not to think about how it feels a little like the l-word. You can’t let yourself get that far. You can’t do it again. You guess it’s fitting that the story begins and ends with Namjoon. You rub the tears from your eyes and start from the beginning. 

[ohwereusingourmadeupnames]

“You almost died! And for what?” - post endgame, please!

Where All Your Biggest Fears Are Gonna Come For You

Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark (Starker) Rating: Mature (M) Notes: I had a great time with this one - thanks for the prompt, anonymous friend!  Word Count: ~3K Warnings: Tony losses an arm and the symptoms of PTSD are described. Summary: 

Peter never thought Tony would be the one to snap the world back to normal. When it happens, there’s a desperate scramble to save his life. 

do the thing, send in all the prompts 

At the end of 5 years slaving over theories and ideas, Peter never thought the end of Thanos would lie in Tony’s hands.

They spent hours a day working through the time travel capabilities and even longer trying to tap into the makeup of the pym particles. Between the late nights in the lab, Peter and Tony found comfort in each other. It was the one consolation prize of the fucked-up situation that wrapped its hand around the planet.

Adventuring with Steve and Tony to get the stones was like watching a movie of their past lives – the younger Tony didn’t seem all that different than the one he knew intimately; but then again, Peter didn’t think Tony would ever feel like a stranger.

After watching Thor resuscitate Tony with his illustrious hammer, Peter quickly realized losing Tony was his worst fear. They weren’t entirely open about their relationship, but Peter craved the comfort of Tony’s touch and held his hand the entire way back to their present.

Bruce stepping up to take ahold of the gauntlet the first time gave Peter a sense of false hope. There were others willing to step up – people that could handle much more than Tony; no matter what though, Peter should’ve known better. So many people wrote Tony off as someone who only worked for himself; it made his chest ache, how wrong they actually were. Peter knew that Tony’s biggest fear was losing the people that meant the most to him. Luckily, the entirety of the world was included in that.

Completely absorbed in keeping as many of Thanos’s soldiers at bay during that final battle, Peter didn’t realize what happened until everyone stilled. Turning on his heels, Peter let out a loud wail – Tony was stumbling, his brief look of triumph giving way to pain and disorientation. Glad to have his super speed, Peter closed the distance between them quickly, his hands grabbing Tony’s shoulders before the man could hit the ground. 

“Tony – Tony, it’s okay. It’ll be okay.” Peter repeated those words over and over again, Tony grasped his hand and looked at him helplessly, the energy he absorbed obliterating the right side of his body.

“Fuck, please no,” Peter groaned, his palms on Tony’s cheeks. Despite it all, Tony was looking at him with a dazed sort of smile, the haze in his eyes one Peter saw so many times over the last few years. He wasn’t willing to part with it, either. Leaning forward, not giving a single fuck about the people gathered around them, Peter pressed a kiss to Tony’s head and let go.

Before he could turn away or think or come up with a plan, a hand was on his shoulder – T’Challa was looking at him with a serious expression. “Let Shuri try.” As if his words summoned her, the technological genius appeared. “He doesn’t have much time,” T’Challa said without hesitation, his arm pulling Peter away from Tony to give Shuri room.

Without being asked, Stephen created them a portal that lead directly to Shuri’s workspace in Wakanda. Peter watched with wide eyes as Tony was laid across a table that Shuri immediately started to interact with. His heart hammered when he noticed the heart rate monitor fluctuating between low and non-existent.

Tears he couldn’t help were rolling down his cheeks, the sobs that felt trapped in his brain were shaking his shoulders. Seeing Tony like that pulled him apart one cell at a time. He didn’t know how hysteric he was until T’Challa pulled him from the room, the man’s hand a solid weight around Peter’s shoulders.

They didn’t exchange any words for a while – Peter was too immersed in his agony to be able to form anything coherent or even listen to someone talking at him. The heavy pressure of T’Challa’s arm stayed there until he cried himself out. His head ached, the front of it pounding from the ruthless feeling of grief and confusion and loss. The last vision of Tony was burned in his brain – he’d never seen the man he knew to be one of the strongest on the planet so lifeless. The white of his face would haunt him for a long time to come.

“Shuri will do everything she can, Peter Parker. You must keep the faith,” T’Challa remarked, breaking the silence after Peter’s sobs subsided. “I know that I won’t get you to go far – but you need to get cleaned up and refuel before standing vigil. Her work may take a while.” He gave Peter a brief squeeze before leading him down the hall. Peter could do nothing but follow, his emotional instability no good for anyone in that moment.

He made his way through the food put before him on autopilot – his body must have needed it, because it was gone before he even realized he’d been spooning it into his mouth. The shirt and pants he was given to wear were deep red and made of the softest fabric he’d ever felt. A small comfort in a time when he didn’t remember how to put thoughts in sequence; his brain bounced back and forth between worry and the horrible sight of Tony’s blackened side.

When he felt more or less like a human again, Peter wandered back into the small chamber they set up for Tony. The fact that he hadn’t been sent for during the last couple of hours was reassuring, but the paleness that still clung to Tony’s skin as he laid against the sheets gripped at his heart. He looked frail – Tony’s fragility staring him right in the face. The overwhelming feeling it evoked in Peter raw and devastating. 

Grabbing Tony’s hand between both of his, Peter pulled it towards him – his lips lingering on the skin there. The usual warmth wasn’t there, but at least the subtle thrum of his heart could be felt when Peter checked his pulsed every few minutes.

It took five days for Tony to open his eyes for the first time. Shuri did what should could for the damage on his right side – she had to remove his arm completely and the skin of his face was riddled with scarring; but he was alive. The first time Peter saw Tony’s deep brown eyes after what felt like a lifetime, he flew forward and wrapped him up. Peter pulled back when Tony groaned, his heart fluttering at the sound. “God, Tony – “ Peter babbled, tears already streaming down his cheeks.

Tony didn’t stay conscious for very long. He stuttered out Peter’s name and drank a little bit of water before passing out again. And it went like that for a while. He slept for long periods of time, then woke up just long enough to blink blearily Peter’s way. Despite the progress, Peter was slowly going insane. Shuri didn’t see a lot of changes in his condition, but attempted to meet Peter with a smile when she told him to keep hanging on to the hope that everyone who entered in the room tried to project.

Since the most pressing threat was under control, most of the Avenger’s scattered to do their own thing. The few that were planning to stick around and take up the next fight made their way to Wakanda to be with Peter and Tony. Steve, Bucky, Sam, Wanda, and Natasha took turns sitting around with Peter while he morosely clung to Tony’s hand. 

Peter mainly watched the rise and fall of Tony’s chest and tried to listen to whatever his concerned friends were trying to tell him. He always shot them an embarrassed attempt at a smile when they had to repeat themselves for the second or third time.

Peter woke up a little when Nat sat down next to him after a couple of weeks of the endless moping. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him against her side, fingers on him tight – her grip telling him he wasn’t going anywhere. Sucking in a breath, he turned his head to look at her, eyebrows quirking.

“He would hate to see you like this, Peter,” Nat said plainly, the white in her red hair still something that made his breath catch. The passage of time blew his mind, even after all the crazy shit he’d seen in the last few years. Dropping his head against her shoulder, Peter felt himself start to cry when she pressed her lips to his forehead. “You’ve gotta do something else.”

It was the exact thing he needed. The next day, Peter approached Shuri; she was fiddling with something under a microscope, the recognizable hum of vibranium engulfing him the longer that he stood there. She broke the silence – the sharpness of her voice bringing a sort of smile to his face. “You want to help, I assume,” she said, Shuri’s eyes coming up from the microscope to look at him head-on. “I could use it. Your familiarity with vibranium will come in handy.”

He didn’t understand what she meant at first, Peter was honestly just willing to do whatever he needed to. When she showed him the arm she’d been working on for Tony, he suddenly understood. Shuri wanted to give him an arm that would function with the rest of his suit. It was absolutely brilliant and terrified Peter to the core. The thought of Tony stepping onto the battlefield again made him want to drop to the floor and curl up into a ball. In the depths of his heart, Peter knew he would never be okay with it – not after the close call they were still dealing with.

Pushing passed it, Peter dug into the work. As it turned out, his knowledge on both the nanotech and Tony’s work with vibranium made the process a whole lot easier. They wouldn’t know for sure whether the suit extension would work until Tony tried it for the first time – but, the arm was stellar. The creation and design was very remnant of Bucky’s – Peter pitched a color change and grinned when Shuri showed him the red and gold accents she added to it.

Tony finally woke up entirely after four months of coming to and dropping back off again. 

Peter walked into the lab to start working when Shuri gave him an unrecognizable look. Tilting his head, Peter shrugged on his lab coat and rolled up the sleeves before asking – “What? Is something wrong?”

With a firm shake of her head, she grabbed his hand and pulled him over to the machinery monitoring Tony’s condition – even without any expertise, Peter could see the noticeable change in brain activity. “This is good, right? Maybe he’ll actually wake up!” Peter exclaimed, his shoes squeaking on the spotless floor as he ran over to Tony’s bedside. He gripped his hand tightly, his eyes slamming shut. “Please – wake up, Tony.”

The clench of his fingers a little while later had Peter looking up, his eyes wide. Tony attempted to sit up, the shift in his weight apparent when a grimace flashed across his face. As quickly as he could, Peter hefted him up and placed a couple of pillows directly behind him. After being fed by a tube for the past few months, Tony was probably extremely weak – the slump in his posture speaking volumes.

“How am I alive?” Tony asked first, his voice scratchy and deep – like each word was being pulled out of his throat like it didn’t want to leave. His fingers twitched again in Peter’s hand; the weak touch probably meant to be reassuring. Peter sat on the edge of Tony’s bed and got his hands on as much of his boyfriend as he could. The limbs below him were too skinny – the paper-thin skin so different than the lively flush of the man that stepped out of their house in hopes of finally defeating Thanos.

Giving himself a second to process the question, Peter drew his bottom lip between his teeth, the tension on his skin there enough to help him think. “T’Challa offered to help. We’re in Wakanda. Shuri worked her magic and did everything she could to make sure you’re sitting here with me right now. It’s been 4 really long months.” Peter’s last few words were gut wrenching, his mouth sour from saying them out loud.

Still exhausted, Tony nodded and relaxed into the pillows. “Can’t say I expected to be here. But, I’m so happy to see you.” He reached for Peter, his hand not making it very far before falling back to the bed. Moving without thought, Peter rearranged them until Tony was in his arms, the frail body against him one he missed so desperately. There was nothing like the warmth that was steadily attempting to creep back into Tony’s center.  

----  

Tony’s recovery was slow moving. A couple days after he woke up and started moving around, Shuri and Peter presented him with the vibranium arm they created. Peter didn’t want to delve into the additions made to incorporate the nanotech yet, but Shuri went off excitedly. The small flash of excitement in Tony’s eyes made his stomach roll, the nauseous feeling of pure panic settling deep in his gut.

Once he got used to the weight of it and how the absence of his actual limb felt, Tony seemed more determined than ever. With every passing day, he got a little bit more color in his cheeks. He put on weight and let Bucky take him through exercises that would help to accommodate for the extra points of force the new arm brought with it. The part of Peter that loved to watch Tony flourish burned brightly – the Stark determination wasn’t a made-up thing; it was tangible in the way he put his all into every part of the process that would make him better.

With the increase in energy came an increase in the need for constant stimulation. When he wasn’t working out or training, Tony was annoying Shuri in the lab with his constant questions. And when he wasn’t doing that, Peter captured his attention and kept him as close as possible.

Luckily, nothing had changed between them. In fact, the bond they fostered over the years seemed to burn brighter than ever. Tony didn’t have to hear from the team about Peter’s dedication to his bedside to know how devoted he’d been. Despite not being entirely conscious, Tony swore he could feel Peter there every single time he managed to come to.

A month later, Tony felt good enough to travel – so they headed back to upstate New York to disappear in the comfort of the little house that’d been their sanctuary for such a long time. It felt amazing to walk through the door to something familiar – watching Tony’s face light up in recognition and obvious affection had him grinning, his palms gripping delightfully rosy cheeks to pull him into a kiss. “Welcome home, Mr. Stark.”

The happiness surrounding their homecoming lasted for about 6 weeks – Steve Rogers pulled into their driveway and broke the bubble to pieces on a rainy Thursday. Peter shot him a murderous look when he knocked on the door – “Can I talk to you for a second?” Peter asked before Steve and Tony could shake hands. He pushed Cap down their porch stairs and didn’t stop until they were within feet of his car. “Why are you here? You can’t be here with Avenger’s shit already, Steve – he’s just now getting back into the swing of things. And still healing.”

Steve put a hand on his shoulder, like the parental gesture would erase the fear and anxiety that wouldn’t stop rushing through his veins whenever he thought about the inevitability of their next mission. “It’s time, Pete. Threats are imminent. We’ve got to be better prepared next time.”

He presented it in that exact way to Tony, too. Steve kept flashing looks over in Peter’s direction the entire time he talked, but never stopped the words from coming out of his mouth. It made his head spin, all the details about rounds and patrols and training schedules. Peter figured they’d eventually make it back into the helm of things – but, he wasn’t ready. The idea that he’d be faced with the helpless feeling of waiting by Tony’s bedside again so soon like a claw gripping his heart and wrapping it in doubt and uncertainty.

Peter felt Tony’s arm on his waist when he pushed the door closed after Steve left – neither of them giving him the go-ahead, but both aware that it was coming, that not answering the call wasn’t in the cards for them. Sighing, he reached up, his fingers tangling with Tony’s on his shoulder.

“I’m not ready,” Peter admitted, the pressure in his chest too much to keep inside any longer. He was surprised he made it through Steve’s visit before coming undone. “I’m not ready to worry, yet. I’m not ready to put how I feel about you away for the greater good. You almost died! And for what? To just jump back into the fray and not enjoy the life you fought so hard to secure for everyone else? I can’t lose you, Tony. I can’t.”

His hands framed Tony’s cheeks as he spoke, Peter turning around and tugging him close when he felt the man’s weight shift behind him. His thumb ran across the scars on Tony’s right cheek – the lines there still a bright pink, the noticeable effects of healing enhancing the point for him more. “Can we wait – please? Just a little longer.”

Tony didn’t answer right away – he let Peter’s fingers run over the skin of his face, his eyes following every movement he made. Leaning forward, he closed the gap between himself and Peter, their lips meeting in a tender kiss. Tony brushed their noses together as he pulled away, the caress sending a shiver down Peter’s spine. He closed his eyes, the steady rise and fall of Tony’s chest soothing in the silence that surrounded them.

The softness of Tony’s voice had him stepping away, his eyes desperately seeking out the warm chocolatey pools he loved so much. “I’m not ready, either. I thought, just for a second, that I might be. Then he started talking about battle plans and my heart started to race.” Tony gripped his hips with both hands, the coolness of the vibranium against his skin still something Peter was getting used to. “I’m scared, Pete. I don’t want to go just as much as you don’t want me to.”

Throwing his arms around Tony’s neck, Peter pulled him into a tight hug, a beaming smile slipping across his face.

“That’s the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”

[glamrockmonarch]

MiCO LTD - Brian May x Reader

A/N: I hope you enjoy this, I don't think it is too long. I didn't want to put too much info and confuse everyone... This is not exactly my first time writing more "imaginative" stuff, but it is certainly the first thing like this that I post over here. And I will be waiting for some feedback guys!

"Travelling through space and time has never been easier! Allow us to take you to the other side of the universe, the cosmos awaits! Visit our website www.mico.com to find out more about our payment programs."

The friendly high pitched voice of a woman on TV got everyone excited. The payment programs were too good to be true.

In fact, it was all a lie. We all forgot to read their name. MICO. It was so obvious and simple, it was right there on their business sheets, yet we were fooled.

You would have to be either too poor or too ignorant if you did not get yourself a seat on the Nautilus.

It was all fun and games. The world coming together to watch the ultimate show. To have the stars dance for us, in front of our eyes. Nobody could know, predict or tell how fucked we were.

Royally fucked. Some of the teens described it later, before they were pulled into the youth cells.

Their red overalls stained with dark patches over the knees, evidence of the long day they had at the fields. Like everyone, they wore white long sleeved shirts underneath, as a sign of rebellion some of them cut the sleeves to make them ¾ or even removed the sleeves entirely. These teens were often pulled aside and were seen again with brand new shirts and dilated pupils.

The young ones suffer the most, being 12 already counts as a teen for them. Some are only children still, forced to work all morning, attend school in the afternoons and go to the youth cells every night...but I digress.

Once you had your ticket you were told to pack nothing but your passport. If you had a ticket you were issued a new one. Mine was a metallic blue card with nothing but the words U.S.E on one side and a small golden chip shinning on the corner of the other side - women with university degrees got the same one.

Women without degrees were given golden ones. A platinum one meant that you were an elder. Pink and Violet ones were for the "sexually diverse" - as they call them in HIə. Men with or without university degrees got yellow ones. Children got green ones, all teenagers got red ones.

We failed to see the differences, too distracted by the novelty of a card with a chip as an official document. It contained everything that there was to know about us, beyond our addresses it contained information about our physical examinations prior to the trip, what we were beyond who we were... it was too late when we discovered it.

The ship, the large and beautiful Nautilus, was a piece of metal engineered to take all of us through the galaxy. All of my friends and their mother were going too. Half the world population took ships alike. The classes on the ship were oddly assigned, while women had the best rooms and seats in the viewing salon, men were put on different rooms at the bottom of the spaceship. The children had to stay in a special viewing salon where mechanic Nana's looked after them. Upon entering the ship we were given uniforms. Everyone's passport cards matched their pants and jumpers, we thought at first it meant something like the meal plan people were on, which was later debunked as we were separated from our friends and family.

That was the worst part. That moment when we realized this was a mistake, that we had no option but to do as we were told. When I look down at my hands I can almost see it still, my husband's llong fingers fiercely tangled with my own before the officers pulled us apart.

In many ways, I wish it had gone down a different way. Brian meant well when he got us into the whole thing. He wanted to take the chance, to see the very thing he spent so many years studying. I could see the childish wish spread on his face when we first talked about it. The great darkness of the universe unveiled at last. The large planets, the small moons, the dying stars, black holes and craters on alien earths. We fell for it. Worse, we dragged people along.

It was a nice trip all the way till the third month, regardless of us being apart for the evenings, we were still allowed to eat together and wander inside the ship in the company of whomever we wanted. It was then, when we were supposed to be heading back that we saw the real problem; we were never meant to come back to earth. The ship moved forward still. Had it not been for the airplane pilots in the crowd we would not have seen it happening. The ship was not bringing us back to earth. It took us here, or as they spell it on this planet: HIə.

HIə is a strange place. The city is made up of tubes and cabins. Some call it Earth 90214. We call it... Here. Because there is nowhere else to go.

We got separated from each other. All bluesies, goldens, and greenies went straight to the training camp. The rest were taken away. Apparently Pinks, Violettes and Reds got taken into the reduction chambers before joining us. Male Plats, elders, were put on psyche wards for evaluation while Female Plats were selected and discarded.

The new world awaited, we did not know it until it was too late to reject it. Rejection of the social order meant discarding, meaning you were put inside a tube and shot outside of the atmosphere. Here has breathable air, we could go outside from time to time, see the odd light of the sun on the rocks, but we were not allowed to talk among ourselves until the programme was over. There are plants and wild animals. We have seen them, but it doesn't feel like home when you are put in large rooms with 49 roommates all sleeping in bunk beds.

I don't know what has been of my friends, I fear to know. Are they dead? Have they been discarded? Will I be discarded?

This training...it is starting to look like brainwashing, we reply to the Great Question, we call it Master. Who does that?

We call this home. I know this place is not home. They have machines put chips in the nape of our necks. Will they read my thoughts? Program me like a cheap machine? Use me?

I don't know.

I wonder, as I roll the ring on my finger, and I look out the window in the large sleeping hall. Bunk beds around me, the jumper shining under the light of our night. It is winter in Here. Nights are longer, cold and wet. Sunlight shines the strangest shade of violet during the day, night is pitch black. The glass is starting to become foggy and I have to pull my sleeve over my palm to wipe it. Three moons stare back at me from their odd formation in the night sky.

"Are you thinking of him again?" A little voice to my left hisses.

Rolling on her side she sighs. The bags under her eyes tell the truth of our situation. She pulls her knees up to her chest under the fluffy covers of her bed.

"He must be thinking of you too," she assures me.

I shake my head. A frown forming on my face at the pain inside me.

"They will discard him," I voice my concern, "he is older. Stubborn. They cannot change him into their pet." I hiss.

Another capsule flies away up into the wide nothing and my stomach sinks. Every one of them could be him and I wouldn't know. I am so scared. What do we do? If he is gone, what am I holding on to?

Hope.

I hope he is alive. I hope he is well. I hope they haven't brainwashed him.

"He is famous on Earth. He is smart. They have no reason to throw him into space." She whispers, her voice soft and soothing.

I wipe my face of tears I didn't feel falling.

That is even worse: them using him.

My mouth feels dry, words are gone in my brain. The training has started to take its toll. I sit and stare at the reflection on the mirror and ignore her voice as I stand from the window sill and walk back to my bed, laying down with my eyes looking forward and my body going limp.

Hope is stupid, and resistance is futile.

[motherlycleric]

🌲🍄🌼 !

16 oc questions

🌲 What is the kindest thing your OC has ever done for someone? What is the kindest thing someone has ever done for them? On the flip side, what is the worst thing your OC has done to another person?

pre-wreck ro was one of the most giving people on the planet. to strangers, her family, the people that moved in and out of her life as she traveled and they aged. most of her life was spent doing for others. children especially, making sure they were safe and fed and clothed and had enough to keep them happy, because what’s the point of living if you’re not filled to the brim with joy ( that philosophy ended when the only thing keeping her breathing was revenge ). i think gabriel seeing through about seventy layers of bullshit to be able to give at least a single fuck about her is pretty kind. there are other things people have done but, yah know, spoilers. she’s tortured people. straight up sliced off pieces of skin and burned holes through them just to get an answer that she needed, that someone else needed. only ever to people that deserved that kind of end, of course. but still. it’s an awful thing to do to another person.

🍄 How would your OC react to the death of a friend/family member/loved one? Is there anyone they can confide in?

canonically, not well. rage against the world, bloodlust, feral-being level not well. but that being said, death is natural and she understands that at a base level. and if it hadn’t been her entire family? in two bloody and brutal fell swoops, she would have been okay. she’s lost people before and it was awful and she mourned them, but she was okay. now? it would depend on who it was… how it was. who did it? things could get very dark, very… evil maybe? there’s one person that could pull her back from the brink, long as he wasn’t the one that died.

🌼 Describe one of your OC’s worst nightmares

this contains so many spoilers so things have been left out: it’s the night her ship went down, except, she’s frozen in place, she’s not doing a single thing to help. [redacted] pulls at her wrist, that smile that not a single person can resist is gone and in it’s place is a silent scream. [redacted] is trying to get her to move, to save herself ( always always always thinking of her first, even after so many years ) but she can’t. aurora can smell the smoke, smell the sea. flashes of the faces she loves move past her, some still trying to keep the ship afloat, some falling into the waves to meet their death. a prayer goes through the air and she can see [redacted2] begging the sky for help. now now now is the time. please, [redacted2] screams. [redacted] is gone by then. aurora knows where [redacted] goes, even if she can’t see it now from where she’s planted. this isn’t the worst part, seeing them all go down fighting, reliving their deaths, not being able to save them ( even if when it was real, she did try ). no, the worst is when she’s in the water. the tail that was once her source of freedom now a source of self-hatred. she’s weak, wounded. and when the water pulls into her mouth and tumbles into her lungs, she’s on the cusp of drowning. and that’s when she wakes. a moment from the peace she so desperately wants.

[emeraldspiral]

Endgame thoughts

My initial reaction was that it’s surprisingly really slow paced and has very few action scenes. I was going to say it was all ultimately worth it for the big climactic battle at the end. But then it really lost me on almost all the endings for our heroes.

Pretty much everything I dreaded came to pass. Tony had five years with his wife and kid, but he had to live those years in a super-depressed world where he felt like a failure, then when he had the chance to fix everything and settle down and finally enjoy life, they ripped it away from him. Also, kinda selfish of him to insist that they don’t erase the last five years on the off chance that it causes Tony to not get married and have a kid with Pepper. Like, fuck all the people who didn’t get dusted but died as a result of pilots and drivers and doctors suddenly disappearing or who became depressed and were driven to suicide and fuck Loki, Heimdall, Vision, Gamora, and half of Asgard I guess?

Similar to how they ended Tony’s story about PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and the overbearing burden of feeling like he has to be responsible for everything in the worst way possible, I feel like Steve’s ending was also antithetical to his entire arc. He spent the whole series trying to acclimate to life in the future and he was doing a pretty good job of it. He got caught up on tech, pop culture, and even found a new love, bland and underdeveloped as she was. Then he just goes back in time to live in the past? Also, the whole point of sending Steve back to return all the stones was to ensure the timeline didn’t get fucked and things would play out as they had originally, so Tony’s daughter wouldn’t be unborn. But then Steve goes and hooks up with Peggy, who got married to someone else in the original timeline. Also, no one noticed Captain America returning after being presumed dead in a time where memories of him and what he looked like would still be fresh? Also, also Peggy founded SHIELD. Did she have to hide Steve’s existence from everyone who knew him every day that she worked with them? Did Steve not warn her about HYDRA infiltrating her organization? What about in the future when those HYDRA agents were tricked into thinking Steve was one of them? Any consequences to that?

I think the biggest tragedy of Steve’s ending is that it could’ve been the most beautiful, perfect, satisfying, sentimental ending to another story. Like, if they’d done this at the end of Avengers 1, or even Winter Soldier, I could get on board with the idea that Peggy was Steve’s one true love that he could never move on from. But after so many movies showing Steve acclimating to living in the future, making new friends and getting an old one back, (He seriously didn’t get to spend any time with Bucky outside the battlefield after they finally fixed his brainwashing. How bullshit is that?) establishing himself as the leader and moral center of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and making out with Peggy’s grandniece it feels like character regression to have him throw all that away to literally live in the past.

Also, he passes on the mantle of Captain America to Falcon, who already has a perfectly good superhero identity, instead of Bucky, who could actually use a new identity to start over with.

I felt cheated by the fact that they emphasized Loki being important to Thor in the marketing, but then Thor just walks right past him in his cell. Present Thor never interacts with or even mentions Loki and all of his emotional moments are with his mom, who I never cared about, in a callback to one of the worst movies in the franchise. Which isn’t to say those scenes weren’t well-done. Well, I mean, except for the fact that Thor’s fake hair and beard and beer-belly were terrible and distracting and took me out of the moment, though props to the actress playing Frigga for managing to be so sincere acting opposite Chris Hemsworth in that getup. I really don’t know what they were thinking with that. Like, they could’ve written the movie’s timeline so that they went to see Thor when he’s sad and fat to get their cheap laughs and then have them take another year or so to put together their time-travel setup so Thor could get back into shape. But no, they really decided to commit to that bit and have him spend the entire movie, his character’s swan song, as a damn clown. Like, they couldn’t have at least switched out the cheap ugly unkempt hair and beard for a better set that looks more realistic so he could look just a smidge more dignified in the finale battle?

And that’s not even getting into Thor’s ending. I was already peeved by Infinity War giving Thor his eye back immediately after he lost it but I think the ending they gave him somehow managed to be even more insulting than Tony’s. Like, his dad dies and he finally ascends the throne and takes on the responsibility of being a king and then he just gets fat and drunk and then abdicates and puts Valkyrie in charge so he can run off aimlessly looking for a new purpose with the GotG? Like, what sense does that make? Also, he justifies putting Valkyrie in charge by saying she’s got leadership qualities, but when did she ever demonstrate any? Ragnarok was all about Thor demonstrating HIS leadership abilities by recruiting Valkyrie, Hulk, Loki, and the Sakaar rebels to fight for his cause. Valkyrie didn’t do any leading in that film, she just learned to start giving a shit and be a team player again. In Endgame, all she does is point Rocket and Hulk in Thor’s direction and then show up on the battlefield. They don’t even imply that Valkyrie was taking charge while Thor was wasting away.

She looked fucking great on her horse though. But where did she get it? I don’t remember seeing her herding one onto the refugee ship at the end of Ragnarok. I’d say I’m surprised that Thor and Valkyrie didn’t become an official couple offscreen like Peter and Gamora did, but after they threw away Jane, Sharon, and Betty and aborted Nat and Bruce’s romance, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that Thorkyrie went nowhere. If they hadn’t gone with making Thor a joke for the whole movie though, it could’ve worked really well since in their last film together, Thor was the one who pulled Valkyrie out of a funk where she was drinking and wasting her life on Sakaar to cope with her trauma and she had the opportunity to do the same here. Oh well. Maybe with Thor out of the picture and Loki possibly alive the ship I really wanted to see take off might actually stand a chance.

The big girl ensemble scene kinda made me laugh because they really wanted all the girls (sans Nat) together and it was already kinda forced and corny when they did it in Infinity War when there were only three, but when you’ve got a huge battlefield full of mostly male heroes and random male soldiers and grunts it stops being a believable coincidence that all the women and only the women would end up in the same spot and just becomes transparently “we deliberately flocked together just for the sake of forming a girl group with no regard for strategy”. But that’s not even what made it funny. What made it funny was that they stuck Mantis in there and then as soon as everyone charged she disappears because Mantis isn’t a fighter, so there was no reason for her to join that group, which makes the whole thing even more transparently like, not a thing that would happen organically in real life.

I totally didn’t even notice that Lady Sif didn’t appear because the actress had left the franchise long ago, so I just never expected her to show up, anymore than I expected Jane to. In fact, I was so sure that Natalie Portman was only going to appear in archive footage or in faraway shots with a body double that it shocked me when they had like, a whole five seconds of her waking up and then Rocket walking into the room and it didn’t look like it could’ve been from the original movie because they never would’ve shot the scene to linger after Natalie walked off with the camera angled to frame a two-foot tall character. So I guess they got Natalie back just for that.

I’ve expressed before that I’m not a fan of dealing with story and character problems by throwing them away instead of fixing them, and Jane’s a pretty good example of why. The first two Thor movies feel like a complete waste now since they spent so much time developing her and Thor’s relationship and Thor having to choose between his obligations to Asgard and his love for her. Her dumping him in Ragnarok doesn’t inform his character at all, unlike Tony and Pepper’s break-up in Civil War. It’s just an excuse to make him single so they can set up Valkyrie as his new love interest. But then Thor and Valkyrie don’t get together, nor does he reconcile with Jane. The movie indicated he was still heartbroken over Jane, and they had the perfect setup for a reconciliation. Thor lost his both his parents, his siblings, his best friend, his eye, his hammer, his home planet, and half his people, but Jane was snapped by Thanos, which means she came back to life at the end. It was such a blatant missed opportunity to not have him either get pulled out of his funk by Valkyrie or reconcile with Jane in the end it almost feels like maybe they were going to in an earlier draft but then decided it was too similar to Steve's happy ending so they just decided fuck anything respectful or satisfying for Thor and just dumped him on the GotG for no other reason than to make his different.

When Valkyrie said she liked either Bruce or Hulk apart better than both of them together I was like “hard same”. Like, the CGI on Hulk was never that convincing, but it gets really deep into the uncanny valley in this film. It just feels wrong to see the big green guy emoting and gesturing like Bruce and hearing Bruce’s normal soft-spoken voice coming out of Hulk’s mouth. Nothing about it is okay. I would’ve liked it better if they hadn’t skipped over the character arc too. Like, instead of just “Oh, we reconciled our differences and merged into one during the timeskip” Bruce was still unable to Hulk out for five years and didn’t know why and then finally figured it out for the final battle in a big triumphant moment.

I was hoping there’d be some kind of a twist to the soul stone get scene. Like, because Nat sacrificed herself instead of being pushed in, she’d get the stone instead of Clint and then they’d both live, or they’d both fall and be resurrected. Kinda like in Yu Yu Hakusho when Yusuke and Kurama both tried to sacrifice themselves to the magic mirror to save Kurama’s mom so it let them both live.

They should’ve just cut Clint’s storyline and swapped it for Hulk’s story. Cause like, the whole Ronin thing doesn’t really impact the plot in any way. The only purpose it serves is to give him a reason to fight with Nat over who should sacrifice themselves despite Nat being the obvious choice since Clint has a wife and kids he’s trying to get back. The scene at the beginning where he loses them is all we really need to be emotionally invested in him. Scott only had the one scene with his daughter and that was enough for him.

If they’d had Hulk’s reconciliation happen over the course of the movie instead of during the timeskip then they could’ve sent Clint to New York and Bruce to Vormir, since an active battlefield wouldn’t have been a good place for Bruce to be while unable to Hulk out. It could’ve been Bruce and Nat fighting over who should sacrifice themselves as a resolution to the feelings of guilt and self-loathing they discussed in Age of Ultron. Nat could’ve sacrificed herself, not out of shame for her past or the future she doesn’t think she can have, but out of love for Bruce. Her sacrifice could’ve been the key to unlocking Bruce’s ability to reconcile the two halves of himself, which would've been a nice payoff to her being able to snap Bruce out of Hulk mode in AoU and Ragnarok instead of just a thing that happens to make you sad for no reason.

I thought Captain Marvel in her solo movie was just okay. Not unlikable by any stretch, but not particularly funny or charming or otherwise possessing any kind of engaging character traits strongly enough to give me something to latch onto. But I found her quite unlikable in this film. She’s barely in it and every time she is, she’s copping a real attitude. Like, everyone else is grieving and wracked with guilt because they’re actual empathetic characters who’s natural reaction is to feel bad about the situation even though they tried their hardest, and many of them couldn’t have done much anyway. But Carol just seems really defensive. Like, if this were any other hero, she’d be sorry she wasn’t around to stop Thanos. She’d be haunted by all the people who suddenly, inexplicably turned to dust, knowing she was the one hero powerful enough to stop him, but she wasn’t where she needed to be. Instead, she comes across as being more bothered by the idea that other people might blame her for not stopping Thanos than by what Thanos did.

I kept thinking that maybe since Loki got the the space stone the timeline was messed up and he was going to pop up in the final battle and I actually played myself into thinking it was him moving Mjolnir for a sec before it turned out to be Steve and then I was disappointed he didn’t show up later when everyone else did.

Nebula at the start of GotG 1 was already hoping that Ronan would help her kill Thanos, so it’s OoC for past Nebula to be his loyal servant in this movie.

How did Clint and Natasha go to Vormir not knowing about the sacrifice? Nebula was able to figure out what happened to Gamora in Infinity War, so why didn’t she warn them?

Loki disappeared with the space stone in Avengers 1 but he was still in his cell during the events of TDW, but then they went further back in time to get the space stone in the 70s. But when did Steve return the space stone? If he sent it back to the 70s, does Loki still get it in 2012, or did Steve stop him from getting it?

Also, why did they even need to go to the 70s to get more Pym particles? Bruce already had the time stone. They could’ve just used it to fix their flub with Loki.

I can’t believe they finally put explicit gay rep in the movies but like, in the weirdest way. Like, it wasn’t like they hyped it up and then only vaguely implied it with stereotyping, like some other movies. They did have like, an outright unmistakable declaration of a character’s sexuality, and it wasn’t even saved for the very end. It’s in like, the first half-hour. But, they did it with a random no-name extra. So it’s like, they now acknowledge that gay people exist in these movies, but there’s still no explicit unambiguous LGBT representation among the heroes, or even the supporting cast.

I remember in Tony’s funeral scene, seeing a teenage boy and thinking “Who the hell is that? That’s not Peter, and that’s not one of Clint’s kids”. Like, I’m not great with faces, especially when they’ve drastically changed due to puberty, so of course I wasn’t going to recognize the kid from Iron Man 3. Now that I know that that’s who that is, I think it’s a pretty nice touch, even though it’s still bullshit that Tony died.

Kinda confused about Gamora. We’re never shown that she goes back to her time, but I guess we have to infer that she did because she’s not with the other Guardians at the end and Peter has an image of her on a screen implying that he plans to somehow find her and bring her back to life in his time. Also, how is Nebula alive if her past self died?

Everyone who got snapped was brought back to life, but the five years they were gone wasn’t erased. So Peter is still 15, even though he’d be 20 if he hadn’t died, unlike Cassie who is now a 13 instead of 8 (I think that’s her age, don’t quote me on that). But we see Peter hug Ned, who looks the same age, and Flash and MJ also appear to be the same age in the Far From Home trailer. So, I guess it’s a coincidence that everyone in Peter’s circle just happened to also get snapped so there’s no awkwardness with Peter being in high school while all of his friends are college-aged now.

[finn-nelson-for-the-win]

Chapter 10? Already!? No way!!! 😱

Hello there! It’s kind of hard to believe that this is the 10th chapter I’ve written for this multi-chapter fic (and I still don’t have a fucking title for the fanfic as a whole…WHY AM I LIKE THIS!?!)…After how difficult it was for me to overcome writer’s block and write the prior chapter, I was pleasantly surprised by how easily this chapter came together…and it’s not a very short chapter either! 😬😅

I have a feeling a lot of you will like the direction that this chapter takes, because I certainly do enjoy the new dynamic that is taking shape between Rae and Finn here. As always, thank you for reading/reblogging/liking and just being all around superb people! Please let me know if you want to be tagged in my future writings and updates and/or if you’re having some trouble with your tag in my fics, as I’ve heard a number of you are, and I’ll see what I can do.😁😘❤️All my writing can be found right here…

Something New

Rae was not scheduled to work again until Wednesday morning and she had managed to leave her apartment with plenty of time to grab breakfast from the small café on her way to work, which for her was quite the accomplishment.

Since she had a few spare minutes to actually sit and enjoy the blueberry muffin and chai latte she had purchased, Rae walked toward the designated “smoking area” where she and Finn had spent part of Monday afternoon talking and took a seat at the exact same table. Pulling her phone from her purse, Rae pressed play on her Spotify app and resumed listening to the playlist she had been listening to as she got ready for work earlier that morning and a song aptly named “coffee” flowed through her earbuds.

Looking around her and taking in the peaceful hum of the city she lived and worked in on this early winter morning, memories of her conversation with Finn that had taken place at the same table found their way back into Rae’s mind, causing her to blush as a shy smile spread across her face.

 I’ve been talking to Finn for about two months now, but talking to him on Monday was something else entirely.

 It was so much more than just music, demanding customers, and bits of shameless flirting that defined many of our conversations since we became friends in October. This time it was so much more real and personal…much more intimate?…Nope, wrong choice of words, Rae! The last thing you need to be thinking about is “Finn” and “intimate” in the same statement.

 I can’t remember the last time I felt comfortable enough with another person—let alone a guy that I found as attractive as Finn—that I could hold a deep and personal conversation with and discuss my past with, no matter how little I had actually divulged.

 And he was so sweet about all of it! He clearly wants me to trust him to be there for me if I need him and he wants me to be happy and..well…I think I want him to be there for me too and be one of the reasons for my happiness…

 When I’m with Finn—and it’s just the two of us—we just seem to click and everything seems to make sense and be so easy.

 After years of being unhappy and struggling to find semblance of stability in my life, talking to Finn feels second-nature and in all honesty: I think I’m starting to see how Finn and I could be more than friends…

 Maybe…Perhaps…If he would be interested in something like that…

 But how do I figure out what he wants without getting hurt? I know he’d never hurt me intentionally, but can I handle the rejection if one of my best mates and coworkers turns me down when I am so completely and utterly enthralled by him?

Okay…let’s just assume that everyone and their mum that have been giving their opinions on the situation are correct and Finn fancies me too…what is he waiting for?

He hides it well with his occasional cockiness and brooding, but I can tell that Finn is a bit socially awkward and nervous at times too.

What if he is waiting for me to make the first move and I’m waiting for him to make the first move and no one ever moves..?

Rae kept considering her options and trying to determine how badly she wanted confirmation that there was chemistry between her and Finn and it was not just a figment of her imagination (and the imaginations of all her friends and coworkers), before finally coming to a conclusion about how she wanted to proceed.

Well, I suppose there’s no harm in kicking the flirty vibes up a few notches and testing the waters to see how Finn will respond to a more forward, less coy, Rae…

***

When it was nearly time for Rae’s shift to start, she threw away the trash from her breakfast in the bin next to the table she was at and walked along the perimeter of the building to the entrance of the office she worked in.

Rae scanned her badge at the machine on the wall and walked toward the row is desks where some of her mates, who must have gotten into the building a couple minutes earlier than Rae, were already seated and logging into their computers.

“Hey Archie! Good morning, Izzie! How’s it going, Chop?” Rae called as she took a seat close to the end of the row, leaving one empty desk to her right, and placed her chai latte on the desk beside her computer monitor.

“I’m doing pretty great, Raemundo. It looks like that coffee of yours is already taking effect…you actually seem awake right now!”

“Excuse you, Chop! It’s a chai latte, not coffee!” Rae stuck her tongue out at Chop’s teasing and continued logging into her computer and checking her email to see if there was anything important she had missed since she last worked.

“Hiya…you seem in a great mood, Rae. How was your Christmas?” Archie replied skeptically, trying to assess her body language and determine the cause for her unusual giddiness at 7:56 am.

“My Christmas was alright, I suppose. I’m just happy to be back at work and keeping myself busy again.”

“Okay…” Archie was about to press further to determine why Rae seemed uncharacteristically happy when Finn walked up and sat at the empty desk beside her, attracting the stares of almost everyone in their row of desks.

“Hey Izzie. Alright, Archie?” Finn said excitedly as he adjusted the height of his desk chair and waved at them.

“Excuse you, Finney boy…you can’t even be bothered to say hello to your best mate after dropping off the face of the planet inexplicably for weeks.” Chop huffed in frustration as he wheeled his desk chair closer to where Finn had just sat down, but was unable to keep up the miffed façade when Finn chuckled and clapped hands with him in greeting.

“How’s it going, mate? And sorry for not being very responsive to your texts lately Chopper, it were an accident, I swear!”

Chop pulled Finn in for a hug and ruffled his mate’s hair with his hand to show that he accepted his friend’s apology before they both returned to their desks.

“Finn! Where have you been for the last month? The rumors have been flying and we were starting to assume the worst. We thought you had been fired or something!” Archie exclaimed.

“Seriously? You all thought I got myself fired?” Finn asked slightly offended that this was their best guess at why Finn had been absent from work lately. Archie, Izzie, and a couple other of their coworkers had turned in their chairs to join the conversation and all of them shrugged slightly.

“Well, no, I did not get fired. I was just doing some traveling with friends.” He turned to meet Rae’s eyes, giving her a wink and a knowing smile.

As everyone else returned to what they were doing, Finn turned in his desk chair so his body was fully facing Rae. She turned slightly in her chair to mirror his position after she finished checking her work email, blushing slightly when he proceeded to just stare and smile at her until she felt it necessary to look away momentarily.

“Good morning, Rae! I missed seeing you at work yesterday, but I’m glad you’re working today. How are you?”

“Hiya Finn, I’m good, how are you today?”

“I’m loads better now that I get to work with you again today, girl!” Rae chuckled and rolled her eyes to dismiss his flirtatious eyebrow raise.

Finn moved his chair closer to Rae’s until they were close enough for him to gently bump his knees against hers as he swiveled side to side slightly while talking to her.

These brief moments of contact between their knees were subtle and Rae had initially assumed them to be accidental, so she moved her chair away slightly to give him more space. She was caught off-guard, however, when Finn compensated for the distance by moving his chair to remain close enough to continue touching knees and for him to rest his foot on the base of her desk chair between both of her feet.

So clearly Finn likes to be close to me…that’s a pretty good sign, I suppose!

“So, how is your garden doing?“ Finn asked with what Rae found to be genuine curiosity and interest.

“Raemundo, you have a garden?” Chop asked before Rae could reply, suddenly tuning into the conversation from where he sat behind her.

“Indeed she does! And it’s a secret garden…she were telling me all about it when we hung out after she got off work on Monday, isn’t that right Rae?” Finn answered on Rae’s behalf.

What is it with the blokes around here always interrupting me and speaking for me?!

“RAEMUNDO! You cheeky minx! Our Finney boy hasn’t even been back in the city and back at work for more than a couple days and you’re already spending time with him outside of work and telling him all about your ‘secret garden’…I suppose I’m not that surprised, but…wait! You didn’t let him—”

When Rae saw Chop use air quotes and put emphasis on “secret garden” she knew exactly where his dirty mind had gone to, so she shot Finn a scowl and tried to determine the best way to derail Chop’s current train of thought before she died of embarrassment in front of all her coworkers.

Finn also realized how Chop had interpreted what he said at about the same time, but was just smirking and laughing at how Rae’s eyes had widened in embarrassment. When their eyes met, Finn just shrugged and bit his bottom lip to hide the smile on his face as he ran his fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, but the blush in his own cheeks gave away how much he was enjoying the shift in conversation that was his doing.

Fuck…why does he always have to do that thing with his hair when he’s nervous?

It just makes it look like he’s flexing his bicep and showing off how toned his muscles are…and no one person should have the ability to look that effortlessly sexy!

It’s hardly fair!

“No, Chop, you’ve got it all wrong. I have a proper garden—with herbs and vegetables and flowers and such—that I take care of on campus. The only ‘secret’ thing about it is that it’s in a gated area and almost no one has the key to unlock the gate to get in, so it’s a great place for some privacy…”

Chop seemed to accept this explanation and he turned back in his chair to face his computer screen with a shrug. Rae then turned to Finn, who was still biting his lip in an unsuccessful attempt at hiding his smirk.

“Ugh! Why did you have to say it like that, Finnley? You know Chop’s only got one thing on his mind, so he was surely going to jump to that conclusion!” Rae whisper yelled at Finn, playfully pushing his arm in annoyance.

“Oh, I’m aware…” Finn whispered as he gently grabbed her hand that had lingered on his arm slightly longer than necessary after she shoved him and held it between his hands, slowly turning it over to trace random shapes onto her palm with one of his fingers.

“I just wanted to have a little fun…and I like to make you blush and squirm a little bit sometimes.” He added, scrunching his nose slightly and grinning when Rae scoffed and pulled her hand from his grasp but her cheeks were flushed nonetheless.

“You’re such a dickhead sometimes, ya know that, Finnley?”

“Oh whatever, Mae…you know you love me!” Finn replied cheekily, jutting his lower lip out when she refused to shift her attention away from her computer despite being able to see him out of the corner of her eyes.

Bloody hell…is Finn seriously pouting right now? Why is everything this boy does so insanely attractive?!

Rae began working customer messages that were in the queue, ignoring the stares and raised eyebrows at that whole exchange that she was getting from Izzie and Archie.

When Finn left to go on break a couple hours later, Archie and Izzie turned towards Rae, anticipating the gossip that she was intending to share with them.

“Okay…so it’s a really long story, and now isn’t the time for this story, but there’s been some…interesting developments…between ‘Alphonzo’ and I” Rae glanced around to make sure that no one was listening as she said this before proceeding, “Are you two free at all in the next week or so to discuss everything that’s happened?”

The three of them made plans to hang out the following week when they were free and Rae was expected to get them all caught up on the latest developments in her “flirtationship” with Finn.

“So you never answered my question from earlier, girl!” Finn said as he sat back down at his desk when his break had ended.

“And what question would that be, Finn?” Rae asked tilting her head to one side and quirking an eyebrow at Finn in confusion, her previous annoyance with Finn long since forgotten.

“How is your garden doing? You did check on it after work on Monday, right? Or was that just your polite way of shutting me up..?”

“Of course I wasn’t just trying to shut you up! Why would I ever do something like that?” Finn shrugged and looked away slightly as Rae continued. “My garden is great! The roses and marigolds are actually blooming now and everything is starting to look like proper vegetables instead of just a mess of stems and leaves…you really should try to stop by and see it sometime.”

“That’s so great. You must have quite the green thumb, huh? And I’d absolutely love to! Just let me know the time and place, girl!”

“Yeah, I’ll be sure to let you know…and maybe if I’m feeling generous I’ll give you the exclusive tour and maybe you could have a little taste test, if you’d like…” Rae added with a smile as she continued typing her message to the customer she was assisting.

***

The following day Rae had picked up an extra shift that started at 10am and she was incredibly thankful for the later start time that allowed her to sleep in a bit and take her time getting ready that morning.

When it was nearly time for her shift to begin, Rae walked into the office with a red and white, holiday themed take-away cup containing her soy latte in-hand and took a seat at the open desk beside Finn.

“Rae! You normally don’t work on Thursdays…What are ya doing here today?”

“Hello to you too, Finn! A girl can pick up a shift if she wants to, can’t she? Or do I need your permission to do that?” Rae joked, raising her eyebrows in question.

“Sorry, that came out all wrong…I’m happy to see you here—really I am—I just wasn’t expecting you to be here today. You should know by now that I’m no good with words, girl! I didn’t mean to sound rude or nothing and of course you can work or not work whenever you want to, I’m not the boss of you. I just—”

“Finn…chill out. I was just kidding, I know what you meant,” Rae quickly replied to pull Finn from his rambling, “I was just giving you a hard time, but it is kind of fun to see you all flustered like that…” Rae added with a smirk when Finn turned away from her in embarrassment.

Rae continued working in silence aside from the occasional question or comment she would make to Finn about how much her ability to enjoy work has decreased since some of their coworkers had commandeered the radio and changed it from her favorite Alternative music radio station to the station that was still playing nothing but Christmas music.

“Well…be thankful, girl. Yesterday the radio was taken over by Hannah and it was nothing but shit Pop music and Top 40 rubbish!” Finn griped, rolling his eyes at the thought of his friend’s awful taste in music.

“Now, now Finn…not all pop music is shit. Most of it is, surely, but not all of it. And not every girl can be lucky enough to have a knowledge of music as extensive and impressive as I do…” Rae replied, grinning cockily at Finn, which caused him to chuckle and mutter something under his breath that Rae couldn’t quite catch.

They returned to working in a comfortable silence and Rae continued assisting customers as she sipped her latte that had finally reached a temperature that was cool enough to drink and enjoy.

When she took what seemed to be the final sip of her beverage, Rae removed the plastic lid from the cup and huffed quietly under her breath.

And this is why I never get hot beverages from this coffee shop…every latte is mainly foam and so much goes to waste at the end!

Rae used her finger to scoop up a bit of latte foam from the edge of her cup and as she placed her finger into her mouth, she noticed Finn in her peripheral vision do a double-take, evidently taking an interest in what he saw.

Oh, so Finnley likes watching me lick the latte foam off my finger, huh? Well then he’s gonna love this…

Rae looked around casually to ensure that none of her other coworkers were looking in her direction before turning her chair slightly toward Finn and using her tongue to lick the foam off the lid of the take-away cup as slowly as she could.

Rae was beginning to doubt if this was even alluring or if she just looked like a total freak; however, when she quickly glanced up at Finn through her eyelashes to gauge his response and she saw him staring at her, nearly entranced by the sight before him, she knew she had gotten the desired reaction out of him.

She placed the lid lightly on top of the empty take-away coffee cup, licking her lips to ensure that there were no remnants of latte foam left on her mouth, and turned towards Finn as he gulped audibly and cleared his throat.

“Can I help you, Finn? You know it’s not polite to stare, right?”

“Oh! I…sorry, I was just, uh…” Finn shook his head to gather his thoughts and form a coherent string of words before replying.

When he composed himself a bit more, he smirked cheekily at Rae, but it was easy to tell from the deep rosy shade of his cheeks that his cockiness was a failed attempt at hiding his nervousness, “I was just, you know, enjoying the view…”

***

There were only a few days left in the year, but Rae already knew that she was ready for some change in her life. For the last 5 years, Rae has found that she has a habit of altering her appearance whenever she begins to get bored—hence experimenting with streaks of various colors in her hair at 15, getting a nose ring on the day she turned 18, and opting for purple hair a couple months ago—and she could already feel herself getting bored with life yet again.

Friday at work, Rae and Izzie sat beside each other replying to customers quietly for the first few hours of their shift before Izzie broke the silence.

“Is everything alright with you lately, Rae?” Izzie asked with a hint of concern in her voice.

“I suppose so…why do you ask?” Rae asked, confused about why Izzie would suddenly decide to ask her that.

“Well, there’s just been something about you lately Rae…something different..? I just didn’t know if there was something going on with you or if you were willing to talk to me about it yet…I don’t wanna overstep my boundaries or anything though, Rae.”

“Oh Izz! I would never think that you were prying just for checking in on me like this and if I had something to tell you about I wouldn’t purposefully hide it from you.” Rae gave her friend a reassuring smile before continuing, “What do you mean ‘something different’? Like, good ‘different’ or bad ‘different’?”

“Neither really, just different. There is something new about the way you’ve been carrying yourself lately…more confident, perhaps. Have you not noticed a shift?”

“Huh, I suppose I haven’t noticed…” Rae replied, trying to determine if she had noticed the change in herself that her friend had apparently caught onto.

“And today you’ve seemed really quiet and like there’s a lot on your mind. I know we agreed to discuss the whole ‘Alphonzo’ situation at length when we hang out next week, but is that why your mind seems elsewhere?”

“Actually, no! Not today, oddly enough…but I’ll tell you more about that outside of work and away from potential eavesdroppers,” Rae added jokingly rolling her eyes and gesturing to where Chop, Peter, and Hannah sat on the other end of the aisle of desks.

“I was actually trying to decide if I’d wanna get a tattoo soon…”

“A tattoo? What made you think about that?” Izzie asked, slightly confused because she had never known Rae to discuss tattoos other than those covering the arms of one coworker in particular.

“Well, I’m bored with my life again and I feel like a tattoo could be the little bit of change and spontaneity that I’m craving…”

Just as Izzie was going to inquire further, she noticed Finn walking down the aisle toward the empty seat beside Rae. Rae noticed his presence as well and turned to give him a smile when he waved at her from the opposite side of the aisle while chatting with Chop.

When he finally approached his desk chair, he pulled the forest green jumper he was wearing over his head to reveal his fitted black t-shirt that was a favorite of Rae’s. Rae had already resumed her conversation with Izzie but turned slightly when she saw Finn hang the jumper on the back of his desk chair before sitting down in his seat.

“…I just don’t know what I’d wanna have inked onto my skin forever, you know? Depending on where I get the tattoo, it could be out in the open for everyone to see…I don’t wanna be some basic bitch and get a cliché tattoo. I want whatever I get to have meaning…”

Rae’s eyes flitted to the dozen or so tattoos that were visible on Finn’s arms and he smirked when he followed her gaze to see what had caught her attention.

“So, if I heard you correctly, it sounds like you’re considering getting a tattoo fairly soon, is that right?”

“I briefly entertained the notion, yes, but I still don’t know what I’d wanna get…”

“Well, what have you been considering? Or what style are you thinking of?” Finn asked, clearly enjoying the shift in conversation toward something that he was more knowledgeable than Rae about.

“I initially thought about doing lyrics to a song that I really like,” Rae hesitated when she saw Finn raise an eyebrow and grimace slightly, “Is that a bad idea?”

“I typically don’t recommend getting text tattoos, since a lot of people end up regretting them more than say, something more artistic or abstract…like what is to say that the song lyric you like right now will hold any meaning to you in 5 years, or even a year. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, that makes sense I guess, but…the song lyric I considered means a lot to me because I discovered the band when I was at a really low point in my life a few years ago and their music was a comfort for me during that time…” Rae trailed off, suddenly unsure if she had said too much, but she relaxed some when Finn nodded and gave her a friendly smile.

“Well clearly you’ve thought this through more than most people, and that song and band have a lot of meaning to you, so I think you should go for it if you’re serious about getting that tattoo. Plus, who am I to judge you for wanting a meaningful lyric tattooed on yourself when I have this?” He then brought his arm closer to Rae and trailed his finger along a tattoo in a language that Rae did not recognize that wound itself around Finn’s bicep.

“What is it? Like, what does the writing mean?” Rae had not realized it until it was too late, but she too was now lightly tracing a finger along what appeared to be a handwritten phrase inked into the lightly tanned skin of his upper arm.

“I’m gonna seem so hypocritical if I tell ya and I don’t want this changing your opinion of me, girl, but it’s…uh, a few lines from my favorite poem.” Rae realized that Finn was clearly embarrassed and she could feel him tense slightly as she continued touching the tattoos that she saw on his arm, so she willed herself to put a bit more distance between the two of them as she moved her chair back to its original position in front of her own desk.

“Well, Finn, I think it’s beautiful…I don’t think I’m ready for a tattoo quite yet, but I appreciate hearing more about it from someone who knows a bit more about them than myself…”

Rae returned to work and nodded along as Izzie contemplated aloud if she would ever get a tattoo and what she would want to get, when suddenly Rae had an idea.

“Hey Izz…quick question: Could you picture me with a septum piercing? It’s the little bit of skin in the middle of your nose…” Rae added, lightly tapping a finger against the part of her own nose she was referring to when she noticed that Izzie was a bit confused about the piercing she was referring to.

“Hmm…would you keep the other nose piecing as a hoop?” Izzie turned to face Rae full-on, trying to envision her friend with this additional piece of jewelry.

“No, I’d probably change it to a stud piercing, I think…” Rae had been enamored by the iridescent purple hoop nose ring since she first saw it in the piercing shop display case on her 18th birthday when she got her nose pierced and she eventually purchased it and it has been adorning her left nostril for close to a year now, but she was uncertain about having two piercings that were hoops in such close proximity to each other.

While Izzie was still thinking and considering Rae’s initial question, Rae noticed Finn lean toward her in his desk chair, gripping her chin lightly for an entirely too brief moment as he angled her face toward him a bit more.

His face was incredibly close to hers and Rae found that she was suddenly having a difficult time breathing normally while under the close scrutiny of Finn’s dark brown eyes.

“Yes.” Finn finally stated simply as he returned to his prior position facing his computer screen and went back to responding to customers that had contacted them for assistance.

“Uhm…alright. Thank you Finn, I was gonna ask for your opinion after Izz responded, but I suppose you saved me the time…” Rae replied, still a bit flustered from the sudden attention Finn had given her.

“No problem, girl!” Finn replied with a wink, clearly not seeing how much his actions had effected Rae.

Rae had not realized the time until she noticed Izzie logging out of her computer and the machine on the wall chimed to signal the new hour, which also meant that Rae’s shift was over.

Rae quickly logged out of her computer as well and Izzie stood from her chair and waited for Rae to follow suit.

“I think I could see you with that piercing…maybe…” Izzie added after taking one final look at Rae’s face.

“Cool…I think I might get that done really soon, instead of a tattoo…” Rae scanned her badge at the machine on the wall before turning to wave goodbye to a few of her coworkers and lastly Finn.

“Bye! Have a good day, Rae!” Finn called to her from where his desk was in a peculiar accent that cause them both to laugh before she called out a simple goodbye in return.

As Izzie and Rae walked side-by-side out of the building, Izzie finally broke the silence with her voice that was cheery as always.

“Well, that was a…fun…series of events.” Rae chuckled slightly and agreed, “And you can doubt it all you want to, but there is undeniably something new between you and Finn...I’m sure of it!”

Izzie turned to face her friend as they walked, prepared to stop Rae’s attempts to combat her statement; however, for the first time in over two months, Rae merely shrugged and smirked in response, making no attempts to contradict her friend this time.

@eveerez @tinakegg @hey1tskat1e @bitchesbecrazy89 @kneekeyta @milllott @protectfinnnelson @arathewallflower @jackiewalsh2013 @pink-royaute @i-dream-of-emus @lurkernolonger @bitchy-broken @nutinanutshell @mallyallyandra @borntosik

A/N: Hey there, so in my last chapter I voiced my inner turmoil about the very different directions I could take this story in…So, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to @yes-please101 for this brilliant suggestion…

…in all seriousness, I think I found a way to approach this dilemma that does in a way offer an alternate storyline for you. So we’re already pretty far along in the story line, so it may be too late for me to bring this up, but I occasionally go back and read my own writing and can see potential areas of confusion, so if you have any questions or concerns you’d like me to clarify for you, feel free to let me know! I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting pretty excited for the next chapters to come! 😁😏😏

[lokgifsandmusings]

Definitive Ranking of Book 4 Episodes, #2/13

2. 4x13 The Last Stand

Kuvira tears off her arm. Mako makes a Heroic Sacrifice and no one will heal him. Korra and Kuvira fight, until Korra freakin’ bends pure energy, rips apart the city, and demonstrates her growth in one quick spirit world conversation. Hasook fulfills his clarinetist destiny. We get the most ambiguous ending everrrrr.

You know, after going back through this whole season, I’m realizing that there were a lot of flaws with Book 4. A lot. It’s  not to the point where I feel this episode ranking as second highest is unearned, but it is making really wonder about “what would this have looked like had Bryke been given more time?”

The thing is, with this episode, the emotional beats are nearly perfect for Korra. And that’s really what matters, given that the show is...well...the legend of *her*. Even for most other characters, this conclusion was (dare I say it?) dramatically satisfying. Thematically satisfying, too.

But at the same time, what didn’t work is only more and more glaring with each revisit, and especially after thinking through it.

Kuvira is probably the hardest character to reconcile, because she’s the primary antagonist, and yet up until Korra dropped the “oh you’re an orphan” truth-bomb that explained ~~all~~ of Kuvira’s actions, there was every indication that her guiding motivation was much more about her perceived rejection by Suyin, or a desperation to prove her wrong, or a mentor’s fall from grace when an inherent hypocrisy was shown...

Honestly, from just the perspective of Kuvira’s arc, dismissing everything as “you were sad about your parents (who you never talked about once) leaving you with the creepy thought-policing matriarch and you didn’t want to ditch the EK in the same way” is almost insulting. Kuvira like...made compelling points in the Suyin-filtered flashback about why Su should accept Raiko and Tenzin’s offer, and it seemed to be coming from a place of pure pragmatism, not compensation for abandonment or a way of gaining control. Actually, she framed it about sharing prosperity:

Kuvira: Suyin, I know this isn't my place, but I think you should do this. Zaofu has always been a beacon of modern progress, and now you can share that with everyone.

Suyin: What would you have me do? March into Ba Sing Se with an army? We'd be seen as conquerors and greeted with nothing but war.

Kuvira: There are already wars. The Earth Queen nearly destroyed our nation. This is our opportunity to change things.

Also, fun fact: Suyin didn’t even tell Korra that Kuvira was an orphan; she barely even implied it.

Korra: How did things get so bad between you and Kuvira? I thought she was your protégé.

Suyin: She was more than that. She was like a daughter to me. I took her in when she was eight years old and nourished her talents. Kuvira was smart, a natural leader, and quickly rose through the ranks. I saw myself in her.

Like, this could have meant anything. Maybe she took her into her School of Metalbending Dancing and Narcissism. Maybe this is a nitpick, but it just amuses me if there was some version of this scene where Korra is like “it must have been so hard being an orphan,” and Kuvira goes, “...wtf my parents are FINE.”

Back the main point here, the difficulty in parsing out Kuvira’s guiding motivations and meaning of her own arc is not made better by the fact that her political position and military campaign were incredibly poorly defined. This is nothing new for Bryke, but with regard to this episode specifically, there’s still the question of why Kuvira was even interested in reclaiming UR land when she was supposedly just a technocrat that opposed the Earth Queen’s unjust rule, and had spent a painstaking amount of time laying down tracks to connect the two nations in what seemed like a cooperative measure and to truly bring the EK up to speed with the rest of the world. Was storming Republic City always her plan? Would she have been able to without the super laser that she didn’t know was being invented (Varrick was just looking for clean energy, remember)? After successfully taking Republic City, was she going to lock up every citizen there not of EK origin?

The general idea is that she was supposed to be earnestly committed to restoring stability in the Earth Kingdom, while also pushing forth innovation, and that when Korra pointed out how horrible and out-of-balance she was, it was a comeuppance and reality slap. I guess in this respect, the broader strokes make sense, but then there was so much that seemed so personally motivated, like...everything to do with Zaofu (she even made a point of saying “when I return I’ll be greeted with open arms), and then wrecking all of Republic City.

Even ignoring motivations, there’s logistics, because Kuvira’s disappearing army (and the disappearing United Forces) was still very much evident here, especially since mecha tank officers came clomping back into view at the end, and she needed to instruct them to stand-down. It kind of makes me giggle to think that Varrick powered down these suits, and the morons just lay on the ground helplessly until they were up and running again. But there were also all those ground troops and shit, so...

Oh yeah, and Raiko formally surrendered. There should have been an entire platoon sent to the island as soon as Kuvira realized Baatar had been captured while traveling there.

None of this is a specific issue to “The Last Stand,” but it does make the resolution feel a little...convenient. As though all these things were just dismissed and swept under the rug. This is best exemplified in Suyin’s line as a response to Kuvira’s apology, where she goes, “you’re going to answer for everything you’ve done!” Like, that didn’t even follow what Kuvira had said! Though there’s also a chance that this was a place-holder line they never bothered to change (or ran out of time to change). It’s not the only one with this vibe.

At the end of the day, Kuvira worked fine for Korra. But the way she had been scripted herself, there was really no telling how she’d react to a given situation until after the fact. I could have seen her, stirring from the rubble, having the same exact spirit world conversation with Korra, rather than running away to find Chekhov’s very literal gun. She trashed an entire fucking city and nearly died already just with Mega Maid’s explosion, after all.

Most of the other challenges of this episode have to do with the wrap party, because it was pretty clear that Bryke had a case of “we have X minutes to conclude all of this.” Enter bizarre conversation after bizarre conversation.

It’s not exactly a secret that I’m currently writing on a fic that tries to make sense of “why the hell does this wedding feel as though it is simultaneously the day after the fight, and two months down the road?” Word of God is that the wedding is 2 weeks later, which may or may not have been made up by Mike on the spot. But it’s just all so wonky. Korra is acting as though she hasn’t talked to anyone, Wu and Mako certainly haven’t seen each other since the evacuation, Tenzin only just talked to Raiko, and yet Zhurrick planned an entire wedding and somehow world leaders were able to travel to the still utterly destroyed city to enjoy it.

It’s WONKY, I’m telling you. The worst case offender?

This is a terrible fucking idea. I get that it’s a Y7 American show and we have to be pro ~~democracy~~ as a general concept, but the logistics behind it make no sense. I suppose in the context of Wu’s arc, him stepping aside because he doesn’t feel qualified is fitting. Granted, I thought the whole “you were calm during the evacuation and also badger moles like you” stuff was to show how he does have leadership potential, so long as he plays to his strengths and allows those more informed than him to take the lead on other matters. But I suppose we can say it was part of a bigger picture: Wu learning to be less of an entitled asshole. He pushed himself and stepped up when the world needed him to, but in the end “sometimes a good evacuation is its own reward.” Nice.

Now go and create a horrible panic by tossing the EK’s political and legal structures out the window!

The Mako/Korra conversation was a very nice endcap to Mako’s season-long arc, and the series long relationship between these two characters. They were incompatible as romantic partners, but Mako found meaning in their platonic friendship, looking to Korra as inspiration to be more selfless. It’s just nice. And it’s nice to see exes being nice and not jealous or still hurt or pining or whatnot. Nice.

That said, Wu’s role in Mako’s arc is a headscratcher. Mako definitely had an influence on him, but the other way around...I’ve got nothin’. Unless we consider Wuko a possibility, because IT IS THERE, DAMNIT. Except, I really don’t think Bryke meant for it to be there. Which means that Mako played a bit more of a supporting role for Wu than the other way around. Wu had diddly squat to do with Mako feeling inspired and self-sacrificial...that was a decision Mako reached inside Mega Maid as a result of watching a clip show about his relationship with Korra.

And yeah, let’s actually talk about that moment, because it was probably the second most emotional point of the episode. For those who don’t know, it’s also the point where I realized, at 5:50 in the morning, that I was going to start bawling in the middle of Planet Fitness if I stayed, so I cut that short and went home to finish out the episode.

It was touching, even if Bolin’s “This isn't the time to prove how awesome you are. I already know how awesome you are... you're awesome.” lines were incredibly odd. However... Looking back, this was probably the dumbest thing Mako could have done in this moment.

The weapon was disabled (he knew Su and Lin were taking care of that), and Korra was in the “head” having a fight to the death. There was no pressing need to power down Mega Maid at that point (Kuvira initiated lockdown as soon as they got in, actually), and the only thing he knew was that he could probably get it to explode. With everyone still inside. All things considered, how Mako didn’t just kill everyone inside the tank is beyond me. How Mako didn’t die is equally beyond me, cause dude got shot squarely in the chest. I mean yes, Bolin came back for him (where did he even dump the other bodies? The legs?), but Mako has a heart and stuff.

I don’t want to detract from the message of “Mako is an incredibly selfless hero,” but the logistics get in the way. It’s like Bryke wanted him to have this moment, but they didn’t take the time to figure out a realistic way it could unfold, so it just happened. Which is jarring, especially since this immediately followed Hiroshi’s sacrifice from the previous episode. Snaps for Mako, but 10 points from Brykendor for the contrivance.

Also as a side note: poor Bolin, this episode. I mean yes, he’s in a good place, and he got to marry Zhurrick (I can confirm: officiating a wedding is mad fun), but the dude didn’t even get a Conversation of Significance with anyone. Needless to say I’m going to be fixing that with my final chapter...

Let’s just round out the Krew then and discuss Asami. And I 👏👏don’t👏👏fucking👏👏know👏👏 what to do with her.  

I mean, you know what Asami means to me as a character at this point. And Korrasami. But going back through and watching this season, there’s a few things that are blindingly clear.

1. The scripting is bizarre. Not just for Asami—across the board. There are lines that feel outright unedited. For instance:

“When the queen fell, and everyone was asking you to help keep the Earth Kingdom from falling apart, all you wanted to do was hide in Zaofu, and let others deal with the consequences.”

It’s not as though lines like that don’t work, but it’s the kind of thing where if that were in fic I was beta-reading, I’d highlight “fell” and “falling” so the author would know to take out one of the repetitive phrases.

For characters with a lot of lines, the lack of polish can be overlooked, for the most part. For Asami, who had an incredibly limited screen presence during Book 4, things stick out.

2. Seychelle Gabriel’s voice acting was...different. It wasn’t bad, but some of her lines had a certain stilted quality to them. I’ve actually noticed that with just about every character in Book 4 that wasn’t Varrick or Bolin (that’s just John Michael Higgins and PJ Byrne falling back on their comedic chops), with a big exception in Korra. I sort of think Janet Varney didn’t settle into a consistent voice for her *until* Book 4, but that’s a whole other story, and yes, deeply subjective.

The best example I can point to for Gabriel is the way she delivers, “Thank you. I'm just glad I was able to forgive him.” It just had this awkwardness about it, and a good thing too, since I’m 95% certain that’s what spawned @progmanx’s entire fic, as well as my own views on her characterization (oh hey, we’re of one mind with that).

3. There really could have been more to Korrasami. Even with Russian TV restrictions. But I already talked about in my “Reunion” piece, so I won’t rehash here.

4. Asami’s scripting was pure *convenience*. I touch on it here for “Enemy at the Gates” and here for “Day of Colossus.” But it’s not really hard to recap.

Asami needs to open the lines of communication to her dad, so she does, and it is wonderfully, realistically hard on her. Then in a ridiculous scene, she spots a happy father and daughter, and decides she wants to work to forgive the man who tried to fucking kill her. We can assume she’s feeling conflicted about it because she snaps at Korra over it, but really, we have to just assume, because this shit is never talked about on-screen. Then Hiroshi pops in to save the day with his oddly specific technical knowledge of stuff he wasn’t working on. Then Asami tells him that she loves him before they go into a flying mecha suit to battle potentially to the death, and then Hiroshi dies.

And yes, I’ve talked a lot about what an internal character Asami is, so it would have just been odd if she suddenly started expositing on why she was feeling the way she did, but at the same time... When *did* she decide to forgive him? Was it just because he was willing to save the city? Does she even know if he’s changed his opinion of benders, or if he just regrets not having her in her life? Does she regret not seeing him sooner? Did she ever READ THOSE DAMN LETTERS?

So for her to sit her ass down next to Korra and say that she’s super sad but glad she forgave him... Well yeah, of course she’s sad. But she’d probably also be confused and conflicted and angry and guilty and a million other things just by how inherently fucked up this situation is. The last time she and her dad were in a mecha suit at the same time, he TRIED TO KILL HER. This isn’t hyperbole. He also saved the city from being destroyed *this time*, despite being the man who bombed it before. You see what I’m saying???

I think this is coming at a bad time, because I am working over and beyond to make sense of Asami’s headspace during this specific point in the story right now with ‘Half the Pieces’. I even gave her and Hiroshi another pai sho match so they could talk this shit over, and am kind of getting at the idea of her forgiving him as more of like, she really wants to have forgiven him and to have that closure after three years of incredible pain relating to him. But for what we got on our screens, it feels rushed, there’s just no other way around it. Rushed and simplified.

The most frustrating thing about Asami’s character is her wasted potential—the way they could have been using her as a foil to Korra so much sooner, the way her unique position as an industrialist went largely untouched, the way there is so much packed into her and given a little space, she will come and wallop you with a bag of feels (“you tainted our past and destroyed our future together”). 

Yes, she’s in a support role, and I’m not advocating her being foregrounded over anyone else on the Krew, and certainly not over Tenzin. But keep in mind, this was the season that gave a very complete and detailed arc to Varrick and Wu, while also pushing Kuvira & the Beifong Family Drama as the main tension. So excuse me for just a little annoyance with what could have been.

What *was* for Asami here was...fine. It’s not like I can’t remember what her conversation with Korra felt like the first time, or how could it felt that for once in her craptastic life, she was getting to be happy for a little. And for Korra too, realizing she had been disconnected for too long, realizing through her letters and the distance that she was in love, realizing she can take time for herself—it just all made for a beautiful moment, even if I do think that it felt a tad clipped. Given how much ground Bryke needed to cover here, it’s not shocking.

As a last note before I get to Korra and begin explaining why this episode is #2, I want to briefly touch on Tenzin. He was simply not a major player in this season, and I guess that’s fine. His relationship to Korra was in focus for Book 2, with her becoming *her own Avatar* at the end, and then his relationship to his daughter and the Air Nation at large was Book 3. I don’t feel like anything was incomplete with Tenzin here on a larger scale, though it was a notable decision. I wonder if Book 4 had been given another pass, would there have been a more imaginative way to utilize his character?

I think that may have detracted from the impact of his final conversation with Korra, too. Or maybe that’s why it almost felt like it had bizarrely romantic undertones for a second, because it was hard to have a handle on where *they* were at with how they related to each other. Also he said the phrase “big bumpy ride” so...

And that conversation was the most, “let’s wrap up this Y7 show yup yup” that fell victim to extremely unfortunate wording. The idea was to show that Korra had found meaning in what she had been through, harkening back to Katara’s remark that Aang “chose to find meaning in his suffering and eventually found peace.” What Katara did not say was that Aang NEEDED TO EXPERIENCE THE GENOCIDE TO FIND PEACE. Because who the hell would say something like that.

There are negative implications of Korra saying she “needed” to suffer to be more compassionate, especially since compassion was never a department she was lacking in before. However, as a result of what she went through her approaches to situations did change, and her “go-to” mode of operation, altered. We saw her trying to fight against the “old me” in Zaofu, and that was simply ineffective. In this final chapter, we saw her take action as she needed to, only to finally talk the antagonist down in the end. It wasn’t an increase in compassion, but it was a result of her empathizing over the fear of being vulnerable—a fear we’ve seen Korra struggle with since the start.

“I may not have been an orphan, but believe me, I understand what it feels like to be afraid. [Sits down so she is at eye level with Kuvira.] After I was poisoned, I would have done anything to feel in control.”

Look, there’s a wonderful narrative here, and it just...fell over itself on the way to our screens, and that’s unfortunate. Because it would have required so little to fix.

If you’ll allow myself and @progmanx to be hubristic here, we actually did rewrite this for my upcoming chapter (not finalized yet, but it will be something along these lines):

“I know I was in a pretty dark place after I was poisoned; all I wanted to do was feel like myself again. And I think it took seeing Kuvira being so angry and scared of letting everyone down, just like I used to be, for me to finally realize what I already knew: I can never just go back and to being that person again, and I don’t want to be. I’ve seen now what fear can do and what it can drive people to...what it drove me to do, even if it didn’t hurt as many people. That’s a part of me, and there’s no undoing it. I don’t think I want to undo it, either. Your mom told me that Aang found meaning in his suffering. I guess if I’ve found mine, that’s it. We’re all afraid sometimes, but that doesn’t make us weak. In fact, it’s what makes us stronger.”

It’s almost as if I like A Song of Ice and Fire, or something.

Would a more diverse writers’ room have resulted in a different end line? Who can say. But this at least demonstrates why a diversity of voices and a willingness to think through the implications (something Bryke aren’t incapable of) is helpful.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that #1 on this list is going to be “Korra Alone.” So I’m going to save fully gushing about Korra’s healing arc there. 

But what I will say is that “The Last Stand” brought the series to a thematically apt, and rather uplifting conclusion. The season was about balance, but you could just as easily say that the series was too. This also tapped into “light in the dark,” only Book 4 took the time to explore that darkness rather than blow by it.

Seeing Korra so...at peace, was truly remarkable. We’ve seen her so insecure at many points in the series, and it really was just heartening to watch her be so decisive, so proactive, and also so *effective*, even if that meant switching approaches on the fly or, idk, leaping in front of a giant cannon and ripping open a hole in the universe and by doing so being so impressive that there was an instantly humbling effect on the megalomaniacal dictator to the point where Korra was able to talk her down with words alone.

It kind of makes me laugh, thinking of some of the Discourse™ as the finale ended: that Korra was “neutered” or “tamed.” Yeah those are great adjectives to attach to someone who threw themselves in front of a firing spirit cannon on an instinct. What we saw is a deeply matured and strategic Korra.

Remember, she was the over-eager hero who was told that the world didn’t need her. Her narrative was never going to be “I saved the day therefore I am,” but rather “Who am I when I’m not saving the day, and does that matter?”

Yes.

As for Korra, the world’s most powerful bender/spiritual leader of the masses/ with her ancient wisdom and sheltered upbringing ending up with the wealthy nonbending driver of modern innovation from the world’s biggest metropolis, well... that’s just the perfect endcap to the all-subtle balance theme. Nice.

Edit: 4/11/2017:

This entire piece wound up a little more focused on negatives than I wanted, so please read this reblog commentary for clarification/a few more notes on what was really great here.

#13: 4x08 “Remembrances”

#12: 4x11 “Kuvira’s Gambit”

#11: 4x09 “Beyond the Wilds”

#10: 4x07 “Reunion”

#9: 4x06 The “Battle of Zaofu”

#8. 4x12 “Day of Colossus”

#7 4x01 “After All These Years”

#6 4x03 “The Coronation”

#5 4x04 “The Calling”

#4 4x05 “Enemy at the Gates”

#3 4x10 “Operation Beifong”

Book 2 ranking/essays found here

[bisexuallittlefreaks]

wip

list all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. this can be writing, art, vids, gifsets, whatever.

tagged by @cilophyte <3

A Discussion on Monogamy

this is a little mcspirk post beyond ditty (okay, i say little...) that happened because i’m a diehard mckirk shipper but beyond was so damn spones-y and i love mcspirk so ta da. it’s two chapters in--one focusing on jim freaking out that bones might leave him, the second a pwp mcspirk goodness, and there’s one chapter left to write. i swear i will write it soon, i swear to god.

Untitled McSpirk Longfic

this is the reason i’m so determined to finished a discussion on monogamy. because it’s the prequel to this long ass fic i have almost entirely planned out with some great whumpiness (esp on bones’s part), badass ladies, a guest appearance from jocelyn and joanna, and much more. the worst part is i haven’t written any storyboarding down for this... ha.

Make Me Alive

we move away from star trek but not away from karl urban. this is an Almost Human fic (and if you haven’t seen it, do because it’s only 13 episodes and greatly underappreciated--just make sure to watch it in production order, not airing order). i’m over 20k words into this one and i’m just finishing up the first of three acts. ha. it’s basically a shippy (jorian) season two featuring more danicas, vaughn’s return, and ANNA. i’m trying to explain all those plot holes we were left with because only one season and i’m about to introduce some new characters, my favorite being the medical examiner, reilly glover, who is genderqueer and epic. we have a couple more murders to solve and vaughn has yet to show his face, and let me tell you the resolution with vaughn is going to be so. damn. satisfying.

i’m putting a read more here because at this point everything else is original work

Lights in the Mountains (Gisola)

a long time ago i finished my first full original book. it was a grand total of fifty pages and i’d been fighting with it for about seven years. i then went to a writing workshop and came out with the courage to trash it finally. i spent the entire next day with a notebook trying to come up with a new story. i decided to pick out bits and pieces (settings, characters, storylines) from all the other stories i’d come up with over the years that i always loved and mash them together. this is the result. it’s about two cities who suddenly find themselves under attack from a monster from the mountains and two individuals who travel over the mountains to try and find a solution. instead they find out that everything they thought they knew was... well, not wrong, exactly, just... misconstrued. it’s an urban fantasy with polyamory, queerness, false gods and evil racist asshats, a small dragon-like creature who’s everyone’s lovable uncle, and a weird mix of technology and magic.

there is also a prequel planned for this story called Secrets in the Sea that features an asexual siren and i can’t really say more without going much more into detail about Lights in the Mountains.

Fallen

this is my baby. this started out as a book, and then it was a stage play, and now it’s a miniseries. this was inspired by a snapshot scene in a dream of an angel waking up to realize her wings are falling apart. in her grief she absolutely tears them to shreds herself. the imagery was so compelling i came up with an entire six episode story around it and that scene doesn’t happen until the last fifteen minutes of the last episode. the full story is about two very different women who survived the apocalypse and start to (unwillingly at first) gather a group of survivors with the sole purpose of trying to survive. (well, and for one of the women to exact revenge on a demon for the death of her little sister.) very much supernatural inspired (in case that wasn’t obvious...), but i like to think it’s better if only because there are queer characters, complicated moral issues (that angel ain’t so angelic and that demon ain’t so demonic), a lot more women (though, to be fair, they were all dudes until charlie bradbury died and i went on a rampage through my stories of WHY DOES THIS PERSON HAVE TO BE A DUDE? THEY DON’T. THEY’RE A LADY NOW. FUCK YOU), and an actual ending in sight.

The Dragon Princess (not the final title)

the dragon didn’t kidnap and eat the princess, the dragon /is/ the princess. and no one knows until izzy, a firework maker’s apprentice, is literally picked up into the air by said dragon princess. kind of a lesbian beauty and the beast story except the dragon/beast is sweet and ridiculously socially unprepared instead of a bit of a dick. there’s also a gaston-type villain, but he’s a Nice Guy (TM). i really don’t have much figured out beyond that for this story, but there you are.

No Man’s Frontier

this was a novel and then i realized i don’t know cowboy stories well enough so it’s now a movie where i’ll get some good experts to come in and help. this is one of those mixing two story types together things--dragons live in the western area of north america. the railway has died because of the dragons and people are moving back east. our asexual hero (yep, more asexual characters--you can expect a lot of them in my original stuff) meets a dragon who’s been outcast from it’s pack and injured and realizes maybe dragons aren’t all that bad after all. we have all the classic cowboy story elements including the chieftess of an american indian tribe, a grizzled old asshole cowboy, and of course--ending with a ride into the sunset. just this time it’s on a dragon instead of a horse.

The Children’s Circus

this is a television series that has some heroes elements in it. long ago in the 30s, 40s, there was an orphanage that was hit with lightning and all the children suddenly found they had powers. that same night the woman in charge of the orphanage disappeared so the oldest boy (who’d been out when the lightning hit and therefore didn’t get powers) found himself in charge but too young to work and still take care of the children. he decides the best way to keep all these children together and safe is to start a traveling freak show. fast forward to modern day.

a construction site’s found something odd and the police are called in. our two cop heroes investigate to find there’d been a mudslide on the site decades--almost a century--ago and somehow everything was perfectly preserved. everything being a freak show full of children. while they’re looking around, the children start moving. not only were they perfectly preserved--they’re still alive.

and that’s just episode one.

No Time

i’m not sure what this is going to be--book, movie, television, etc. this is a vonnegut inspired story so that alone should tell you a lot about the vibe at the very least. it takes place on a planet where the cloud cover is so heavy that there’s no night or day. there’s no way to measure time, so by all rights, there is no time. the planet is very peaceful and chill until one of our heroes who asks too many questions finds a way to send a small shuttle above the cloud cover and discovers there’s an entire universe out there. this leads to a complete societal meltdown.

Time Menders

this is a movie trilogy with elements of doctor who, firefly, terra nova (another fox network scifi series that ended too soon), and star wars. ...probably some of things as well, but those are the most obvious. ...i have no way to explain the plot of this story right now without way too many words, so i’ll just say there’s time travel, alternate universes, black holes, and slightly psychic children (in the manner of river tam).

and there you have it. my wips. i won’t tag anyone, but feel free to do this if you feel inclined :*

[sleepymarmot]

DS9 season 3 liveblog & notes

[Season index: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PS]

The Search 1

Um... so what about that treaty about no cloaking on Federation starships, that was such a big deal in The Pegasus?

What's going on with Jadzia's hair...

"We're going to take our only warship into the territory of people who think of us as intruders to convince them we represent no threat" Logic???? What kind of plan is this?

Loaned? Ah, ok.

"When did I start thinking of this Cardassian monstrosity as home?"

If this is "one of the finest collections of ancient African art you'll ever see", what is it doing in their luggage instead of a museum? This is almost as bad as Picard and that priceless artifact in The Chase...

"Maybe it is. Maybe I'm your friend, and maybe I want you to see that you are still needed here no matter what some idiot Starfleet admiral might think." ;_;

Why dim the lights when you cloak? Just to give a visual shorthand to the viewers?

Wow Odo... I don't understand why everyone is so hard on Quark in this episode -- Sisko bullies him, Bashir insults him for no reason, now Odo is yelling at him with more aggression than he's ever shown in two seasons...

Seriously?! Cloaked ships leave a trace, and nobody in all decades of conflict ever noticed that?! I mean, even if somehow only the Romulans know, that means they can detect cloaked Klingon ships, which would mean they could as well have been uncloaked -- that'd be a massive retcon that doesn't work with anything we've seen before.

I still don't understand how replicators can produce foul tasting food... They make exact copies on a molecular level...

Poor Bashir -- it's as if Sisko picked his best friends to leave behind on purpose...

another literal redshirt dead

Class M planet with no star? What? 

Why do these changelings all look like Odo -- imperfect imitations of humanoids? I thought Odo's appearance was the result of trying to fit in Bajoran society + lack of skill to make face more detailed. These changelings live by themselves so they can pick any shape they like, and I'd expect them to have more control over details, so just repeating Odo's design looks like a lazy shorthand to indicate they're the same species -- as if their liquid state weren't enough. They even have the same hairstyle -- which he copied from a Bajoran! If the writers are trying to say "they're just copying Odo" then they should all be played by the same actor.

The Search 2

Oh come on, Kira, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a lot of questions in this situation!!!

Me: well this story is pretty bad so far, I don't have any expectations for it anymore Screen: Andrew Robinson as Garak Me: interest instantly restored

(I'm certain every person liveblogging this show made or reblogged a post in this vein...)

Alright, Sisko's plotline is definitely some kind of hallucination

Or is it? I thought it was all too good to be true, but maybe the Dominion is just tricking them

Wait, that subcommander is alive and on DS9?

Okay, I didn't like that "Starfleet security officer" and now he's more suspicious. Maybe he's a part of the Dominion. Maybe the changelings are a part of the Dominion. Maybe all these people acting strangely are changelings in disguise. Maybe everything is a conspiracy. I dunno, this entire episode feels incredibly fake. 

"It seems our leaders have simply gone insane" Garak stop reinforcing my impression that you and Sisko are somehow the only real people in this story... Well Dax and Bashir also seem to be alright, but they're a bit too passive.

Oh, Garak didn't look behind himself and got shot, guess he's not real either

FUCKING FINALLY

This is so unsurprising that I can't tell if the writing is to obvious or if I've seen this spoiler before and half-forgot. Probably both.

And they just let them all go. Sure. I wonder how they managed to gain so much power, if they're prone to dumb decisions like this..

What a shitty story. Jfc. The only amusing part was that according to the main characters, the Starfleet admirals are stupid and untrustworthy (what a surprise...), and Garak is smart enough to not only take action when needed, but seem to almost realize the world around him is wrong (but he still somehow fails a spot check in a firefight...). Bashir clearly wants him to join the team and run around having adventures (not a surprise either...). It's funny that the character who comes closest to becoming self-aware is actually one of the simulated ones.

The fakeness of the plot is obvious enough to make me unable to take it seriously, but not clear or fun enough to just relax and enjoy the ride. I don't hate simulations on principle, but I need them to be good simulations. The Federation is too stupid -- it might have worked with some new admiral, since they're often assholes, but we know Nechayev and she was obviously OOC. The editing is pretty telling: there are weird timeskips (worst offender: Sisko gets into a fight and then without a change of pace others come to break him out from the brig), plus I don't think there were establishing outside shots of DS9. And anyway, the very first scene with Sisko where he's in a shuttle even though at the end of the previous episode he was about to be captured, and then Dax and O'Brien show up and we've never seen them escape is a dead giveaway that everything about this group of characters from here on is somehow wrong. And that's 8 minutes into the episode. I thought "Well, maybe it's an editing experiment, and it'll be a how-we-got-here flashback episode" but nope. What a waste of time.

Lmao I just read this in a comment to a review of this episode: "When I first saw the The Search, Pt II I found it unusual that Bashir is in a shuttlecraft with someone and for the first time manages not to annoy his travelling companion. And then the ending reveals why – it was all a dream!" That's right! I actually thought that too! :D

I can say one good thing about this episode: Odo's love of order has always had dark undertones, and I like that it's explored and discussed here as a racial trait which made his brethren into a galactic evil force.

But otherwise I'm not very impressed with his storyline? In the first part his anger and compulsive homing instinct look offputting instead of sympathetic. At one point he makes an expression that is probably supposed to be soft and makes the viewers go "aww", but ends up just looking forced and creepy. And the tender moment with Kira at the end just didn't work for me.

The House of Quark

OUCH

I was pretty scared for Quark, since he's not a big fan of violence, nice to see he's taking this so well

A new pretty outfit for Quark! A beautiful Klingon woman!

Another beautiful Klingon with a great grey mane. Yes, my commentary is very deep today.

I just continue to be amazed by Quark's luck with the ladies. Cultural exchange with a Vulcan in the previous season, now with a Klingon.

Aw, O'Brien actually wants Bashir's opinion now. And Bashir gives good relationship advice to a married man -- compare to their conversation in Armageddon Game!

Doesn't this solve their problem? If Kozak died dishonorably, that means D'Ghor gets nothing. Which is what should have happened in the first place. So now that D'Ghor challenged Quark, Quark's inability to fight will be shown to everybody (as if it weren't obvious enough...), so D'Ghor's lie will be exposed. And then he'd not only have no right of ineritance, but presumably also become a criminal for lying to the coucil.

Quark is awesome

What a good episode. Quark acts cool and noble! Klingon vs Ferengi value clash & working together! A-story and B-story work together well because despite no direct connection, they're both uplifting and thematically linked!

Equilibrium

Oh, of course when Jadzia gets screentime, it's for her to act OOC

Aw, a J&J friendship scene

Time for the annual comment on how much Bashir grew up! I've already talked about his scene in the previous episode, and now there's this lovely, purely platonic scene with Jadzia

How can these Federation weirdos sleep without blankets?

This was okay. But can we have a Jadzia episode not about her almost dying? So far this season is disappointing -- only one good episode out of four.

Second Skin

O k a y. You got me, I really didn't expect this

This is the kind of episode I watch this show for

How do you disguise someone as a member of species for years? I can understand cosmetic surgery like in Face of the Enemy, but to change their entire body so it would show as target species during any medical examination... This concerns the episode Tribunal, too. How are agents so deep undercover supposed to work? She spent all these years helping the Resistance. How does that benefit Cardassia? 10 years ago they wouldn't have known the Federation would become involved and their sleeper agent would work with them

Niiiiice

"Just something I overheard while I was hemming someone's trousers" lmao his excuses are getting more and more ridiculous

Cardassian!Kira *is* more attractive than the real Kira

the real Garak demonstrates how much his reflexes are quicker than his simulation's :D

Honestly, by this point I'm just curious for how many seasons can the writers stretch the mystery surrounding Garak. :D They're having too much fun giving out pieces of the puzzle one by one.

The Abandoned

This beautiful woman with a really impressive chest is Jake's gf? Wow!

Why are they just taking away the wreckage instead of buying it from Quark?

Sisko holding the baby and Jadzia and Julian watching him with smiles on their faces :'))

oh my god Odo used his old bucked as a cache-pot for Kira's plant... :O

wait, weren't the Jem'Hadar much more reptilian?

"It's amazing how some people would judge you based on nothing more than your job" haha

If this boy has so much aggression, why is it only expressed as need for physical combat, and not angry verbal outbursts etc? Another genetically engineered quality -- he needs to be a brutal soldier that doesn't talk back?

I find it curious that this episode answers the question "Is it okay for a 20 year old to date a 16 year old?" with such a definite yes. That's pretty questionable territory, and it's unclear why exactly Sisko changed his mind: his opinion about the girl's job or Jake's interests doesn't negate the age difference.

I like that the show takes Odo's backstory as a lab specimen so seriously. I used to expect exploration of this theme with Data, since he must have spent a lot of time in some Federation research centers before entering the Academy.

Civil Defense

Garak AND Dukat? I like this episode already.

Why are they not asking Garak for help? I know they'd prefer other options, but is kind of an emergency! I know they'll have to, eventually, since he's in the opening titles.

"I never knew how much this man's voice annoyed me" :D I'd actually be curious to hear the announcement in full, personally!

This is such a good excuse for a Disaster-like episode?? Perfect synergy between the setting and the needs of the plot

haha of course Odo and Quark are trapped together

"The only place in the galaxy that still recognizes my access code is a Bajoran space station" So what about that code in Second Skin?

bwahaha it just gets worse and worse

I think this is a good episode to show new viewers who want a taste of the show before starting to watch it properly from the beginning: it gives a good idea of the setting and involves all major characters to some degree, but so far it has very few continuity references

"What? That you'd spend your final hours in jail?"

"Tell me, Doctor, what is it exactly about this situation that's making you smile?" "You, Garak." oh my god...

holy shit this station is something else...

Dukat shows up in person! It's strange they didn't even discuss the possibility of calling him earlier. Of course, he immediately turned this into a hostage situation, so...

Oh my god he's making himself tea in the middle of this... amazing

"If you had been on the station when I designed this programme, I would have made an exception in your case."

HAHAHAHAHA

When Odo and Quark walk out, why are so many people just chilling on the Promenade?! They were about to die seconds ago!

What a beautiful episode :D Probably not as suited for beginners as I initially thought, thanks to Garak&Dukat. But I really appreciate the dark comedy side of it

Meridian

I think I've seen this episode in TNG... maybe multiple times... Jadzia is even worse suited for this role than Deanna. 

welp this was really bad on literally every possible level. i could complain for a long time but i'd rather save my breath

the only good thing about this episode: it's so irrelevant you can easily skip it.

Defiant

I think she needs sleep, not a night out in the bar

THAT VOICE 

I think I'm spoiled about this one...

Second Chances did such a good job not villainizing Tom and then this episode comes and ruins it

ah yes tell all your military secrets to the Cardassians, including cloaked ship detection...

why the random kiss

aaand Riker spends possibly the rest of his life in a Cardassian camp? great. just great. why did someone hate him so much they deemed this necessary? they managed to make me so salty about this I didn't even care about the Cardassian stuff, that's an achievement. Will gets to continue his career and marry his imzadi while Tom, who already spent 8 years marooned alone and didn't even get a promotion afterwards, now rots in prison forever. "You always had the better hand," indeed.

it's hilarious how quickly Dukat can make Sisko sympathise with him just by mentioning fatherhood. worked even better than the last time. if he got half a brain he's doing it on purpose.

I hope Riker at least got to spend some time with Ro while they were both in the Maquis. now that's something I'd like to see

Fascination

"I'm a poor substitute for your wife" "I could have told you that 60 games ago"

do we really need the Odo/Kira/Bareil love triangle?

"I usually make it a point to drop by Quark's three or four times a day at random intervals, just to let him know that I'm thinking about him"

"Jadzia, of course. I've never understood how the two of you could be such good friends. [...] It's just that she gets to spend so much more time with you than I do." "Jadzia and I have been doing this for the past two years."  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

oh O'Briens, pls don't fight over nothing :(

so where is Bashir during all this? because I'm pretty sure he and Garak are not immune to this romance confusion nonsense, and that sounds like a much more intriguing story than what I'm watching

ah, he's with Kira, well at least this one's mutual and not sexual harassment

I understand Odo, but why is Sisko unaffected too?

A question that concerns not only to this episode: why is Kira always the object of everyone's attraction? She's dating Bareil (which I completely forgot about; when she mentioned having a boyfriend in the previous episode I was very confused), Odo has a crush on her, in this episode Jake and Bashir do too, an episode before Riker kisses her, an episode before some creep wants a blow-up doll of her, an episode before Dukat leers at her...

Well... I guess this was less gross than The Naked Now.

Past Tense

I like how Dax adjusts to this time period instantly. was she already born by then?

"Some of these people are mentally ill." *braces myself for some horrible comment* "...They need proper medical treatment." oh thank god

Jadzia looks absolutely gorgeous

surely it's not a coincidence that the only white character among the time-travellers ends up with a millionaire, while the others are locked up in the sanctuary

Sisko and Bashir's discussions are very heavy handed, it's like watching some old moralizing play

I like how Jadzia retrieved her combadge by telling the truth

there was nothing particularly wrong with this story, and it was well-made, but for some reason it didn’t really impress me

Life Support

so. Winn was behind the sabotage, right?

this is like "Ethics" in reverse

haha they want Terok Nor back

"She talks a lot for a female" Nog you used to be better than that...

"Listen to me. I don't care about your negotiations, and I don't care about your treaty. All I care about is my patient, and at the moment he needs more medical care and less politics. Now, you can either leave here willingly or I'll call security and have you thrown out."

now it's more like "The Host". (I can't stop comparing everything to TNG haha)

don't try to make this into a "grey morality" situation. Nog is objectively in the wrong here, the human culture is objectively better than the Ferengi culture in this respect. TNG intentionally wrote Ferengi values to be abhorrent, and DS9 didn't change them but somehow tries to justify them and it just. doesn't. work. Just admit you wrote yourself into a corner, and either retcon the Ferengi to be more tolerable, or set aside your "all cultures are valid" agenda for a minute and admit some things are just bad. this glorification of moral relativism is DS9's version of TNG's worst misapplications of the Prime Directive

wow, are they actually going to kill him off?

"Positronic implants"?! Um. UM. They have working positronic brain now? Since when? Last time I heard, nobody managed to make stable ones since Dr. Soong... Or are implants easier to make than a full brain? Anyway, the possibility of a mixed organic-positronic brain has never even been discussed before, this is kind of a big deal. Dammit, just putting some human skin on Data was something only the Borg managed to do! This sounds 1000 times more complex!

"Major" ah, so that's how they break up, he’s incapable of romance now

ahh, his voice, head movemens and facial expressions are just like Data's

uggh the Jake-Nog storyline went as I expected

wow I didn't expect the treaty to actually get signed!

"I won't remove the last shred of humanity Bareil has left" rude... and that's from the man who befriended Data... I'm disappointed

oh btw if he just casually talks about the possibility of fully replacing Bareil's brain, that means it is possible to create stable positronic brains at will now! this is enormous! Data doesn’t have to be the only one of his kind anymore! Lal can be rebuilt! oh wait, let me guess, this will never be addressed again ever.

Welp. You know, right before I started this episode, I was mentally complaining about Bareil, like "kill him off already". Whoops! I feel bad now. This episode didn't go as I expected, and was more important than I expected too, which is good.

Jake and Nog's storyline and the positronic stuff -- less good. Honestly, the more I think about these two points, the angrier I become and the less I like this episode.

I thought that A and B plots were annoyingly unrelated, but actually... I think they share the theme of "peace above all", on a very different scale. Because the Bajoran-Cardassian treaty doesn't sound very fair to me either. "There's even the possibility that the Cardassians will issue a formal apology"?! Is that really enough? "Even the possibility"? Meanwhile, people like Dukat not only walk free but remain at their high posts. Cardassia|Nog was the offending side, Bajor|Jake did nothing wrong, and yet rather than declare that and demand justice and apologies, the latter can only hope to achive mutual tolerance -- even that is hard enough. Well, let's just hope the show isn't going to try and justify the occupation, like it did with Nog's misogyny...

btw, since we're talking about international politics and status quo: what about the Dominion threat? everyone was really scared for a couple of episodes, and then things went back to normal. we went to the Gamma Quadrant once for no reason (nothing about the plot required that!). the Defiant, a unique warship sent here for defend DS9 and the wormhole against Dominion attacks, is regularly used as a shuttle/runabout for random trips. way to disperse all sense of danger, change and excitement.

I certainly like Bashir in this episode more than I liked Crusher in Ethics (or in The Host, lol). He can get pretty intense when it comes to saving his patient's life. Not "fly to Cardassia to face a former head of secret service" intense, but still.

It's nice to see Winn humanized a bit. The writers have spent a lot of time making Dukat likeable, she deserves the same treatment. I'm so used to mistrusting her, I spent the entire episode being confused whether she actually wants the treaty to succeed or is plotting to make it fail for some reason, whether she wants Bareil alive or dead. But I guess I was supposed to take everything she was saying at face value for once? 

I don't know what the hell is this season doing with these Ferengi B-plots that, I guess, are supposed to be humorous (???) but are wildly offensive instead. Are we supposed to just calmly accept Quark and Nog's extreme misogyny? It was played for drama pretty well in Rules of Acquisition; this is a noticeable step back.

Heart of Stone

I love Sisko and Bashir's casual conversation about a male ensign's pregnancy! Sure, he's an alien, but it's still progress for this show.

Odo and Kira's storyline is so cliched... I don't even make an effort to listen to their technobabble

As viewers we all know Kira will be saved somehow at the last minute, but in her and Odo's place I'd already start discussing a mercy kill. Phaser blast from a friend >>> asphyxiation

"I'm in love with you too" ???????????????????? YOUR BOYFRIEND LITERALLY DIED IN THE PREVIOUS EPISODE

Sisko, he's just a kid. I know you're testing him, but there's no need to go that far.

Okay, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but: what about misogyny? The previous episode made a point of showing that Nog upholds Ferengi values regarding women. And that's completely incompatible with Starfleet. Isn't anyone going to mention that?

heh... there was a thought at the back of my mind that a changeling might be involved

aww, good, stand up to Quark, you two! :)

Well, most of this episode is very boring, contrived and derivative, but it does give Odo some character development (even if it includes the dreaded romance, ugh) and has a good excuse for this plot device at the end.

Destiny

"I also had Chief O'Brien reprogram the replicators to provide Cardassian food" Um, why wouldn't it already be on the menu? I assumed the replicators weren't replaced by Federation ones, and in season 2 Keiko gave a Cardassian dish to  Rugal. I went back to check, and she literally said "I found some Cardassian recipes in the memory bank of our food replicator"!

It makes sense that the Bajorans don't want the Cardassians in their Temple

let me guess, there'll be an unexpected third Cardassian and suddenly the prophecy will sound much more believable

"Now those are about the two friendliest vipers I've ever met" Hey, maybe don't make jokes like this immediately after someone walks out of the door...

Told you so

Damn, the third "viper" seems to actually deserve that name! Will she be the "bad" one, or, in subversion, the only trustworthy one?

"Men just don't seem to have a head for this sort of thing. That's why women dominate the sciences." ah yes hello reverse sexism trope

Cardassians flirt by bickering? Never heard that before... I thought this was more like Klingons.

Okay, they played it straight with Dejar

That's lovely! But "vipers will return to their nest in the sky" doesn't make sense -- how did the comet fragments return to their nest?

The Prophets don't "want" anything! They just can tell you the future because they don't exist in linear time!

Well, this was a lovely episode, if not the most engaging. But the subplot with O'Brien and the scientist was completely unnecessary.

Prophet Motive

Was! This! Necessary?! I don't need to see sex on screen! And yes that includes oo-mox!

Aw Bashir

I can't believe we're getting a story where Bashir is the one who suffers because his friends won't shut up. Karma is real...

nice job breaking it, Quark

The story is pretty shallow by itself, but makes me ask some interesting questions. Would it be ok to nonconsensually transform a bad person into a good one? Especially a person in a position of power? I know I'd be tempted to do this to some politicians... But even if we assume the ends justify the means, who would define good or bad? Sadly, this episode doesn't take these issues seriously.

After 2.5 season of Bajoran religion, it's actually nice to meet the "Prophets" in person again in all their creepy, clueless glory.

Visionary

Time to torture poor Miles with more unreality!

why are both sides being so dumb? just say "Odo was separated from the rest of his people as a baby, grew up with no knowledge of them, and only met them 1.5 times"?

"I'm always diplomatic" *cut* "THAT WAS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING I'VE EVER HEARD AND I RESENT THE IMPLICATION!"

my first thought: the transporter genuis who beamed in the device was O'Brien

this one doesn't make sense... the sleeping Miles should know about the disaster and the radiation device too...

As usual with time travel episodes, it's very fun to watch, but the mechanics break down at the end and spoil the impression. I like that, as in Civil Defense, every time you solve a problem it gets worse.

It's only season 3, and "O'Brien suffers" as a type of episode is already getting old.

Distant Voices

There's a Cardassian writer named Shoggoth? :D

"Still the man of mystery?" "Oh, you wouldn't have me any other way"

Melting Odo is a genuinely disturbing sight...

"There's hope for you yet, Doctor"

Very predictable story, but it has some character development and lovely scenes with Garak.

Through the Looking Glass

when Mirror!Garak looks in indignation at Sisko kissing Kira: honestly same

Mirror universe Terok Nor is less riot-proof than our universe's was...

Episode: boring and pointless as I feared

Mirror Kira: somehow even worse than the last time, at least watching her hit on herself was mildly entertaining

Mirror Garak: still a giant waste of Andrew Robinson -- seriously, he appears rarely enough, and for the third time in this season he's not playing his real character

Sleeping with alternate versions of friends/subordinates: incredibly gross

Well at least Bashir and Dax looked really hot with these haircuts lol

Improbable Cause / The Die is Cast

Ahh, so many of my favourite things. Odo investigates! Garak confronts his past and justifies his reputation for once! International conflict! Dominion is dangerous again!

The cliffhanger where Garak joins Tain is the most thrilling thing that happened on the show recently! But I'd be severely disappointed if he didn't do that. 

The torture scene is very impressive, but there are some things I don't understand about it:

What, "They're still my people and I want to go home" is the big secret that's worth all that torture? Seriously? Anyone could have told you that. How is this information new or relevant?!

Nevertheless, "he never broke" is a lie, right? Odo did break and confess, even if I think his revelation was completely useless. Don't the intelligence agencies of the two biggest police states in the galaxy have security cameras in their interrogation chambers?!

I could understand if Odo forgave Garak eventually, but not so soon and easily! He tortures you horribly, then you never even mention it and invite him to hang out only several hours after! Sorry, what?!

It's becoming a trend to start Garak-centric episodes with something bad happening to him. :D Oh shit, Garak's hand got bitten! Oh shit, Garak has a migraine! Oh shit, Garak's shop blew up!

Explorers

Come on, O'Brien, is this really more ridiculous than building ships in bottles? :D You of all people should understand!

"For a moment there I thought that you had been put in charge of the Cardassian Ministry for the Refutation of Bajoran Fairy Tales"

Miles, just say the word! :D 

Fireworks in space! :D I don't know what I love more -- the beautiful and uplifting moment itself, or Cardassians going "Shit :))) We gotta be really nice today :))))) Congratulations :)))))))"

After the epic intense two-parter -- 45 minutes of pure fluff :D It has so many things that are specific to DS9: Sisko and Jake's family bond, Bajoran culture and Cardassians being jerks about it, Sisko and Dukat's passive-aggressive skyping, Bashir and O'Brien's slowly developing friendship -- all leading to the celebration of the “boldly go where no one has gone before” spirit, and everything, for once, ends well.

Family Business

"If I were Curzon, I'd have stolen her from you by now" *facepalm* let's just pretend this stupid heteronormative line doesn't exist

this house looks like a Hobbit hole

Quark and Rom's mom is awesome. get rekt you misogynists!

omg Miles & Julian, how old are you? :D

Rom is so nice in this episode

I like Kasidy

Ishka is 10 times more awesome than it seemed

Rom really rocks in this episode

aaaand the ship sails :D

I wish Ishka could make a public statement, and Quark would 

Good episode: interesting family dynamics, amazing Ferengi feminist, cute new ship

Quark and women is a fascinating topic. He's a traditionalist when it comes to Ferengi women, but in daily life among other species usually manages to come off no worse than any 20th century misogynist, and finds strong and outspoken women attractive rather than repulsive. Apparently it boils can be traced back to mommy issues: Quark isn't just a "good Ferengi", he's being reactionary towards Ishka, but at the same time she clearly is a positive influence on him, even if he won’t admit it. Too bad in this episode he refused to take even one step forward as he did in "Rules of Acquisition"...

Shakaar

Shit, things are really going downhill on Bajor... separation of church and state, what's that?

"We spent so many years fighting the Cardassians. We spent so much time hoping and praying for a Bajor that was free. Now that we won, how can people just hand their freedom over to someone like Winn?" "It has been my observation that one of the prices of giving people freedom of choice is that sometimes they make the wrong choice."

Why can't those reclamators be replicated?

"I wasn't aware that our relationship needed solidifying" 

Great episode! (If I set aside the question of replication... Seriously, what's the law here? The Bajorans on DS9 can use the replimat, but Bajor can't ask the Federation to replicate some farm equipment? I don't think it would be physically impossible, surely it's not made of something like dilithium or latinum.) Winn hasn't reminded me of our sad reality so much since her first appearance. The B-plot was completely irrelevant, but I always enjoy seeing this sort of thing.

Facets

Quark... are you trying to convince the station commander's 16 year old son to write porn for you? seriously?

Ah yes, people closest to Jadzia, aka all of the main characters... and a dabo girl who appeared once for 45 seconds

don't do this... especially in front of all of ur friends...

Dax has a multi-Doctor episode! :D

CurzOdo and Quark's reaction to him are beautiful :D But how can he drink?

Poor Jadzia :(

Go Rom! Quark is too much of an asshole this season...

This is messed up... 

Typical man: he's attracted to a woman, so he takes out his frustration and her and nearly ruins her life

How do Trill memories work? Why is this ritual needed when all memories are already in Dax's head? Are some of them in a .zip and need to be decompressed to be appreciated fully? How did Jadzia not know of Curzon's crush? Is it possible to hide some of your memories from the next host(s) on purpose? You know what, nevermind. Rene Auberjonois (whose name I had to copy-paste, I must admit...) clearly had fun with this episode, and so did I.

The Adversary

yes finally! :)

When they introduced the word "changeling" I was like "that's dumb, that's not what the word means" but now I understand. tbh I love them as enemy -- this story is so beautifully paranoid

why are they all assuming there's only one changeling on board

Well, they certainly know how to end the season on a dramatic line...

This season, my honeymoon phase of "oh my god, serialized Trek" finally ended, and I started thinking about whether or not I like these serialized stories. So I felt compelled to write longer notes after each episode, and don’t have any general remarks this time.

[lim-lifeinmotion]

The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma

By Junot Díaz  I found a story amidst my delving into the depth of childhood trauma, I suppose I just wanted to know what someone else had been through and if they managed to somehow over come it. It’s unusually comforting to read the feelings he had, the same “cut-off” of disassociated presence he felt with not only himself but with everyone else around him. To shed light on the sexual trauma he experienced and how it mirrored my own sexual intimacy blocks. Among all the amazing things he created from this experience it was really hard to hear the profound affect it was still having on him decades on. Perhaps this is just me now, forever? I suppose it was all well and easy to say I wouldn’t change it for the world because it has made me who I am today, beautiful, kind, gentle, and above all, a dedicated and passionate lover, but to think I will live with this for the rest of my life, that Perhaps i may never be able to break down these barriers even with professional help, thats not something I would want of anyone, not of myself. Perhaps if i could rewind it all I would change everything, I may not be who I am today but perhaps I’d be able to give and receive love openly from others and to myself, even if I was a complete asshole, a close minded, non-empathic person, to be happy and free from all of this pain i carry, is all I ask from the world. I wan’t to be able to love myself so damn badly, but I can only keep on trying until one day I do finally make it because I will, it’s not living otherwise.

Last week I returned to Amherst. It’s been years since I was there, the time we met. I was hoping that you’d show up again; I even looked for you, but you didn’t appear. I remember you proudly repped N.Y.C. during the few minutes we spoke, so I suspect you’d moved back or maybe you were busy or you didn’t know I was in town. I have a distinct memory of you in the signing line, saying nothing to anyone, intense. I assumed you were going to ask me to read a manuscript or help you find an agent, but instead you asked me about the sexual abuse alluded to in my books. You asked, quietly, if it had happened to me.

You caught me completely by surprise.

I wish I had told you the truth then, but I was too scared in those days to say anything. Too scared, too committed to my mask. I responded with some evasive bullshit. And that was it. I signed your books. You thought I was going to say something, and when I didn’t you looked disappointed. But more than that you looked abandoned. I could have said anything but instead I turned to the next person in line and smiled. Out of the corner of my eye I watched you pick up your backpack, slowly put away your books, and leave. When the signing was over I couldn’t get the fuck away from Amherst, from you and your question, fast enough. I ran the way I’ve always run. Like death itself was chasing me. For a couple of days afterward I fretted; I worried that I’d given myself away. But then the old oblivion reflex took over. I pushed it all down. Buried it all. Like always.

But I never really did forget. Not our exchange or your disappointment. How you walked out of the auditorium with your shoulders hunched.

I know this is years too late, but I’m sorry I didn’t answer you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. I’m sorry for you, and I’m sorry for me. We both could have used that truth, I’m thinking. It could have saved me (and maybe you) from so much. But I was afraid. I’m still afraid—my fear like continents and the ocean between—but I’m going to speak anyway, because, as Audre Lorde has taught us, my silence will not protect me.

X⁠—

Yes, it happened to me.

I was raped when I was eight years old. By a grownup that I truly trusted.

After he raped me, he told me I had to return the next day or I would be “in trouble.”

And because I was terrified, and confused, I went back the next day and was raped again.

I never told anyone what happened, but today I’m telling you.

And anyone else who cares to listen.

That violación. Not enough pages in the world to describe what it did to me. The whole planet could be my inkstand and it still wouldn’t be enough. That shit cracked the planet of me in half, threw me completely out of orbit, into the lightless regions of space where life is not possible. I can say, truly, que casi me destruyó. Not only the rapes but all the sequelae: the agony, the bitterness, the self-recrimination, the asco, the desperate need to keep it hidden and silent. It fucked up my childhood. It fucked up my adolescence. It fucked up my whole life. More than being Dominican, more than being an immigrant, more, even, than being of African descent, my rape defined me. I spent more energy running from it than I did living. I was confused about why I didn’t fight, why I had an erection while I was being raped, what I did to deserve it. And always I was afraid—afraid that the rape had “ruined” me; afraid that I would be “found out”; afraid afraid afraid. “Real” Dominican men, after all, aren’t raped. And if I wasn’t a “real” Dominican man I wasn’t anything. The rape excluded me from manhood, from love, from everything.

The kid before—hard to remember. Trauma is a time traveller, an ouroboros that reaches back and devours everything that came before. Only fragments remain. I remember loving codes and Encyclopedia Brown and pastelones and walking long distances in an effort to learn what lay beyond my N.J. neighborhood. At night I had the most vivid dreams, often about “Star Wars” and about my life back in the Dominican Republic, in Azua, my very own Tatooine. Was just getting to know this new English-speaking me, was just becoming his friend—and then he was gone.

No more spaceship dreams, no more Azua, no more me. Only an abiding sense of wrongness and the unbearable recollection of being violently penetrated.

By the time I was eleven, I was suffering from both depression and uncontrollable rage. By thirteen, I stopped being able to look at myself in the mirror—and the few times I accidentally glimpsed my reflection I’d recoil like I’d got hit in the face by a jellyfish stinger. (What did I see? I saw the crime, my grisly debasement, and if anyone looked at me too long I would run or I would fight.)

By fourteen, I was holding one of my father’s pistols to my head. (He’d been gone a few years, but he’d generously left some of his firearms behind.) I had trouble at home. I had trouble at school. I had mood swings like you wouldn’t believe. Since I’d never told anyone what had happened my family assumed that was just who I was—un maldito loco. And while other kids were exploring crushes and first love I was dealing with intrusive memories of my rape that were so excruciating I had to slam my head against a wall.

Of course, I never got any kind of help, any kind of therapy. Like I said, I never told anyone. In a family as big as mine—five kids—it was easy to get lost, even when you were going under. I remember my mother telling me, after one of my depressions, that I should pray. I didn’t even bother to laugh.

When I wasn’t completely out of it I read everything I could lay my hands on, played Dungeons & Dragons for days on end. I tried to forget, but you never forget. Night was the worst—that’s when the dreams would come. Nightmares where I got raped by my siblings, by my father, by my teachers, by strangers, by kids who I wanted to be friends with. Often the dreams were so upsetting that I would bite my tongue, and the next morning I’d spit out blood into the bathroom sink.

And in no time at all I was failing everything. Quizzes, quarters, and then entire classes. First I got booted out of my high school’s gifted-and-talented program, then out of the honors track. I sat in class and either dozed or read Stephen King books. Eventually I stopped showing up altogether. School friends drifted away; home friends couldn’t wrap their heads around it.

Senior year, while everyone was getting their college acceptances, I went another way: I tried to kill myself. What happened was that in the middle of a deep depression I suddenly became infatuated with this cute-ass girl I knew at school. For a few weeks my gloom lifted, and I became utterly convinced that if this girl went out with me, if she fucked me, I’d be cured of all that ailed me. No more bad memories. I’d been watching “Excalibur” on heavy rotation, so I was all about miraculous regeneration. When I finally got up the nerve to ask her out and she said nope, it felt as though the world had finally closed the door on me.

The next day I swallowed all these leftover drugs from my brother’s cancer treatment, three bottles’ worth.

Didn’t work.

You know why I didn’t try again the next day?

Because my one and only college acceptance arrived in the mail. I had assumed I wasn’t going anywhere, had completely forgotten that I had any schools left to hear from. But as I read that letter it felt as if the door of the world had cracked open again, ever so slightly.

I didn’t tell anyone I tried to kill myself. Something else I buried deep.

I often tell people that college saved me. Which in part is true. Rutgers, only an hour from my home by bus, was so far from my old life and so alive with possibility that for the first time in the longest I felt something approaching safety, something approximating hope. And, whether it was that distance or my bottomless self-loathing or some desperate post-suicide urge to live, that first year I remade myself completely. By junior year, I doubt anyone from my high school would have recognized me. I became a runner, a weight lifter, an activist, had girlfriends, was “popular.” At Rutgers I buried not only the rape but the boy who had been raped—and threw into the pit my family, my suffering, my depression, my suicide attempt for good measure. Everything I’d been before Rutgers I locked behind an adamantine mask of normalcy.

And, let me tell you, once that mask was on no power on earth could have torn it off me.

The mask was strong.

But as any Freudian will tell you trauma is stronger than any mask; it can’t be buried and it can’t be killed. It’s the revenant that won’t stop, the ghost that’s always coming for you. The nightmares, the intrusions, the hiding, the doubts, the confusion, the self-blame, the suicidal ideation—they didn’t go away just because I buried my neighborhood, my family, my face. The nightmares, the intrusions, the hiding, the doubts, the confusion, the self-blame, the suicidal ideation—they followed. All through college. All through graduate school. All through my professional life. All through my intimate life. (Leaked into my writing, too, but you’d be amazed how easy it is to rewrite the truth away.)

Didn’t matter how far I ran or what I achieved or who I was with—they followed.

Do you remember how during our chat at Amherst I talked about intimacy? I think I said that intimacy is our only home. Super ironic that I write and talk about intimacy all day long; it’s something I’ve always dreamed of and never had much luck achieving. After all, it’s hard to have love when you absolutely refuse to show yourself, when you’re locked behind a mask.

I remember when I got my first girlfriend, in college. I thought that was it—I was saved. Everything I’d been would officially be erased, all my awful dreams would disappear. But that’s not the way the world works. Me and this girl were into each other something serious, were in our narrow college beds all the time—but you know what? We never had sex. Not once. I couldn’t. Every time we would get close to fucking the intrusions would cut right through me, stomach-turning memories of my violation. Of course, I didn’t tell her. I just said that I wanted to wait. She didn’t believe my excuses, asked me what was wrong, but I never said anything. I kept the Silence. After a year, we broke up.

I thought maybe with another girl it would be easier, but it wasn’t. I tried and I tried and I tried. Took me until I was a junior before I finally lost my virginity. I saw her first in a creative-writing class. She was an ex-hippie ex-hardcore sweetie who wrote beautifully and had a tattoo on her head and the first time we got in bed she didn’t even ask if I was a virgin; she just pulled off her dress and it happened. I almost threw a party.

But I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. Me and J⁠— dated for two years, but I was always acting, always hiding. The mask was strong.

I’m sure she sensed I was all sorts of messed up, but I’m guessing she chalked it up to typical ghetto craziness. She loved the shit out of me. Brought me home to her family, and they loved me, too. It was the first truly healthy family I’d been exposed to. Which you would think would have been a good thing.

Wrong. The longer we were together, the more her family loved me, the more unbearable it all got. There was only so much closeness a person like me could endure before I needed to fly the fuck away. I had long bouts of depression, drank more than I’d ever drunk, especially during the holidays, when they were all at their happiest. One day, for no reason at all, I found myself saying, We have to break up. There was absolutely no precipitating anything. I had just reached my limit. I remember crying my eyes out the night before (in those days I never cried). I didn’t want to break up with her. I didn’t want to. But I couldn’t stand to be loved. To be seen.

Why? she asked. Why?

And I really had no answer.

After that it was C⁠—, who did a ton of community work in the D.R. And then B⁠—, the Seventh-Day Adventist from St. Thomas. Neither relationship worked. But I kept going.

And that’s how it went for a while, from college to grad school to Brooklyn. I would meet intimidatingly smart sisters, would date them in the hope that they could heal me, and then the fear would start to climb in me, the fear of discovery, and the mask would feel as if it were cracking and the impulse to escape, to hide, would grow until finally I’d hit a Rubicon—I’d either drive the novia away or I would run. I started sleeping around, too. The regular relationship drug wasn’t enough. I needed stronger hits to keep the wound inside from rising up and devouring me. The Negro who couldn’t sleep with anyone became the Negro who would sleep with everyone.

I was hiding, I was drinking, I was at the gym; I was running around with other women. I was creating model homes, and then, just as soon as they were up, abandoning them. Classic trauma psychology: approach and retreat, approach and retreat. And hurting other people in the process. My depressions would settle over me for months, and in that darkness the suicidal impulse would sprout pale and deadly. I had friends with guns; I asked them never to bring them over for any reason. Sometimes they listened, sometimes they didn’t.

Somehow I was still writing—about a young Dominican man who, unlike me, had been only a little molested. Someone who couldn’t stay in any relationship because he was too much of a player. Crafting my perfect cover story, in effect. And since us Afro-Latinx brothers are viewed by society as always already sexual perils, very few people ever noticed what was written between the lines in my fiction—that Afro-Latinx brothers are often sexually imperilled.

Right before I left graduate school and moved to Brooklyn I published my first story, about a Dominican boy who goes to see another boy, whose face has been eaten off, and on the way he gets sexually assaulted. (Seriously.) And then in one of those insane twists of fortune I hit the literary lottery. From that one story I got an agent, I got a book deal, I appeared in The New Yorker, I published my first book, “Drown,” which sold nothing but got me more press than any young writer should ever have. Anyone else would have ridden that good-luck wave straight into the sunset, but that wasn’t how it played out. I clearly wanted to be known, on some level, had been dying for a chance at a real face, but when that moment finally arrived I couldn’t do it; I clamped the mask down hard. After “Drown,” I could have stayed in N.Y.C., but I fled to Syracuse instead, where the snow never stops and the isolation was a maw. I stopped writing altogether.

Entire literary careers could have fit into the years I didn’t write. In the meantime I met S⁠—. If Black Is Beautiful had a spokesperson it would have been her; S⁠—, who would have thrown away a thousand years of family to make it work. Didn’t matter; we never were able to have sex. The intrusions always hit where it would hurt the worst. Never knew who I could have sex with and who I couldn’t until I tried. S⁠— found someone else, ended up marrying him. I moved on to other women. The years passed. I never took off the mask; I never got help.

And for a while the center held. For a while.

No one can hide forever. Eventually what used to hold back the truth doesn’t work anymore. You run out of escapes, you run out of exits, you run out of gambits, you run out of luck. Eventually the past finds you.

What happened was that I met someone: Y⁠—. In the novel I published eleven years after “Drown,” I gave my narrator, Yunior, a love supreme named Lola, because in real life I had a love supreme named Y⁠—. She was the femme-matador of my dreams. A state-school girl raised in Washington Heights who worked her ass off, who never ran from a fight, and who could have danced Ochún out the fucking room.

We clicked like crazy. Like our ancestors were rooting for us. I was the Dominican nerdo she’d always dreamed about. She actually said this. She didn’t have a clue. I fell into her family, and she fell into mine. And her mother—Dios mío, how the señora loved me. I was the son she never had. And before you could say “Run” I had created another one of my romance stories, but this one was more elaborate and more insane than any I’d ever spun. We bought an apartment together in Harlem. We got engaged in Tokyo. We talked about having children together. Even the writing started coming again. Negroes I’d never met before were proud of our relationship and told us so. Two “successful” Dominicans from the hood who loved each other? As rare and as precious as ciguapas.

Of course, there were signs of trouble. I spent at least six months out of the year depressed and/or high or drunk. We could have sex but not often—the intrusions often jumped in, a hellish cock-blocking ménage à trois.

Sex or no sex, I “loved” her more than I had ever loved anyone. I even told her, in an unguarded moment, that something had happened in my past.

Something bad.

And because I “loved” her more than I had ever loved anyone, and because I had revealed to her what I revealed about my past, I cheated on her more than I had ever cheated on anyone.

I cheated on her como un maldito perro.

I knew plenty of men who lived double lives. Shit, my father had lived one, to my family’s everlasting regret. And here I was playing out the patrimonial destiny. I had a double life like I was in a comic book.

Y⁠— got as much of the real me as I was capable of showing. She lived with my depression and my no-writing fury and with the rare moments of levity, of clarity. The other women saw primarily my mask, right before I ghosted them.

The mask was strong.

But no mask is that strong. No one’s G that perfect. No one’s love that dumb. One day Y⁠— didn’t like an answer I’d given her about where I’d been. I’m sure she’d been having doubts for a while—especially after one woman showed up at a reading of mine and burst into tears when I said hi. Y⁠— decided to go snooping through my e-mails, and since I wasn’t big on passwords or putting old e-mails in the trash it took her less than five minutes to find what she was looking for.

A heartbreak can take out a world. I know hers did. Took out her world and mine.

Another woman might have shot me dead on principle, but Y⁠— simply printed out all the e-mails between me and all my other girls, all my bullshit seduction attempts, all the photos, had the evidence of my betrayals bound, and when I came home from one of my trips handed them to me.

When I realized what she’d given me I blacked out.

Which is what tends to happen when the world ends.

A few months later, I won the Pulitzer Prize for a novel narrated by a Dominican brother who loses the Dominican woman of his dreams because he can’t stop cheating on her. When I found out I’d won the prize my first thought wasn’t “I’m made” but “Maybe now she’ll stay with me.”

She didn’t. A few months later Y⁠— got her head together and kicked me out of her life completely. She kept the apartment, the ring, her family, our friends. I got Boston. We never saw each other again.

When I was a kid, I heard that dinosaurs were so big that even if they received a killing blow it would take a while for their nervous systems to figure it out. That was me. After I lost Y⁠— I moved to Cambridge full time, and for the next year or so I tried to “walk it off.” For a little while I seriously thought I was going to be fine. The mask had exploded into fragments, but I kept trying to wear the pieces as if nothing had happened. It would have been comedic if it hadn’t been so tragic. I tried to use sex to fill the hole I’d just blown through my heart, but it didn’t work. Didn’t stop me from trying.

I lost weeks, I lost months, I lost years (two). And then one day I woke up and literally couldn’t move from bed. An archipelago of grief was on me, a wine-dark sea of pain. In a drunken fit I tried to jump from my friend’s rooftop apartment in the D.R. He grabbed me before I could get my foot on a nearby stool and didn’t let go until I stopped shaking.

In the treatment world, they say that often you have to hit rock bottom before you finally seek help. It doesn’t always work that way, but that sure is how it was for me. I had to lose almost everything and then some. And then some. Before I finally put out my hand.

I was fortunate. I had friends around me ready to step in. I had good university insurance. I stumbled upon a great therapist. She had dealt with people like me before, and she dedicated herself to my healing. It took years—hard, backbreaking years—but she picked up what there was of me. I don’t think she’d ever met anyone more disinclined to therapy. I fought it every step of the way. But I kept coming, and she never gave up. After long struggle and many setbacks, my therapist slowly got me to put aside my mask. Not forever, but long enough for me to breathe, to live. And when I was finally ready to return to that place where I was unmade she stood by my side, she held my hand, and never let go.

I’d always assumed that if I ever returned to that place, that island where I’d been shipwrecked, I would never escape; I’d be dragged down and destroyed. And yet, irony of ironies, what awaited me on that island was not my destruction but nearly the opposite: my salvation.

During that time I wrote very little. Mostly I underlined passages in my favorite books. This line in particular I circled at least a dozen times: “Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell.”

And then there was this section from my own novel:

Before all hope died I used to have this stupid dream that shit could be saved, that we would be in bed together like the old times, with the fan on, the smoke from our weed drifting above us, and I’d finally try to say words that could have saved us.

But before I can shape the vowels I wake up. My face is wet, and that’s how you know it’s never going to come true.

Never, ever.

It’s been almost a decade since the Fall. I am not who I once was. I’m neither the brother who can’t touch a girl nor the asshole who sleeps around. I’m in therapy twice a week. I don’t drink (except in Japan, where I let myself have a beer). I don’t hurt people with my lies or my choices, and wherever I can I make amends; I take responsibility. I’ve come to learn that repair is never-ceasing.

I’m even in a relationship, and she knows everything about my past. I told her about what happened to me.

I’ve told her, and I’ve told my friends. Even the toughest of my boys. I told them all, fuck the consequences.

Something I never thought possible.

So much has changed. But some things haven’t. There are still times when the depression hammers down and months vanish out from under me, when the suicidal ideation returns. The writing hasn’t come back, not really. But there are good stretches, and they are starting to outnumber the bad. Every year, I feel less like the dead, more a part of the living. The intrusions are fewer now, and when they come they don’t throw me completely. I still have those horrible dreams every now and then, and they are still foul as fuck, but at least I have resources to deal with them.

And yet—

And yet despite all my healing I still feel that something important, something vital, has eluded me. The impulse to hide, to hold myself apart from my colleagues, from my fellow-writers, from my students, from the circle of life has remained uncannily strong. During the public talks I’ve given at universities and conferences, I’ve sometimes commented on the intergenerational harm that systemic sexual violence has inflicted on African diasporic communities, on my community. But have I ever actually come out and said that I was the victim of sexual violence? I’ve said elusive things here and there but nothing actionable, no definitive statements.

Over the last weeks, that gnawing sense of something undone has only grown, along with the old fear—the fear that someone might find out I’d been raped as a child. It’s no coincidence that I recently began a tour for a children’s book I’ve published and suddenly I’m surrounded by kids all the time and I’ve had to discuss my childhood more than I ever have in my life. I’ve found myself telling lies, talking about a kid that never was. He never checks the locks on the bedroom doors four times a night, doesn’t bite clean through his tongue. The cover stories are returning. There are even mornings when my face feels stiff.

And then at one of my events, another signing line—this one at the Brattle Theatre, in Cambridge—a young woman walked up and started to thank me for my novel, for one of its protagonists, Beli. Beli, the tough-love Dominican mother who suffered catastrophic sexual abuse throughout her life.

I had a life a lot like Beli’s, the young woman said, and then, without warning, she choked into tears. She wanted to say more to me, but before she could she was overwhelmed and fled. I could have tried to stop her. I could have called after her me too me too. I could have said the words: I was also raped.

But I didn’t have the courage. I turned to the next person in line and smiled.

And you know what? It felt good to be behind the mask. It felt like home.

I think about you, X⁠—. I think about that woman from the Brattle. I think about silence; I think about shame, I think about loneliness. I think about the hurt I caused. I think of all the years and all the life I lost to the hiding and to the fear and to the pain. The mask got more of me than I ever did. But mostly I think about what it felt like to say the words—to my therapist, all those years ago; to tell my partner, my friends, that I’d been raped. And what it feels like to say the words here, where the whole world—and maybe you—might hear.

Toni Morrison wrote, “Anything dead coming back to life hurts.” In Spanish we say that when a child is born it is given the light. And that’s what it feels like to say the words, X⁠—. Like I’m being given a second chance at the light.

Last night I had another dream. It wasn’t a bad one. I was young. Just a boy. No one had hurt me yet. A plane was dropping flyers announcing an upcoming Jack Veneno match, and all of us kids in Villa Juana were racing about in great excitement, gathering the flyers in our arms.

I barely remember that boy anymore, but for a brief moment I am him again, and he is me. ♦

[xoxthewitchxox-blog]

About Me

1. What is your name? Courtney 2. How old are you? 30 3. Are you sure? Reasonably 4. What is your earliest memory? 1970's style striped carpet. That classic yellow/burgendy/blue combo 5. What is your favorite alcoholic drink? Jack Daniels 6. What is your favorite vegetable? Pumpkin 7. Do you remember your first day at school? Yes, hated it 8. What is the worst exam result you remember ever getting? E. Cheers Mr Boland 9. How tall are you? 173cms 10. Can you swim? Of course, I'm Australian 11. Who is your favorite movie actress? I don't think I have one

12. Who is your favorite movie actor? Again, don't particularly care. Maybe Vincent Price?

13. Who is your favorite comedian? Russell Brand. He's amazing. Intelligent, well spoken, thoughtful. And that face *swoon

14. Who is your favorite politician? Scott Ludlum. Please move to Vic so I can vote for you 15. Who is your favourite historical figure (been dead for at least 100 years)? Vlad Tepes was my first thought, so maybe him? 16. Who is your favorite super-heroine? The Black Widow 17. Who is your favorite super-hero? Deadpool duh 18. Can you name a female scientist other than Madame Curie? Hedy Lamarr helped invent WiFi. That's good enough for me 19. Who is your favorite mythological god or goddess? Baphomet

20. Who is your favorite woman of all time? Me 21. Do you agree with "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"? Sometimes the high road is too hard. 22. Do you agree with "Life does not forgive weakness"? Yes 23. Do you agree with "It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance"? Yes 24. Do you agree with "The state can do what they want to do"? The reality is yes, yes they can. Do I agree? No. 25. Do you agree with "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country"? Depends on so many things......

26. Do you agree with "If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads"? Yes 27. Do you agree with "Crime is a product of social excess"? More a lack of excess, so no. 28. Do you agree with "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? Yes 29. Do you agree with "And mankind is naught but a single nation"? Yes 30. Do you agree with "Bulimia is soooo '87"? Hey, it can totally work for some! /s don't hurt me 31. What is the worst movie you have ever seen? Holy Shit! This completely horrible movie on Netflix my friend made me watch. London something, it's not worth remembering the full title. Terrible and I still haven't forgiven him for making me watch it and wasting my goddamn time. 32. What is the worst TV show you have ever seen? anything that relies on a laugh track, or anything in the NCIS/CSI franchise 33. What is the worst book you have ever read? Foundations of Statistics textbook, and I spent an hour on 50 Shades of Grey before getting physically angry and ranting at friend about how absurd it was that this exists, and has made so much money. Seriously. It's not even good enough to be called for poorly written trash. 34. What is the worst song you have ever heard? HEY I JUST MET YOU ------- AND THIS IS CRAAAAZY 35. What is the worst sport you know of? golf? 36. Who is the worst movie "star" ever? Tom Hiddleston 37. Who is the worst comedian ever? Outlandish shock jocks are shit.

38. Who is the worst author ever? That 50 Shades lady. Those books are a crime against literature.

39. Who is the worst musical act ever? Avril Lavigne 40. Who is the worst sports "star" you have ever seen? Bernard Tomic 41. If you could go back in time to witness an historical event in person, what event would you want to see? Any part of the French Revolution. The Salem Witch Trials 42. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go? Melbourne haha 43. If you could meet anyone in the world, who would you meet? Jason Momoa, so I could annoy a friend 44. If you could become famous for one thing, what would that thing be? A *good* sex tape. Kim Kardashian made a whole empire for her and her family off of a shoddy one, imagine if it were good?! 45. If you could buy anything regardless of cost, what would you buy? A new laptop, and all of KILLSTARS everything, forever. 46. If you could change any one thing about your country, what would it be? The older generation, their conservative personal views are the one thing keeping us in the dark ages. #marriage equality

47. If you could change any one thing about international politics, what would it be? Just get rid of Trump. I think he's been a lesson to 80% of the planet at this point. 48. If you could meet any famous person who is dead, who would it be? Ayrton Senna 49. If you could become dictator of the world, would you? Would you not? 50. If you could eat an entire cow at one sitting, would you? God no, I can hardly finish a burrito in one sitting 51. Have you ever illegally downloaded music/TV shows/movies from the net? No. 52. Have you ever used illegal narcotics (yes, even pot counts if it was illegal at the time)? Honey, I'm 30 53. Have you ever gotten any points on your driving license? Technically no! 54. Have you ever stolen anything from a shop? Yup 55. Have you ever bought alcohol or cigarettes while underage? No, that what other people were for

56. Have you ever bought alcohol or cigarettes for another person who was underage? Yeah, that shits hard man. 57. Have you ever tried to cheat the taxman/social security/other government agency? No, they always win.

58. Have you ever ridden on a train or bus without paying? Yes 59. Have you ever been arrested? No 60. Have you ever been charged with a crime ... ? No 61. What's the furthest you've ever been from home? Brisbane 62. Where have you visited that you would like to go back to? Adelaide is wonderful 63. Where would you like to visit that you haven't yet? Norway 64. Where is your favorite place in the world? My bedroom 65. Where have you visited that you hope never to go to again? Sydney. 66. Where would you definitely never go to? South Africa 67. Where is your least favorite place in the world? The dentist 68. What is your favorite way to travel  ? Roadtrip 69. What is your least favorite way to travel? Train 70. What is the capital of Assyria? isn't it a city-state? 71. What was the last movie you saw? haha it was Zodiac, one of my favourites 72. Was it any good? It's great if you're in serial killers and RDJ 73. What was the last book you read? Roomitarian - Henry Rollins 74. Was it any good? He's a brilliant writer, speaker and frontman. Love Henry 75. What was the last song you listened to? Life is Killing Me - Type O Negative 76. Was it any good? Of course 77. What was the last computer game you played? Civ IV 78. Did you do well? Mods are fun 79. What was the last meal you ate? Vegemite on a toasted roll haha

80. Was it any good? It was perfect 81. Do you believe in God/Goddess/Gods/Goddesses? I believe in many things. 82. Do you agree with the war in Iraq? No 83. Do you believe in aliens? They scare me 84. Do you agree with the theory of evolution? and natural selection.

85. Do you believe in reincarnation? Yes, I think I was a cat reviously. I can sleep anywhere and only like to be disturbed for food and affection. 86. Do you agree with the idea of the UN? United Nations (UN)? Theoretically it works, but in practice.... I have no idea   87. Do you believe in karma? Yes

88. Do you agree with the theories of man-induced global warming? Yes. In the last week the temp in my town has been everywhere from 19 to 36. In a WEEK.

89. Do you believe in democracy above all other systems of government? Looking at the US at the moment, maybe not. OR they could try out complulsory voting so EVERYONE has to have a say, not just those with already strong opinions. 90. Do you agree with Freddie Mercury when he sings "Fat-bottomed girls you make the rockin' world go round"? As a rather flat assed girl, I find it offensive. 91. What is your favorite movie? Zodiac, The Crow, Norwegian Wood 92. What is your favorite book? Any collection of Poe's works 93. What is your favorite song? Tiny Dancer -Elton John or practically anything from HIM 94. What is your favorite city? Melbourne 95. What is your favorite sport? Formula One 96. What is your favorite place in the world? Bed 97. Are you glad these questions are almost over? My back hurts 98. What are you going to do next? have a cigarette and play with my dog 99. Do you anticipate this activity being fun? of course. she's fluffy as fuck 100. Give us a quote to end on...  "I was never insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched" Poe