#written in red cause I wanted to track my progress
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telleroftime · 4 months ago
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I bring forth a snippet of the Sukuna bingo WIP, written during my flight with a grand total of 0 hours of sleep. OOC? Maybe, most definitely, but oh well I'll just tweak it later.
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With some bonus dialogue:
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And also:
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pshcomforts · 9 months ago
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➳ let you break my heart again | psh.
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collegestudent!sunghoon x fem!reader (mentions of wonyoung from ive)
“one day i will stop falling in love with you”
synopsis: you’ve been in love with your friend, sunghoon for a long time but he has eyes on someone else.
warnings/content: college au. unrequited love. pure and heavy angst. cursing. no happy ending. written in third pov. sunghoon’s oblivious. reader is introverted. a little bit of jay x reader.
comments, likes, and reposts are appreciated :)
word count: 3.3k
a/n: part two — ₊˚ʚ falling in love ɞ˚₊
fictional characters — dae (jungwon’s boyfriend), min-su (heeseung’s girlfriend), and ji-woo (jake’s girlfriend). shameless part two is in the works i swear!
༘˚⋆𐙚。masterlist⋆.✧˚
current song playing: let you break my heart again by laufey
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
1:04 ─────|────────────── -3:25
it was a gloomy and early evening, and all y/n could hear were the sounds of bird chirps and wind whispers.
she gave a soft sigh as she arrived onto the school campus. “just a few hours today, it’s gonna rain too..,” she murmured with a saddened expression.
the girl soon felt a harsh arm tug around her neck, pulling her close within the person’s chest.
in an instant, the smell of cologne and fresh laundry attacked her senses and she knew who it was.
“you just got here??” her close friend, sunghoon beamed towards her.
y/n’s heart instantly thumped at the processed words. “yeah.. did you?” she took a gulp, eyes trailing up towards the body figure.
she heard him give a low chuckle that caused her insides to churn and twist all in one. “i’ve been here for a while, dummy. we’ve all been waiting for you.” hoon spoke, arms unintentionally linking her closer in his presence.
the girl awkwardly laughed along before swallowing her feelings away. “oh.. well, i’m here now.”
“finally! i’ve been waiting since 8am!”
“you have?” her head peered up and she only hoped that sunghoon didn’t notice the blushing red around her cheeks and ears.
he didn’t. the stupid boy was oblivious.
so he only cackled a laugh before furiously nodding his head — “yeah! i need to give you an update on how it’s going so far with wonyoung.”
oh.
y/n’s heart instantly sank to the pit of her stomach, killing all of the possible butterflies that had been formed there. “o..oh…,” she mumbled with a lip bite. “yeah, how’s it going so far?”
she attempted a smile but could only go so far with just her lips forcibly pressing into a thin line.
sunghoon didn’t notice the way his friend who’s crushed on him for months subtly withdrew away from him as he yapped on and on about his progress.
“so me and her..,” “and then we..,” “but she also told me..,” “and i really want her to know that..,” the oblivious boy mumbled on, and all she could do was let him run his mouth with how much excitement surged through him.
y/n laughed here and there, playing the simple mannered jokes to quiet down her aching pain that wished to become present.
but even with her efforts, her tears that caused a shine to display in her eyes were worsening her act. and when she quietly sniffed away her snot, sunghoon immediately noticed and stopped in his tracks.
“hey,” he nudged. “you okay?”
“yeah.. no, yeah, i’m definitely fine! it’s just getting cold so i think i’m getting a little sick.” she muffled back with her head turned away from him.
he didn’t give a response. at least, not right away. it was urgently quiet as he observed her body language, almost as if trying to figure her out.
“are you sure you’re okay?” the male softly uttered. his voice was sweet and reassuring, much like his feelings for wonyoung.
“if you need to, just go back home. your head might hurt if you stay in class.” he added in.
y/n hated this. she hated how caring he was, how unintentionally charming he was. she hated it, and she hated him (lies).
“no it’s fine, hoon.”
sunghoon’s face spoke with disbelief in her words. resting his hand on her shoulder, he firmly murmured, “i’m sure the professor will understand, i don’t want you to force yourself-“
“i said i’m fine.” the girl harshly reiterated.
after the cold shoulder, she felt his hand slip off of her shoulder — causing a burning pulse to ache in her heart. he was the one who withdrew this time, and she felt it.
“you didn’t have to be harsh, y/n.”
sunghoon’s hand was about to fully slip away but y/n caught it in time, fingers dangling onto the forearm with hope and regret.
“sorry, sunghoon, i’m just a little irritated with this cold,” she lied. nothing about her runny nose and teary eyes were about a cold. he was the reason, but he couldn’t know that.
✩ ‘i don’t even think that you care like i do’ ✩
hoon sighed. “i know you get a little mean when your head starts to hurt but don’t take it out on me,” he softly joked, playfully nudging her head afterwards.
the girl rolled her eyes before giving a light smack to his arm. “shut up, i’m just not feeling well.” another lie.
“well just don’t get me sick cause then i’ll get wonyoung sick.”
oh.
his words processed into her ears faster than she thought, and her smile dropped.
but when sunghoon looked back at her to see if she laughed at his joke, she quickly wore a grin once more.
“calm down, you guys are still talking.” y/n said with a stab to the heart.
“not after today, i hope.”
her ears perked up. she knew it wasn’t possible for her friend to like her back, especially with how much he always went on and on about a girl like wonyoung; but it didn’t hurt to have a little hope right?
✩ ‘pretend that we are more than friends’ ✩
“what’s happening today?” she asked, finding it hard to gulp down saliva with her heartbeats in her throat.
sunghoon awkwardly chuckled as he scratched the back of his nape. “i’m planning to ask her out today.”
another heart drop to the stomach.
✩ ‘i should stop’ ✩
‘of course.. i’m an idiot…,’ she thought to herself as she exhaled a heavy sigh.
“what? that’s not a good idea?” the boy asked, catching onto that exaggerated sigh.
“what? oh.. no, it’s a good idea! ask her out!” she beamed, displaying a wide smile. she felt like an idiot. her hopes went up for a second, just for it to be shot down like always.
✩ ‘heaven knows i’ve tried’ ✩
“thank you, y/n! you always help me with her, i can’t thank you enough!” sunghoon yelled, hugging and shaking her around.
y/n lightly laughed. “once is enough..,”
“what?”
“what..? nothing! hey, there’s jake and them, let’s go!” she dragged him towards their friend group and sighed in relief.
“you guys are finally here?” jake teased, displaying his full set of teeth as he laid his head on his girlfriend’s shoulders.
y/n nodded. “yeah, i just came on campus.”
“girl, it’s noon!” her friend, ji-woo yelled in disbelief.
“hey, my class is later, so i’m not late!”
“that’s true, at least she’s planning to go to class.” dae chimed in with a shrug in his shoulders.
“exactly! thank you,” the single friend defensively beamed back.
“that’s a first.” min-su uttered, causing cackled laughter to erupt out of the group.
a few topics of discussions immersed before sunghoon intervened with his own — “so i’m planning to ask wonyoung out.”
everyone immediately shifted their gaze to y/n, who had her head slightly drooped down. they knew she liked him. everyone knew, everyone but sunghoon.
but it wasn’t like they could just tell him for her. it wasn’t their place, and she’d honestly rather keep it a secret with how eager he was to be going out with another girl.
y/n softly shook her head ‘no’ towards her three closer friends who intentionally stared at her a little longer than the members. ‘no, don’t say anything, it’s fine’ — she spoke with that head shake.
ji-woo sighed out before uttering, “you’re really gonna go out with her?”
sunghoon’s head tilted to the side in confusion as he responded with a — “yes? is it that surprising?” he turned his attention to jake to get an idea of what his girlfriend meant, only for jake to just awkwardly smile.
“well, you’re just not the type to be that bold, you know?” dae urged, saving ji-woo’s ass.
“yeah, you’re usually more like the guy who just lets stuff happens unintentionally.” min-su said in an attempt to cover their question up.
“baby, i’m sure sunghoon’s just getting more confident with her.” heeseung replied to his girlfriend, intertwining his hands with hers.
y/n’s head slightly bolted before looking at the male who just spoke. they met eyes before he mouthed a ‘sorry’ towards her.
“hee’s right. she just makes me feel confident in being more out there. she’s so sweet, and talks confidently, and..,” sunghoon chattered on.
and it was then that she realized just how different wonyoung and her were.
wonyoung was extroverted, and y/n was introverted.
she was so outgoing and natural in everything she did, and y/n truly admired her for that. she couldn’t ever hate someone who was so unbelievably sweet like wonyoung.
but the two girls were different, and y/n could see just how much sunghoon and her wouldn’t work out. they were too similar, and he needed someone opposite from him.
her. it was her who was like that. wonyoung brought the best in him, and y/n was at least glad for that.
so as hoon kept yapping on about his plan, y/n disassociated with every thought that flooded her head. she couldn’t bare to hear the same words, so the best thing that she could do was just blur out whatever he was saying.
the group took notice and eventually stopped sunghoon.
“hey y/n, doesn’t your class start soon?” dae quickly intervened with an eyebrow raise.
“hm? oh, yeah.. soon.” she blatantly said, no sense of emotion shown.
ji-woo awkwardly laughed as she added, “girl you should start walking.” her chuckle was in an attempt to make light jokes of the situation, but y/n only nodded.
“okay,” she mumbled and got up from the table seat.
“oh, i’ll walk you.” jay uttered, taking the excuse and leaving as well.
sunghoon cocked his head. “what? but i was supposed to walk her. jay??”
“don’t worry, i’ll walk her! her class will be close to mine anyway!” the dark haired boy shouted before catching up to y/n.
“hey,” jay bumped his arm against hers. “you want to talk about it..?”
she sighed as she faced him. his face showed a sickly amount of worry and it only caused her to playfully push his head away.
“does it look like i want to talk about it?” y/n murmured, softly pouting.
jay chuckled. “no, but i’m here if you need me. i know it’s not easy, y/n, and sunghoon’s a little stupid for not seeing that you like him.”
she clicked her tongue as she rolled her eyes. “please, i haven’t shown that i’ve liked him at all. he’s not stupid, he’s just in love with someone else.” when her words actually processed, she felt her heart shatter into a million pieces.
the girl stopped her tracks and lowered her head, causing jay to look back at her with pity.
“y/n..,” he whispered, brows furrowing at her state.
“it’s pathetic, isn’t it?” she chuckled through her pain, tears already flowing down her cheeks. “being in love with someone who only sees me as a friend.”
“it’s not. maybe if you just tell him-“
“what, tell him and make our whole relationship awkward? no. he’s already adamant on going out with her anyway, there’s no point.”
y/n’s head lowered even more, hiding away her puffy, red eyes that were clear in daylight. she let out soft sobs before attempting to shut down her feelings.
✩ ‘promise i don’t mean to cry’ ✩
“sorry, this is gross. i’m not crying anymore, sorry jay-“
✩ ‘but i get overwhelmed and confused’ ✩
in swift seconds, jay pulled her into his embrace and softly squeezed her. “your feelings for sunghoon aren’t stupid. you may be for not telling him any sooner, but your feelings are never invalidated.” he muffled through the hug.
the girl cracked a smile at his words before slapping his arms. “thanks.. that was a little mean but, thanks jay.”
jay beamed a sweet and reassuring smile as he stroked her hair for a second. “what are friends for?” he said.
✩ ‘some day, someone will like me like i like you’ ✩
“are you still planning to go to class?”
“should i..? after i cried..?”
he cackled a laugh, shining a smile towards her before mumbling, “it’s up to you, but i honestly wouldn’t. you can always catch up too..,”
y/n turned her head to look at him. “are you suggesting that you skip with me?”
“who said i was skipping??” the tall male grinned ear to ear as he watched her exasperate a sigh out.
“you cant tell me to skip and not have you skip with me!”
“fine.. i’ll skip with you.” jay sighed in defeat. “but we have to get the others to skip too!”
“deal! i was already texting dae!”
the two laughed before making a weird U-turn from their pathway.
.  . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
eventually, their plan to skip only turned into a library study session. and with such short timing, only a few were willing to do it — dae, min-su, ji-woo, and niki.
the rest were either still in class, at home already, or in some cases, asking their crush out.
so when it was just the six in one big table, everything was chaotically quiet.
y/n sat next to her three closest friends while jay and niki silently bickered here and there.
“i cant believe jungwon didn’t come, he’s usually always down for these study sessions.” niki snorted.
“well wonie wasn’t feeling it today so he just went home.” dae butted in, eyes staying glued to his laptop.
jay huffed out a sigh. “this is a little boring.. i thought we were gonna do something more fun when we skipped, y/n.”
“well, we have to catch up for the work we missed.”
“remind me to never skip with you again..,”
the group quietly laughed together as jay continued — “seriously, y/n, what was the point if we were going to do something like study?”
“i just didn’t want to listen to my professor talk,” she scowled.
“let’s go eat somewhere, at least!” the male frowned, eyes rolling at how much she was concentrating.
“i wouldn’t mind eating..,” niki chimed in.
“let’s go!” yelled ji-woo, getting everyone hyped up to leave.
y/n immediately jumped up from her cushioned seat with a beam — “okay! i just have to go pee first.”
“do you want us to wait for you?”
“no it’s fine, jay needs to get the car anyway so just come around the block and i’ll be here.”
a few debates on staying with the girl was made before she ultimately convinced jay to just let them go first.
.  . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
once y/n was finally done, she brought herself to the front of the library. as she stepped out, she finally heard the heavy rain drops pour from outside.
the campus was flooded with wet puddles and muddy sidewalks. she exaggerated a sigh as she covered herself with a hoodie.
“should’ve just had someone wait with me,” she mumbled under her breath.
the girl glanced back and forth, from left to right to ensure nothing was in her way, but once she did so, she completely hated the sight she came across.
a few ways down from her once-peripheral vision, y/n saw sunghoon and wonyoung wrapped around each other in a hug.
she immediately found it hard to breathe with how tight her heart began to clench onto every single ache. tears ran through her cheeks as she watched from afar.
the only thing that further confirmed his stated plans from earlier were the dim lights on campus — exhibiting how well hoon was wrapping his arms around her, how well they fit each other like puzzle pieces.
she bit her lips as she tried to swallow back another crying sob, but she just couldn’t help it.
y/n was watching her closest friend fall in love with someone else this entire time, and she’s always been able to somewhat sustain it. but now? now, he would actually be with wonyoung, instead of the girl who’s been in love with him since high school.
✩ ‘if only you knew what i felt like’ ✩
her breath hitched as every memory of her and hoon being potentially more flashed away in an instant. she’d always thought that maybe on some level, she’d get with sunghoon because of how well it went for all three of her close friends to find their special someone from being friends first.
but that little fragment of hope she had left for something possible was now crushed to a pulp.
✩ ‘some day, one day’ ✩
it wasn’t like the movies where the two friends realize their love for each other, and y/n knew that now. because if it was anything like that, hoon wouldn’t have been so excited to tell her everything that he knew about wonyoung.
he would’ve just confessed his feelings, and baam, happy ending.
but yet again, it wasn’t like the movies.
so she harshly wiped her tears away and though no one was around, she couldn’t help but be thankful for the heavy raindrops that blended her tears in with it. a half smile plastered across her face in revelation to that while sighing.
‘happy for you..,’ y/n thought to herself as she pulled out her phone.
✩ ‘i will stop falling in love with you’ ✩
beads of water from the rain plopped on her phone in a quick pace while she texted a family member — ‘can you come pick me up?’
she bit her lips before leaving to her shared group chat with her beloved friends.
y/n <33:
hey.. i just remembered that i have an exam next week so i have to study for it
go ahead and eat without me tho!! my brother’s already on his way so don’t worry abt any of that! :)
jungwon’s bae 🩶:
You have an exam??
Why didn’t you tell us!
Just come out anyway 🥰
hee’s fav 🤍:
yeah one day won’t hurt!
jake’s girl 🫂:
jay’s taking forever but yeah, just come y/n!
y/n’s eyes glistened when she felt another wave of emotions hit her. they didn’t even know she was going through such a thing, and it hurt that she couldn’t tell them yet.
y/n <33:
no it’s okayy, another time!
a buzz to her phone was made before she found her brother pulling up. she ran to the car with a shaky breath, and soon, they drove away from the heartbreaking sight.
.  . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆
when the girl got home, she immediately ran to her room and sobbed her eyes out. she broke down in a crying mess after holding it in in front of her brother.
tears streamed down her cheeks and snot filled her nose with every hiccup in her throat.
“i’m an idiot,” y/n grumbled in a scratchy whisper.
just then, her phone rang like crazy and she peeked over. her three friends were calling, most likely to call and talk like they do every night, but she couldn’t do it. not right now.
so she declined it, and a few other buzzed calls from them.
y/n ignored the flooding texts of concerns and playful frustrations before coming across a few from sunghoon.
hoonie 🤍:
You busy??
I have to tell you how it went, y/n
Text me back as soon as possible! I have such good news 🙂
her heart sank. of course he had good news, she was there to witness it. but she was a good friend after all.
✩ ‘until i do, i’ll be thinking of you’ ✩
y/n <33:
oh really?? what happened?
✩ ‘then of course i’ll let you break my heart again’ ✩
★・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・★
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whyitfucks · 10 months ago
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Why it Fucks: City of Mist's Themebooks
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lateral character progression rules!
For those who don't know:
City of Mist is a 2017 Powered by the Apocalypse game from Son of Oak Games. Described as "set in a modern city where legends are real people. Heroes, tricksters, and monsters are reborn inside ordinary people, regular Joes and Janes, who gain supernatural powers connected to their legendary alter-egos."
The game focuses on telling stories that merge the fantastical with the grounded. Okay, if not grounded "lower altitude". It's the structure that you'd find any on detective/police/superhero procedural on TV. A detective game, even if those detectives are also embodiments of legends like Red Riding Hood or the Goddess Artemis.
One of the delightful things about it, and the reason behind this post. Is its use of what it calls themebooks. Every character at any given time is host to 4 themebooks. These can be powers tied to the myth you represent (Mythos) or some part of your mundane life (Logos). A Thor based character could have a "Relic" mythos for his hammer, and a "Defining Relationship" Logos with his old dad he cares for. They provide benefits to rolls when needed, have unique weaknesses and so on. Most importantly they have a mystery (for the mythos) and identity (for the logos) that tell us why we care or give little hooks. These themes get discarded and picked up throughout the game as you use them. Letting characters change without worrying about balancing difficulty.
As an example, let's look at one of the characters from the quick start, Salamander, tied to the myth of, well, the Salamander
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One of his 4 playbooks is based on his job as a city water worker. We can see it has the identity "I need my job to survive" this tells us why it's important to him. I won't go in to much of the rest about power tags and such, instead looking back up to Attention and Crack.
Attention is like an XP track for that aspect of your character. There are a couple ways of gaining it like invoking your weakness tag for a penalty for example. You evolve it, expanding out the power/importance of the theme.
Whenever you take an action that goes against or would cause conflict with one of your themes it takes on a crack. Maybe Salamander has to leave his shift to go fight some bad guys, angering his boss. When the crack track is full, Salamander will lose that theme and trade it for another. Broadly, the themebook creation rules are written very generously. You can come in with a loose concept and they'll help you solidify it into something usable
Why It Fucks:
SO. What we have here are characters with 4 individual aspects that serve as side plots, mysteries or recurring beats that each have two directions they can go to (focus or conflict) that are, for the most part, entirely player directed as to which way they're going. Some MCs might twist arms for hard choices but at the right table that's just good drama baby.
This is a game that frequently references television procedurals or detective stories as big touch stones. What they've done here is empower not only the MC but the players to thread together their episodic adventures in a way that can also reflect consequence without making that player less "powerful" in game terms. Facilitating really dramatic change.
City of Mist is a game I'm quite fond of, it has it's issues but design like this is why I want to start writing these posts. Whatever I think about the game, this single little bit is SO! juicy to me.
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ghost-of-you · 3 years ago
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Okay, we all analyzed the complete mess video to filt, we overanalyzed that shit so hard we were finding meanings that were definitely not there, buuuuuuut, we did that on the point of view of the band trajectory, and that definitely makes a lot of sense, but I think they are also talking about 5sos5 as a concept in that. And I will be going into heavy details under the cut
My basic idea is that 5sos5 is an album that will progressively get darker.
Okay, the video opens with them in the desert, and that could be a metaphor for the industry and how hard life could be, @bandsanitizer and me also played with the idea of the desert being "the regular life they wanted to escape" but I think we can look at the desert as literal desert, representing how the album started on Joshua Tree, with just the 4 of them alone, and they stay together for the first verse and the first chorus.
The first chorus has this shot:
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"Just as you're losing yourself again, look in the mirror, take my hand" he's literally fading away as he looks in the mirror while reaching his hand out, like, if this is not on purpose, I swear to god. The first part also only has solo shots of Luke and Calum. This, along with the fact that take my hand was written only by Luke, leads me to believe that take my hand is Luke's solo moment and it is part of the lighter side of the album. That also puts me in the direction that Calum's solo moment is also on the lighter side of the album, but probably the shifting point. The fact that they stay together through half the song also makes me think that most of the lighter songs were written by all four of them together.
In the second verse, we get them splitting up, and we get Luke and Calum moving to one side and Ashton and Michael to the other.
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That could be the split between light and dark parts (and that makes me terrified about what Ashton and Michael can pull off in terms of devastating song, cause we know they can)
We move on to what I think is one of the most fascinating parts of the video, which we also analyzed until we couldn't anymore: the Cashton and Muke moments.
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Excuse me "A darkness that holds me and loves when I bleed" HELLO?????!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
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"Need someone to show me what I couldn't see" Come on, I can't be the only one that sees it.
Also still talking about easy for me to say "a glimmer of hope that keeps staring at me"
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Continuing, the Muke/Cashton moments mark the shirt to night, and its also where they find each other again, making the point they've been making all for the past few months very obvious, we can in fact exist and create as individuals, and it's important for us to do so, but we enjoy it so much more when we are together, cause there's a difference in the group shots at the beginning and the end, they're very stiff in the beginning but they seem to be having fun in the end, a little "it took us a while to find the new pace but we really like where we ended up."
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In terms of the album, I'm very interested in this particular shot
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Because for solo shots we get Luke, Ashton and Michael floating, and yeah we get Michael on the ground, but Calum is the only one we see falling, which is why I think, his song will be the shift in tone in the album.
Another thing that could be interpreted in album terms is the Colors, Alison explained it so much better than I could ever hope for, but in the end, we have Luke, Calum and Ashton in primary colors and Michael in black and white. If we take a color wheel, we have red, blue and yellow and the hue, how light or dark the color is, and having Michael working as a producer he's literally mixing (since you mix a track) them and helping them be all the colors they can be together and getting them to sound the way they want to sound.
There's also the way that in the night shots we have two major light colors, orange, red and yellow, Calum and Luke, and cyan, a lighter blue, Ashton and Michael. And in the shots where they are just vibing, we have them in orange and at the end where they find what they're looking for they're covered in blue. (Thinking about the tragectory symbolism for a second this could be them finding Ash and kickstarting this whole thing, how beautiful)
Okay so this is long, but pretty much what I'm trying to say is: I'm predicting Ashton and Michael having darker more intense songs, Calum having a breaking point song, at least one happy dancy cake song, and the thing I'm dreading the most a full-on drown in the blues Mashton song.
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curmudggeon · 3 years ago
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An Unexpected Encounter (Arthur Morgan x Female Reader)
After receiving an invitation to the mayor's Gala party, you encounter the one person you despise the most, Arthur. Just when you thought your rivalry would get any more infuriating, he comes along and one thing leads into another or maybe even into something more...
“Fuck it.”
Word count: 3.1k
Warnings: Minor spoilers of 'The Gilded Cage' Mission, Vulgarities, Alcohol, Guns, Violence, and Sexual intentions
A/N: Honestly, I didn't know where I was going with this. It's been quite a while since I've written. While playing through this mission, I was thinking of an enemies-to-lovers type of banter with the whole glitz and glamour of the situation. I hope you enjoy it or maybe not...
The grand music by the string quartet swelled into the elegant ambiance of the evening. With Saint Denis’ high society gathered together into one establishment, being invited into these types of conventions was a rare opportunity. You managed to get in the mayor’s party through close connections within the city. It was a chance to get your hands on valued pickpockets from pompous rich people; away from the hassle of collecting useless bounties.
The mansion was rather extravagant as you entered; unique architecture and expensive pieces of artwork looking out into the outskirts of the city. The scent of liquor, cigars, and the deep aquatic plants of the Bayou was intoxicating.
Defying all the odds of 1899 fashion, you wore a dress that had a slit on the slide of your right thigh that was high enough to hide the spare gun that you managed to sneak in despite having to surrender the rest of your weaponry at the entrance.
The mayor’s servants eyed you closely when you laid out your revolvers in front of them, since it was apparently absurd to witness a woman carrying such hefty guns. Winking at them as you moved away, you scowled under your breath at their suspicion and avoid being further searched. It was your only option of protection in case a fiasco had broken out in the middle of your pickpocket adventure.
Conversations started to tune out the music in the background, the heads of married men turned towards your direction as you made your way through the party, striding with utter grace and elegance to catch the eyes of your potential suitors to steal from.
Grimaced expressions were coated on the faces of the women while examining your revealing choice of clothing. You stood beside the refreshments, holding a free glass of champagne, as you glanced at the group of women engrossed in conversation regarding the lady that came into the establishment. You.
Raising your eyebrow as you sipped on the champagne, you gave them a firm nod headed their way, causing the litter of southern belles to widen their eyes at your acknowledgment and quickly disperse from their conversation. Real smooth.
It was the kind of attention you had gotten used to. After all, being the only woman bounty hunter in the city wasn’t normal in the present day’s context. Opting for a more reckless and freer lifestyle gave you a sense of adrenaline; to escape every expectation of conservative American society. You felt entitled to be who you are and wanted to be. A free woman. You started making a name for yourself in this city, bounty after bounty until one particular man decided to show up and defeated all your means of survival on the jobs you took on...
Arthur
The sound of his name left a sour taste in your mouth. He was the reason why it started to get progressively difficult collecting bounties. When you showed up for a $100 bounty for the leader of the Lemoyne Raiders, Lindsey Wofford at the abandoned fort, that is how you met Arthur. You were outnumbered. Deciding to team up with him, was the last thing you should’ve done. He was charming at first, but then came the point when he handed over Lindsey’s body to the police, betraying your efforts to help attain the bounty as he kept the prize to himself. So much for being handsome.
The moment bounty posters were displayed, it became a competition to get to them first. He would capture or kill them before you did. The feeling of immense frustration struck you as he flashed that lazy, crooked smirk of his. Arthur tipped his hat to you while collecting his reward for the day.
“Asshole.” You muttered under your breath, unable to contain the urge to lunge at him for beating you to it. The glimmer in his eye resembled the commencing of his mockery towards you.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Princess.” His eyes shined with amusement along with that stupid grin of his slowly widening at your reaction. Oh, he is so not going to see the light of day any time soon.
Your anger was at its peak, ready to set off and wipe that smug expression off his face. You couldn’t let him have this, not this time. Within a blink of an eye, you reached for your pistol and aimed it at Arthur’s head with ease.
“You take that back.” His face slowly turned south as his grin disappears upon my demand. I thought so, too.
“Woah, Woah, young lady. Put the gun down,” The policeman warned as he stood with his hand out to coax you into dropping my line of fire and from blowing Arthur’s brains out in front of him.
Ignoring the warning, you focused on Arthur, waiting for his apology. After a long pause of silence, his face slowly distorts, as if he can’t control the outburst of emotions flowing within him.
He’s
He’s laughing?
Your eyebrows furrowed even further as he slowly bends his arms onto his knees as blurts of laughter simultaneously start to escape his mouth. The policeman was surprised at the sudden change of atmosphere, as he stares at Arthur like a madman. He walks away, shaking his head as he retorts lowly, “I don’t get paid enough for this job”.
Rolling your eyes, you were annoyed at the fact Arthur doesn’t take you seriously. Even as your rival, it was unbelievably childish of him to do so. He continued to wheeze as if I’m the biggest joke in the whole wide world. “Ha ha. Very funny, Arthur”
A small smile crept up your mouth as you lowered your aim of fire and place it back into the holster at the round of your hip. You had to admit, he had one of the most contagious laughs you have ever heard, but that doesn’t mean you should lose your guard against the one person you despise the most. In defeat, you left the police station before he had anything else to say to mask yourself in humiliation.
“This changes nothing, I’m still going to beat you.”
-
A few glasses of champagne and pickpockets later, you managed to get your hands on some gold rings, silver-plated watches, and money off drunkards that made their way to you. They were easily wrapped around your finger to steal behind their back. The men surrounded the area as they unwind into the evening with very little knowledge, of what’s coming to them. You secretly stashed the contents of your pickpockets into your purse while walking away from endless conversations about politics and the weather.
Getting bored by the events occurring before you, in the corner of your eye you spot the mayor; Henri Lemieux by the fountain.
Hoping to make a name for yourself in this city —and probably pickpocket him, you make your way to his location. With elongated and purposeful sashays, you stopped in your tracks when you heard footsteps following behind you.
“Hey, little troublemaker.” His voice resonated through you.
Within a split second, you knew that warm, gruff voice anywhere. Frozen in your tracks, you closed your eyes and mentally cursed to yourself as you just got caught red-handed.
In front of you was your shadow cascading on the brick flooring of the garden as Arthur’s tall and burly figure enveloped yours under the dim moonlight. He was directly behind your back, just barely touching the exposed skin of your shoulders. You could feel the warm heat radiating off of him, making you shudder.
Slowly turning around to acknowledge his presence, composing yourself with utmost annoyance to resist the intoxicating proximity in between.
"Oh, it's you." He chuckled at your sarcastic remark as you admired his ravishing appearance. He donned a well-fitted Tux that hugged his biceps perfectly, along with the slicked-back hair from the usage of pomade to style it.
The view of him was a refreshing sight. Seeing him in such a way, despite the usual boyishly rugged blue shirt of his, that shaped his figure well tingled on your skin. He smelled of musk and wildflowers. The scent caused an involuntary sigh out of you before you could realize what you had just done.
"It's nice to see you." Slightly grinning, he stared at you closely. Holding eye contact as he took in the sight of your appearance. Before you stared at each other longer than the both of you had anticipated, fireworks had burst in swirls up in the sky. It caught the attention of guests as they watch the beautiful night sky be painted with streaks of vibrant colors. Comments of amazement filled the air.
Shifting your gaze back to Arthur, you felt like your heart had stopped for a mere second. What?
Arthur had already been staring at you, and your face started to slightly warm at the realization. As if on cue, at the side of the fountain was the mayor and his servant, quietly arguing. You eavesdrop only to hear the contents of the discussion 'Cornwall' and 'horse's ass'. Bingo. You knew anything that had to do with the wealthy man was a big deal to make out of. And definitely would come with something worthy to steal.
As the servant departs away from the mayor, Arthur was already making his way towards him to find out more information. Oh no, you don't.
You follow behind discreetly with the same intention before he finds something more useful than the already invaluable pickpockets in your purse.
Making way back through to the entrance of the Mansion, Arthur makes his way upstairs to the staircase leading towards the mayor's office, as you follow shortly after.
He enters the office quietly as he jams to open the locked drawer with a letter opener on the table. Slowly, you make your way to lean against the door frame, crossing your right leg over the left one to increase the view that revealed your exposed skin with a revolver strapped to your thigh. Preparing to display your disapproval of his actions, you fold your arms as he voices out the contents of the letter. "Mr. Leviticus Cornwall... Top secret… Extremely confidential. Very interesting."
"Very interesting, huh?" His head quickly turns in my direction upon the sound of my voice. His eyes widen. Gotcha cowboy.
Smiling innocently at his reaction, you slowly tilt your head the opposite way of the door frame, awaiting his response.
He pauses for a while as his gaze reaches your face as it makes its way through the revealed skin and revolver coyly making an appearance to him. Breaking off his stupor, It takes him a few seconds to process your actions as you walk towards him.
“What’s that?” He turns his back to prevent you from have a closer scan of the confidential document. Trying to reach it from out of his hands, he turns in another direction, holding the document up in the air far from your reach.
“Nothing useful,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone as he remains amused at your multiple attempts of stealing it from him. He looks away from you, dodging any suspicious allegations you might get just by narrowing your eyes at him.
“If you’re trying to hide it from me, sure as damn means it’s useful.” You hiss at him to hand it over as you continue trying to get up to his height to retrieve the ‘useless’ document out of his hands. Giving up, you stop your actions as an idea had come to mind. A stupid one.
Removing the revolver off your thigh, you pointed the gun at his foot to threaten him into giving you a glimpse of the contents of the paper regarding Leviticus Cornwall.
“I’d love to see you try,” His deep blue eyes sparkled as he challenged you with delight. Arthur knew you wouldn’t dare to pull the trigger and risk another catastrophe to happen at the mayors’ mansion.
Fireworks outside the window started to quieten down and conversations start to resume back to normal.
The sound of a key unlocking a door from another part of the office fills the room.
You look at Arthur with a slightly panicked facial expression. He folds the document neatly and places it inside the inner breast pocket of his tux as you quickly strap back your gun to the side of your thigh.
Arthur moves swiftly past you and grabbing you by the wrist before both of you get caught.
We make our way through the hallway and down a few steps down the staircase to get as far away from the office as possible. The soft tones of speaking at the end of the stairs traveled just at the rounded corner of the wall, nearing the both of you. Heavy stomps became louder and louder at the top of the staircase. You and Arthur were dead in your tracks, standing in the middle of the staircase, as your only two options of escape were far from reach. It was a dead end. This was a day you would go to jail, the both of you.
“Fuck it.”
And he kisses you. Hungrily and ever so desperately.
Pushing you against the wall as his hand cups the back of your neck bringing you close to him while the other was lowering to grab the exposed leg through the slit of your dress and cling it to the side of his hip. Your heart was beating out of your chest, ringing into your ears. And you were pretty sure he was able to hear it too. Not being able to grasp the situation, your stunned eyes fluttered shut, forgetting the entirety of your surroundings with his lips crashing on yours. Arthur’s lips.
There was no denying your attraction towards Arthur, from his physique to that annoying smirk of his that kept you on edge, it was hard to pay attention to the rivalry the both of you shared. Sometimes neither of you noticed the longing but yet despising looks you and Arthur exchanged. You thought you were being delusional, but It always seemed to be so much more. An indescribable magnetic force, pulling and pushing away from each other.
His stubble along the sides of his jaw skimmed the surface of your chin, inviting a light hum to alight from your lips from the contact. It made him smile against your lips, enjoying your compliance with his actions. Unable to resist, you grabbed the ends of his suit into fists, bringing him closer as his hands explored the map of your skin. Just like a predator devouring its prey, you lightly moaned as the warmth of his skin against yours created an inexplicable connection. A grunt escaped his mouth at your reaction to his touch. Kissing you harder, his hand gently slid up the exposed skin of your leg and over your—
"Ahem,"
Breaking off your kiss, a look of disgust was plastered onto the face of the servant, stumbling upon a couple who can't seem to get a room.
Regaining consciousness, you realize the highly scandalous position the both of you were in. You against the wall, arching your back with your hands resting on his heaving chest. You look down, noticing the strap of your dress that had tipped of your shoulder, which revealed your cleavage a bit more than it had already displayed. And his hands, at your waist and up your thigh reaching, Oh. Your face turned bloodshot red.
In a protective stance, Arthur leans forward closer to shield the tantalizing sight of your appearance to the man who had caught both of you at the top of the stairs. Furrowed eyebrows and eyes of infuriation were headed his way.
"Oh, heavens" a group of maids that reached the staircase, quickly shuffled away to busy themselves with other things than going through the second floor of the mansion.
“Pardon me for the intrusion, but this area is strictly out of bounds.”
“Well, I don't see any signs suggesting, so”
The servant raises his eyebrow higher with arms crossed, emphasizing how ridiculous his comment was.
Arthur grumbles, “We’ll be on our way”
The man’s heavy footsteps move past us, giving you privacy to freshen up whatever articles of clothing that was out of place
Hesitant to make eye contact, you observed the bow tie that hung around Arthur’s neck like it was the most interesting thing you had ever seen. You could feel his intense gaze drilling holes into you as his eyes did all the talking. The air was thick, making it hard to breathe as each second passes by. There wasn’t an inch of space left between the both of you, except for the slight distance aching to be met at the lips. His fingers lifted your chin to divert your attention back to him.
You could see the reflection of yourself drowning in the deep seas of his cerulean blue eyes. His gaze lowers down to the swell of your lips. Momentarily, time stops moving, it was the climax of something different. Something exciting, that the hatred you had spent building up for him was collapsing. Something you couldn't quite pinpoint.
There’s a gravitational pull pulling us closer and closer…
The basis of physics was no match for the two of you.
Lips barely grazing onto yours as light music soars in the background,
“Arthur!”
He stops, painfully closing his eyes to the familiar voice that constantly put him to work.
The tension breaks like a gunshot piercing through the air, pulling you out of your daze and back into reality.
What the fuck just happened?
Arthur groans and smothers his face into the crevice of your neck. His arms tightening around your waist, holding for dear life like you were going to slip away from his fingers. Gibberish left his mouth, whining like a child being awoken from his slumber, as the voice that yelled for him gets louder.
You couldn't handle the position you were in, he was so close to you. Your heart could burst any time soon from his touch. It was nothing you had ever imagined with him, nothing you had ever experienced before. This feeling was new.
“I have to go” her murmurs barely under a whisper, only for you to hear. Arthur lightly kisses the skin of your shoulder to signal his departure. The sensation tingles as he separates away from you.
The initial distance that was so close between the both of you was now a little too far away for your liking. Leaving you at the staircase, he looks back at you.
Our eyes meet, and it’s only the two of us, and from this point onwards, everything changes, and you find yourself longing after his lips.
Maybe for once, things could change.
Maybe we can change.
Us.
part 2-?
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farthngdr · 3 years ago
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Some Thoughts on “Dead to Rights” by Radio Company
First, if you are not a Cockles truther, you should probably look away. My tinhat is so tight it hurts. Surgical removal has been deemed too risky and would probably result in my demise.
The comments here are entirely mine, as are the assumptions incorporated into my lyrics analysis about real-life people and their relationships. No disrespect is intended. Please do not contact Jensen, Misha, or Danneel about anything you read below, or about anything Cockles-related, because there is absolutely no evidence for anything I am saying here, and their lives are essentially unknown to us.
Thank you.
_______________________________________________________________
She said It all will change If not it all can wait It may die away Over time But I do believe It's better than being alive It's better than being alive It's better than being-
Bombs away Only just begun You want to be the one to say you love The rain-
fall
When all the while the angels call; The only way to see just how it comes to be Every day To know it all falls away.
You had me dead to rights Holding down my chain; You had me dead to rights I got out again; Never been the same.
Song composed by Jensen Ackles and Steve Carlson
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No official statement has ever been made by the two songwriters as to who wrote the lyrics, who wrote the music, or if words and/or music were composed by both. I am proceeding on the assumption that Jensen wrote the lyrics. He has mentioned writing lyric ideas on notepads (as shown in the above photo), and so indeed he gives much thought to his lyric-writing process.
In another track from Vol. 2, “City Grown Willow,” a song clearly written by himself, he uses “chain” imagery. Clearly, the concept of the chain resonates for  him, whether the chain belongs to his lover, in “City Grown Willow,” or, as in this song, the chain is attached to himself, with the other end being held by the “she” he refers to throughout this lyric.
In addition, a close examination of other tracks by Radio Company share similar lyrical hallmarks as “Dead to Rights”: the invocation of a “she” in “City Grown Willow,” who I maintain is the same “she” as the one here, namely Danneel; “bombs away,” a metaphor for his emotional relationship with the “bomb,” i.e., Misha, recalls “cannonball, rise and fall,” from Vol. 1; other similar MC metaphors are the “fire” from “Jump into the Fire,” and “he stokes the flames ‘cause he is amused by the glow,” from “City Grown Willow.” Other JA lyrical hallmarks can be identified here as well.
________________________________________________________________
“’Dead to rights’ means having overwhelming evidence of someone's guilt, having irrefutable proof that someone is responsible for something. The idiom ‘dead to rights’ came into use before the 1850s in the United States.”
“’Dead to rights’: In the act of committing an error or crime, red-handed. For example, ‘They caught the burglars dead to rights with the Oriental rugs.’ This phrase uses ‘to rights’ in the sense of ‘at once.’”
________________________________________________________________
The theme of guilt is embedded in these lyrics--the narrator, JA, is guilty of something, and he was “caught red-handed,” as it were, by someone, the “she” in the song--his wife. The “guilty” act was more, I believe, her intuiting/noticing that her husband was in love with another--early days, perhaps before much had occurred between the two men, but wives are smart, and they can sometimes intuit when their men are in love with another, even before the husbands know themselves. 
“She said”---This song focuses on the fact that the narrator’s wife notices instantly--”at once”-- the “act” for which he feels guilty. And she voices it to him--she knows he is in love with another. And she also knows who. 
Thus, the “dead to rights” reference--she knew right away when her husband fell in love, and that he either wants to, or already has begun, pursuing a romantic relationship with his love. She “caught him red-handed,” even though a “crime” has not literally occurred, and, most importantly, *she is not angry or judgmental*; rather, she is concerned. 
She has thought about it before she confronts him with it. She is philosophical: “It all will change”--that is, this could be a momentary fancy, and if you follow through, everything will change in your life. “if not”--that is, if this is something lasting and substantial--then “it all can wait.” What’s the rush? Why not cool your jets and see if you still feel the same way in a few months? And know too, if you do pursue this, “It may die away over time.” So be careful. Don’t jump into the fire. You could get burned. I don’t want that for you.”
What is his response to her words? He acknowledges to her: “You are right.” 
He concedes that everything she says is true. But he has thought about it too. A lot. And he realizes something: “But I do believe it’s better than being alive.” This cryptic line puzzled me initially. “What” is better than being alive? Then one day, after hearing the track a few times, it hit: If the relationship crashes and burns--if it does die, and his heart is destroyed in the flames and ash--then so be it. He has decided that being with this person, jumping into the abyss with him, which could result in his own  metaphorical “death,” is exactly what he will do, because “dying” from the possible fallout of a disastrous love affair is preferable to the agony of continuing to live without him.
“You want to be the one to say you love the rain.....fall” --I love the pause here, putting the emphasis on the “fall,” conjuring up the act of falling in love; and also, the possibility of falling to one’s death. And of course, the biblical “fall”--we’re all fallen from grace. He is reminding her that it is she who always says she loves the rain--metaphorically, the rainy days, the times when things aren’t necessarily all sunshine and roses. She understands and accepts life’s gifts and risks. (And we learn in “City Grown Willow” that, in fact, “Her faith in love is better on sunny days.”)
“When all the while the angels call”--I cannot emphasize enough how unequivocally this imagery refers to MC. If I have to explain how many times J has called M an “angel”.....The point being, the angel calling him is impossible for him to ignore, and he just plain doesn’t want to. When an angel calls your name................you go.
“The only way to see just how it comes to be”--a typical Jensen cryptic line, when he wants to say something but doesn’t want to be too revealing, so he does so with the utmost vagueness, to the point where his meaning is almost impossible to decipher. That cryptic line, combined with the rest of the verse, “Every day/To know it all falls away,” strikes me like this: “The only way to know if I should do it or not, is just to do it.” And in the end, he philosophizes, everything falls away in any case--”even you and I will someday be parted.” The idea of mortality--of the limited span of time we inhabit this life--is heavy on his mind. And again, he has made his decision: His love is so deep, so compelling, that he is willing to risk everything--heart and soul--to be with the angel who is calling him.
_______________________________________________________________
ADDENDUM TO MY POST:
Unless Steve Carlson has said publicly that he specifically wrote the *words* to City Grown Willow, I maintain steadfastly that Jensen composed the lyrics. It makes sense that Carlson had written the guitar piece itself, with its beautiful, cascading notes and striking chord progressions, which demonstrate his skill as an instrumentalist. It’s no accident that the recording itself features only Carlson’s playing, with no other instrumental accompaniment--probably exactly the way Jensen first heard it.
Jensen heard Steve play the piece, loved it, and proceeded to write words for it. When Carlson says he played this piece for Jensen and that he had written it years prior, I take that to mean that Jensen loved the sound of the guitar and wanted to work with it.--that the song had no words. The lyrics have the hallmarks of Jensen's writing style; the content fits his situation, with a female and 2 males as the protagonists; and HE is “the man from the mountains.” That’s not Carlson’s identity--that's a moniker Jensen deliberately chose for himself, as he makes clear in the music video. 
If anyone can provide for me a direct quote from Carlson that he wrote the words, I will retract my statement. Until then, I hold my position.
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seonghwanotes · 3 years ago
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henna art | song mingi
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pairing: mingi x femreader
genre: fluff, festive related (diwali/deepavali)
word count: 1.1k
a/n: i wrote this on 14 nov 2020 & now it's alr 2021 jshahahs diwali this year is nearing too, like in a week or so & thought i might just drop this here. it's... not my best work but i wanna keep the account going so here it is!!
also, my apologies for being MIA on this account – started uni end of august and it's been HECTIC i didn't really have the energy or the willpower to write but time flies hella quick and im about to be done with my 1st sem so you best believe ill try to get something written soon :) let's hope it all works in my favour & have a good week!
Your eyes were glued onto the television screen, trying to memorise the way the artist was drawing and trying to learn her skills too. You first sketched the simple design on paper using a pencil which worked out fine, but the second you picked up the henna tube, things were the opposite instead.
Henna art was something you've adored since young but you never really got to wear it by yourself since you got it done by a professional instead and they'd charge you a few dollars for that. Plus, you would only be wearing henna during festive celebrations.
Diwali was around the corner and you were excited this year since you were celebrating it with Mingi in a simple manner. It made you feel sad that this was your first Diwali without your family around but ever since you started dating Mingi, he was family to you too.
A smile was plastered on your face as you thought of him, wanting to spend a holiday that's important to you with you and he took a day off solely for that though you insisted there's not much that you can do since you didn't make any sweets as well.
You continued your practice with henna and tried numerous times on paper to make sure you didn't mess up when you drew it on your hand. It took you several tries to master one design and when you did, you squealed out of happiness.
"God, finally."
Placing your left hand on the table, you adjusted your hand position so that you could start drawing your henna. Slow and steady… you were soon halfway done. The flower looked a little off but progress was there. The henna paste flowed out from the henna tube as you squeezed on it, eventually drawing small dots on the back of your hand. A beautiful flower drawing was formed and you put down the tube, satisfaction filling you up.
You smiled at your work, immediately grabbing your phone to take a picture of your hand while the paste was still wet. After you were done, you put your phone and placed your hand in front of your small fan to make it dry.
"And, now we wait."
While you were waiting for the henna to dry up, you lost track of time and ended up using your phone until Mingi came back home. He told you he'd be home by six and it was a quarter past six, making you realise your henna was dried up since you were on the phone for about 40 minutes now.
"Hi baby," He greeted with a smile, pushing his glasses on the bridge of his nose. You ignored his greeting and rushed to the bathroom sink, washing off the dried henna paste. The dark red colour reappeared as the dried paste absorbed the water and it almost looked like blood.
Mingi followed suit and he gasped when he saw the blood lookalike in the sink, worrying you had hurt yourself. "Y/N, what happened? What is this?" He panicked, grabbing your hands softly.
Giggling at his worried state, you felt warm on the inside seeing his concern for you. "Baby, it's nothing. I drew henna on myself just now so I'm washing it off cause I forgot to wash it off earlier."
His hands dropped to his side, "Oh. What's that? What's… Hannah?"
You laughed, "It's not Hannah, it's henna. Wait, do you wanna see pictures? Let me wipe my hands first." You grabbed a towel and dabbed your hand slightly until the water dried up, the henna design standing out on your golden skin.
"Whoa, baby, that's so pretty." He mumbled, taking your hand into his hands, admiring the red colour on your hand. "Can you do it for me too?"
"Huh?"
"Yeah, I want this. Can you draw for me?"
You giggled, "Your manager is gonna scold me for this. It's gonna take a week or more for the henna to disappear."
He thought about it for a second, then nodded. "Yeah, I want it. Let's forget about the management for a while, okay?"
"Okay!" You exclaimed in happiness and pulled him to the living room with you. The two of you sat down and you searched up henna designs on Pinterest for Mingi but you didn't manage to find something that was simple and not… flowery.
You frowned and sighed, "I can't find anything that is not flowery, baby." Mingi shook his head, "I found one though. Look."
He showed his phone to you, a picture of a small heart tattoo shown. "Let's have matching hennas, I'll draw yours and you can draw mine."
Smiling at him, you nodded. "As you wish."
You began your henna drawing, now turning into a hobby, on Mingi's wrist. He flinched a little, "It tickles."
"Aw, sorry, I'll be slow." You replied. "You know what, I've never seen a guy wear henna before."
"Wait, really?" He asked, sitting up straight to fix his posture.
"I mean, I have but it's rare. Some men wear it for their wedding. But, it's cool. It's similar to tattoos anyway, just that it's temporary." You told him.
You finished it rather quickly, for the tattoo he picked was a small and easy one. Your hands were a little shaky but you were done. "Alright, there you go. Is it okay?"
"Holy shit, baby. This looks so good!" He said, his eyes round as he scanned the henna. Grinning, he took the tube from you and held his hand out for you to place your hand.
"Come, it's my turn now." He said, excited to draw on you.
You noticed he was moving a lot so you warned him, "Mingi, careful! It hasn't dried up so it will stain your hand, like this." You showed him your right hand, your palm decorated with red strokes and dots.
"Ah, okay, okay." He said, being extra careful. "Aren't you curious on why I chose this?"
You were focused on his gentle touch, so you hummed. "It's a little different, why?"
"It symbolises us. I'm the big heart, loving you all the time and I'm always keeping you close in my heart with me. You're the small crescent, resembling you - you're small," Mingi explained, pausing to giggle.
You scoffed at his description but smiled after. "In conclusion, I'm always keeping you close to me in my heart."
"Even though the henna is temporary?"
"Even though the henna is temporary. I promise." He said, finishing his henna on you.
You smiled to yourself, feeling thankful and warm inside. "Thank you for being here with me, I appreciate that a lot."
He shook his head, "Don't gotta thank me, baby. The next time we wear this, it better be our wedding." He flashed his cheeky smile at you, making you blush at his statement.
Smiling back at him, you said, "Why wait? Let's get married then."
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the-bat-collector · 4 years ago
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SUPERBAT Rec List!! AU NO POWERS ish PART 2
No Powers or No Capes (There are some minor exceptions but I think this still applies)
Soo it’s become harder to find these fics and I kept postponing making this list just in case I found moreeeee. After some time convincing myself I decided that If I find more I’ll just make a part 3.
Here is the link to Part 1 Post
So without further ado. Here you go!
Storge by ichikonohakko @ichikonohakko
G - 3,310
Storge (storgē, Greek: στοργή) is liking someone through the fondness of familiarity, family members or people who relate in familiar ways that have otherwise found themselves bonded by chance. An example is the natural love and affection of a parent for their child.
Or the story of how Clark Kent meets the Wayne family children.
So this was in my mark for later and I read it as I was making this list and it’s very cute and adorable and highly recommend it! 
don't you know an apparition is a cheap date by knoxoursavior  @clqrkkent
E - 39,385
Clark has been able to see ghosts since he was eight, just a few days before his Pa died in his sleep. Years later, after having moved to the city with Martha to pursue writing, Clark meets Bruce Wayne, who takes an interest in his work and Clark in particular. Not long after they meet, Bruce asks Clark to marry him and Clark moves into a mansion that has more ghosts than it has people.
So I couldn’t find more AUs for this list, I was about to quit looking and yesterday I ran into this one and it gave me so much hope that there might be more out there (part 3?maybe?) I think of this as Ghost Whisperer Clark 
Stories for the Loved and Lost by MatchaMochi @renaimori 
M - 9,681
The first chapter leads Clark to another, and another. He turns the pages, eating the words up hungrily and feeling them, pored over the story as if he was reading someone’s personal diary. And the thing was, he knows it, he knows this story. He remembers flashes of memory that aren’t his, thrown in yesterday’s weird dream or last night’s nightmare.
or in which Bruce is an author and Clark is his fanboy.
I WILL read every single SOULMATE AU FIC I CAN FIND CAUSE I’D DIE FOR THIS TROPE. This is beautifully written <3 <3
Ghastly Murders in the East End by dippkip @dippkip
T - 38,227
London, 1888. A vicious killer known as Jack the Ripper has begun haunting the district of Whitechapel. In light of Scotland Yard’s inability to solve the case, intrepid reporter Clark Kent has made it his mission to track down this fiend and bring them to justice, though he may find himself more deeply involved in the affair than he bargained for.
Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne, a seemingly irresponsible and eccentric duke, remains largely unconcerned about these atrocities. The Batman, however, has taken special interest, and spends his nights relentlessly hunting the new murderer at large. The paths of these men will converge as the body count begins to rise, and their investigations and growing affections will cement their bond, intertwining their fates with that of the most notorious murderer in all of England.
OKaaaay this is one of the exceptions, Bruce is Batman but it’s a different century and Clark is powerless, I think it compensates. Usually I prefer when they’re both “capeless” but this was such a fun read. 
As You Grow by dnawhite76 & Prubbs @prubbs​ 
M - 59,946
After the death of his wife and children, Clark returns to the United States after spending years abroad to reconnect with his friends and their families. And while trying to gather what little remains of his old life and possibly move forward in his grief, he ends up falling into old habits with his first love and best friend, Bruce Wayne.
A story about grief and acceptance.
So I want to point out how good this fic is. I hate sad and this story has a lot of grief and I felt it was very grounded on its depictions of feelings. I tend to avoid this type of fics buuuuut this was so good. I couldn’t stop reading even if the grief got to me. It’s very wholesome and does have a satisfying ending. 
A good start by BlueAlmond @discretocincel​
G - 1,253  
Clark loves being an elementary school teacher, but it breaks his heart to see any of his students hurting. So, when he notices Jason waiting over forty minutes every day for someone to pick him up, he decides to have a word with his father.
Absolutely love Professor Trope!!! Sooo you could argue this is ficlet but doesn't feel like one to me so I’m not putting it in the ficlet section. 
Engraved In Our Souls by Nixie_DeAngel @nixie-deangel​
T - 9,004
It started with pain, with warm blood and bold, black letters. How was he to know it'd lead to a pair of gorgeous eyes, shimmering with the promise of life long happiness and love?
Or, after years of waiting, Bruce finds his soulmate in the least likely of places.
Little cute soulmate AU<3  AS I SAID I WILL READ EVERY SINGLE SOULMATE AU OUT THERE CAUSE I LOVE THEM
Ghosts by ren_makoto 
T -3,067
Wayne Manor is haunted. Clark doesn't mind.
Here is another of the exceptions, this is neither No Powers/No Capes, but they’re not relevant to the plot or we don’t see them using them (I don’t think they are mentioned but its implied). The Fic’s whole focus is on the ghosts! and absolutely loved it I LOVE REN MAKOTO FICS
There is Little Danger by ren_makoto
T - 5,327
"It's tradition," he said, one inch from Clark's mouth. "Yes," Clark said. "Tradition."
Or, where Bruce and Clark are trapped in an elevator
another Ren Makoto cause I can’t help myself
Semi-Permanent Couplings by ren_makoto
E - 10,463
"So, Bruce, how do you feel about one-night stands?"
Ren Makoto <3 <3 <3 This fic contains Adultery soo Read the Author’s Notes
Hubris by ren_makoto
M - 20,197
"This is turning into a routine," Bruce said breathlessly. "What can I do for you, Clark?" "Please," Clark said hoarsely. "I just want to get some sleep."
I really like the writing on this fic, this is a 100% NO CAPES, Clark does have powers and he’s starting to process them. Ren Makoto stole my heart with this one.
Not so Perfect Afterall by tekowrites
E - 6,966
AU: High school, Senior year. Clark thinks his life is nearly, if not already perfect. Then he overhears a conversation that changes absolutely everything. Bruce is there to pick up the pieces.
Red, White and Blue by melmel_79
E - 3,639
He works for the Secret Service, and it's best that no one knows he is in a relationship with the president. At least he hoped no one would know...
He grips the envelope tighter and knocks on the door to the Oval Office.
This was a mistake.
Late Night Feelings by the_butler @the-butler-fanstuff
M - 9,283
It was a little past one in the morning, the phone the only light in his room. He glared at it, then threw it to his side on the bed, not caring to see where it landed. A few seconds after, he patted all along the side to find it and looked at it again. He pulled up the messaging app, scrolled down, and then sighed. He exited the app and threw the phone on the bed again. He repeated this several times until some minutes later the phone chimed and he hurriedly sat up and felt for it on his bed. He opened the messaging app again and finally breathed a sigh of relief when he read the reply he’d been waiting for the whole night.
“Be there in 30 mins.”
I LOVE CLARK HERE, GOOD FOR YOU. He’s such a good adult looking out for himself! self-loving and self-respecting Clark here everybody.
it took me by surprise (I know you felt it, too) by jessequicksters @jessequicksters​
G - 1,124​
In which Clark and Bruce fall in love in between study sessions, track races, grocery shopping at Whole Foods and romantic student dinner dates, burnt lasagna and all.  
FLUFF, could argue this is a ficlet buuuuut dont care, it goes here.
Towards You by tekowrites
E - 22,607
AU where Clark is a new transfer student at an elite high school, and he encounters Bruce Wayne. Clark doesn't fit in, not anywhere it seems, and his crush on the star of the football team? Only serves to shows how much. Jealous girlfriends, misunderstandings, hormones and lurking trouble are just some of the challenges he's going to face.
I LOVE THIS , basically this fic made want to make a PART 2, just had to find 15+ other fics to add to the list. 
Read the tags, this does contain some heavy topics towards the end
The Game (of Love) by KaizokuHime @kaizokunohime
E -12,288
In WayneTech VR Augmented Gaming, a guild of superheroes has arisen who volunteer to help police that reality. One of these superheroes, Superman, has had a crush on his fellow member, Batman, for many years, but thus far has had little success on asking him out, even as fellow guildmembers. How will their relationship progress? And how intimate can they truly become without knowing the other's identity offline?
A Game You Can't Win gave me hunger for gaming fics, then I found this one and I WANT MORE GAMING FICS
Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang by ShowMeAHero @andillwriteyouatragedy
E - 8,354
Clark Kent is a professor at the same university as Bruce Wayne. Not that it matters, because Bruce doesn't really speak with his co-workers - they're there to work with, not befriend. That is, until Clark and Bruce are assigned to teach a class together in the fall, and start spending more and more time together, and Bruce starts to realize, maybe, he just might need a friend - and maybe, he just might need something else, something Clark-specific.
YES YES PROFESSOR TROPE. They are the best together!
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SORTA KINDA MAYBE FITS THE CATEGORY
The Gift by tmelange
E - 5,564
University student Clark Kent is on a field trip to Gotham City where he meets a creature of the night.
VAMPIRE AU, soooo Clark has powers but he is not superman so NO CAPES on his part. Bruce is a Vampire and I’m not really sure if he’s Batman but he’s some sort of vigilante. This felt very AU and sorta? fit the category, so I decided to add it anyways but it’s worth to mention this is an outlier on this list.
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SPECIAL MENTION CAUSE I HAVENT READ THIS ONE BUT IT WAS RECOMMEND TO ME by @just-add-butter​
Spoils of War by littlechinesedoll @cumdumpsterbrucie
“If I go with you as a spoil of this pointless war, will you leave?” Bruce stands his ground, terrified and shaking, but he keeps eye contact with the warlord.
“Excuse me?” Kal must be hearing things.
“If I go with you, if I serve you, will you let my people live? Will you let my brother live?”
This is not finished buuuut it’s a Medieval AU. I just need to get myself in the right mindset to read an unfinished fic but will get to it! love what llittlechinesedoll writes.
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FICLETS 
This section was accidental. I like my fics long and rarely read ficlets but here are a few that came across my way when I forgot to set word count filters.
Snapping the Chats by littlechinesedoll @cumdumpsterbrucie
G - 2,278
Clark tries to use the Snapchat filters on Bruce.
General Check-up by littlechinesedoll @cumdumpsterbrucie
T - 906
One where Brucie is getting a check-up from Thomas Elliot and he touches Bruce more cause Clark is obviously jealous
Subway Providence by the butler @the-butler-fanstuff
G - 400
A short drabble about art I did of Clark and Bruce waiting for the train on a subway platform.
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So my first list was me coming across and realizing I love this kind of AUs and this second list is me carefully looking for them! Even tho my 1st list has some of my favorites, I hold this one closer to my heart. Hope you Enjoy it. 
Also if you know of any that I haven’t included on these lists, please I beg you send them my way <3 
106 notes · View notes
sage-nebula · 3 years ago
Note
Hmmm... "tfw ur evil mom doesnt like ur bf"
Despite the glib file name I gave it, this one is actually pretty serious.
This one takes place in my Paradigm Shift AU, which is an AU in which not only was Keith raised in space, and not only did he join Team Lotor, but he and the rest of Team Lotor (or Team Revolutionary as I call this version of them) became the Paladins of Voltron and are fighting a revolution against the Empire. More specifically, this WIP was an AU of my AU, and more specifically still it's a, "what if Haggar controlled Narti in Paradigm Shift the same way she did in canon? What if the Narti Incident still happened?" After I considered the question I couldn't get it out of my head, so I had to write it down—or at least start to write it down, before I got distracted by other things.
TL;DR: Haggar uses Narti to spy (against Narti's will), and Lotor (in a moment of trauma-induced panic) tries to kill her as in canon, only to be stopped by Keith . . . and things get worse from there. Narti does end up escaping (nothing but unrefrigerated women in my AU), but Team Revolutionary is pretty badly fractured as a result of what Haggar makes her do after Keith intervenes, how Lotor reacts to what she does, how Ezor reacts to how Lotor reacts to what she does, and all the emotional fallout that comes with it.
I actually had quite a bit written, so I'll give multiple snippets:
So one Sincline ship was necessary, absolutely, but Lotor had ordered the construction of four more with the remainder of the comet they had secured from an alternate reality. At first, Acxa hadn’t understood why. They had their Lions, and while she couldn’t speak for Zethrid, Ezor, or Narti, Acxa herself was pretty attached to Red. She didn’t want to trade for a Sincline ship. But Lotor had, when she had questioned him, pointed out the fact that they would not be able to pilot Voltron forever. Eventually, they would die or move on to other things. And when they did, and Voltron passed into other hands, it may be necessary to have a check on its power, just in case.
“At present, the Sincline ships are the only ships in the known universe with a hope of meeting Voltron in a fair fight,” he had said. “They will only be five ships, one per Lion, when completed, but that is still five more ships than the universe had before.”
“But we have them,” Ezor had said, “so aren’t we just making a check on ourselves?”
“We have them now,” Lotor had said, a little smile playing at his lips, “but we need not have them forever. Nothing is eternal, Ezor.”
With that decided, construction had progressed on the remaining four. Acxa had to say, they were impressive. While she still felt a strong attachment to Red that she wasn’t willing to break, the Sincline ships gleamed in the light of their hangar, and their cockpits had a soft scent that was comforting and welcoming at once (“New ship smell,” Keith had called it, and Acxa wasn’t so sure about that, but she also couldn’t think of anything to counter it). The third ship was about halfway complete; between the mechanics they had recruited and the droids they had built for this purpose, construction was coming along at a brisk pace, and so Lotor’s smile as the six of them watched its progress from the doorway of the hangar was (in Acxa’s opinion) completely warranted.
“At this rate, we should be able to begin testing on the third ship within the next few months,” Lotor said, his voice raised a little to be heard over the sound of the ore being soldered. “Acxa, have you checked the calibration and pilot test results from the second ship?”
“Yes,” Acxa said. “Calibration of the second ship is complete, and it passed all other tests with no errors. It’s in perfect form.”
“Excellent.”
Lotor cast one last satisfied look at the half-completed third ship before he turned and left the hangar, the rest of them turning to follow suit. Well, most of the rest of them; Keith alone lingered for just a moment more, smiling a little as he looked back at the ship, but when he turned and caught Acxa watching him, his smile fell.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Acxa said, and though she resisted the urge to roll her eyes, she couldn’t keep a little smile off her own lips as she followed after Lotor, Ezor, Narti, and Zethrid down the corridor. “Attached already, are you?”
“I like ships,” Keith said, a little defensively as he fell into step beside her. “That’s all.”
“I know,” Acxa said. But though it was childish of her, and though there was no reason to rile him over being excited at the construction of the Sincline ships, she still couldn’t stop herself from adding, “Nerd,” under her breath.
She glanced at him in time to see him roll his eyes, but he was smiling a little again as he stepped to the side to knock his shoulder against hers in a playful bump, and that made her own smile grow.
[. . .]
It had been six weeks since an agent of the Blade named Ulaz had infiltrated the castleship looking for someone named Shiro—six weeks since Keith saw a symbol on Ulaz’s weapon that he thought looked vaguely familiar, and six weeks since Ulaz had looked at Keith with an expression caught somewhere between joy and heartache, like he knew him, somehow, but couldn’t acknowledge that even to himself. Ulaz had given them the coordinates to one of the Blade of Marmora’s bases, and had urged them to go there as soon as possible. Keith wanted to; it was obvious that was what he wanted without him having to say it. But he had said it after Ulaz had left them, his jaw set and his eyes burning holes into the floor as he spoke privately to Acxa and Lotor.
“I think I . . . there was something kind of . . . familiar about him. Like I knew him, maybe. And he—there was something he said, before he died, that made it seem like maybe he knew me, too. And I don’t know how, or why, but . . . maybe if I meet with the Blade like he said, I’ll figure it out.”
The logic was sound. It made sense. And it was something, Acxa knew, that Keith was fixated on, even if he didn’t bring it up regularly. But though Ulaz had infiltrated the castle six weeks ago, they had yet to trace the coordinates he had given them to visit the Blade of Marmora’s hidden base. Their delay was justified; there was always more work to be done. But all things considered, Acxa felt there was a good chance Lotor was delaying their visit on purpose.
Acxa glanced sidelong at the frown Keith was sending Zethrid’s way before she faced forward again.
It was selfish of Lotor if that was the case, but if she was honest with herself, Acxa couldn’t say she didn’t understand.
[. . .]
By now they had reached the base of the stairs leading up to another floor (there being too many of them to all cram into the elevator), and whatever had hit the castle did so with enough force to tilt it briefly up on its side. Ezor flailed and grabbed the banister, while Acxa was thrown sideways into Keith, who stumbled and barely kept his balance as she was thrown into him. Narti spread her arms and straightened her tail to keep her balance, Kova digging his claws into her shoulder, while Zethrid grabbed the other banister and Lotor was nearly thrown back off the stairs he had just started climbing. The attack (because Acxa didn’t know what else it could be) was powerful enough to cause the castleship to tremble with aftershocks even after the blow ceased; and as they all stood up, Ezor looked at the rest of them with wide eyes.
“What was—?”
The security alarms blared to life, drowning out Ezor’s voice and causing Kova to leap off Narti’s shoulder with a startled, angry yowl. In lieu of answering Ezor, Lotor tapped the communicator on his wrist, and as soon as the hologram screen flared to life above it, snapped, “Bridge, report! What’s happening?!”
“We’re being attacked by Empire fleets!” Dune, a member of Auxiliary Team One, cried. “Two, three—at least three of them, from different ang—!”
Another attack crashed into the ship, this time from the opposite side. Acxa caught herself against the wall, and held out her other hand to brace Keith was he was nearly thrown into her. Ezor and Zethrid were gripping the stairway banisters for dear life.
“Use Keith’s console to raise the particle barrier,” Lotor ordered. “We’ll be there momentarily.”
“On it!”
Dune’s voice had already been a crackle through Lotor’s communicator, but her response was even more clipped than normal as Lotor cut the communication in a sharp snap before he turned to head up the stairs again. Acxa and the others immediately hastened to follow suit, Kova climbing up Narti’s back to cling to her shoulder again, yet even as the lot of them sprinted up the staircase, Keith took the stairs two at a time to match Lotor’s strides.
“Lions?” he asked, and before Lotor had time to answer, added, “It’d be faster if we doubled back instead of going all the way to the bridge. We can get to the Lions through the Sincline hangar.”
“No,” Lotor said, and perhaps sensing the rebuttal in Keith’s frown, explained, “If we’re being attacked by this many fleets it wouldn’t be wise to counter. We’re better served using a wormhole to relocate until we can better plan our next move.”
“But how did they find us?” Acxa demanded. “Even if we leave, if we don’t know how they found us in the first place—”
“We had to have been tracked,” Zethrid said, and though Acxa agreed, that didn’t ease the knot in her throat, or the fists her fingers instinctively curled in.
“But how?” Ezor asked, a nervous frown on her lips. “Last time we were tracked by those other reality Paladins, right? By their Lions?”
“But they left a while ago,” Keith said, “and Dune didn’t say Zarkon was here. She would have mentioned it if he was.”
“If she knows what’s good for her, anyway,” Zethrid said.
“Then how did the Empire find us now?” Ezor asked. “If it wasn’t the other reality Paladins and their Lions, then what? How were we tracked?”
Lotor hadn’t broken stride the entire time they climbed the staircase. He hadn’t offered his own input, nor had he shown any indication that he heard their conversation at all. Yet as he reached the second floor he slowed, and finally came to a full stop just as Narti made it to the top of the stairs. Ezor and Zethrid, who had managed to pull ahead of him in the mad sprint up the staircase, noticed and stopped as well, both turning to look back.
“What is it?” Acxa asked.
Lotor didn’t answer her. He gave no indication to show that he even registered that she was talking to him. She was near enough to him so that she could see his profile, and while she couldn’t say why, exactly, what she saw was enough to make ice take up root in her chest. Lotor was staring at the floor, his jaw clenched. His hand was resting on the hilt of his sword. Acxa opened her mouth to call out to him again, yet thought better of it in the next tick. She looked over to Keith instead.
But for once, Keith didn’t return her glance. Instead, he was watching Lotor. His eyes were narrowed, his lips tugged in a sharp frown. And slowly—so slowly that Acxa almost didn’t catch it—he palmed and raised the Black Bayard so it was level with his waist.
Acxa restrained the impulse to reach for her Bayard in turn.
The moment, which felt like hours even though it could have only been a few seconds, ended with the ferocity of a lightning strike. Lotor whipped around as though a bolt had gone through him, his eyes wild, bright, and locked on Narti. In the next tick he threw himself forward, his sword clearing its scabbard as he brought it up in a high arc—
And a ring of steel upon rift ore echoed in the corridor as his blade clashed against Keith’s, Keith having thrown himself between Lotor and Narti like a living shield.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Keith demanded. He pushed back, knocking Lotor’s sword up and away, yet though Lotor took a step back, the wild look in his eyes didn’t fade.
“Keith,” Lotor said through a clenched jaw, “move.”
“No. We’re supposed to be under attack from the Empire, not each other,” Keith snapped. “What’s your problem?”
Lotor was gripping his sword so hard his arm was shaking. “You don’t understand—”
“I don’t think anyone could understand why you wou—” Keith froze mid-sentence, and glanced back over his shoulder. “What—?”
Keith’s voice broke, not in a yelp, but in a gasp as his spine arched and he jerked forward.
“Keith!” Acxa said, as both Ezor and Zethrid came closer. “What—?”
Her question died in her throat.
Narti had grabbed Keith. She had grabbed his arm for support, Acxa thought—had thought. She had grabbed him to give him support through whatever spasm had suddenly seized him. But the spasm wasn’t caused by anything to do with him. Three long, claw-like blades crafted from rift ore protruded through the front of Keith’s Paladin armor, dripping with his blood. They had been driven straight through, and Acxa recognized them. They all did. They were Narti’s blades, from her Bayard, as it took the same shape it always did for her. She had run them straight through Keith’s back, pushing them through until they cut open his stomach with three, evenly spaced wounds.
The one prolonged, solitary moment in which everything seemed frozen while they all processed what happened broke. Narti pushed Keith forward, and in the same moment pulled her blades out of his back. They retracted back into her Bayard with their customary shing-click as Keith—his eyes glazed even as they fluttered shut—collapsed. Lotor lurched forward, knees bent in a crouch, to catch him; his arm looped around Keith’s waist to support him as Keith sagged, limp and unresponsive, against his chest. The Black Bayard fell from Keith’s now slack grip and hit the floor with a clatter, but Lotor did not release his own weapon even as he wrapped his other arm across Keith’s back in a secure, though gentle, embrace.
Lotor’s expression was stricken, his voice strangled as he choked out, “Keith—”
The castle gave another lurch as something rammed against—it, Acxa supposed, or against the particle barrier—and though it was sudden, disruptive, and violent enough to cause them all to stumble once again, it was also enough of a shock to break through the lock her mind had slammed down in an effort to reject what had just happened. She didn’t—she didn’t want to accept it, but there Keith was, bleeding out—bleeding out in Lotor’s arms, and—
The shock, the reminder that they were under attack—it was all Lotor needed, too.
Acxa was only awarded a glimpse of his face—one tick to see not the rage, but the hatred in his eyes—before he jumped over Keith and threw himself at Narti, bringing his sword down in a vicious arc. He missed; Narti leaped backwards and hit the center of the staircase in a back handspring that allowed her to flip the rest of the way down.
Lotor wasn’t deterred. He didn’t hesitate for a heartbeat as he tore down the staircase after her. And Ezor, her eyes wide as she realized everything that was happening—
“No . . . Lotor, no!”
—she, too, sprinted right by Keith and took off after.
Ezor was chasing Lotor, who was chasing Narti, who was trying to escape, but Acxa had no time for any of them. She didn’t register when she hit her knees by Keith’s side, or even what she was going to do as she grasped Keith’s shoulders to try to pull him up, but the moment she realized what she was doing—as the reality of the situation kicked in, and she fought against the urge to kick herself for not taking command of the situation sooner, before it reached this point—she said, “Zethrid!”
“Yup.”
Acxa stood and stumbled backward as Zethrid swept forward and easily hauled Keith up off the floor.
#WIPs meme#series: paradigm shift#fic fix#voltron#prince lotor#keith kogane#acxa#narti#ezor#zethrid#keitor#keith & acxa#so basically the situation ends up being:#Narti escapes & is forced to pilot a stolen ship to wherever Haggar is since her cover was blown#(it's not a Lion or a Sincline ship; just a normal one)#Narti is pretty devastated over what she was made to do bc Team Revolutionary is / was her family - Keith included#& she vows that while Haggar made her coat her hands in Keith's blood that the last coat of blood on her claws#will be Haggar's#meanwhile while Team Revolutionary does manage to escape the attack they are just a mess#Keith is on life support in the medbay; it's unclear whether or not he'll survive#Ezor is in love w/ Narti & is sure there is a good reason for why she did what she did & is furious at Lotor for trying to kill her#Lotor is beside himself w/ rage & grief at Narti's apparent betrayal & Keith's potential death & is further furious#Zethrid doesn't want to admit it but tbh she agrees w/ Lotor that Narti is obviously a traitor which further infuriates Ezor#esp bc she assumes Acxa agrees w/ Lotor & Zethrid bc of how close Acxa & Keith are#(Acxa has known Keith the longest; they were each other's found family before anyone else)#Acxa honestly doesn't know what to think beyond the fact that her whole entire family has fallen apart in what feels like 5 minutes#& she cannot handle the thought that Keith might actually die - which he very well could still#later when they're alone Lotor tells Acxa to promise him she'll kill Narti next time they encounter her - bc as a distance fighter she's#the only one who safely can. & Acxa agrees tho rly this whole situation just has her miserable#it's a hot mess & it's all thanks to Haggar being evil as usual. thanks Haggar. you're the best
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joaquinwhorres · 3 years ago
Text
hoax (Ch. 1) {Sirius Black x F!OC}
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SUMMARY ››››› It started out as a simple bet: who could get the girl chosen for them first? After four years of half-hearted attempts, Sirius decides it’s time to make a concerted effort to win over the notoriously undateable Florence Saise.
WORD COUNT ››››› 4,100-ish
WARNINGS ››››› Pretty much every chapter is going to have mentions of sex. Including this one.
A/N ››››› I'm so thankful to every single person who responded to my incessant "does this line make sense?" or "can you read this to tell me what you think?" Without you guys this never would have been uploaded, and I'd never already have the start of a second chapter.
Series Masterlist | Read on ff.net | Read on AO3
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Florence Saise was rather convinced that she was the only person not excited to find themselves back at Hogwarts. Everyone else seemed to be coping with the looming start of the school year just fine, if the laughter and shouts that greeted her as she flung open the carriage door was any indication. It was, by all accounts that mattered, (which is to say, hers) not fair.
The blonde haired girl jumped down from the horseless carriage, landing with a heavier thump than might have been expected from her small frame. Before her, masses of students cursed up the hill chattering to one another with smiles on their faces. Not one had the same little crease between their eyebrows that threatened to turn into a full-on scowl.
It was as if every single one of them had either forgotten the bullshit that came along with living amongst their peers or were still blissfully unaware of the curse that was adolescence. Even her friends, who hopped down out of the carriage behind her, seemed too entrenched in the debate that had stretched from the train compartment to the carriage, to fully register what being back at Hogwarts meant.
"You've been quiet, Lory, what do you think?" Marlene asked, throwing an arm around Florence's shoulder as the small group of girls joined the throng of students.
"If Sebastian doesn't know what to do with his tongue when kissing, there's not much hope for him using it elsewhere. You'd do better with Roger."
"Aha!" Marlene cried out triumphantly, pointing a finger at Mary. "That makes it two for Roger, one for Sebastian, and one for giving up on boys all together," she tallied as Florence shrugged out from under her arm. Lily appeared on Florence's other side, trapping Florence in the middle of the group.
"You can't just use physical stuff as the metric for whether or not a relationship will be any good," Lily asserted. "There's more to dating than snogging and sex."
"Says the person who's never properly snogged anyone," Marlene stage whispered to Mary.
"Exactly," Lily said, perhaps a little too passionately. "And look how fulfilled I am."
Marlene shot Florence a skeptical look, and Lily reached across her to smack at Marlene's arm. This started another round of fierce debating, Lily reminding Mary that Sebastian had written her once a week all summer whereas Roger had only written four times, Marlene reminding Mary that she didn't want to die a virgin, and Dorcas reminding Mary that she never had any of these problems with her girlfriends.
Florence felt a dull needling, like a knuckle digging into the side of her head. At this rate, she was going to have a headache before they even reached the castle.
The Gryffindor strode ahead of the group, near enough that she wouldn't catch any flack for abandoning them but far enough that she could more easily drown out their bickering. She would give anything for just a single moment of peace today. Between her father and brother waking her up with their argument to Lily and Marlene's stupid battle over who Mary should date, all Florence wanted was ten minutes where she didn't get roped into playing referee.
But as she looked up ahead on the path, her eyes landing on James Potter and his crew, it seemed like peace was not in the cards for her today.
The group of boys were laughing amongst each other as they subtly enchanted trees to tap students on the shoulder or grab an unsuspecting second year. It was, objectively speaking, rather funny to witness the reactions of their various victims. One boy let out a startled shriek so loud, Florence would have expected it to come from a banshee. Another girl was attempting to fight off a branch that kept pulling at her plait. The problem with Potter and them's joke was not so much the unrest it caused amongst the students ahead of Florence.
The problem was Lily.
"You have got to be kidding me," Lily sighed, cutting Marlene off mid sentence. "What's even the point in making Remus a prefect if he's going to let his friends get away with everything?"
Before any of the girls had a chance to talk Lily down, the prefect marched up the hill with impressive speed, her hair billowing behind her.
"I am not missing this," Marlene said eagerly, grabbing Mary by the hand and tugging her up the hill with her. Dorcas and Florence shared a look and a sigh, before following them after Lily.
"Potter!" Lily shouted, and the group of boys came to an abrupt stop, nearly causing the group of Ravenclaws behind them to collide with their backs.
"Ah the dulcet tones of Lily Evans," James Potter said as he turned around to face the fuming redhead, a smirk set firmly in place.
Lily pulled up right in front of him, chest heaving from her quick trip up the hill. "You are to stop using magic at once or else I'll be forced to give you detention."
"I'm not sure what you mean," Potter said, tilting his head and allowing confusion to overtake his features. Lily's scowl deepened, clearly not buying the act. "I think you and I are both aware that it's against the rules to use magic before term starts, and we're not even at the castle yet."
Behind him, Pettigrew and Black snickered. The sound seemed to bolster James Potter's already rampant egotism as the smirk returned once more to his face.
"Unless of course, you're saying that I've enchanted you. Do you find me bewitching, Evans?" Potter asked, wiggling his eyebrows at her.
"I think I've made it quite clear what I think of you, James Potter," Lily snapped, her hands balling into fists at her sides. "10 points from Gryffindor."
"Ah, Evans," Potter tsked, as if regretting the fact that he would have to share bad news with her. "Prefects can't take points until the start of term. Learned that fourth year," he added on, dropping the sympathetic act.
Marlene nudged Florence with her elbow and held out her hand expectantly. Florence's eyes moved from the open palm to her friend's gaze, raising an eyebrow.
"I believe you owe me a hundred galleons," Marlene informed her, a smile tugging at her lips even as she fought to remain serious. "As James Potter has just confirmed that he has, in fact, learned something in his past five years here."
"That doesn't count," Florence said dryly, slapping Marlene's palm down even as Marlene grinned at her winningly. The stare off between a seething Lily and smug James was looking very much like it was about to end in a murder. Remus Lupin must have also caught onto this because he shook his head and finally stepped forward.
"Come on, let's at least make it to the castle this year before you and Lily have a row," he appealed, making a half-decent attempt at Prefect-like behavior.
Potter turned to his friend with a magnanimous smile. "Since you asked so kindly, Moony," Potter paused, shooting Lily a look. "I'll make sure there is no more confusion about whether or not we might have been doing magic. Watch carefully, Evans. I'm putting my wand in my back pocket. Feel free to track its progress up the hill," he added with a wink.
Lily let out a disgusted noise as Marlene snorted, and Potter turned to continue back up the hill with his friends, Sirius Black playfully pushing him as he rejoined the group.
"What a wanker," Lily murmured, watching the boys go.
"Maybe, but he's looking well fit," Marlene noted, taking Potter up on his offer to make sure his wand stayed in his back pocket. "You could do a lot worse than James Potter."
Lily whirled on Marlene, emitting a scandalized,  " Marlene! "
The dark haired girl laughed and shook her head. "Oh come off it, Lils, he's smart, funny, attractive, all of which is important to you, and," she looked around before leaning forward conspiratorially. "I've heard his wandwork isn't the only magical thing he can do with his hands." Marlene wiggled her fingers at Lily, who pulled back looking so pale that for a moment, Florence thought she might actually be sick.
Which was far too hilarious not to laugh at. So she did, earning a dark look from Lily and a shiteating grin from Marlene.
Lily rounded back on Marlene before shaking her head and starting back up to the castle.  "He's not funny; he's cruel. And he's only half as smart as he thinks he is."
"So you agree he's attractive?" Marlene asked, raising an eyebrow, and Lily's face turned bright red before she managed to sputter out a:
"Looks don't mean anything!"
"She's right," Dorcas added. Contributing to the conversation for the first time with the decisiveness that the girls had come to expect from her.  "Looks don't mean anything. But being good with his hands, well…"
Lily emitted a strangled sound somewhere between disbelief and mild outrage as the rest of her friends laughed at her and moved past on their way to the castle. A small feeling in Florence's chest loosened as she walked with them, the conversation alternating between teasing Lily and debating between Roger and Sebastian. Maybe this year wouldn't be quite as bad as the past five.
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Naturally, the hope of a better year was squashed the very next day.
This, of course, should have been expected. After all, the first day of classes was primarily meant for overloading students with work they weren't yet prepared for and reminding them that their very futures depended on the mastery of the material. However, those spiels were not the giveaway that this year would be more or less the same in terms of teenage bullshit as the years prior. What it really came down to was her Defense Against the Dark Arts class.
The death of her hope began the moment she walked into the classroom and was faced with an obscenely tall and lanky man, dressed in a smart tweed suit with his chin length hair tucked behind his ears. A name was written in halting cursive on the chalkboard behind him.
Oleander Fernsby.
It was a ridiculous name for what was, by all indicators, a ridiculous man.
Although, as Florence watched the way his eyes darted around the classroom, shooting away every time a student got too close to making eye contact, she began to think that perhaps ridiculous was the wrong word. It suggested a certain confidence that this man in front of her was severely lacking.
It was painful to watch really, seeing him hoist the corners of his mouth up just to seem to lose his grip and have the smile come crashing down again. Both of his hands were shoved into his pants pockets, the right one fiddling with something it found in there so that the pocket almost seemed to flutter with his nervous energy. Even as she sat down next to Marlene, Florence couldn't take her eyes off of this clear disaster waiting to happen.
"This is going to be interesting," Marlene noted with raised eyebrows as she tapped her quill tip on the desk. "Reckon he'll make it the whole year?"
"Reckon he'll make it to the end of the month?" Florence returned, and Marlene snorted.
The last of the students shuffled into the room, claiming desks next to their friends and casting skeptical looks up at the unusual choice for professor. Even Remus Lupin looked unsure about Dumbledore's choice as he sat with eyebrows raised and a slight frown on his face.
The professor cleared his throat, which was completely ineffective when it came to quelling the murmurings of students sizing him up.
"Excuse me," he said, his voice dipping down into a mumble on the last syllable. As could be expected, the class' attention remained on their own conversations.
" Merlin's beard," Dorcas muttered under her breath from behind Florence. The professor furrowed his brow, a look of resolve on his face before trying again.
"Good morning." He had added a bit of volume and force assertiveness to his voice, but it wasn't until Potter hit Black on the shoulder and gestured with his head to the professor that the talking in the room tapered off. Faced with a room of quiet students, he succeeded in finally managing a weak smile.
"Good morning," he repeated, his voice soft but steady at least. "I'm Professor Fernsby, and I'll be teaching you Defense Against the Dark Arts this year."
It was hard to imagine this particular wizard ever standing up against the dark arts. He looked like he could hardly manage a boggart let alone a hag or Lethifold. Even faced with a room full of bored teenagers, he was crumbling under the pressure. Across the room Peter Pettigrew snickered, and Fernsby's expression faltered.
"I know that I am a new face here, and you've had five other professors, but I hope that together we'll have a good year this year and learn a lot."
Florence snorted and either Lily or Dorcas (probably Lily) jabbed a finger into her back in scolding.
Fernsby's smile flickered, and he paused. "Erm, yes. I know that this is your second class of the day, and it's early. The first years were all practically asleep at their desks this morning, but this is an NEWT-level class, so we will be covering rather complicated and dark material--oh! Yes, you there," Fernsby said, gesturing towards a student in the back. Florence turned, watching as Cassius Avery lowered his hand, a self-satisfied smirk already twisting at his lips.
"Can you explain what you mean by 'dark,' professor?"
The classroom went so still even Fernsby seemed to notice, his pocket fluttering once more.
"Well, we'll learn about the Unforgivable Curses. How to battle Inferi--"
"Will we be learning more about the Dark Arts themselves?" Avery interrupted, tilting back his chair so that it leaned against Thaddeus Nott's desk.
Fernsby's eyes flicked around the classroom as if looking for help from one of the students, but everyone remained still and quiet, watching to see what would happen. Florence set her jaw as she looked back at Avery who was looking rather smug. Beside him there was a glint in Thomas Mulciber's eye as if he were watching an animal fall into a trap.  "I'm not sure that would be entirely appropriate--" Fernsby started.
"I was just thinking that we should know how the Dark Arts work and such so we can properly defend ourselves?" Avery clarified and beside him Mulciber smirked. Florence's hand curled into a fist on her desk. "I mean, you want us to be prepared, don't you, professor? We need to know--"
"Avery you smarmy little git, would you shut up?" Florence snapped, and the eyes of the class shot over to her. But she was just looking at Avery whose eyes flashed angrily. "Even he's not thick enough to teach you how to curse someone. Go ask your dad. Or is he too busy shagging his cousin--I'm sorry, your mum."
There was a beat of silence as the whole class seemed to collectively hold its breath before across the room, Sirius Black broke out into a loud barking laughter, muffling whatever Avery snarled at Florence.
"Pardon?" she asked, arching an eyebrow, and though he opened his mouth to say it again, it wasn't Avery's voice, but Fernsby's she heard next.
"That is--that is quite enough," the professor finally interjected, and Florence turned around, ready for her detention or points to be docked, but as Fernsby's eyes landed on her and she met them with a fierce unrepentance, he wet his lips and moved on.
"Merlin's beard," Marlene whispered to Florence. "Been holding onto that for a while, haven't you?"
"After what he and Mulciber did last year to Mary, he's lucky I haven't set him on fire," Florence mumbled. "Last thing we need is that lot learning about the Dark Arts so they can practice on muggleborns."
Marlene nodded her agreement, and the two focused back on Fernsby who was presently taking attendance.
Class continued and with it the growing feeling that someone was attempting to stare daggers into the back of her head. When she finally turned with a raised eyebrow, she found that not only was Avery glaring at her, but Mulciber and Nott had also joined in their friend's effort. She gave the three of them the most saccharine smile she could muster and lifted a middle finger towards them. When she turned back to Fernsby, he was in the middle of listing his credentials and previous places of employment..
He had just finished on how formative his time in the Azkaban processing unit was when James Potter began to loudly pack up his bag. "And erm..." Professor Fernsby stopped, watching as Potter corked his inkwell and dropped it into his bag. "Mr….Potter was it?"
Potter looked up, "Oh, I'm sorry, Professor," he said, his face genuinely apologetic. "I thought you were about done."
"Done?" Fernsby asked. While the word might have cracked like a whip from McGonagall or Kettleburn, instead it came out rather helpless as he looked appealingly to Potter for an explanation.
"It's just that usually professors keep class short the first. To get us acclimated to the school schedule again, you know."
Fernsby said nothing, looking out over the class to see nods of assent. Even Dorcas kept quiet.
"He's right," Marlene said from next to her, and Florence's attention whipped to her friend. "Although usually they make us stay at least half the block," she added with a reproachful look to James.
"Ah, well, I suppose here is as good a place to stop as any," Professor Fernsby said. "Come ready to learn, as I will be picking up the pace as the year progresses."
He seemed rather proud of himself, Florence thought as she along with her classmates scurried to pack up their books before anyone could possibly grow a guilty conscience. He probably thought the early dismissal was a sign of kindness and not what it really was: blood in the water.
Shouldering her bag, Florence headed out behind Lily and Dorcas into the hallway.
"We're not going to learn anything all year," Dorcas moaned, tossing her head back to stare miserably at the ceiling.
"It's going to be an easy O at least," Lily sighed. "And besides, next year it'll be someone new. Maybe they'll be able to catch us up."
Dorcas wilted a little, head coming back down to face forward with a pout tugging down her lips. "I suppose."
Marlene looked disbelievingly at the group. "Are we really not going to talk about Avery?"
"Do we have to?" Mary asked with a shudder. "He's so creepy. "
"That whole group is destined for Azkaban," Lily murmured, shaking her head.
"Not if Lory gets to them first," Marlene countered, smirking.
Florence shrugged, "I already told you I didn't think Fernsby had the backbone to tell him no."
"Right, but going after his dad like that?" Marlene pressed, raising her eyebrows at Florence as if to prompt an explanation.
"Everyone knows the Sacred Twenty-Eight's inbred," a voice drawled from behind the group. Lily rolled her eyes, letting out an annoyed sigh through her nose as Potter, Black, Remus, and Pettigrew interspersed themselves amongst the girls. "After all, you're looking at someone whose father shagged his cousin. Thankfully all of the negative effects of my parents' decision to procreate saved themselves for Regulus. Florence snorted at this, and Marlene barked out a laugh. Even Lily's lips quirked up into a reluctant half smile. "I have to say, Saise, that was a thing of sheer beauty in there. I think I might have even fallen in love with you a little," Black grinned.
Florence rolled her eyes and shook her head, even as the grin stayed on her lips. "I hope you're prepared for heartbreak then. Pettigrew, I'd start collecting chocolate frogs now, he's going to need them."
A quick confusion crossed Pettigrew's face as he darted a glance at Black, as if to ask if Florence was serious. But his friend was too busy throwing a hand over his heart and staggering back as if wounded.
"Should I get some chocolate frogs too, Evans? Or are you planning on sparing my heart this year?" Potter asked, grinning winsomely at Lily.
She gave him a tight lipped grin back, tilting her head towards him. "You should get as many as you can and stick them in your bag. That way, every time you have even the faintest impulse to ask me out, you can take one out and shove it in your mouth to save us both the trouble."
With that, Lily brushed her hair over her shoulder and moved forward to link arms with Florence, turning them both around to march down the hallway and away from their heartbroken boys.
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"I think there was progress," James said, piling potatoes onto his plate once the boys had sat down for lunch. The past forty-five minutes that they should have spent in Defense Against the Dark Arts had been devoted instead to James' eternal pining over Lily Evans. "She didn't call me any names."
"Didn't need to, mate," Sirius said, snagging the serving spoon from James. "Her face and tone of voice largely did that for her."
"Yeah? What'd it say?" James asked, raising an eyebrow as he watched Sirius spoon potatoes next to his sausage.
Sirius straightened up in his seat, pointing the spoon at James. "It said, James Potter, you are a complete tosser," he said, mimicking Lily's high voice, much to the amusement of both Remus and Peter.
James looked down the table to where Lily tossed her head back laughing at something Mary Macdonald said. The lack of outright animosity had been progress, but she still didn't look at him with even a fraction of the warmth she gave to everyone else. Lily caught sight of him and the smile slid from her face, settling into a look of pure disdain before she turned back to her friends and said something that made Marlene McKinnon almost spit out her pumpkin juice.
"Well at least I can say I'm trying," James protested, turning back to face Sirius.
"Trying what? To get Lily Evans to hex your arse halfway 'cross the country?" Sirius asked. "Because that is about the only thing you're set to succeed at with her."
James scoffed before growing serious.  "I'm trying to win the bet."
Sirius raised his eyebrows at his best friend, and even Peter seemed to have checked back in to the conversation. Remus however let out a groan and set down the book he'd been reading so he didn't have to listen to James going on about Lily. "I thought you two had given that up."
"It was just on hiatus for a while," Sirius dismissed, picking up his fork to dig into his lunch. "Because unlike Prongs, I don't have to spend years just to get Saise to tolerate being in the same room as me."
"And yet," James said, picking up his own fork. "You still haven't won."
"Well, I've been a bit too busy with other matters to be worried much about the birds?"
"Like what?" Remus asked, picking his book back up.
"Largely, being the family disappointment," Sirius remarked with some finality as he bit into his sausage.
James just laughed at this. "Please, you have about as much interest in dating as Saise does. One of you is going to call it quotes before you can even go public--let alone last two weeks."
"All I'm saying is that at least Saise doesn't actively detest the very sight of me," Sirius shrugged, taking another bite of his food.
"I'm making progress."
"Of course you are, mate," Sirius nodded, navigating the words around the mouthful of food.
James shook his head at Sirius, "Padfoot, when it comes right down to it , I don't even think you could get Saise out of her knickers, let alone date you."
Sirius scoffed. "Everyone can get her out of her knickers. Everyone practically has gotten Saise out of her knickers."
Remus looked up from his book, a frown tugging at his features. "That's an ugly thing to say Sirius," he scolded, but Sirius looked completely unrepentant.
"It's not like it's a secret that practically our entire year has shagged Florence. Everyone knows what she's like," Peter shrugged.
"Exactly. Thank you, Wormtail," Sirius said. "But if you're so certain I can't do it, Prongs, then you'd have no problem making a little add on to our bet. Right?"
"No problem at all," James said, smugly.
"Great," Sirius said, leaning forward on his elbows. "Let's talk terms."
24 notes · View notes
carnationcreation · 4 years ago
Note
Hi! Can I please get an imagine where the reader is Bombay’s daughter and he’s never been around because of his job and that he left the readers mum years ago. But he comes back to coach her team, not knowing she plays and they argue, he pleads to get to know her etc.☺️😄basically the absentee!father x reader who wishes for a father but doesn’t know how to forgive him
TITLE: Forgiveness [Can you imagine?] (Bombay x daughter!reader)
✌🏻Masterlist Taglist, Requests, and Works in progress!
Prompt/summary:  Bombay tries to reconnect with the daughter he walked out on 8 years ago. 
Word Count: 2,519
Authors note: You said argue? Alright here’s some angst. It feels so good to be writing for The Mighty Ducks again, this is one of my favorite movies so I’m so happy I got a request for it!
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Every summer I used to get the same letter from my dad. It actually wasn’t even a letter. It was child support.
Every fall we used to stop by the diner in town to get milkshakes to celebrate the anniversary of him leaving us. It wasn’t that he was a terrible dad, she just knew she could do better for the both of us if he wasn’t around. After 8 years she still got the same order every time we went to the diner, and every year Mrs. Conway was still there taking our order.
Her son Charlie was always there too. Both of us played on the same hockey team and every winter we would drag our gear down to the pond to practice with our team.
That entire routine changed after one day.
“Goldburg you’re the goalie, the puck is supposed to hit you,” Charlie sighed as he skated towards us.
“Does that sound stupid to anyone else?” the goalie groaned.
I rolled my eyes at him before lining up another shot. 
After a few more shots Charlie tapped my shoulder, he looked in wonder as a car drove out onto the ice. We all wandered over and a man in a finely pressed suit stepped out. 
“Wait, that can’t be him-” I mumbled.
“We ain’t buying nothing man, I’m feeling generous today so I’ll let your sorry vanilla bootie outta here before we use your eyeballs as hockey pucks!” Jesse said.
“Thanks bro,” the man rolled his eyes before going to reach in to his jacket, “but I’m not going home ‘til I take care of business.”
The group slowly backed up. When the man pulled out a piece of paper and not a gun we all sighed in relief.
“District five pee-wee hockey team, I’m Gordon Bombay. Your new coach.”
The team laughed as I locked eyes with Charlie. He saw the absolute panic in my eyes. 
“Got the roster right here. Averman, Dave. Bombay, (Y/n). Conway, Charlie. ”
His face scrunched up as he got to mine. Confusion or being uncomfortable. Either way I couldn’t tell. Luckily no one seemed to notice the fact that I had the same last name as the coach.
“Here’s the long and the short of it. I hate hockey and I don’t like kids. I’m sure this will be a real bonding experience.  Maybe one day, one of you will even write a book about it in jail.”
Charlie nudged my shoulder, looking at me with a questioning look. I sighed, “He used to love hockey, but he really seems to hate kids. My mom said she heard that he got a DWI last week.”
Bombay ordered us to scrimmage. We all dove for the puck. Players tripped and fell over each other as we desperately tried to play. I finally got the puck and started to make a move towards the goal when Jesse (accidentally or not) hooked my ankle with his stick as he fell. Connie skated over quickly to help me up before taking off over to Bombay.
I rubbed my sore elbows as Charlie and I skated back over to the car that was still parked on the ice. Bombay brushed the team off by saying we need to scrimmage more and got back into the car.
“What a jerk,” Peter said. 
Eventually the team came to the amazing conclusion we should hijack the car. On Peters mark, we all jumped on the car, shook it, and climbed inside.
“We want a ride! We want a ride!” Connie began to chant as we all joined in.
“Take em for a spin, anything!” Bombay said, we all cheered as they started driving.
The fun didn’t last for long. Charlie’s mom soon appeared on the ice and made us all get out.
She furiously shouted, “Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking putting that car on the ice? My son was in that car!”
“Lady lady relax,” Bombay said, “The ice is not gonna crack.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she said. Charlie and I slowly got out of the car and skated to the side to take off our skates.
Bombay sighed, “Gordon Bombay, the new hockey coach.”
Oh lord he was in for it now.
“Oh you’re the dead beat that married (Y/m/n). They send you down here to coach the team and you endanger their lives. You endangered your daughter's life!”
I hid my face with my hand as Bombay looked back at me. Oh god he knows now. 
Charlie’s mom eventually pulled us away and drove us home. I knew I’d be hearing about this from my mom later.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By order of the state of Minnesota Bombay was at the game the next day. I’d made it my mission to avoid my “dad”. Charlie did a good job of keeping him away, asking him questions or distracting him. I knew I’d have to talk to him eventually but until then I was content with pretending I wasn’t his daughter. 
The game was a joke. We didn’t score any goals. Didn’t get a chance to defend ourselves as the Hawks beat us into the ground. 9-0. I left the game with bruises on my face and arms. My helmet was barely covering my face and my hockey pads were my dad’s old ones from the 80’s. One of the few things I stole from his house when we left. Charlie was extremely frustrated at the missed shot he had towards the end of the second period.
As the team sat arguing I was putting my gear up. 
“I thought we came here to play hockey. Do you guys think losing is funny?” Bombay yelled.
“It’s not like you coach us or anything. At least we tried,” Jesse said.
Bombay’s face went red with rage, “That was the sloppiest playing I’ve ever seen. Why the hell won’t you just listen to me?!”
I stood up, shouldering my bag, “Why the hell should we?”
The team followed me out of the box. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next game was a disaster. Bombay encouraged us to lie, cheat, and foul our way through the game. Bombay was furious when Charlie wouldn’t do his little act when he was cornered. The bruises on my face still hadn’t healed properly. 
The locker room was filled with groans as everyone agreed the game was pathetic.
“Charlie! When I tell you to do something, you do it! Got it?”
“You can’t make me cheat,” Charlie said walking out of the locker room.
Jessie and Terry’s dad stormed into the locker room, “LEt’s go boys. This is what I gave up my overtime pay for? To watch my kids take falls? You’re a pathetic excuse for a coach, and an even more pathetic father if you can let your daughter get beaten up like that.”
The team’s heads turned to me as he pointed in my direction. I let my head fall as I stormed out behind Jessie and Terry. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I really thought I could keep avoiding him. I didn’t think he would come and try to find me. 
The next day at practice was a shock for everyone. We all got new uniforms, gear, and sticks. Everyone was pumped up during practice and we even got two new players.
“What changed?” I asked Charlie.
He shrugged, “I don’t know. He came and apologized last night.”
My blood boiled. He can apologize to another kid but not his own daughter who he practically abandoned. I warmed up to him as practice went on but in the back of my mind there was still that thought lingering. 
“(Y/n), you’re riding home with me,” Bombay told me as I packed up my stuff.
I looked at him confused, “But-”
“Your mom said it was okay.”
I silently followed him out to the car, the driver had rolled up the middle window so we could have some privacy.
“So…” he said, I stayed quiet still looking out the window, “Your mom told me you never quit hockey. Even after I…”
“Left?”
He sighed, “Yeah I guess it was like that wasn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Look (Y/n), if I had known how much it had affected you I never would’ve stepped out that door. Your mom and I… we just weren’t good together.”
I scoffed, “No, your drinking side just didn’t line up with the fact mom wanted a decent husband.”
He went to speak again but quickly closed his mouth.
“I’ll just imagine me forgiving you. Maybe one day I can actually do it with meaning,” I sighed and went to pick my bag up as the driver pulled up to the curb. 
“(Y/n),” he said grabbing my arm, “I already talked to Charlie about this. I’m so sorry for the way I acted. I never should have asked you guys to cheat. And I definitely shouldn’t have taken my anger out on you guys. I’d do anything to try and get you to forgive me.”
“I’m just confused as to why your star player got an apology before your daughter did. I’ve been waiting for that for 8 years. If you truly wanted that from me you should’ve tried a long time ago.”
I slammed the car door as I got out. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next few days I spent at Charlie’s house when my mom wasn’t home, hoping Bombay wouldn’t come track me down again. 
“(Y/n)?” Charlie said, “Someone left a package for you.”
I looked up from the comic books that were sprawled across Charlie’s bed in confusion as he sat the brown paper package down. My name was written across it in black sharpie.
Charlie shook his head, “Well, are you gonna open it?”
“I think I already know who it’s from.”
“(Y/n), he really wants to make it up to you. Just open it.”
I sighed and slowly ripped the paper, inside was a jersey. My favorite hockey team’s jersey.
“Woah,” I said.
Charlie scoffed, “Your dad sent you that? How’d he know your favorite team?”
“Cause it’s his favorite too. Charlie this is his vintage jersey.”
“Well,” he said, “Maybe you can start imagining that forgiveness part.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The Ducks? We’re the ducks? What brain dead jerk came up with that name,” Peter scoffed. 
“As a matter of fact,” Bombay said pulling a jersey out of the box, “I did. But I didn’t have a choice, we’re being sponsored. You’d rather be district 5? Some stupid number?”
“They don’t even have teeth,” Peter said.
“Neither do hockey players,” he said, we all giggled, “Have you ever seen a flock of ducks flying in perfect formation? It’s beautiful. Pretty awesome how they all stick together. The other animals are afraid, cause they know if they mess with one duck then they’ll get the whole flock.”
Bombay walked around the locker room giving his little speech. He smiled when he got to me, his eyes flicking down to see I was wearing the old jersey he had left for me. 
He whipped off his coat to reveal his Ducks jersey underneath as we all laughed, “I’m proud to be a duck, and I’d be proud to fly with any one of you.”
Charlie and I smiled at each other.
“So how about it? Who’s a duck?”
Silence followed as everyone looked around the room to see who would go first.
“I’ll be a duck,” our new player Fulton Reed said.
I smiled and placed my hockey stick on the bench, “I’ll join the flock.”
“Yeah,” Charlie said following suit, “me too.”
Soon enough the whole team joined in. Grabbing jerseys and cheering.
“We are the ducks!” Bombay shouted, “The Mighty Ducks!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The next few games were amazing. Our winning streak started to pick up and soon enough we were getting ready to face off against Cardinals. 
Charlie and I were named the dynamic duo. Our ability to make plays and take shots off of each other improved everyday. But that put a target on our back. 
It was the third quarter, we had to make one shot to pull us out of a tie and win. The crowd was going crazy as Charlie and I sped up the ice. Our team following behind us for backup. 
It was a stupid idea. 
Charlie went to take a shot as I saw a goon defender moving in for the body check. So I threw myself in between Charlie and the goon. My head snapped back against the glass as I heard the buzzer go off signaling a goal.
The team cheered. Charlie frantically raced over to me.
“(Y/n)?”
I could barely hear him, the ringing in my ears was so loud, “Where’s my dad?”
Charlie looked confused before shouting over to Bombay.
“(Y/n)? Can you hear me?” he said.
“Dad?” I started to cry as the pain caught up to me.
“Get her helmet off Charlie,” he said, I felt Charlie gently take it off and the coolness of the ice against the back of my head, “(Y/n) the paramedics are gonna get you off the ice okay?”
I felt myself being picked up off the ice and lifted onto a stretcher, the crowd clapped as I was rolled off the ice.
The ride to the hospital was short, Charlie’s mom called my mom's work to tell her what happened and she rushed over as Casey rode to the hospital with me.
“Where’s my dad?”
“He had to finish up the game, he’s gonna meet us there afterwards.”
Everything happened really fast when we got there, I wasn’t allowed to sleep even though I was super tired. 
“Look who’s here” Casey said. I turned to see Bombay and Charlie walking in.
“Woah,” I yelped as Charlie ran over to give me a hug.
“Are you crazy? You won’t be able to play at the next game!” 
I laughed, “At least we get a next game. It was worth it.”
He rolled his eyes and ruffled my hair. Bombay sat down in the chair beside the hospital bed. Casey and Charlie walked outside.
“Do you remember what happened after you took that hit?”
I paused trying to think back to earlier, “Um… not really.”
“I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it in front of the team. You called me dad.”
I turned my head to look down at the sheets, “Oh…”
“I don’t have a problem with it,” he laughed, “But the team is definitely going to have questions for you tomorrow.”
I smiled. 
“Alright, grab your stuff. The doctor said you can go, you just can’t practice or play in a game for a week.”
My eyes widened, “A week?!”
“Yes,” he said, “And I better not hear any complaints. I’ll make you run extra. Your moms waiting on us.”
“Where?”
“At the diner, she said something about milkshakes.”
I smiled, “We always get milkshakes after games.”
“Well, it’s on me tonight.”
I jumped up and gave him a hug before running out to grab Charlie. I think I can imagine that forgiveness thing now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Taglist: @thebookwormlife @talksoprettyjjx  @coolreallyfuzzystudentuniverse  @igotabadfeelingabouteverything @larrystylinson-sus @lovesanimals @aunicornmademedoit @thexhotmess @ssprayberrythings @registerednursejackie @julieandthephantomsblogduh @fangirling-allday @solophantomsmultis @drxgxnslxyer @schnapp-my-neck​
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im-thinking-arson · 3 years ago
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Hi wow depression is a hell of a thing.
I'm sorry for the relative silence here, considering everything that has been going on in the last (roughly) year and a half it has been really hard to focus on any creative outlets. Everything has felt pretty heavy as I have been piecing together what exactly happened to myself and the people I used to share a community with.
Although my former FC is basically non-existent at this point, I feel it is appropriate to say that I no longer associate with its' leader @morganaux (sernoudenet on Twitter and formerly here) and to clarify why.
I have been struggling with what to even say about the situation. There are so many layers that I don't honestly know if any single cross-section could explain all there is to unpack. When it takes multiple people six months to explore everything they know as fact... I think that shows its not so much of a 'he said, they said' scenario as the few people who still support Morgy have tried to claim.
I feel guilty not speaking up sooner, considering this person is a member of the FFXIV community who I'm fairly sure some of my mutuals follow. Its so hard to speak out when he publicly acts innocent, like he has quietly moved on and refuses to acknowledge what he's done.
The reality feels so cold in contrast, with the knowledge I have- that he has done this multiple times before, burning down or wearing down those he has hurt with false sincerity; claiming innocence, claiming people misunderstand the significance of the intentions behind the knives in their backs, claiming he is the truest victim of the mess wrought of his own actions.
He quietly retweets fan art, cute animals, head canons, and all kinds of fandom things- but also others' tweets to identify with their own traumas- the same traumatic thoughts and feelings he incites in others through a mixture of gaslighting, lashing out, and playing the victim. He tweets passive aggressively about people he feels the victim of, (justified or not) even amid posts about his dearly beloved OC.
At this point I should just block him and try to scrape all memory of what I went through from my mind, but un-fucking-fortunately I know him too well to believe it's over when it's over. He still makes passive aggressive tweets about people he hasn't talked to in one, two, ?? years, a person who was a good friend to him for 10 years before he scapegoated them to maintain his own sense of righteousness.
Seeing as I witnessed him maintain not one, not two, not three- FOUR venting channels in his own discord, including at one point one specifically made for sh*tting on a single person, defending it's use and encouraging others to participate saying 'this is how victims cope'...
I know it's not over, and if he had a single shred of...anything... He could leverage against me he would have already tried to 'cancel' me. I'm not turning my back again to see if he decides to throw another knife.
For a long time I wanted to believe I had simply misunderstood the situation, that his intentions weren't so self-serving. The more I saw, the more I heard testimony from others that matched my own, the more I began to un-repress and process my own memories and connect the dots... And the less sense his own account made.
While I tried to maintain my friendship with him I ignored all the red flags, my own rise in anxiety, the isolation I felt. I felt so much pressure to fit into his equation, to be a supportive friend, to keep track of how he was feeling that I stopped taking care of my own mental health.
All the while he got angry for people not checking on him when he asked for space, threw a fit when anyone failed to accommodate his whims, and even accused his three closest friends of purposefully excluding him by taking screenshots without him in them or even hanging out together when he was offline..
And he would have people believe that most of the issues he was involved in centered on his friends not communicating with him. But in my case at least, nothing could be further from the truth.
I told him I felt uncomfortable with the fact his (at the time) friend had publicly lashed out at me in his discord server for stating my opinion. He suggested I work harder to befriend this person, that he couldn't and wouldn't approach his friend about it because he wasn't a FC member and only there as a friend of himself and his two closest friends.
He lashed out at a former friend (and FC mate) of mine -on my behalf- because they wouldn't stop messaging me while I was at work... And when this person subsequently put me on blast thinking I had put him up to it I mentioned considering posting my side of the story- to initially be shamed (by the person mentioned above) for suggesting I protect myself, stating it could make things worse for the people who had already publicly attacked this person...
I approached him about another former friend of his angrily ranting about a character I had though at the time they knew I was planning to RP (I had spoken about it both in-game and in a discord we all shared) because I didn't know them well enough to feel comfortable saying that made me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome in the space. I approached my former friend because I knew from experience he took things like this seriously and he was the one who had invited this character TO role play in the first place.
He reacted by telling this person he had no idea why I was upset, asked them to address an issue they had no context for - prompting them to write an apology, and then reinforced their worry that I hated them by saying I "probably disliked them since [I] hadn't written them an apology" in return. I had thought they both wanted to drop the subject because he stopped responding about the situation.
He decided the situation was resolved and kept inviting us around one another for at least four months while keeping up the illusion that I disliked this person despite me trying to remain friendly- and said nothing about the situation until AFTER he had nuked his FC and almost everyone was done with his bullshit. I had asked him to be honest about the situation and finally got "[name] thinks you dislike him" ???
(I might add more details about these situations because it's honestly much more of a mess than it might seem, but I'd probably have to write a fucking book to explain everything well in-sequence of events.)
But those examples aside, I told him up front that the favoritism he showed and my concerns being glossed over was messing with my head, that I didn't know if I felt safe in his FC, that the whole situation was making me feel like I was losing my grip on reality, that at one point feeling like I was being discouraged from defending myself was beginning to make me feel su*cidal. These are things he knew.
He reacted to this ignoring both cause and effect, ignoring me unless I reached out first or it concerned RP, continually inviting me to hang out with people he knew I felt uncomfortable with (or vice versa) and normally turning down anything I invited him to do otherwise- including several times that I offered to help him with Eden or dungeons he wanted to farm when he previously said he was free to do so. A couple of times he declined saying he was waiting to see if he could convince another friend... and then threw a fit about 'no one wanting to help him' despite declining my offer and not reaching out to me after his other friend declined (I was still online but he decided to vent on discord instead).
Behind my back he talked shit about me, enough that someone who had known him 10 years and was familiar with his behavioral patterns qualified it 'constant' bashing, whenever I came up in conversation. And even included confronting me about the three situations I mentioned above in a plan he was working on to 'fix' his FC, as if he thought I was reaching out to him to stir up drama.
Eventually it came out that the friend I mentioned in the first example was emotionally abusing his friends (and I found out later told him two of them were talking shit about him- prompting HIM to lash out at them). One of them mentioned that person had still been talking shit about me 6 months later on a private account and when I got upset that THREE people I had thought were my friends didn't tell me, I made a few jokes in poor taste (that I do now regret) about the situation to try and prevent myself from having a mental break down.
The person he led to believe I hated left the discord server at that point and he decided to divert some of the blame for (in his words) 'being worried for this person's life' -whom he had attacked over the situation- to me... blaming them leaving and him having trouble contacting them on me.
I told him if this former friend was indeed attacking people and he was so worried we needed to talk about the situation, since in other situations his response was to ignore the hurt caused. He blew up about me messaging him at work, he blamed me for every situation I had brought to his attention. He went to his mods to rant about me and sent one of them to scope out the situation in hopes they could shut me up.
This is the friend of 10 years, who quickly became concerned and not for the reasons he had hoped. They shared a few screenshots of things said to gaslight me behind my back as the conversation progressed. Eventually the other mod jumped in and, knowingly or not proceeded to gaslight me FOR him, based on what they were told. By him.
They reinforced everything he was saying in guise of a neutral perspective and my efforts to prevent a full-scale breakdown failed. I lost all grip on reality for several days- in which at some point I wrote an apology to him for accusing him of several things that were later proven true- and one thing he, himself, proved he'd lied about to the other person involved.
I spent almost two weeks in a self-imposed social break to sort everything out and attempt to cope with what I was told was reality. I fell into the deepest depression I've been in since I had to run away from home, and honestly if it wasn't for my wonderful SO and our house mates, I might have really hurt myself.
It turns out another situation had been brewing parallel to my own. People had been coming to the social mod, the friend of 10 years, with their own worries about him. Almost every. Single. Member. Including at least four people who came forward with fears that if they did a single thing that he interpreted as an insult or threat they would find themselves exiled, called out, and ranted about in a jumbled mix of truth and fictional-malice until their own friends turned on them to support his victim complex.
These four people came forward on the condition that their names be kept anonymous to protect their identity. He didn't take kindly to this, quickly demanding names so they (his mod team) could handle the situation. The mod refused, knowing he has a history of lashing out at any criticism against him and to protect those who were already afraid of bringing the problems up to Morgy.
He reacted by lashing out at this person, claiming they ruined his life, and attempting to weed out those who had spoken out against him by kicking anyone he didn't feel 'safe' being around from his FC. He posted a message in his FC discord about resuming his 'reign of terror'... Which, even if it was a joke, was in in poor taste after pruning his FC of anyone he didn't think could be convinced of his 'good intentions.'
I missed this first culling of his FC members, I assume, because I had apologized and at the time submitted to his version of events. He approached me soon after I noticed the changes in the discord and FC roster; claiming he really wanted to work things out and remain friends- going as far as to say he was so nervous about my reaction that he was shaking.
I wanted to take him at face value despite everything that happened because yeah, I did want to believe he was sincere, that he was a good friend, and that all of it had been an unfortunate misunderstanding. And at first I did until I started talking to other people who knew him and getting their side of the story. Nothing he said added up. Between first-hand testimony and over a hundred screenshots from multiple people the ONLY things that were clear and consistent were that he lied and fit his narrative to whatever he wanted to achieve.
He tried to reduce conflict by omitting information, he controlled people's perception of one another by how he spoke about them and how close he let them to himself and others, he built a support group by polarizing his friends against his 'enemies' and if anyone had a problem with him... They were wrong, and got added to the pile of 'aggressors' he had accumulated over the years, to be bashed and spit on for years to come.
He may have sensed my change in opinion when I directly asked him to help me reach out to the person who thought I disliked them-  managed to come to an understanding and we mutually apologized for the situation... Without his meddling. Or maybe when he realized I was still on talking terms with the people he had lashed out at and directly asked him why he had kicked people who did absolutely nothing to him... Or it could be that I kept in contact with the person who 'ruined his life' by trying to protect his friends from him. I don't know.
While we were still talking he tried to identify with me and bond over the feeling of loosing the FC, a group of people that despite the anxiety, and pain I had felt in the environment he'd built I did deeply respect and care about... Despite the dissolution of that group and the abuse I suffered being -at the core- his own fault. He even went as far as to say my description of the PTSD and fear I was experiencing described exactly how he was feeling, too.
As our conversations further weighed on my mental health I had to take a break from interacting with him. I was honest again, with what I was told, what I knew, and asked him for honesty about the situation... What he had said about me behind my back and why because I wanted to hear it from him. I wanted to see if he would acknowledge the harm he caused both to me and the rest of the (former) FC.
He never did, and probably won't. He asked for some time to tend to his own stress levels and mental health and then blocked me on all social media and discord, and kicked me from his FC without ever making an effort to reach out.
Of the few people who are still close to him, one of them suggested that "maybe he just decided he didn't want to be friends anymore." But after him begging to have a conversation to iron out all the facts, claiming to be so anxious about such a conversation going well that he was 'shaking', admitting that what he did hurt people and that my being wary of him was understandable, asking me -directly- to let him know if he did anything 'shady', and stressing he REALLY wanted this conversation to take place when we were both able to handle it because of how important he felt it was...
I feel like its fair to say that him suddenly cutting off all contact isn't quite so simple. He could have done that at any point. Before pointedly ignoring my concerns, before gaslighting me, before blaming me for the results of his own actions, before accepting an apology for accusing him of things he did legitimately do, and certainly before directly telling me had no real problems with me, that he it was super important to him that we remain friends, and that I deserved his honesty.
I'm not going to try and tell anyone who they should be friends with or not. Frankly, people can change and in a lot of cases experiences with individuals will be different.
But on that same note, if I had known then what I know now I might have saved myself from roughly two years of anxiety and avoided the state of dissonance I now find myself in. I still have moments where I want to doubt the things I experienced first hand. My mind is still trying to repress my own memories to cope.
A part of me still cares about him despite everything because as far as I knew, he was my friend and I am still trying to reconcile what I found to be true.
At this point I feel like I should say please don't harass Morgy if you read this, but honestly? If you have any reason to hold him accountable go for it. He needs it. And if you have any gut feelings about him or anyone in his circle please listen to it. The few supporters he still has are willing to ignore anything he has done previous to the fall of his FC and have shown they are willing to debate and accuse people who speak out about legitimate concerns involving him.
If anyone has any questions I am willing to answer them and share the proof I have.
And in the off chance anyone wants to (further) argue with me about my experiences or whether or not I suffered enough to be considered a victim, please Google some images of a hand giving the middle finger. But if after that you still really want to play stupid games? I can find you some stupid prizes.
I don't owe him my silence. Or peace of mind. The only thing I owe him is to be as entirely, brutally, honest as possible given the information I have. I think it's a fair offer considering the mind-numbing volume of honesty he -still- owes all of us.
- - - - -
I may add more onto this. Unfortunately the entire situation is a lot more complex, but I wanted to get the backbone of my own experiences out there and there is so much bullshit it can't all be seen from any one direction. A lot of the circumstantial evidence loops back into other situations and makes it hard to comprehensively represent everything on any sort of singular timeline. As I said in the beginning there is a reason it took a small group 6 months to piece it together.
I am far from the only person hurt, and the entire situation was a mess with people feeling unnerved or pressured into going along with his agenda. For the most part now that I have more context I don't blame most of the people involved for their own actions. I fully support those who can't or won't come forward about the situation whether they just want out of his drama, or are afraid to come forward.
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girlsbtrs · 4 years ago
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How Being a Woman in Hardcore Helped Me Learn to Love Myself
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Written by Jen Moglia. Graphic by Laura Cross. 
Since this is my first piece written for Girls Behind the Rock Show, I figured that I should introduce myself; hi, my name is Jennifer, but most people call me Jen. I live on Long Island in New York, and my favorite things include my cats, the color pink, giving gifts to my Animal Crossing villagers, and watching sports. Above all else, however, I love music.
I frequently refer to music as the love of my life. It somehow plays a role in everything that I do. I got my first iPod when I was five years old, stacked with everything from Miranda Cosgrove and Avril Lavigne to Tool and Deftones. Some of my favorite memories growing up are sitting in my pink and purple bedroom singing and dancing along to Paramore’s crushcrushcrush and Fall Out Boy’s Thnks Fr Th Mmrs on the local alternative radio station. I danced for 12 years, played cello for seven, and am currently a wannabe ukulele rockstar after buying one on impulse and starting to teach myself how to play four years ago. Even on the simplest, barely noticeable levels, music has been everywhere in my life for as long as I can remember; even now, I can’t complete a basic task without a song playing in my headphones.
Music became an even bigger part of my life when I started attending live shows. I went to my first concerts at age 10, seeing my two favorite artists - Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush and classic progressive rock band Rush - within one month of each other. By the time I was 15, I had been to my fair share of arena/seated shows with one or both of my parents, from Fifth Harmony to Fitz and the Tantrums to Alice in Chains. My first general admission show was seeing the Foo Fighters at Citi Field with both my mom and dad when I was 12, but my first pop-punk general admission show (yes, they’re different) came a few years later. I had the typical list of favorite bands that you would expect from a young teenager getting into alternative music: Neck Deep, Knuckle Puck, Real Friends, and State Champs. 
In late 2018, I was able to see all four of these bands for the first time, and I am a firm believer that it changed the course of my life. I met, cried-during, and eventually got the setlist for Neck Deep at Stereo Garden on Long Island in September. I sang all of “Untitled” at the barricade for Knuckle Puck at SI Hall at the Fairgrounds in Syracuse in October. I had my first minor concussion scare (yay!) before Real Friends’ set at Irving Plaza in New York City in November. Finally, I crowd surfed for the first time during State Champs’ anniversary show for The Finer Things at House of Independents in Asbury Park in December. After just a few shows, I had fallen in love with this new brand of live music that I had just been introduced too. There was something so magical to me about skin covered in sweat and Sharpie marks, feet hurting from dancing in the pit all night, and meeting strangers on line outside the venue who would become your best friends and know your deepest secrets by the end of the night.
After making some friends at all of the pop-punk shows I was going to, they started to tell me that I should get into hardcore music. I was hesitant at first - the heaviest thing I had listened to at that point was nowhere near the snippets of hardcore that my friends had played for me - but, eventually, I decided to give it a chance. I was bored and home alone with nothing to do one night over the summer of 2019 when I listened to my first hardcore album, Laugh Tracks by Knocked Loose. Immediately, I got that gut feeling that you have when you know you’ve heard one of your favorite bands for the first time. I knew that this was something special that I was meant to find at this point in my life. For the rest of the summer, I worked my way through the rest of my friends’ hardcore and hardcore-adjacent recommendations, with Cost of Living by Incendiary, Stage Four by Touche Amore, You’re Not You Anymore by Counterparts, Time & Space by Turnstile, Springtime and Blind by Fiddlehead, Smile! Aren’t You Happy by Absence of Mine, Bad to my World by Backtrack, and Reality Approaches by Harms Way being some of my favorites. By the time the next school year started, I was hooked, and I already had tickets to my first few hardcore shows in the fall.
My first hardcore show was in November 2019, seeing Knocked Loose at Webster Hall in New York City - fitting, right? They were on tour supporting their new record A Different Shade of Blue, which I had become obsessed with the minute I heard it for the first time. Although I was ridiculously scared of getting stepped on and breaking all my bones (yes, that was an actual fear of mine), I had the time of my life at that show. There was something about this newer kind of live music that prompted a cathartic release, one that I hadn’t found anywhere else before. As soon as the show was over, I was counting the days until my next one.
My love for live hardcore music (and live music and hardcore music in general) has only grown since then, and that story sort of ends there. However, I want to go back to that first hardcore band that I listened to, Knocked Loose, and the album they put out that first summer that stole my heart. I was taken by storm as soon as the first notes of A Different Shade of Blue rang through my headphones, but something was different about the third track, A Serpent’s Touch, particularly the ending; I heard a voice that sounded a little bit more like my own.
This song features Emma Boster, who does vocals for one of my favorite hardcore bands right now, Dying Wish. When I heard A Serpent’s Touch for the first time, though, I had no idea who she was. I was used to the aggressive vocal delivery of frontmen in hardcore, particularly that of Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris, but hearing it come from her changed my perspective on a lot of things. It’s not like the song was super angry and changed its tune to be lighter once the token girl came along; in her verse, Boster sings, “I watched the venom / Overcome your spirit / Jealousy holds you now / Distorting your appearance / Bleed out.” These were lyrics that held the same intensity that the lines screamed by the men held, and they sounded just as cool coming out of her mouth. As cheesy as it sounds, it had never even occurred to me that women had a place in this new world that I had discovered. The audiences in the live videos I watched (and eventually at the shows I attended) were made up of mostly men who looked bigger and older than me. When I did start going to shows, most of the non-man population consisted of my friends and I. Emma Boster, along with so many others, began to open my eyes to the fact that a place for people like me existed in this community. It didn’t matter that I had bright red hair or liked butterflies or wore pink - I was just as much a part of this magic as the men multiple feet taller than me with tattoo-covered arms, and I belonged there just as much as they did.
As time went on and I got more involved in the genre’s music and community, I discovered more bands with women in them, and it only fueled this fire of empowerment inside of me. When I felt insecure, I’d watch live sets from Krimewatch, a hardcore band from New York City, just half an hour away from my hometown. They have multiple women as members, including their energetic badass of a vocalist, Rhylli Ogiura. Year of the Knife became one of my all-time favorites, and their bassist Madison Watkins became a serious inspiration to me; the way that she can balance killing it on stage and running the cutest, most pink apparel brand I’ve ever seen (aptly titled Candy Corpse) amazes me. Even some of the bands I’ve found more recently have had an impact on me. I started listening to Initiate last year when their EP Lavender came out, and their beautifully colorful cover art caught my eye before I had heard any of their songs. Their vocalist, Crystal Pak, is also a woman, and she’s insanely talented. Discovering this kind of representation in this new universe that I had come to feel so at home in introduced me to a world of confidence and determination that I had never known before.
When people ask me why I love hardcore so much, I often give the easy answer; “the music sounds good.” If the person allows me to ramble on for a little longer, the answer becomes much more emotional and cheesy. Hardcore taught me that speaking up for what I believe in is important, and if there’s something I’m passionate about, it’s worth shouting about. I became familiar with this when listening to one of my favorite bands ever, Incendiary (the second hardcore band I ever checked out), before quickly realizing that politics are a pretty common topic within the genre - it’s what this music was practically built on. The first time I heard their vocalist Brendan Garrone singing about police brutality and injustice on songs like Force of Neglect and Sell Your Cause, I realized that there is so much more to music than just sounding good.
However, at its core, the thing I love so much about hardcore is what it taught me about being a woman. Growing up, I was the loud girl with the personality bigger than the room who always had something to say and had a never ending supply of excitement about just about everything. As I got older, I was taught that this was not okay. People didn’t like how enthusiastic I was about everything, or that I constantly had new ideas and new discoveries I wanted to talk about. As cliche as it sounds, I felt like everyone around me was trying to dull my sparkle, especially some of the men that I was encountering on a day-to-day basis. Even when I started to come to terms with my big and bright personality, in turn also coming to terms with my own femininity, I was told that this wasn’t how girls acted. I had to pick one - I could watch Disney princess movies and wear Hello Kitty hair clips, or I could be outspoken about my beliefs; but never both. The women that I mentioned earlier, along with so, so many more, helped me unlearn these toxic mindsets. Seeing someone like Emma Boster take the stage and scream ferociously for a full set helped me see that I could be a girl and still be a powerhouse. Following Madi Watkins around on social media showed me that I could love bands like Year of the Knife and also love heart-shaped purses and wear pink from head to toe. My aggression and passion didn’t make me any less of a woman, and my femininity didn’t make me any less of a force to be reckoned with. 
So, at the end of this love letter to hardcore and the women who run it, I say this; thank you for teaching me that I don’t have to shrink myself anymore. It has made a world of a difference.
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drivingsideways · 4 years ago
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in search of a better dream
This is about three pieces of South Korean media that crossed my path recently: the dramas Search WWW and Flower of Evil, and the novel Kim Ji Young, Born 1982.
Disclaimer and context : I'm not Korean, I don't speak the language, and I've watched a very limited set of kdramas. The criticisms I make in this piece are not to single out kdramas, or kdrama fandom,  as what I've described exists in Western and other Asian media and fandoms as well.
 Under the cut for length:
There's a scene in the first episode of the hit 2020 k-drama "Flower of Evil" that made me want to quit watching the show within the first ten minutes. The scene goes like this: our protagonists, Cha Ji Won and Baek Hee Seung meet Baek Hee Seung's parents along with their four year old daughter. The occasion is Baek Hee Seung's birthday, and loving wife Cha Ji Won has set up a special birthday dinner for them. On the way to the restaurant, the daughter has already complained about how she's scared of her grandparents, and they don't like her. When we meet the grandparents, we see the truth of this- they are as cold as the Arctic to all three, but especially to their daughter-in-law and granddaughter. In a bid to smooth out the social awkwardness, Cha Ji Won instructs her daughter to greet her grandparents the way they had "practiced" earlier- a cutesy little greeting where the adorable Eun-ha makes a heart over her head and chirps "I love you grandma and grandpa". When this fails to soften them, Eun-ha retreats, looking scared and disappointed. Not to worry, Cha Ji Won has this completely figured out: if you try harder, she tells her four year old daughter, they'll eventually love you.
Reader, I was, as they say, mad.
We find out soon enough that this stellar bit of parenting follows from an abiding principle in Cha Ji Won's life. Her romance with Baek Hee Seung starts when a handsome oppa walks into the family store, and is a saga of her stalking and pursuing a man who repeatedly tells her he's not interested, until he finally gives in. The power of her persistence pays off when the emotionally distant and abrasive man, in a classic beauty-and-the-beast transition, becomes a loving boyfriend, and then later, husband and father. It's a fantasy- some might even say feminist fantasy come true- he's handsome, supportive, reliable, artistic,  the primary housekeeper and caretaker of their daughter while she pursues her demanding "dream" job as a police officer, and they have enough money to live in a charming and lovingly set up two-storeyed house in ruinously expensive Seoul. This is heterosexual female wish fulfilment at its peak, and it is all made possible because she persevered.
It all threatens to come apart with the discovery of the perfect man's dark past- for a brief period, she's forced to contemplate the idea that he's actually a serial killer who's conned her for the entirety of their relationship of fourteen years; that the perfect life was, in fact, a lie.  
However, since this is written and billed as romance melodrama, this horror is short-lived. As the story progresses through increasingly improbable, violent and sometimes downright hilarious twists and turns, we grow closer to the (inevitable) happy ending. Baek Hee Seung/ Do Hyun Soo is no killer, just a traumatized child with a horrific past. The lies are the result of psychological damage inflicted by a society that unfairly deemed him a monster; the cage of repressed emotions that he'd locked himself in needed only the unshakeable conviction of Cha Ji Won's love to be broken open. "I wish you could see yourself as I see you" she tells him, in one of the show's endless supply of tearfully emotional moments, "I wish you could understand yourself the way I understand you."
This framework continues right to the end, when a bout of short term amnesia (!!) has Do Hyun Soo questioning himself and her: do you know, he asks her, when I'm lying to you, and when I'm not, because I don't.  The show answers that almost immediately- it doesn't matter, because it's her vision of him that he wants to be; in other words, he chooses the version of himself that she wants. The horror of the lie was a red herring, Cha Ji Won was right from the start about her husband- all it took was the power of her love and her perseverance to overcome the lie at the heart of her marriage,  to restore it to its previous shape- quite literally. The dream house they built together, which was destroyed by the villain, is shown in the last shots as unchanged from how it was in the beginning. One of the last shots we have of the couple is of them kissing in the artisan husband's workshop, an almost perfect recreation of the first time we see them. Paradise Regained, and all of us- and Cha Ji Won- can breathe a sigh of relief. You, the twenty-first century woman, are the architect of your own fantasy and can have it all. What could be more powerful than that?
 In Kim Ji Young, Born 1982 , a novel published in 2016, and often credited with kickstarting a new conversation about feminism in South Korea, the eponymous protagonist's story is also one of perseverance. It's a starkly written tale, an everywoman tale, a dryly narrated fact finding mission report complete with citations and references, about a woman born in the late twentieth century into a rigidly patriarchal culture, whose very existence is an aberration- her parents didn’t opt for a sex-selective abortion unlike many of their contemporaries when they found that their second child would also be a girl. Kim Ji Young, like the rest of us, grows up immersed in a misogynist culture. Even before she understands it, she learns to work around it and through it, rationalizing the micro-aggressions, burying the anger at the casual and institutional sexism that permeates her life, compromising and coping with it all, and achieving some semblance of having it all: a job, a decent, loving husband, a child. However, it's when motherhood arrives that it all falls apart- Kim Ji Young, faced with the exhausting carework of having a baby at home and another regular, full time job, does what so many women in her position do- quits her "outside" job for her parenting one. Fighting exhaustion and depression, a casually cruel and misogynist remark from a stranger in a park proves to be the proverbial final straw; Kim Ji Young suffers a mental breakdown, dissociating herself completely from her own life, and "seamlessly, flawlessly" taking on the personalities of other women she's known- her mother, her friend, her colleague. The novel ends with a narrative twist that's both horrifying and appropriate:  we learn that our narrator is actually her male psychiatrist. Kim Ji Young doesn't even get to be the voice of her own story; instead, it is told by a man cocooned in his own privilege, who displays the same paternalistic and misogynist behaviour that he correctly identified as the cause of her breakdown.
There is no escape here for Kim Ji Young save that of a complete break from reality. In the light of the narrative that leads her to that point, it feels both inevitable and even more horrifically, a blessing. This is a horror story told as it is shorn of any hope; the ending is death or insanity.
Reading Kim Ji Young, Born 1982 was to confront the familiar and heart-breaking and horrific neatly distilled into 200 odd pages; it's "fiction", but not really. My only surprise was how similar the culture described there was to my own in specifics; how incidents in Kim Ji Young's life were things I had actually experienced myself or seen other women experience, in a country several thousand miles away.
I read this novel just after watching the 2019's Search WWW, a show with a bit of a cult following, I think. Before I started watching it, one friend assured me that I would love it, that it was made for me; another said that  she dropped it because it "rang false" to her at the time. I've seen the show described several times as a feminist power fantasy, sometimes, if the reviewer wanted to demean it, with the qualifier, unrealistic.
This seemed an odd sort of criticism to me- after all, who turns to k-drama romances or really, any romance, for realism? Female wish fulfilment, which is the cornerstone of romance as a genre, whether in books or film, is still written and recognized as fantasy. So what was particularly unreal about Search WWW?
Well, simply put, it is written like the patriarchy doesn't matter, and has never existed.
The three female protagonists are all in their thirties, in powerful positions in their careers. As such, they are constantly walking into meetings where women speak more than 33% of the time. There are men in the room, but they never outnumber the women, and they don't silence the women.
The interests and decisions and choices  of women in the show- even the lead antagonist, who is an older woman whom we often see casually making beefy young men pose nude for her paintings- matter, not just to domestic and private realms, but to society at large; the antagonist is a power broker whose reach goes right up to the highest echelons of the country's politics; the younger women's ethical choices directly affect the republic's functioning as a democracy.
What about the men? It's not that they've been ignored; it's just that their place in the narrative has been decentered. Do with that what you will, the writer seems to say, as she writes in speaking roles for women wherever possible—every second side character is a woman— I have no time or inclination to justify that choice.
As for romance- it's not just that two of the three romances fall into the "noona romance" category, which is subversive in itself. It's that the power of decision making in these relationships clearly rests with the women.
In the "main" romance track, in a reversal of the usual trope, the woman is the one who is emotionally unavailable, and whom the man has to convince to take a chance on their relationship. What was hugely refreshing was that the reason for her emotional unavailability isn't trauma, that the man has to help her heal from, unlike the gender reversed versions we often see, eg in Flower of Evil. Instead, it's a difference in perspective that has its roots in the years of experience she has compared to him; it's the difference in life perspective of a twenty something man, and an almost-40 woman. She considers the implications and possibilities of entering into a relationship with a man who wants marriage and kids, while she doesn't want either and is unlikely to want them in the future. She thinks through it, and sees the pitfalls of it, perhaps all too clearly. In the end, when she makes a decision to commit, it's with the understanding that she's choosing to live in the moment, that he makes her happy; that they make each other happy and it is worth something, even if it doesn't last.  But both of them understand that her happiness is not centered in him or their relationship being successful. The other two romances end on a similarly open note- the possibility of love with the man you just divorced, but there's no hurry to get there; and a long distance relationship that may or may not last the two years of military conscription the man has to undergo.
The happily ever after in this series is not the perfect heterosexual family unit; it was always going to be the complicated, thorny and intense queerplatonic relationship between the three women, who, in the end, literally drive off along an endless open road under a blue, blue sky, to "a place with no red lights", as one of them describes it.
For a week after watching Search WWW, I wandered around in a daze. How did this show get written, I kept asking myself? How did it get produced? Aired??? What magic was worked to put it in my eyeballs, and how can it keep happening?
That feeling intensified when I read Kim Ji Young, Born 1982. But the book also provided the answer, at least to the first question. Because it is Kim Ji Young's voice in Search WWW. This is the fantasy that Kim Ji Young would have wanted to live in; a society and a life where she's seen as a person, entire, and it's not something she has to fight every day for. The gigantic leap of imagination that the writer of Search WWW took was only because that fantasy has been yearned for, in a way only a person growing up in Kim Ji Young's world- our world- could.
"Flower of Evil"- and other dramas like it— are also, undeniably, products of this world. It's unsurprising to me that in many ways, Cha Ji Won's little fantasy domestic world in Flower of Evil, on the surface, looks exactly like a post-feminist world. If the real revolution is men doing housework and childcare, then that fantasy has already been achieved on the individual level for Cha Ji Won. Sure, she's the only female member on her squad, and maybe the entire police force, for all you see women in her workplace. Sure, the other female characters with speaking roles exist mostly to be tortured for manpain by the narrative or literally by men as part of the plot. She seems to have no friends outside of work, which means that all her friends are men. As for relationships with other women, except her mother, who exists mostly to share the burden of childcare, and her mom-in- law who turns out to be an evil sort herself, there are none. When she meets her sister-in-law, the entire scene gives off a strange catfight vibe- her sister in law is the only other woman who can legitimately be said to have a claim on knowing the real Do Hyun Soo, and Cha Ji Won's reaction is to deny that claim and tell her to buzz off, basically. "I'm his family now" she tells her sister in law, "He has a wife"; firmly establishing the primacy of a heterosexual romantic relationship over all others.
Her "dream" job means nothing much despite the work she has put in to get it; for most part of the narrative she ends up betraying every professional ethic and her squad- her only friends. Of course, she is easily forgiven for it, without doing any of the work to earn that forgiveness, but that's really because who has the narrative time to develop those relationships which do not matter, like her work, which is shown up for the narrative prop it is, just like her daughter?  Even her sociopath (but not really, poor baby) husband ends the series with a tentative sort of friendship with a person he's not married to, but not Cha Ji Won, whose entire world by the end of the series has narrowed down to the four walls of her perfect little house and her perfectly-rescued husband. "I can't be happy if he's not happy," she tells her mother, who suggests that maybe it's time she let go of her not-so-perfect husband. "So please accept him."
In the end, the fantasy is based on this : self-improvement as the winning strategy, not structural change. Try hard enough and you'll get what you want. In the fine print, easily ignored: as long as what you want falls within the bounds of heteronormative patriarchal standards. It's an attitude that is passed down to the next generation; Cha Ji Won's early conversation with her daughter is an example.
The writer's vision is clear- what could have been an interesting and intimate look at our deepest fears in a relationship- that the other person will see us for who we are and horror-struck, leave; or even a deconstruction of the heterosexual woman's fantasy of The Perfect Man, is instead a tired repetition of the Beauty-and-the-Beast trope. You can dress it up and put a gun-toting, career woman wig on it, but that disguise falls apart pretty quickly. Cha Ji Won openly states not once, but several times, that she would rather live the comfortable lie; it's only when even that isn't an option- and not because of her choice or agency, but circumstances and the man coming to a decision, that she begins to let go. But only for a little while- barely ten minutes in show time- because ultimately, this is a female wish fulfilment fantasy, isn't it? Her longsuffering perseverance is rewarded when he decides to mould himself to her fantasy version of him, and the past is erased, and time reset, complete with soft lighting and soaring soundtrack.
Some love stories are horror stories, but others are horror stories masquerading as love stories. Why are we so often sold the latter, and so accepting of the narrative gaslighting? When I look at the popularity of Search WWW vs Flower of Evil, I feel bitter despair and quite a lot of anger. Why do so many women- and it is women, who are producing this work, for women, primarily (I mean, romance, as a genre)- settle for so little? It's the twenty first century, I think, why are we still here, I rage, gnashing my teeth, and indulging in the vicious satisfaction of giving Flower of Evil a single star rating that will make not a dent in its popularity. If we can't demand and aspire to a better class of fantasy, what hope do we have? As you dream, so you will do.
I often think that these days feminism is made toothless because we're shaping it into something that will validate every little feeling of ours;  we don't want to be made uncomfortable by it. But feminism is not meant to make anyone comfortable; interrogating your own desires and pleasures is as much a part of smashing the patriarchy as fighting for fundamental human rights like bodily autonomy.
I guess, in the end, what I want to say is this: for the love of sanity, dream better.
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catsitta · 4 years ago
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Modern!Mobtale Sans Character Reference Sheet CODENAME: Karma
OTHER IMAGES [1 2 3]
So...since I keep writing about this little AU of an AU, I present my first official character ref sheet of my Modern!Mobtale Sans. Aka: Karma. I'll probably be putting together other relevant sheets as time goes on and my fic 'The Good Doctor' progresses, and esp. if I write more with Karma as a focus. Priority would be on Papyrus, Gaster, Frisk, Toriel and Asgore, though I do have written notes reguarding most of the main cast. BUT YEAH! I figured if I was going to keep drawing and writing about him, I needed a proper reference or even I'd go a little nuts cross checking my notes and drawings. Heh.
[ LEFT - Past ] This sleepy-eyed skeleton seems to know a little about everyone and everything. Lazy, sociable and hard to anger, the elder of the Gaster brothers is nobody to be concerned about, no matter his father’s reputation...right? Unless of course you realize that he’s the Dreemur Family’s best hitman, one known only by rumor. They call him The Angel of Judgement or more eloquently, Karma, as those he is sent to dispose of are generally dangerous enemies of the Family. He doesn’t gain LV...and if one were to CHECK him, they’d see nothing but a harmless series of 1s across the board.
Uncaring about his appearance, the only reason he looks put together is due to other people meddling. With a preference for layers, he is most often found in shirtsleeves and a vest, with fuzzy slippers on his feet. He’ll wear clothes until they’re wrinkled beyond redemption and is often found with the buttons of his clothes misaligned. And if something is too big? That’s fine. He can roll up the sleeves or the cuffs of a leg and move on with life.
Major traits: Nihilistic, chummy, observant and judgemental. He bleeds red. Pretty Determined for such a ‘laid back’ guy.
[Author Notes: Sans from SitM could be read as a proto version of ‘early days’ Karma.]
[MIDDLE - Injury] Cause of Injury: Magical overload
Sans was never quite the same after a mission gone awry. Left for dead, he survived due to his brother rescuing him and his father’s apt hand with both magic and science. The trauma from the injury left permanent scars which malformed his sockets and rendered him blind in one socket and the magic in the other unstable. He could always see more than he should about people due to his ability to ‘judge’ others, but after the incident, he could no longer turn it off.
Shortly before the incident, he’d adopted wearing long coats to make himself look bigger and bulkier and thus more intimidating.
[RIGHT - Current] Blind in his right socket and unable to banish the magic in the left, Sans wears a fedora low over his sockets to hide his scars and obscure his eyelight. In possession of a rather vast wardrobe, he can be found wearing an assortment of clothing, though he prefers shades of blue. He is rare to be found without his trademark trench coat and a hat, though he has been known to put on practical shoes from time-to-time. He favors gold accessories and will usually wear at least one gold ring and his necktie pin, and does adorn a wristwatch for those occasions where a phone just isn’t practical. While one might claim this to be a trait of a fashionable man, it is more the result of many years of others wanting him to look presentable. He will still sleep in his clothes and spend a day a rumpled mess, but after his injury, he’s less inclined towards doing so.
Those that knew him from before the accident will describe Sans as a changed man. Quieter with a darker sense of humor, with a less sensible relationship with danger and self-preservation. He’s colder and sharper and more openly pessimistic. One could even call him callous. During hits he is more volatile and violent, though no less efficient at covering his tracks. He can be charming. He is more flirtatious than before and is obviously more confident in himself. Somehow he still seems to know too much despite not being as endearingly sleepy and chatty as before. And he picked up a few bad habits, including smoking and drinking harder stuff than just the usual ketchup straight from the bottle. Perhaps his close call with death matured him into the role he was always expected to eventually play?
[Author's Note: Reference my fics The Good Doctor, Wrong Number Darlin' and Sleepin' with the Fishes, for more on how I am developing Karma's character.]
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koala-otter · 4 years ago
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i love your atla writing?? your grasp of the characters shines through the dialogue, you really have their voices down!! here's a writing prompt (only if you're interested, of course!) if it helps: some kind of hurt/comfort zukka; maybe ambassador sokka is witness to an assassination attempt on zuko while sokka's staying in the palace, & even though zuko survives & insists he's fine, sokka's still really worried & frets over him? i just. want them to show they care about each other bcos i'm soft
hello beautiful beautiful anon! thank you so much for this 💛 you have no idea how much it means to me to hear you’re enjoying my writing! I’m sending you all my love and adoration
and here is some zukka for good measure! thank you, soft anon, for the prompt!
“nothing wrong with wanting to protect you” 2.5k words
“What is this?”
Zuko looks up from his full-length mirror to see Sokka striding briskly into his chambers, a rolled up sheet of paper clutched tightly in his balled fist. He unfurls the sheet and holds it out to Zuko once he’s standing next to him. 
“There’s nothing on there,” Zuko deadpans, turning back to the mirror to resume adjusting his sash. 
Sokka balks and looks at the paper, then shakes his head. “Had it the wrong way,” Zuko hears him mumble, and then Sokka turns it around to reveal an illustration of Zuko’s father and several characters written on the other side. “There!”
Zuko glances at it briefly. “Oh, that,” he says dismissively. 
Sokka stares at Zuko, then back at the paper, and then once more at Zuko. 
“Are we not reading the same thing?” he asks disbelievingly. He shakes the paper in Zuko’s face. “It’s a New Ozai Society poster! Looking for new recruits! To kill you!”
“I know, Sokka,” Zuko says sharply, pushing the other man’s arm away. 
“Why aren’t you freaking out?” Sokka demands. “We got rid of the society years ago. Now it’s suddenly springing back up and advertising an assassination attempt? We’ve got to launch another—”
“It’s not ‘suddenly springing back up,’” Zuko interrupts him. He takes a moment to check his hair in the mirror, pulled tightly into its top knot and hairpiece, before he finally faces Sokka. “There are posters like that all over the Fire Nation. There have been for years.”
“What?” Sokka asks. “Why am I just finding out about this now?”
Zuko shrugs. “I didn’t want you to worry,” he says. “It’s not a big deal. We used to have people tracking them down, but the society never actually did anything, and eventually there wasn’t a point. It’s fine.”
“‘Fine?’” Sokka repeats. He points to a line on the poster. “Maybe you missed this part: they literally say they want a team specializing in stealth to kill you.” He throws his arms in the air. “‘Kill you,’ Zuko!”
“Yeah, I can read, too,” Zuko says pointedly. 
“We should double your guards,” Sokka says, starting to count on his fingers as he thinks to himself. “We’ll put them at the windows and in the hall, and we can get even more at night. Oh!” His eyes go wide with revelation. “We should ask Suki to send some Kyoshi Warriors again.”
Zuko sighs. “I knew this would happen if you found out.”
“What, that I would try to keep you alive?” 
“Sokka,” Zuko says impatiently, “this isn’t your job. You’re not a guard; you’re an ambassador.”
“Actually, Admiral Chen called me your ‘paramour’ the other day,” Sokka replies with a self-satisfied grin.
Zuko snorts an uncharacteristically graceless laugh. “That’s very her,” he says. He turns away and moves toward a chest of drawers to put away the extra robes laid out by an attendant that morning. “Either way, you shouldn’t have to worry about any of this.”
Sokka’s eyes are soft as he watches Zuko move around the room. “Can you please just understand that it would kill me if something happened to you?”
Zuko slams a drawer shut. “I don’t need you to protect me, Sokka,” he says impatiently. “It’s not like I’m another sixteen-year-old princess with a death wish.”
The cavernous room goes silent. Unease climbs up Zuko’s spine, crawling over his scalp, filling his body and keeping him rooted to the ground as he waits for Sokka to reprimand him, to tell him he’s gone too far. A stillness fills the air, up to the high ceiling, so that even the drapes at the windows and in each corner of the room hang heavy and motionless. Sokka still hasn’t said anything. Zuko finally turns around to look at him. The hurt is so clear in his face, in his wide eyes and the slackness of his jaw. Zuko hates himself, suddenly, acutely, for having caused it. 
“Sokka, I—” 
Zuko reaches toward Sokka, but stops himself when he sees Sokka’s face harden. The backs of Zuko’s eyes burn.
Suddenly Sokka’s at the door, pulling at the handle roughly despite the ease with which he normally opens it. He pauses in the space between Zuko’s room and the hallway. “I’m telling your guard to double up tonight,” he says, still not looking at Zuko. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll be with the engineers if you need me.”
The door closes, and Zuko is alone.
For the first time in a long time, he doesn’t see Sokka for the rest of the day. And he isn’t the only one to notice. In a meeting with Earth Kingdom dignitaries over a land dispute, Admiral Chen leans over and asks the Fire Lord quietly, out of the side of her mouth, “Where’s Sokka? He’s the only one who can get on these guys’ good side.”
Zuko just shakes his head and puts on a smile for their guests, ignoring the rise of Admiral Chen’s eyebrows.
That night, Zuko leaves the lamp on and sits on one of the settees in his bedroom. He nurses cup after cup of chrysanthemum tea and pretends to read a letter from Aang, but when he realizes he’s read the same paragraph three times, he’s forced to confront the fact that Sokka isn’t coming. He snuffs out the light and climbs into bed, staying on the left side and trying to ignore the wide open space on his right. He stares at the canopy above him and focuses on the slow pace of his breathing.
Minutes, or maybe hours, later, Zuko sits up when he hears the window blow open.
“Sokka?” he calls into the darkness. 
There is no response. 
He lights a fire in his palm and surveys the room. The tea pot and his cup are still out along with Aang’s letter, and his robe is still flung over the chair in the corner. A chill breeze flows in through the open window and stirs the drapes. Zuko sighs and rises to close the window. He looks out on the garden beneath him and up at the waxing moon above him. The night is still and quiet. He shuts the window, making sure the clasp is secure. 
Zuko turns and freezes. A figure clothed entirely in red, blood red, wearing a white mask, stands only a few feet away from him, crouched in an attacking stance and holding a sword in one hand. As he falls into his own stance, the figure rushes forward, and all Zuko feels and hears is the heat and roar of fire rushing out of his hands. The fire dissipates, and Zuko finds the figure flat on the ground, looking up at him with a deep tilt of their head. He thinks he hears a snicker from them. 
A crash sounds from the door, and Zuko looks over to find Sokka rushing in, armed and ready with his sword and his boomerang. Two guards follow behind him, each holding another red figure in a headlock. 
“Sokka,” Zuko breathes, relief crashing over him.
But Sokka still looks panicked.
“Zuko, behind you!” he yells as he throws his boomerang.
Zuko turns just in time to see another figure directly at his back, and he swears he can almost make out a smile through their mask before a club swings straight down on his head.
The room Zuko wakes up in is dark. It’s the first thing he notices before the pain rolls in, suddenly and mercilessly, like a tidal wave, and he has to close his eyes and grit his teeth while he waits for it to pass. 
“You’re awake!” he hears, and Zuko cracks his good eye open to find two blue eyes and a warrior’s wolf tail at his side. He didn’t realize he’d made a sound.
Zuko tries to nod, but Sokka reaches out and touches his forehead with one of those big hands of his, brushing Zuko’s hair out of his face and stilling him. 
“Good to see you back with the living,” he says with a small smirk. “I’ll get the doctor.”
He rises to leave, but Zuko manages to grab his shoulder. Sokka stops and waits. The pain subsides to a dull throbbing, finally, and Zuko can sit up and open his eyes. He takes in the room as they adjust to the dark. The bed he’s in is covered in white sheets and thick furs. He can make out a wolf helmet mounted on the far wall. And the desk in the corner is littered with scrolls and scraps of paper Zuko can only assume are blueprints and various inventions in progress. 
This is Sokka’s room.
“Why—”
“It seemed safer,” Sokka explains with a smile, crouching at the side of the bed again. “While we made sure there weren’t others.”
Zuko nods and keeps taking in his surroundings. The last time they were in Sokka’s room together was maybe a few weeks before, when they had a chance to sneak off for a few minutes between meetings. Admiral Chen kindly averted her eyes when they returned for the naval council and Sokka realized he put his tunic back on inside out. Otherwise, they mostly sleep in Zuko’s room, and their trips here don’t usually leave Zuko with much time to examine Sokka’s choice of decor. He now finds he likes it.
“You were right about the windows.”
Zuko expects Sokka to laugh at that, but he only sighs. 
“Yeah,” he says, “I guess.”
Despite the groan in his head, Zuko leans over the side of the bed to frame Sokka’s face with his hands. He stares at the planes of his face, the stubble on his cheeks, and it strikes Zuko how beautiful Sokka is, yet again, despite the bags under his eyes and the tense look of his jaw. Zuko kisses his cheek gently, and then the space between his eyebrows. Sokka inhales sharply in surprise—between the two of them, Zuko is not usually the more affectionate one—but he closes his eyes as he leans into his exhaustion and Zuko’s touch. Zuko brushes his lips again between his eyes, and then down the bridge of his nose, almost as though drawing a dotted line down the middle of Sokka’s face. When Zuko finally reaches his mouth, Sokka relaxes enough to place his own hand on Zuko’s face and press back up against his lips, slowly and sweetly. 
“Thank you,” Zuko says quietly as he pulls back. He bites his lip. “And I’m sorry.”
Sokka’s eyes open, and he gives something of a laugh. “It’s not your fault you got attacked.”
Zuko shakes his head. “About what I said before,” he says haltingly. 
He doesn’t need to clarify any more. Sokka nods once. “It’s fine.”
“No, it isn’t,” Zuko presses. “It was cruel, and I was wrong.” He takes Sokka’s other hand. His voice sounds hoarse when he says, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Sokka rises and presses another kiss to Zuko’s mouth. “Don’t worry about it,” he says with his trademark good nature. He gives Zuko a crooked smile. “Really.”
Zuko nods and looks down at his lap. “I wondered if it was why you didn’t come to bed,” he says. He sounds ashamed still. 
Sokka looks at him quizzically. 
“Oh,” he suddenly says, understanding dawning on his face. He sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. “You know it wasn’t, right?”
Zuko smiles sheepishly. “I do now.”
Sokka sighs and shifts in his seat. “I was patrolling with your guards.” He smiles at the surprise on Zuko’s face. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d tell me I was overreacting again.”
“I would have,” Zuko admits. 
Sokka squeezes his hand. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to protect you,” he says in a low tone. “And it’s not because—” Sokka stops and clears his throat. “It’s not because of what happened at the North Pole.” His eyes meet Zuko’s. “I really don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
All they can do is look into each other’s eyes, the details of their faces obscured by the relative darkness of the room but for the daylight creeping its way from behind the curtains. Sokka waits for Zuko to admonish him, to maybe tease him for being so soft, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Zuko shifts forward and puts his arms around Sokka’s waist, pulling into him tightly. He tucks his head into the space between his shoulder and his neck, so Sokka can feel his breath on his collarbone, and waits.
Finally, Sokka laughs lightly and hugs Zuko back, adjusting slightly to hold him fully in his arms. 
“I’m glad you were there,” Zuko finally says into his skin. He smells like leather and salt and himself. “I love you.”
Sokka pulls back to brush the hair out of Zuko’s eyes, and then kisses him once more. “Yeah, me too,” he says in a low tone.
Zuko gives him a soft smile, and shifts away. He grimaces at the pain in his head as he begins pulling the furs back and moves his legs over the side of the bed. He looks up to ask Sokka to help him find his robe, only to see a stern look on the younger man’s face. Zuko smiles hopefully.
Sokka pushes him back onto the bed. 
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, bewildered. 
Zuko almost looks offended. “We have a meeting with the Earth Kingdom dignitaries today.”
“Are you kidding? You just got whacked in the head,” Sokka cries. “Hard!”
Zuko winces at the volume of his voice. “They’ll be expecting us.”
“Uh, no, they won’t,” Sokka says, noticeably lowering his voice. He crosses his arms and grins at Zuko in a challenge. “I had your schedule cleared for the next two days.”
“What?” Zuko exclaims. “Why would you do that?”
Sokka shakes his head at him. “Zuko, a team of deadly assassins broke in and tried to kill you last night. You don’t think you might need a couple of days off?”
Zuko smiles at him in an attempt at assurance. “I’m fine,” he insists.
Sokka groans and gently pushes Zuko back down onto the pillows. “Did we not just have the same conversation?” he asks.
“That was different,” Zuko argues as a fur is pulled up to his chin.
Sokka hangs above him, his hands leaning into the mattress on either side of Zuko’s head. “Please,” he says, “will you just let me take care of you?”
Zuko stares up at the bright blue of Sokka’s eyes. At once, he is transfixed. All he can do is nod mutely, and Sokka gives him a relieved grin before pecking him on the lips. 
“Good,” he says, hauling himself back up to a standing position. He gestures to the door with his thumb. “Now I’m really going to go get the doctor.” He sets off.
Zuko’s hand steals out from under the covers and reaches for Sokka’s once more. He misses. “Wait,” he calls out.
Sokka watches him expectantly, his whole body turning and stilling to listen to Zuko. 
“Will you—” Zuko glances away. “Will you stay with me a little longer?”
He looks back to find a grin plastered on Sokka’s face, and his eyes crinkling affectionately. Sokka comes closer and pulls open the covers. 
“Of course,” he says simply.
And he climbs right into bed.
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