#anyway. it's really incredible to me that they even recorded their birth and death years like bro...so often these details are lost to time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rongzhi · 3 months

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English added by me :)

Further Details:

In 2014, while digging ground to construct the Number 7 line for the Chengdu metro, a 2300 square meter tomb with 13 graves was dug up near Mohechi (摩诃池), the former back gardens of the Prince's mansion in Sichuan (蜀王府). Of the 13 chambers in the tomb, most were single graves, and some had been plundered or were difficult to get to. Chamber #8 was found to have its seal still closed and in decent condition, with archeologists speculating that the area had been subject to earthquakes in the past, and robbers skipped over the chamber because they were afraid of the walls collapsing if the heavy stone door was moved. Chamber #8 was also discovered to contain two rooms and the engraving of a dragon and phoenix, indicating that whoever the tomb belonged to were of relatively high status.

While the royal mausoleum of the prince of Sichuan had long been unearthed, the new joint grave was originally thought to be the tomb of an aristocratic husband and wife, as the type of tomb was typical of a husband and wife pair. The area where the new tomb had been discovered was also known long ago as 公公坟 (the eunuch graves). Other tombs of court eunuchs buried around Chengdu had been discovered in 1953, 1955, 1956, 2003, 2005, and 2008.

At the same time, experts noticed that the porcelain relics buried in the Chamber #8 all shared an unusual characteristic: the male figurines had no facial hair. This led to the realisation that the figurines depicted eunuchs. Additionally, two stone tablets were eventually located which turned out to be the epitaphs for the graves, and which allowed the archeologists to confirm that the tomb did indeed belong to two imperial eunuchs from the Ming dynasty. Moreover, the tablets revealed that the eunuchs were named Wei Yu (魏玉, b.1470) and Ruan Ying (阮英, b. 1472). Both were born from poor farming families in Tongzhou (潼州; present day northern Sichuan province).

In the fourteenth year of Chenghua, there was a huge drought in the nation, so both children were sent by their families to become eunuchs in the palace as a means to survive. Being from the same area and around the same age, they would grow to become very close.

In the Ming dynasty, imperial eunuchs had great power, such that they were in charge of many government and even military affairs. Due to this, Wei Yu and Ruan Ying did not stay in Beijing to serve the emperor but instead eventually ended up as chief eunuchs in Shuwangfu, the center of government in Sichuan. Based on the epitaph and historical materials, historians concluded that Wei Yu and Ruan Ying did not necessarily overstep their power as is often the depiction of court eunuchs of the era, and in fact, they cooperated very well with the Zhu Chun, the prince of Sichuan and Hongwu Emperor's 11th son, assisting him to repair infrastructure and bringing prosperity to the people of Chengdu.

Wei Yu was favored by the prince for being clever and witty, and was bestowed the surname Shuang, so is also referred to in records as Shuang Yu (双玉). As Wei Yu's status grew, Ruan Ying's did as well.

In the 10th year of Zhengde (1515), having experienced some rough times, Wei Yu and Ruan Ying decided they wanted to be buried together and and obtained royal permission for it to be so. As they had no children, they were able to accumulate all their earnings (imperial servants were paid) and buy a plot of land. One year later, Ruan Ying passed away and Wei Yu had a tomb built with two rooms so that they could be buried together. Ten years later, when he passed away also, Wei Yu was buried with Ruan Ying, fulfilling their desire to be entombed together.

Additional sources:

https://www.sohu.com/a/413776430_120795605

https://m.thepaper.cn/yidian_promDetail.jsp?contid=3744568&from=yidian

https://www.toutiao.com/article/6706734279713358350/?wid=1705638571420

video (in Chinese)

#tried to find a better douyin to introduce/summarise the topic but some of them had really annoying voice overs lol #i think there is like a cctv type documentary about the dig with actual expert talking heads but i can't find the video online atm #anyway. it's really incredible to me that they even recorded their birth and death years like bro...so often these details are lost to time #but we know all these things about these two from 600 years ago :')#chinese history #video #douyin #tiktok #long post #同志历史

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just-late-roman-republic-things · 6 months

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What was Caesar and Cleopatra’s relationship like?

That...is a difficult question. A few historians are skeptical about whether they even had a romantic affair. Caesar says nothing about it in his account of his trip to Egypt, and there's no record of Caesarion's existence until after Caesar died...But most historians do think the child was his. And it's hard to guess what Cleopatra really felt, since our literary sources are all hostile to her.

Caesar and Cleopatra would have met when he was ~52 and she was ~21. She had already ruled Egypt for about three years, but at that point had lost most of her power and would've needed his support to retake Egypt. The Romans and Egyptians wouldn't have blinked at the age gap. You might argue there was also a power gap, and she might have felt like she had to seduce him to avoid getting killed. He was probably her first sexual experience.

Or maybe they weren't so unequal as that. Cleopatra had dominated Egyptian politics for the last three years, raised an army in her own name, and chose to leave that army and visit Caesar of her own initiative. Caesar desperately needed a friendly, stable Egypt, and she was the only candidate for governing it who was A) competent and B) not trying to kill him. Cleopatra was also incredibly well-educated and resourceful, a skilled administrator and commander, popular with the Egyptian people, and fluent in nine languages. She knew how vulnerable Caesar's position in Egypt really was - and she might have used that to preserve Egypt's independence instead of letting Caesar annex it in 47 BCE.

You could interpret this messy affair in a lot of ways. Was one of them using the other? Were they both using each other? Politics inevitably played a role, but it may have dovetailed with genuine affection. For all his faults, Caesar was certainly better than the homicidal teenage brother-husband Cleopatra was originally supposed to have children with. And Cleopatra was probably not just attractive, but a relief to Caesar, after dealing with said brother-husband and his horrifically incompetent, Roman-hating staff.

After the Alexandrian War, Cleopatra visited Caesar in Rome at least once, probably twice. Our anecdotes from this time period could be read as either continuing a love affair, or as typical diplomacy, with a foreign monarch offering gifts and being entertained in turn. The Romans themselves seem to have had mixed opinions on how appropriate it was. Most historians think Caesarion had been born by this point, but some date his birth to after Caesar's death, since our first contemporary mention of him appears after the assassination.

Caesar never publicly acknowledged Caesarion as his son or left him anything in his will. But then, Roman law wouldn't have allowed Caesar to make Caesarion his heir anyway. Cleopatra was present in Rome during the Ides of March, and left with her son soon after the will was read.

Most fictional portrayals play up the romantic angle of Caesar and Cleopatra's relationship. And that's fine. But personally, I like to see the funny side of things, and to me Caesar and Cleopatra's affair reads like a bizarre, hilariously awkward black comedy. I haven't yet found a portrayal of them that I really like.

#just roman asks #julius caesar #cleopatra #caesarion #jlrrt essays

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draconicfaenerd · 4 years

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Obey Me Theory: In Which God is an Asshole and Solomon Might be a Good Guy?

Okay, here’s the deal. I have way too much time on my hands at the moment and was suddenly struck with inspiration, so I decided to cook up a little theory of my own.

Well, not so little. I’ve been writing this over the last few days, and this turned into something bigger than I was expecting.

Alright, here we go.

One of the great mysteries of this game: who the fuck wrote the whole Tale of the Seven Lords series? I mean, it foreshadows so much of the game’s plot twists that it’s absolutely insane! My initial thought was that Barbatos wrote it, especially since he’s the one who has a bunch of time travel/timeline powers that are, frankly, quite frightening. However, this theory leaves one gaping plot hole: how does Simeon know what’s gonna happen in the upcoming volume? Even Mammon and Satan take note of the fact that they have no idea why Simeon would know something like that. Who besides Barbatos could possibly have the power to see the future? Given this game’s penchant for foreshadowing, this is undoubtedly an important question we need to ask ourselves.

And I’d like to make you think about something as you answer that question.

While we know a fair bit about Barbatos’s power, we know practically nothing about the angels’ powers. Surely it doesn’t make sense that the demons have access to this wild reality-bending power that the angels don’t. Unless they actually do. How is this possible? Well, I turn to my knowledge of Christianity for this part of the theory.

According to many people’s interpretation of Judaism and Christianity, God is supposed to be an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing entity. He knows anything and everything that has happened, is happening, and can/will happen in the future. Additionally, He can set everything up so that events happen according to His plan. Pretty difficult to go up against, right? Now, granted, we don’t know a lot about the game’s interpretation of God (yet); there are enough twists on Biblical canon that it is difficult to determine what direction this is going to go in. However, I do expect that God is supposed to be a ridiculously powerful character in-game; maybe as powerful as (or even more so than) Barbatos.

Side note: However, he is not all-powerful, and here’s how I know: he wasn’t able to just erase Lilith. Yes, I’m sure he was powerful enough to kill her, but not so powerful that he could just kill her immediately free of consequences.

But more on this later; now back to my original point. God is the author of TSL. Or, at the very least, is the divine inspiration behind it (where one of the angels or a specifically chosen human is the one to transcribe it). This explains why an angel such as Simeon would have knowledge of the upcoming plot. Another piece of evidence to back up my point: exposure to divinity. One point that pops up a few times in the Bible is the idea that anyone/anything who comes too close to God’s presence directly will perish. A couple of examples of this are the burning bush that Moses faces and the Ark of the Covenant which the Israelites are forbidden to touch. Now, you may be wondering what these examples have to do with Obey Me. The answer is simple: the TSL soundtrack. Remember why Lucifer was so interested in this soundtrack in the first place?

First off, a scene where the Lord of Corruption places a curse on the heroes? I have a few thoughts on that, but I’ll get to that in a little bit. What I’d like to focus on is the mysterious composer and the people who die surrounding the soundtrack. Lucifer tells us on our final night in the Devildom that the record isn’t actually cursed:

But. Well. I don’t trust that. He’s (probably) not purposefully lying to us, but I don’t think this can be a coincidence. I think that TSL was divinely inspired (along with its soundtrack) and for some reason, this particular soundtrack was too much for ordinary humans to handle (we know that MC isn’t ordinary because of their amount of hidden power that has been discussed; more on that later.)

So I’d like to bring up something else. Propaganda.

God has already spread copious amounts of propaganda about the brothers. Why do I say this? Well, I’m going off the assumption that the human world MC comes from is pretty similar to the human world that all of you readers (and me, obviously) live in. Why does this matter? Religious texts. There’s no denying that Judaism/Christian and their respective texts have greatly influenced the course of world history. Which means, in canon, those same texts no doubt exist in the Human Realm. Now, assuming they were “divinely inspired” (another assumption, but one that seems to make sense to me), a plethora of lies were told. First of all, many of these texts paint Lucifer (the Morningstar) as: the original Fallen Angel, The Devil, the Prince of Hell, and the reason why Sin and Death entered the world (meaning he was the one who tempted Eve). In Obey Me canon, Lucifer was the leader of the rebellion, yes, but he is very different from how he would be painted in Biblical texts. First of all, the Devildom was around for a very long time before the Fall (leading to questions on the true power of the realms, but more on that later). Furthermore, Diavolo and the Demon King are more of what we consider to be “the Devil”; sketchy motives aside (which I’ve discussed in other posts), they are the ones that have the final say in the Devildom’s affairs. Not Lucifer. Yes, the brothers might hold the titles and responsibilities of being the “Seven Rulers of Hell,” but ultimately their will is overridden by Diavolo’s. Additionally, I’d like to talk about that last point: sin and death. In the Bible, Lucifer brought sin and death into the world by tempting Eve to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree. However, in Obey Me canon, we know this is not the case; death existed long before the Fall. We know this because Lilith’s human lover was going to die, hence why she fed him forbidden food from the Celestial Realm. Then, God was going to have her erased and ultimately sparked the Rebellion against Him.

So. We know that God is plenty willing to pin plenty of shit on Lucifer. But other than causing an abnormal amount of daddy issues, what does this have to do with anything? Well, remember how I noted earlier with the TSL soundtrack that it was supposed to be used in a scene where the Lord of Corruption placed a curse on the heroes? Well, the Lord of Corruption represents Lucifer. So, given the game’s penchant for foreshadowing, it seems like Lucifer is going to place a curse on the heroes (forgive me for making yet another assumption, but I interpret MC and the brothers as the heroes). Given Lucifer’s love for his family (and later MC), this doesn’t really make any sense. My initial thought was that the whole attic debacle was the curse, but that doesn’t really make sense either. But. Remember what I just said about God pinning shit on Lucifer. What if God is the one planning to put a curse on the heroes? Just think about that for a bit, let it sink in.

Now, why would God place a curse on the heroes? We know that He and the angels were able to defeat the brothers before, so they could do so again if the need ever arose, right? And why place a curse on MC, an ordinary human?

Well, not-so-ordinary human.

Remember why Asmo made a pact with MC in the first place? Solomon talks to us about how everyone has magical power within them, and it manifests itself in some, but not in others (this is already suspicious as fuck to me that a power as strong as MC’s wouldn’t manifest itself, but our in-game knowledge of magic is vague enough that I’m not really gonna dance around that right now). Anyways, MC gets stuck with Mammon, Beel, and Levi in the underground labyrinth again, and they summon Asmo and draw out even more power than Solomon can. Pretty strange, right? Belphegor also alludes to MC’s great power with his whole “you have the power to control demons” speech.

So basically we have this incredible power. And, if I’m on the right track here, then we’re a threat to God. As I explain here, Lilith is the reason we were chosen for the exchange program in the first place. Additionally, when you meet her as you’re dying and you reply to her and ask her what she’s doing, she says this:

So… there’s a lot going on in her whole dialogue. Really. There’s so much to dissect. And frankly, I don’t think I can dissect it all. So for now, I’m going to focus on the snippets that stood out to me. “I’ve been waiting for so long, you see. I’ve been waiting for you to come find me.” Um, what? First of all, Lilith’s spirit has been around for several thousands of years, right? Granted, the Obey Me timeline isn’t super clear, but still. Even if Lilith has been waiting around for MC ever since their birth, MC is however old the player is (probably late teens or in their twenties since that’s the demographic the game is geared towards); but even if MC is supposed to be way older than that, their lifespan is a very short time compared to Lilith’s existence. Unless. Unless Lilith has been waiting for longer than MC is supposed to be alive. Unless Lilith knew that someone as powerful as MC would come into existence and… do whatever it is Lilith wants us to do. Still not completely sure about that. (Also take note that Lilith never tells us herself that MC is her descendant; make of that what you will).

Also, she says that she’s worried about all her brothers and tells us to “save them” and that she’ll “lend us her powers.” So at first, I thought she was worried about them emotionally, and that she wanted us to save them by serving as emotional support for them. But we didn’t need her for our consciousness to transfer, and Barbatos took care of our alternate self. So what did we need her power boost for? The answer: something that’s coming up in the future. What exactly? I’m not completely sure. But, I do know that Solomon has an idea of what it is, based on the text conversation with him right after leaving the Devildom.

Now, is it possible Solomon knows because of his pact with Barbatos? Yes, it absolutely is. I know that I’ve said time and time again that Solomon’s pact with Barbatos is going to prove to be crucial in future chapters, and I still firmly believe that. However, if something is happening on the Celestial Realm side of things, Solomon has a connection there which would allow him to know the goings-on.

So for those of you who grew up in religious families, you probably remember a little bit about King Solomon; the “man after God’s own heart” (different translations may say something slightly different, but that’s the version most of us probably heard) who, when he had the chance to ask for one gift from God, chose to ask for wisdom. Now, many clues in-game point to show that there’s a good chance that this Solomon is supposed to be that very same guy. Such clues include his mystical powers and his many pacts, particularly his pact with Asmodeus. Now, remember when Solomon told us near the beginning of the game about the Ring of Wisdom he received? He never tells us about the mystery person who gave it to him, but I personally think he received it from God; since in Biblical canon God “gave him wisdom.” Additionally, remember how he talked about getting drunk off its power at first? That piece of information coincides with my earlier point about how exposure to divinity is difficult for humans to handle.

Also, remember that Solomon is a VERY big fan of TSL. (Enough to impress Levi, and enough that he has that super-rare pendant of the Lord of Corruption’s wing). So, given that God is probably the one behind the creation of this series, it stands to reason that his connection to God has something to do with this.

Additionally, while on the topic of Solomon, there is yet another chat (the one that he sends you on your birthday) that shows that he seems to be well aware of something that you, the player, are not:

As I’ve said before, this game really loves its foreshadowing. So, we’re definitely gonna have to save Solomon at some point: now, I know I’ve called him shady many times before, and he really truly is. But.

Maybe he’s not nearly as evil as I originally thought. He has helped us before, but it’s admittedly difficult to pin down his motives. However, if saving him is going to be necessary to the plot, then Solmare probably isn’t gonna make us rescue a bad guy. Emphasis on probably.

Also… he says “first birthday here in the Devildom”... which leads me to believe that MC will have many, many birthdays with the brothers to come in the future. So. Now that I’ve talked about Solomon, I’d like to talk about Luke.

He sends you a chat that opens up some pretty good insight into the whole situation:

Now, we know that Luke is pretty fond of MC, and we’re led to believe that Simeon cares about MC too; however, this whole “charm that attracts both demons and angels alike” doesn’t sit quite right with me. Now, yes, both the in-game angels care about MC, but that doesn’t seem to quite cover Luke’s statement. But what if… There are other angels that have taken an interest in MC? And I don’t mean romantically, I mean… what if one or more of them know about our power? As I said before, Lilith gave us a power boost for something that’s coming up in the future. Something big. And if MC truly has a special sort of charm that attracts demons and angels alike, they could prove to be very dangerous if, say, there were to be another power struggle between realms. But what does this all have to do with Luke anyways? Remember who Luke works for? Michael. Yes, that’s right, the Archangel Michael. Probably the most powerful angel in all of the Celestial Realm. What does this have to do with anything? Well, after the exchange program ends, the higher-ranked angels (including Michael) are no doubt going to want reports of everything that happened during the exchange program… including information about MC. And really, who better to ask that information from than someone as utterly devoted to Michael himself as we’ve seen Luke is?

And if this is the case… Michael will probably hand all of that information right over to God. Given how the Obey Me God seems to be, this is not good news for MC or the brothers.

Now. Just because we can’t trust God doesn’t mean we should go blindly trusting Diavolo and Barbatos either. In fact, @phairfantooooom does a phenomenal job here explaining just how sketchy and terrifying they really are. Maybe I’ll have more of my own comments to add later if the mood strikes me, but for now I’m gonna leave it at that.

One final word: MC is being used as a pawn in a grander game between the realms for which they have no idea how to play, but they better figure it out fast.

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m losing my mind during quarantine and I really just want the sexy, shady sorcerer to not be a bad guy.

We’ll see. So... what do you all make of this? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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the-quiet-winds · 3 years

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The Gravity of Tempered Grace (part two)

[Didn’t get a whole lot of response from part one, but I’ve worked too much on this fic to not post all of it, so I will keep posting it anyway!]

[part one]

[Part 2: I See the Devil in Me, Saying What I Want to Hear]

The Life and Times of Jane the Queen, Chapter 4 - The Lady of Wulfhall

“Not much is truly known of Jane’s early years living at Wulfhall. Most records of her life don’t begin until she arrived at the court of King Henry and began to serve Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn before becoming queen. It is likely she did not receive a formal education, especially not one to compare to Henry’s other wives. She was barely literate, and her formal signature is notable for backwards E’s in both her name and her spelling of “Quene.” Where she faltered in academics, however, she thrived in household work and needlepoint. Some of her embroidery was so well-made, it survived into the 1650s, over one hundred years after her death.”

There she goes again, Catherine can’t help but notice. More needlepoint.

It’s almost hypnotizing, in a way. Jane works with such poise and precision, it’s truly a work of art to behold.

She’ll look up, tilt her head slightly to the side as she studies the subject of today’s endeavor, then turn her head back down to her needlepoint. She does this over and over, never getting dizzy, never deviating.

She only embroiders what she sees, Catherine notes. No imagination or, seemingly, memories of her past life.

Jane remembers her first pass through this Earth, all of them do, but she seems detached from it. She can discuss the painful birth of her son and her prolonged, almost agonizing death without batting an eye.

Aside from maybe Katherine, Jane has the most emotional song in their show. She has outbursts of anger, one of which directed at Catherine of Aragon herself.

Even in those heated moments, though, Catherine can see that she’s only acting. Jane’s eyes are gray and lifeless, even as she screams in Catherine’s face. During rehearsals, it was clear that her tears during her song were produced on demand.

“Did you need something?”

Catherine snaps back to the present at Jane’s voice, and those cold eyes are fixed straight on her.

“You were staring off into space,” Jane says. “Did you need something?”

“Oh, uh, no. Thank you, though. Didn’t realize I zoned out.”

Jane simply hums and returns to her needlepoint.

---

Henry knows that his wife - wives, if you want to get technical - is halfway across the world, but what he needs is here.

It’s well into the witching hour when he stands outside the window separating him from his lost treasure.

He drops his knapsack to the ground and goes to work.

---

They’re just getting home after the show when Jane starts acting strange.

Strange, in this case, is somewhat relative, considering that Aragon and Anne would have classified almost all of her behavior up until now as “strange.”

“Did any of you love Henry?” She asks, sitting on the couch with tea in her hands, as casually as one would ask about the weather.

All the eyes in the room turn to her. “What do you mean?” Anna asks.

“Did you love him?” Jane repeats. “I did, but… did any of you?”

There’s something almost like sincerity in her eyes, and it’s the most emotion and life Catherine has seen out of her since they all came back.

“No,” Katherine says immediately, flatly, nearly offended at the question in the first place.

“Not really,” Anna says.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” Parr adds softly.

It’s quiet, then, and all attention turns to the first two wives.

“I guess I did,” Catherine admits. “I mean, I was married to him for twenty-four years. You don’t get over that easily.”

“I did, at first,” Anne adds. “But I think I loved the danger and sneaking around more than I loved him.”

Jane looks at the both of them, cocks her head slightly to the side, and then, of all things, laughs.

Catherine bristles, and Anne couldn’t look more confused.

“What’s so funny?”

“You know he didn’t love either of you, right?” Jane asks. “It’s true that I’m the only one he loved.”

“Only because you had a living son,” Anne quips.

“A legitimate living son,” Catherine grumbles.

Jane smirks. “I also knew when to shut my mouth and not flirt with courtiers,” she says to Anne.

“Jane, chill,” Cathy pipes in. “I don’t know why you’re trying to rile her-”

She stops talking when Jane turns sharply to her. “I’m simply trying to figure out what my husband saw in these wenches.”

“Woah,” Anna stands up, “that was over the line. Apologize, Jane.”

“Why would I apologize? It’s true.”

“We’re a family, Jane,” Katherine butts in. “You don’t say shit like that to your family.”

Jane rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Goodnight.”

With no apology, no afterthoughts, no anything, Jane rises gracefully and makes her exit.

The other five all look to each other in disbelief. “What the hell was that?” Anna asks, dropping back into her seat.

“That was insane,” Katherine mutters.

“It was incredible,” Aragon whispers, staring blankly at where the wall meets the floor. “That’s the most emotion I’ve seen out of her since we all came back.”

“I have to agree with you there,” Anne mumbles.

“Is this… is this what she’s really like?” Cathy asks hesitantly.

No one can answer her, because no one knows.

The two who knew Jane in the last life… well, they aren’t all that sure they knew her at all.

---

Jane lays down on her bed and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she has no idea where she is.

She’s standing up, first of all, with no memory of getting off the bed. And she’s outside.

Did she sleepwalk?

“Hello, sweetheart.”

A shiver runs down Jane’s spine, although she isn’t sure if it’s from delight or worry.

Delight, she finds herself deciding, despite her ambivalence about the whole thing, and turns around to face her husband.

He looks the same as she remembers, just as tall and ruggedly handsome, although perhaps slightly less aged.

Henry takes both of her hands in his, pressing kisses to her knuckles. “I’ve missed you, my love.”

Jane doesn’t answer.

“Didn’t you miss me too?”

“I don’t know.”

He tugs her softly against him. “I know, my love. I know.” So gently, he kisses her forehead. “But you’re here with me, now. Everything is alright.”

Resting her head on his chest, she tries to relax. But there are too many questions burning and flitting through her mind for her to ignore. “How are you here?” She asks. “And… and where are we?”

“I’m here by the same twist of fate you are,” he answers quietly. “I can’t say I understand it either. And we’re home, my darling. Doesn’t it look different now?”

Jane squints in the dark, and she can vaguely make out the city skyline. It definitely isn’t New York, that’s for sure.

“We’re in London,” he explains. “Back in our once-home.”

Jane’s eyes blow wide and she pries herself out of Henry’s arms. “How… what? London?”

“I’m here, love, you’re okay,” he tries to soothe. “I can’t tell you how, yet, but it’ll all make sense soon.” He leans in to kiss her head again, and Jane is in such shock she can’t move.

Henry reaches a hand into the satchel at his side and looks into Jane’s eyes. “Now go back home and forget all of this happened.”

---

Jane heaves a deep breath as she settles deeper into her bed. Another long day gone, another dreamless night ahead.

Without much pretense, Jane Seymour turns over and falls asleep.

And somewhere else, Henry smiles.

#six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #jane seymour #catherine of aragon #anne boleyn #catherine parr #katherine howard #anne of cleves #julie writes #the gravity of tempered grace

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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I am seized by a fatal need for courtroom ninja drama fic

But not serious courtroom drama. I'm talking Phoenix Wright style Nonsense.

(Some of this was provided by the folks over in @sloaners‘ server, but the bulk of it was me spitballing nonsense at people who actually know the games, which I do not. I do paraphrase a few times to make it more feasible as a tumblr post/fic concept, rather than a rapidfire text conversation.)

Or one of those like. Reality TV paternity test things? But specifically in my mind the people involved in the actual paternity are a married couple and someone that joined them to be their third, and Clan Elders are throwing a fit about how the baby might not be the heir by blood! while the actual parents are like "I could not care less, this is our child, all three of us, please stop getting involved."

HashiMitoMada would be a VERY good option for the paternity nonsense, mostly because I can see Madara screeching at his own elders about how he already said Izuna would be his heir and he's not changing his mind!

Tobirama is just begging the paternity test to work faster off-screen because he's the only person with the machines to make it happen.

(Hashirama is just. Moping in a corner.)

"I just had to INVENT a paternity test that works before the birth! I had to figure out how to test amniotic fluid! If you assholes make me do something this stupid on such short notice again, I will be digging some shallow graves!" "...for who?" "I haven't decided yet."

Anyway, jumping back to like a Phoenix Wright-style murder investigation.

The victim was Danzo. Even the prosecution isn't actually that interested in making sure someone gets arrested, but they're legally obligated to do at least try. A bunch of people all acting really suspicious about who killed him. There is at least one shitty fake mustache-on-glasses disguise to provide a paper-thin alibi.

WAIT The other thing this gives us is ninjas in three-piece-suits but half of them wear the suits wrong. I’m talking mismatched buttons. The wrong way of tying their tie. Sewn-on-cufflinks. This is Naruto, for instance.

Tobirama would wear it properly, except he's rushing about in a lab coat, screaming at everyone to get out of his way because he's The Entire Forensics Team.

(This is the part where I have to confess that I have only seen the live-action movie of Phoenix Wright, as I don't game, so I just have the live action and tumblr osmosis.)

At this point, of course, we gotta ask: Who is the most Belligerent Witness And who is the Helpful™️ Witness that's super enthusiastic but entirely useless

I can see, say, Mito being a solid witness that both defense and prosecution are really thankful for.

Modern gen you have like... Sasuke and Neji are both incredibly belligerent witnesses. Neji at least is polite about it but pulls the "only answers with the absolute minimum of information."

Lee and Gai would have the over enthusiasm but forget to say actual vital testimony until pressed, and Naruto would love to help but might not be entirely sure what the case even is.

Shikamaru falls asleep when the lawyers consult their partners. Prosecution A consults Prosecution B for thirty-seven seconds, then turns around and the witness is asleep at the stand.

Tobi (as in Obito with mask) is an incredibly frustrating witness. They have to declare a recess just so all the lawyers can recover their blood pressure. "Can we please get someone up on the stand with this guy as a handler? I'm--I'm going to explode."

Gaara: Helpful. Polite. Answers with detail. Answers the spirit of the question as well as the letter. Includes more detail. That's too much detail. Gaara please stop telling us about the sounds that bones make.

His testimony just drags on forever.

Ninken can and will take the stand! Pakkun even enjoys it! Some ninken require translators.

ABURAME TRANSLATING FOR A RANDOM GIANT CENTIPEDE THAT WITNESSED A MURDER IN THE FOREST OF DEATH

There are arguments about whether or not the testimony can count since nobody else can confirm the translation except Other Aburame so how do they know the Aburame aren't part of the coverup.

"Okay, so this Danzo guy had like fifty shell companies but I think I found the route that leads back to him?" "Nah, that one goes to a guy that died eighty years ago that's still collecting pensions: his family lied and said he was still alive for the money." "Fuck!"

Also I just. I love the idea of Sasuke and Madara being the exact opposite kind of belligerent witness.

Also, Orochimaru answers with pretty much the exact kind of wording as Gaara, but where Gaara is trying to be helpful and provide detail for the sake of the case, and failing to see that it's maybe not necessary, Orochimaru just wants to see people squirm. ...similar thing happens with Sakura and Kabuto. Similar phrasing, very different energy.

I keep picturing all of Team Taka as part of Forensics and Evidence Collecting ajshakshjd

Juugo, holding up a rabbit: I found a witness.

Karin joins forensics and Tobirama nearly weeps from joy until he finds her criminal record "Shit, that was supposed to get thrown out when I turned eighteen."

Tobirama: I asked for an assistant, not a criminal. Karin: I'm on parole. Tobirama: That makes things worse. Karin: I know how to use a [concerningly advanced machine that I, a business major, cannot name]. Tobirama: ...never mind, I'm keeping you.

Karin: I know how to DNA sequence AND use LA-ICP-MS Tobirama: [weeps with joy]

Suigetsu would be great at blood splatter analysis. ...I think I read somewhere that blood spatter analysis is actually over in 'fake science that's pushed by cops and media but actually doesn't work' BUT apparently it’s in the Ace Attorney games so we’re going to ignore reality a bit. We’ve already got dogs and rabbits and centipedes as witnesses, what’s a bit of blood spatter?

He's also probably really good at cause of death stuff? Like looking at corpse and figuring out how long it took the victim to die, which blow did it, whether any damage was inflicted post-mortem, etc.

Sasuke is usually too busy playing Belligerent Witness but sometimes goes to join Taka for... uh... reasons.

Juugo: [takes the stand] Lawyer: Hey, uh, why's that Uchiha guy with him? The witness-- Judge: No, no, we need Uchiha Sasuke on hand when questioning Expert Animal Handler Juugo. Lawyer: ...why? Judge: Property damage.

(Sasuke as a work partner with Juugo, also moonlighting as a witness/suspect in Danzo's murder.)

One time they need Juugo but can't find him even though court is already in session and he said he'd be here, turns out he was lured away by Kakashi's army of dogs. Kakashi didn't notice until he turned to ask Pakkun if he could help find the missing expert.

Juugo is a decent lab assistant, I think?

Anyway.

Tobirama taking on Team Taka as his forensics team while Orochimaru is... hm... traveling the country to promote his new autobiography, which is outselling the newest Icha Icha to Jiraiya's ire.

Sloane suggested “a case where it's all the Sannin as suspects in a murder. They would be THE WORST, say... the murder of Hanzo.”

To which I suggested “The Sannin are all suspects but the people on trial are the Ame trio, maybe?”

Which garnered the response of “It could be a surprise upset IN COURT that the trio should be on trial.”

We love a court upset.

Suigetsu finds out that the cause of death was actually an entirely natural heart attack, but while he was determining this, the rest of the team and the lawyers found like eight conspiracies by Zetsu, three by Danzo, four by Orochimaru, and an entire network of nonsense by Sasori.

INO IS THE PSYCHIC. I know her thing in canon is reading minds but pls. Ino is Maya. The Spirit Medium.

Is the judge: 1. Hiruzen 2. Hashirama 3. Hagoromo 4. Mifune 5. The Daimyou

(Old dude with authority, optionally easily distracted/questionably competent. I'd have gone for impressive facial hair but only Mifune and Hagoromo have more than like... Hiruzen's weird soul patch.)

It's not a soul patch but I don't know what facial hair is called and I can't just call it a goat beard

Response commentary was as follows: The Daimyou would unfortunately be closer to the personality of the ace attorney judge, more blindly agreeing with things that sound good :joy: Hiruzen could be fun if only for the competing facial hair for a beard, yes xD Hagoromo would possibly be most buckwild tho WELCOME TO MOON COURT

I managed to get this far with like... NO idea who the judges were except “IDK maybe Kakashi?” but consider:

...HashiMada rival lawyers

Dropping over to Izuna vs. Touka for when Hashirama and Madara inevitably become suspects of something or other themselves and have to be witnesses.

(Tobirama's too busy running blood tests, Anija, let Touka handle it, she's better at people anyway.)

...Hashirama is like. Marginally more put-together than Madara, right? So that... makes him Edgeworth... somehow... That feels wrong but Madara as Edgeworth feels even more wrong.

Madara is very into screaming OBJECTION

ALSO consider: Friction when a doctor from a nearby hospital gets called in to provide expert testimony on something because Karin is like "no hey I should be the one doing this" and then she sees how cute Sakura is.

But also at some point Kakashi vs. Gai for a nonsense case. Their personalities are both VERY FUN for this sort of thing.

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moonlightchild-otome · 3 years

Text

Ikemen Vampire - Jean d’Arc Route Summary Chapter 10

here is the tenth chapter!

to clarify again, I’m not very good at japanese so if anything is wrong or weirdly translated everything is on me.

of course there is going to be some spoilers so do not read if you don’t wish to know jean’s story yet.

*also little bonus at the end about Jeanne d’Arc real story! of course you don’t have to read it to understand his route in the game but it’s very interesting :)*

The Count tells MC the history of the war between France and England, also known as the Hundred Years’ War...

【 Comte 】 Jean was a soldier who led the French army during the Hundred Years War.

Jean fights for his country, France and defeats the English army. Jean d’Arc, soon after the defeat of the enemy, becomes a true hero for his people.

However, such glory won’t last for Jean :( 'The most tragic end of the world's heroes', as they say.

In the course of the battle, Jean was captured as a prisoner of war by the enemy. The King didn’t want to help him for some reason. 😡

And of course... 🙄

【 Comte 】 Jean was convicted of heresy and it has been decided that he would be sentenced to fire.

After Jean's death, the king ordered a re-examination of his treason and found him to be innocent, and he went down as a hero of France.

The fact that Jean never knew went down as a hero after his death and this won’t change the fact that he died as an innocent. The protagonist is angry because it doesn't make any sense.

From the bottom of my stomach, I feel a mixture of anger and frustration.

Here, the MC asks the Count a question. “Why did he bring him back to life after such a death?”

There's something different about the Count returning the great men of the mansion and Jean.

The MC wonders if Jean really wanted the Count to bring him back to life. Before the Count can answer, Jean appears, interrupts him, takes the MC by the arm and leads her away.

【 Jean 】 One look at this man's face is enough. I don't like it. Let's go, woman.

As soon as they arrived in the library, Jean seems to have calmed down a little lets go of the MC's arm.

The protagonist apologises for trying to find out about his past without his permission, but Jean says that's okay. Jean says it's okay, because his life has been written about in books anyway. However, he says that he doesn't want the Count to tell her about it.

【 Jean 】 ...It's not enough to say I hate it, it's too much.

Jean says that he is not a hero and that he is no different from the children's book he used to read, The Ugly Duckling.

it hurts me so much that this is the way he perceives himself when he deserves all the love in the world </3

Jean's gaze fell on the book 'The Ugly Duckling', which was still on the table.

That’s it for chapter 10!

here is some real background info about the real Jeanne d’Arc! She is such a brave and interesting historical figure. The epitome of a real badass, fearless and powerful woman.

so, the hundred years' war, if we summarize as much as possible is a series of armed conflicts that began in 1337. which opposes the kingdom of france and the kingdom of england.

in 1328 at the death of king charles iv, the question arises as to who will inherit the french crown.

one then has the choice between the cousin of the preceding king philippe de valois and edward iii the king of england who by his mother isabelle is also a descendant of the french throne.

you can imagine putting an english king on the french throne, wasn’t seen very well.

edward not happy, which led to a succession crisis, which lead to the hundred years' war.

obviously this conflict, quickly overcomes a simple succession crisis.

it's a mess.

what you have to remember, is that the english are gradually invading part of the kingdom of france.

in 1415, after the battle of azincourt and the english victory, the english king henry v controls much of the north of the kingdom of france, including paris for that matter.

but it is far from being the only concern.

what you have to keep in mind is that the king of france at the time, charles vi, is reached at rather regular intervals of madness.

this obviously prevents him from administering the kingdom properly.

as a result, in parallel with the conflict with the english, a real civil war breaks out.

to find out who between his son the heir charles and his cousin the duke of burgundy will be able to take back the reins of the kingdom; the duke of burgundy is supported by the burgundians who will end up allying themselves with the english and the son of the king the heir charles is supported by the armagnacs.

but during this time, charles is betrayed by his own father who disinherits his son and after his death, gives the crown to the english.

i warned you that it was really messy.

and it is in this incredible mess that our jeanne arrives.

and where exactly does jeanne come from? from domremy.

she is also often called the virgin of orleans.

she is associated with the city of reims, but jeanne was originally born in domremy.

and where exactly is this place? domremy is this little town to the west of the city of the vosges department, on the banks of the meuse river.

isn't it pretty?

this is jeanne's birth house,

she would have been born around 1412. the building classified as a historical monument since 1840 includes in addition to a cellar, three large rooms originally used to house the whole family, her parents and four siblings.

according to jeanne's trial, it is here that she would have learned to sew or weave which were two occupations of the young girls of the time.

her father was a ploughman, so she often had to look after the animals.

and since she is very pious she spent a lot of time praying.

she went on pilgrimage at least once a week, for example in the notre dame de bermont chapel, about three kilometres (as the crow flies) from her birth house.

and jeanne d’arc, as you may have guessed, wasn't always called jeanne d’arc.

no, in history she has had different names and official nicknames.

there are of course the best known ones: the virgin of orleans, jeanne the virgin or even just the virgin and in the vicinity of domremy she was also called the jeannette de rommée, in connection with her mother's name. she has even signed several letters with the name jehanne.

and it's even more complicated if you're interested in her surname “d'arc”.

which was originally written darc, without the apostrophe. here again there have been many variations, and i'll mention a few of them: tarc, dars, darx and even d'ailly or daly according to the phonetic transcription of her name, with a lorraine accent. from there we move on to duly, then du lys.

when the king ennobled jeanne and her family, it is written on the deed, la dame du lys in reference to the royal coat of arms.

this is the magnificent bois-chenu basilica, which was built between 1880 and 1940 in honour of jeanne.

and for the record, this incredible basilica was sometimes considered to be the place where jeanne would have heard voices.

however if we refer to the trial, it is in her father's garden, near the house, that jeanne would have started hearing voices, celestial calls, coming from saint catherine of st. margaret's and the archangel saint michael.

the divine mission entrusted to her was very “simple”.

she was only commanded to be a cavalier, to cross a kingdom occupied by the english to go and find the future charles vii and convince him that she is the one sent from heaven.

to help him to take his place on the throne by her coronation in reims.

to show him how to liberate the kingdom of france, of the english presence.

it seems to be an easy enough mission for me. 😅 (nope)

so obviously you can imagine that the people didn't take her seriously right away. it took a few years before she managed to convince the world that she wasn't completely crazy.

- jeanne?

- yes?

- this is the voice.

- is someone talking to me?

- you are the chosen one, jeanne, join me.

- yes, i'm coming.

- i hope you like human barbecue. (ok i'll stop :/)

how is the legend of jeanne forged? how does one go from being a peasant girl eager to help, to jeanne of arc, heroine of the kingdom of france?

this is le centre d’interprétation (the interpretation centre), which is just behind jeanne of arc's birth house and retraces her youth and adventures.

her journey is incredible, at 17 years old, jeanne can't stand not doing anything anymore, she has been hearing voices urging her to act for four years now.

so she decides to return to the châtellenie de vaucouleurs, to meet captain robert de baudricourt, one of the king's faithful followers and after several vicissitudes, she manages to convince him. it wasn't easy, i remind you that her main point was that she hears voices. but yeah, he finally agrees to send her with an escort, join the heirn in chinon.

the journey is quite long and above all risky, we are talking about more than 500 kilometres and in this period of turmoil, the dangers were quite present especially if you look at the map, one realizes that the small expedition crosses areas not controlled by the enemy coalition.

fortunately, everything went well for jeanne, who arrives at her destination on march 1429 and gets an audience with the heir two days later. he was quite suspicious of this young woman at first, who claims to hear divine voices but according to the story she made a revelation to him that we don't know which eventually convinced him.

for the entourage of the suitor of the throne, it's not that simple and you can understand them, betting on jeanne is a little bit like a poker game. so they insist that she will be given a few interrogations, she is questioned about her life, about her morals and finally confidence is established, she is equipped with military equipment. she then undergoes mini combat trainings and here we go, her dream is about to come true, she joins a supply convoy in blois and on april 22nd, with more than 4000 men, she is headed for orléans.

the arrival of jeanne of arc changes many things.

her faith, her confidence in victory gives hope to the soldiers and to the inhabitants, who are filled with new energy. they manage to win in less than 10 days, 10 days and the english are obliged to give up their plan, which consisted of taking the city and then attacking the south of the loire.

jeanne who comes out of this battle with this image as a victorious, ultra badass woman and just earned her nickname... la pucelle d'orléans (the virgin of orleans).

thanks to her victory in orleans, jeanne thus becomes a kind of national heroine. she represents by her fame and her qualities, a not insignificant asset for the heir in his fight against the english and the burgundians.

but what makes a real difference is less her qualities as a war strategist and more her ability to charm and to galvanise the troops and the inhabitants along the way.

it's quite simple, before jeanne's arrival, the english had a reputation for never losing their invincibility.

and jeanne achieves the feat of restoring confidence in a possible victory.

it gives the impression to the troops that they are going to receive a kind of divine help and it changes everything in the soldiers' minds, all the more so because before her arrival there was a prophecy, who said that a virgin would help defeat the english so when jeanne arrives, everyone thought "it's ok, we're saved"!

jeanne persuades the future king to start a ride to reims who is in the middle of enemy territory, to be crowned.

jeanne thus succeeded in carrying out one of the following missions which were supposedly entrusted to her by the voices she hears; in other words, since she has succeeded, she is necessarily an envoy of god, and that for the mood of the troops, it makes a huge difference.

unfortunately after the time of victories comes the time of defeats.

after the coronation, the king and jeanne no longer really agree. she is convinced that her mission is to keep the english out of france.

the king, for his part, is longing for a little rest.

for example, he does not feel at all capable of taking back paris, while jeanne, a little bit stubborn, goes there anyway and suffers a failure.

on top of that she is wounded, she gets a crossbow arrow in her thigh, moreover, she breaks her sword which had for all victories...

it's a bad sign.

some people think that the virgin is abandoned by god. some time later jeanne went to compiègne, a city besieged by the burgundians and by some english contingents and once again it goes wrong, she is taken prisoner in may 1430, by the burgundians.

she tried to escape, but all her attempts failed and in november of the same year, she was sold to the english. jeanne is then taken to the castle of rouen, where members of the church judge her for heresy.

the trial was to say that charles vii was crowned thanks to a witch, she is also blamed for everything and anything, for dressing in men's clothing,

for deferring directly to god's judgement without going through the church, for hearing the voices of demons and not of saints.

jeanne really plays her life on each of her answers, in addition, she faces accusers totally committed to the english cause on her own when she was only 19 years old.

moreover, the witnesses are obviously not chosen at random, everyone who could speak up for jeanne is under pressure. everything is being done to ensure that she is condemned. finally, she ends up at the stake, on the market square, and we make sure there's nothing left of her body, to prevent it from being turned into holy relics.

and then after the end of the hundred years' war, i.e. almost 25 years later, the church reverses this first court decision. king charles vii wants to wash away the insult that was done to him through this trial and he pushes jeanne's family to ask for a review. pope calixtus iii agreed and jeanne was rehabilitated in 1456. the investigations carried out are more serious, many of jeanne's contemporaries jostle to plead in her favour and even people who had once spoken badly of her finally return to saying good things about her.

the first judgement is broken and the young woman's memory is rehabilitated.

an unusual little fact in the end - many people have not been able to admit that the story of the virgin ends up on a pyre. for them it was impossible, this story was too beautiful, this too extraordinary woman.

and it went far enough that people found stories of women, who a few years later claimed to be the real jeanne.

just imagine them saying stuff like "oh yeah, yeah it's me i didn't burn at all, my face has changed a little bit but it's me, i assure you, believe me, really".

a certain claude des armoises is said to have pretended to be her, in the metz region. after having acquired a certain renown, having been given gifts by former relatives of jeanne; she even went so far as to meet two of the virgin's brothers, who (hold on because it's completely insane) believed her.

they really believed it was their own sister who had died at the stake.

it's a crazy story!

well, we don't really know if they really believed it, or if one pretends to believe it for financial reasons for example.

in any case, this woman, who was talked about everywhere, is unmasked by the king himself, so that this fraud can be stopped.

in the end, i find this story quite unusual.

here are the friends!

i hope it wasn’t too long to read (it probably was) and that you have learned two, three little things on our dear jeanne d’arc. after all, she is one of the most famous women in history!

#ikemen #ikemen games #ikemen series #ikemen spoilers #Ikemen Vampire #ikemen jean #IkeVamp #ikevamp jean #Jean #Jean D'arc #jean route #ikemen vampire jean #jeanne d'arc #history #france #my translation #jean all chapters

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defenderrosetyler · 3 years

Text

A Prince and His Swan Prologue

Words: 1.5k

Warnings: Minor Mention of injury and death

Off we go! Thanks again to @flamencodiva for being Beta and @beskaradberoya for her dividers!!

Sam Winchester and Odette Y/L/N had been friends since they were children. Odette was the only daughter of a widowed king, and Sam was the youngest of King John and Queen Mary of the neighboring kingdom across the oceans. King John and Odette’s father had constant talks of joining their kingdoms during their children’s infancy. It was decided that every summer, Dean, Sam, and Odette would spend the summers together in the hope that Odette would fall in love with one of his sons.

Each summer passed with its own challenges. Odette was polite with the palace staff, while Dean and Sam caused havoc around the palace. John sighed one afternoon as he and the other adults sat around the table playing cards. “Well, at least the children seem to be getting along.”

“Don’t worry, John, this arrangement will click with one of them, I promise.” “It’s a perfect match” Odette’s Father smiled over at the other monarchs,

“Sam, she’s making me play dress up,” Dean groans as Sam shakes his head. “At least she’s not beating you at cards. This is the fifth hand she’s beaten me at.” Odette giggled as she lay out her winning hand.

The summers passed, and before long, all three children were grown. Dean had already had his 18th birthday celebration, and now it was Sam’s turn.

“Father, please, put me down! This is just another ball that I’d rather not be a part of!” Odette argued as she watched all the eligible women and princesses in the kingdom approached the steps of Winchester Castle.

“Odette, my darling child, this match between you and Sam is perfect. You two got along so well all these past summers. Surely you must care for him.” Odette’s father says gently. The father and daughter had a close relationship ever since Odette’s mother had passed at the time of her birth. Sure Odette had her tutors growing up, but she and her father were incredibly close. The elder monarch pulled out a black velvet box and revealed a gold chain, and at the end of the beautiful chain, hung the image of a swan carved into the gold locket.

“Papa, it’s beautiful…” Odette gasped as her father reached around to clasp the golden chain around her neck. The gold accessory shimmered in the light of the hallway, but the symbol of a swan reminded her of her mother as it was her favorite animal.

Down the hall, Sam sighed as he straightened his dress clothes. Clearly, this was a ball set to become an engagement party as his mother had insisted on him wearing the nicest outfit he had. Dean, who was adamant of making sure his little brother wasn’t late, walked over to help him. “Seems like mom invited half the kingdom and all the most abundant amount of single princesses in this kingdom and the next one over,” Dean says chuckling, This made Sam roll his eyes at the elder sibling.

“Maybe I don’t want to settle down yet, Dean. There’s so much of the enchanted forest I haven’t gotten to explore yet. I’ve wanted to visit Snow and Charming, but I haven’t had the time since Mom is so insistent that I get married. She didn’t force you to get married,” he added as an afterthought. Dean scoffed and shook his head. This was true, he wasn’t being forced into a marriage, and he’d thought he would be, given the fact he was the oldest of the Winchester princes.

“You’ll have time for that and so much more, Sam, I promise. Have I ever steered you wrong before?”

Sam let out a sigh, Dean was right there. In being the eldest, he always gave the best advice. Sam gave his brother a friendly smile and nodded. Dean pulled Sam in for a hug and patted him on the back. “Come on, there’s a ball, with food, drink, and women” Dean smirked, saying each word slowly and his grin grew with each word before he was out the door.

Meanwhile, Queen Regina Mills was working on a curse of her own across the enchanted forest, but she was also in contact with the witch that presided over the Winchester Kingdom. Rowena Macleod. Before Sam and Dean were born, Rowena had a decent relationship with King John and Queen Mary, but she was banished immediately when the boys were about a year old when she was discovered working with dark magic. Rowena and Regina had been friends when they were younger.

Rowena snuck inside the palace walls, her dark emerald cloak kept her hidden in the shadows, smirking as she spotted the royal family as well as Princess Odette. Rowena had spies hidden within the palace who would provide her with intel regarding the goings-on at the palace. t wasn’t that hard to figure out the fact that Prince Samuel had a soft spot for Princess Odette Y/L/N.

The growing crowd made it easier to allow Rowena to lurk throughout the party with ease, the entire ballroom filled with gasps and murmurs as Odette made her way into the room. Rowena cleared her throat as she tried to gather Sam’s attention, bowing into a low curtsy, she smiled and stood looking at him, rumor around the palace is that you and Princess Odette are to be engaged, what with you being childhood friends and all,”

Sam nodded hearing Rowena, but he wasn’t truly listening to her. Catching Y/C/H out of the corner of his eye, the prince turned to see her come down the stairs and just looked in awe. How did the annoying child he and Dean had grown up with become someone so beautiful…Sam moved to push past Rowena, moving to stand in front of Odette, smiling as they were standing in the middle of the room, giving her a low bow. In-kind, Odette curtsy’s back.

Without a second thought, Sam was inching towards her and his hand rested on the back of her neck before pressing his lips to hers gently, which to the parents of the pair, made them elated, a loud cry filled the room from King John.

“Arrange the marriage between Prince Samuel and Princess Odette.”

As the words echoed in her ear, Odette pulled back and looked in shock. “What? I-I don’t understand…”

Sam pulled Odette over to a corner so they were alone somewhat. “I don’t understand what the problem is.” “Why do you want to marry me? Because we’re told do, or are you willing to marry me of your own choice.” “Well, you are really beautiful…” Sam says trailing a bit. “What else?”

This made Sam blink a bit. After a moment of hesitation, Odette scoffed and gently pushed past him to leave. “Papa, I’d like to go home.”

Rowena stepped out into the crowd and her red hair was vibrant against the castle light. Her voice was low and she was laughing while the words left her mouth. Eyes gazed upon Odette and her elder father.

“adhair, uisge, teine, talamh gabh an nighean seo agus thoir dhomh mo mhallachd. Air an latha eala air an oidhche na bana-phrionnsa, cha bhi i gu bràth leis an fheadhainn air a bheil gaol aice, gus an tèid fìor ghaol aideachadh aideachadh le fuil.”

Which translated to; ‘air, water, fire, earth take this girl and give her my curse. By day a swan by night a princess, never shall she be with the ones she loves, until true loves confession be spoken with blood.’

Odette’s father moved to pull his daughter behind him after the curse was spoken. John was shouting for his guard to seize Rowena and make sure she was exiled like she should have been. The entire ballroom left the palace in a rush, Odette and her father being pushed along in the crowd. Climbing into their carriage, they rushed towards their kingdom and, hopefully, safety.

The following morning, Sam and Dean were in the library, trying to remember the words to Rowena’s spell the evening before. Rowena being the cunning witch she was, was able to escape and cause an ambush on Odette and her father’s carriage, taking Odette with her where Sam would not be able to find her, leaving the golden necklace in the road. “Sam, you, for the record, are an idiot,” Dean says to his younger brother, who simply glared at him. “‘ Is beauty all that matters,” he says trying to mimic Odette’s tone and rolled his eyes, “and you simply respond with, “What else is there?!’”

“Thank you, Dean, for reminding me for the second time this morning and last night,” Sam snapped, looking up as the head of the guard burst through the library wounded just as Sam was on the page where the spell would be translated. “Hey, Hey, you're alright? What happened?”

“Princess Odette’s carriage was attacked on the road, her father is dead…”

“What?!” Dean gasped. In the guard's hand was Odette’s necklace. Both brothers looked up as a storm was seeming to come in out of nowhere. “What the hell is that?” Sam says. “A wall of purple smoke?”

“That would be Queen Regina’s doing,” Rowena smirked as she stood in the library. See you boys soon, though, you probably won’t remember me anyway.” She chuckled as the smoke enveloped the palace.

Tags:

@simsadventures @mummybear @impala-dreamer @holylulusworld @snffbeebee @saxxxology @akshi8278 @deansmyapplepie @luci-in-trenchcoats @samskia-writes @winchester-fantasies @talesmaniac89 @stusbunker @idreamofplaid @cherrypiebbyblog @cleighwrites @jxackles @flamencodiva @wonder-cole @msmarvelouswinchester @downanddirtydean @janicho88 @lacednleathered

#a prince and his swan #prologue #OUAT crossover

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canonicallysoulmates · 4 years

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Last week Jensen was on Rosenbaum’s podcast, this week it’s Jared’s turn. Just like with Jensen’s I recommend checking Jared’s out it is for free on youtube, I will be linking to it at the end of this post, and I also recommend checking out his first appearance on Rosenbaum’s podcast.

While Jensen’s appearance was recorded in the beginnings of the boys Vancouver quarantine, Jared’s was recorded a little more recently after the boys had resumed production and when they were starting on the final episode nonetheless if you are looking for information regarding Supernatural and/or the final epis you will not find them here, Jared actually didn’t talk much about the show. He did however open up about some topics including his arrest.

Of course, they are two different people whose interviews were done at different moments in time and who got asked different questions but this had a very different feel from Jensen’s; while Jensen’s felt more interview like, this felt very much like a conversation between two friends who’ve known each other for years....the majority of the time.

Here’s the thing, and some of y’all are not gonna like me for this....while the conversation had its deep moments and Jared opened up about some personal stuff it felt to me like a more open version of how he is in conventions. Which is not a bad thing! But it’s not like last time where he was, imo, a version of himself that only those in his circle might get to hear. There was some fuckery people, okay? There was some fuckery and we will be talking about it.

I am going to put a disclaimer here, just in case, that this post is not going to be G*nevieve friendly. Or friendly towards her and Jared’s “marriage”.

Before we get into what Jared said and talked about, I do want to take a minute to acknowledge and say condolences to Rosenbaum and his family, one of his sisters recently passed away after being sick pretty much her whole life.

I also wanna say real quickly that something that I really like, and I would say even respect, about Rosenbaum is how open he is about things and listening to the intro of this “episode” made me realize why it is that he gets his guests to open up so often; I think it’s because he himself is open about his struggles and his issues and he is free of judgement so if you confess to something stupid he’s not gonna judge you for it, he’s also willing to cut things out if his guests ask him too so his guests know they can talk to him and he will understand and not judge them and will respect their privacy and cut something out if they ask it of him so they can talk freely.

Okay, after all that let’s get into what Jared said and talked about in the podcast. FYI, much like in the Jensen post, from here forth Rosenbaum will be referred to as MR for convenience.

- The conversation starts on what I considered to be a funny note with Jared talking about his infrared sauna blanket which he travels with that is such a weird item to travel with I can’t with the white richness of it all but hey we all got our quirks 😂

- After that the conversation turns pretty serious and deep, he talked about Sadie and having to make the decision to put her to sleep. He was tearing up talking about it, and I’m not gonna lie I myself was crying - hell I’m tearing up as I’m writing this not just because I can’t handle seeing this man cry but because I know what he’s talking about, I know that pain, I know what he meant by Sadie looking at him like it was time for her to go, I know what it’s like to be in that room with a beloved pet as they’re taking their last breath...I have had to put two of my cats to sleep in the past and it’s the most difficult and heartbreaking decision one sometimes has to make as a pet owner. 😔

- Something I like about when MR and Jared talk to each other is that they have very similar personalities in some ways and they’re good friends so when they’re talking it very quickly turns into two friends talking to one another which means the conversation is all over the place. In a good way. They got into a conversation about living in the moment and how social media and cell phones can affect that; I, personally, found it fascinating. I love hearing them discuss their different POV’s about these types of topics.

- And here’s where we get to the fake. I’m writing this post at an extremely late hour but I’m determined to get it up before I go to bed and I really wanna go to bed, so I’m gonna try to get through this as fast as possible so strap in cause there’s a lot of bullshit to quickly wade through in this section.

Jared starts praising the fuck out of G like this man was going for it, he was really pilling it on nice and thick. So, there I am watching this with my eyes about to roll right out of my skull wondering what was up with all the fuckery cause there’s being civil and a gentleman and then there was this when a light bulb goes off above my head 💡: When this was filmed, he already knew she had been cast to play his wife on Walker, he probably figured out that by the time this aired either the news would have already been out or would be announced soon so he’s hyping her up in the only way he knows how which works anyways cause the character she’s playing is his wife and her likability is in part going to rely on people overlooking her bad acting and the nepotism to focus on her being married to Jared in real life cause people love when irl couples work together even more when they’re playing a couple. From what I’ve seen it makes people less likely to call out a lack of chemistry cause then they feel like they’re insulting the couple.

He hypes her up using the same script he and Jensen have used in the convention circuit for years when it comes to praising the wives complete with classics such as ‘i’m never home so i never knew she did so much’ and ‘i ask her what i can do and she tells me to take out the garbage’. Nothing new is added to the script, he doesn’t go into details about what makes her amazing or about “all she does” he just pretty much says over and over that she’s incredible and does so much, if he meant it and she really does “so much” why not go into detail? It’d be so easy of him to say something like ‘oh, she’s always making us healthy meals and trying out new recipes’ which can be backed up by her insta because during quarantine she did a bunch of insta stories about cooking and checking out recipe books like goddamn Jared if you’re gonna lay it thick at least put in the effort even I could hype her up better and I don’t even like her.

It all comes off as very insincere, have y’all ever seen somebody talk about the person they love? You can tell in their voice, in their eyes, some even get a fond little smile. It’s actually quite cute to watch but there’s none of that here, even when he mentions G giving birth there’s no emotion there’s no sincerity, it’s like he’s saying all the right things but he doesn’t believe them. It reminds me off- have you ever had someone, maybe it’s a friend or a romantic partner or whatever just someone who you’re introducing to somebody else or a group of people and you really need them to like this person you’re introducing so you start to sell them meaning you just start singing their praises to an over the top extend as if you were a car dealer trying to boost up their merch? Yeah, it’s like that.

I don’t believe for one second that she volunteered to go with him to Van so he wouldn’t be alone like Jared go to somebody else with that story 🙄

I did have to laugh at some parts cause he was laying it on thick as if I didn’t remember and know that he looked miserable in almost all the pics G posted of him from quarantine right from the beginning, and being all ‘she doesn’t have any time for herself’ well clearly she found some time cause she does her little yoga collabs, she’s had her little photo shoots, she’s done a bunch of sponsored ads, she did her clothing collab with Kohl’s, she started a book club clearly she has the fucking time to do things for herself and pursue hobbies. He also said with three kids he didn’t have time for himself which I found funny because I don’t know if y’all remember this but early on in the quarantine Jared and G did a livestream and in it he mentioned several times that he was using his time for phone calls and even way too seriously said he was handling cabin fever by hiding and letting G handle the kids so....

It’s also an interesting contrast between what Jensen said in his podcast appearance because while Jared tried to make it sound as if G had no time for herself and like that’d be impossible with three kids, Jensen pretty much said the opposite, he said that he and D would sometimes take the kids and entertain them so the other one could have some space to do their own thing, and even gave an example of settling the kids with a movie so the parents can have their own space at the same time.

- Moving on from that fuckery, the rest of the conversation was very deep and interesting. He talked about going to therapy and once again mentions being afraid of fucking up his kids, but adds that he’s come to realize that no matter what he does he’s gonna fuck up his kids anyways cause that’s what every parent does even if they’re amazing. This is a statement that I very much agree with it doesn’t matter how amazing a parent is they’re gonna make mistakes and fuck you up.

He talked about his anxiety and his depression and how he doesn’t like to say he suffers from it because it makes him sound like a victim he prefers to say he deals with anxiety.

This is gonna sound so weird but I loved something Jared said about death, MR talked about his anxiety and he said that his psychologist told him anxiety is always in the backseat and a. that is so true I think pretty much anybody who suffers from anxiety can tell you that it’s always there but b. Jared mentioned that he head somebody talk about death the same way, that death is always in the passenger seat but they become a friend. I know for some this might sound concerning or macabre but personally I think this is the best way to think about death not as something to hate but as a friend who is always besides you and that doesn’t mean you’re in any rush to welcome its embrace but it does mean you don’t fear it.

He said that now a days if he wakes up and doesn’t feel anxiety he’s like ‘what’s wrong?’ which honestly relatable af

And I am paraphrasing btw, this is the cliffnotes version of a very deep in-depth part of the conversation between him and MR starting when they’re talking about therapy the whole thing is very interesting I’m not doing it justice.

- Towards the end of the podcast Jared opened up about his arrest. He said he has no real recollection of what happened, he doesn’t know if maybe he was drugged or just got black out drunk but he doesn’t remember the fight he just remembers up to the point of going to his friends bar. He has seen the security tapes of that night, saying he didn’t recognize himself due to the way he was acting. He thinks perhaps because he has been jumped before that maybe he acted on instinct to fight back. It is not something he is proud of and he doesn’t make excuses, he knows he fucked up. He also says he has not drank since then.

I am very proud of him for opening up about this, and for either quitting or limiting his alcohol consumption - quite honestly I’m not sure if he has full on stopped drinking or if he is just limiting himself to only once in a blue moon cause I do know people, hell I am one of these people, I don’t drink 99% of the time but if it’s a special occasion or I’m just chilling with someone I know and they’re having a drink I might have one or a sip or two so technically I don’t drink so I don’t know if maybe that’s what he’s decided to do or if he’s quit alcohol forever, either way I’m very proud of him. I’m proud of him for opening up about this and for talking about his mental health and therapy.

With the exception of some fuckery he really did open up about some things and I highly recommend giving it a listen/watch because when it’s the real him talking it’s a very insightful conversation.

Inside of you | Jared Padalecki

#anti genevieve #not even sure what to tag this as and frankly #i am exhausted #so proper tagging will have to wait for my brain cells to come back #also yes i am aware it is wednesday shush just pretend it's tuesday cause i worked too hard on this to wait till thursday to post it okay?#when i come back after hopefully sleeping more than an hour we'll start our regular wednesday programming #mine #annianvi

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vicecityhq · 3 years

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██████████████]99% LOADING...SUSPECT INTO THE APD DATABASE...

WITNESS(ES) SAY HE REMINDS THEM OF: the last plump dumpling on the plate that you and your friend fight over, the betrayal you feel when you drink a milkshake that’s too cold and get a brain freeze but it’s too good to stop, and the buzzing of a bumble bee flitting from flower to flower. With a slight resemblance to LEE JOOHEON (JOOHONEY) of/the MONSTA X.

CLICK BELOW TO VIEW ENTIRE FILE.

FULL FILE:

Last Name, First Name: Kkul Beol (actually his full name. He doesn’t have a surname) ALIAS: Yellowjacket Realm of birth(if earth, nationality): Divine Realm Age: Unknown, but has lived 26 years in Earth realm Date of Birth: May 20th (aka World Bee Day) Gender: Male Preferred Pronouns: he/him or they/them Species: Spiritual Fairy Occupation: The Howlers, Dealer Sexual Orientation: Pansexual

VISUAL FILE:

Skin Color: Milky, pale Eye color: Varies Scars: None Piercings: Ears, Dimple piercings Tattoos:When he doesn’t have his wings out, they manifest as bold linework that follows along his shoulder blades and down his back. He has a colorful fairy pinup girl on his right inner forearm. A bumble bee design on his left upper arm that blends into a fairy circle tattoo on that inner forearm. Various weeds and flowers on his legs. Hair color: Varies Abnormalities: Since Beol can reinvent his physical form to his liking, his features may change on a whim. However, he does tend to stick to the same form, with only his hair and eye color varying. Transformed form:As a spiritual fairy, Beol’s physical form is only a formality that allows him to better experience the world. His spiritual presence is formless and genderless. It is almost like looking at dust when it catches the light.

PERSONAL FILE:

RELIGIOUS BELIEF: N/A SINS: greed / gluttony / sloth / lust / pride / envy / wrath VIRTUES: chastity / charity / diligence / humility / kindness / patience / justice KNOWN LANGUAGES: Korean, English, Gaelic SECRETS: Beol manages to get out of being prosecuted for his crimes by charming the officers who try to arrest him with his fairy dust or using illusions to escape. SAVVIES: drawing, getting tattooed, playing pranks. Powers & Abilities: fairy dust manipulation, healing, wish granting (but it usually has a hidden caveat), semi-immortality, empathy, energy manipulation and absorption, energy barriers, energy blasts, malleable anatomy/shapeshifting, spirit physiology, illusions, intangibility, possession, telekinesis (via fairy dust manipulation), teleportation. Traits: (positive) chipper, animated, fun-loving and playful. (negative) fickle, impatient, gets petulant when things don’t go his way, doesn’t realize his pranks can be harmful or perhaps he feigns ignorance. Aesthetics: the last plump dumpling on the plate that you and your friend fight over, the betrayal you feel when you drink a milkshake that’s too cold and get a brain freeze but it’s too good to stop, and the buzzing of a bumble bee flitting from flower to flower.

BACKGROUND CHECK:

Date of Birth: May 20th, year unknown Date of Death: N/A Crime Record: Beol knows that he should avoid getting entangled with the authorities at all costs, but his innately mischievous nature contradicts rationality. He rather enjoys skating on thin ice when it comes to getting caught. When he was a “teen,” he often got in trouble for truancy, vandalism, and theft. Now, as an “adult,” he has to be far more conscious about getting caught. He has been charged with possession and possession with the intent to distribute, but - miraculously - has not served any jail time.

Background/Biography:

In a time long ago, Celts used to believe that when a person slept or entered a hypnotic state that their soul left the body in the form of a bee. Sometimes those souls got lost on the way back (or perhaps were detained) and found their way to the divine realm of the fae, where they would become what is known as spiritual fairies. Or at least that was the story Beol’s mother told them, but the reality was that there was no living fae who remembered exactly where they originated. Their mother would affectionately call them their ‘wandering little bee’ because Beol was an adventurous child who could never be tied down in one place. It came as no surprise to them when Beol decided to leave the realm they’d always known and venture out into the human world.

When Beol crossed over to the mortal plane, they embraced the incredibly different way of life with childish wonder and enthusiasm. At first they explored in their spiritual form and enjoyed playing all sorts of pranks on unsuspecting humans, but - as is typical of the fickle nature of fairies - that grew boring quickly. Beol eventually constructed a physical form so they could better interact with others around them. Being a young and playful soul, Beol chose the façade of a school-aged child since their fun-loving antics were very similar to his own. What he didn’t take into account, though, was that a parentless, vagrant child stood out and it wasn’t long before his friend’s parents became concerned for his well-being.

In his naivety, Beol didn’t think much of it when they’d asked where he lived and who looked after him, telling them that he took care of himself and stayed wherever he wanted. That naturally led to the police being contacted and Beol was placed in an orphanage until they could find a family for him. Truthfully, he could have simply flitted off and ventured someplace new, but the idea of living with other kids sounded like an eternal sleepover to him and how could that be bad? Of course, it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies in the system. Many of the orphans came from broken homes and were passed around to fosters that were no better. They’d come back with new scars and bereft of their smiles, their innocence gobbled up by the darkness within others.

Beol couldn’t stand seeing them hurt. He could vividly imagine how they’d gotten each bruise like he’d experienced it himself and felt their anguish like a bottomless pit in the center of his chest. Yet he wasn’t powerless to fight against it like they were and Beol quickly went from using his abilities for harmless fun to avenging his friends. He would go out of his way to be assigned to their previous foster parents and would make sure to traumatize them so much with his illusion magicks that they never dared to take in another child again. While it did make him feel better, his habit of terrorizing parents tarnished his record and made him increasingly difficult to adopt out. Not that that bothered Beol. Sure, it was hard watching his friends eventually leave to go with loving parents, but protecting those that remained had become his responsibility and he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that if he left. Besides, he had parents and didn’t need new ones, even if his counselors never believed him when he told them.

As he “aged” into teenage years, Beol’s outer image evolved to suit his interests and style. He became close with the more rebellious crowd, other lost boys and girls like himself who couldn’t care less about authority or conforming to what society wanted. They spent more time in seedy pc bangs and back alleys sharing a pack of smokes than they did in school or hoping for families that would never accept them. It was around this time that he actually came out about what he really was and where he’d come from, though that identity seemed like a far off memory now. He was no longer a shade wearing the suit of a man and could freely embrace his quirkier side without worrying about anyone disapproving.

INTERVIEW QUESTION (para sample): “Just run us through what happened that night”. - Officer

This charade always amused Beol. Every time he found himself in this position, with an officer staring him down on the other side of the table in the cramped interrogation room, he wondered why their initial play was to put on this veil of ignorance. As if they didn’t already know what he did or have evidence against him. Did it actually work on suspects? He assumed that most people dug themselves into a hole trying to weave a pitiful fallacy with the same gusto as a scared child blaming the broken vase on the cat in the hopes that it would exonerate them. Beol, on the other hand, was a sophisticated liar and not burdened with the pressing need to evade something. He could phase out of the room right before their very eyes, after all. So the only reason he had to deceive them was simply because it was fun.

“Well, I can’t just start with last night, officer. That’s not how good storytelling works.” He countered coyly and rocked the chair back onto the two rear legs so he could kick his clunky boots up onto the table. Dirt and grime broke loose from the deep grooves in the sole and fell onto the open file set out before the policeman who was trying his best to see unperturbed, but Beol relished in the neigh imperceptible way his jawline tensed in annoyance. “It all began when my parents died in a tragic car accident and I was adopted by my rotten aunt and uncle. You know, they always told me my father was a drunk and that the apple wouldn’t fall far from the tree. So at least I’m exceeding someone’s expectations. Anyway, this one day, we went to the zoo for my cousin’s birthday and there was this enormous python-”

#vcaccepted #vchowlers

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calleo-bricriu · 3 years

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I just blew apart the identities of a good 30-ish people on my mom’s side of the family, and it’s a brilliant, wonderful feeling.

There is backstory here, because it doesn’t make sense without it, so grab a snack and get reading. :)

I did the thing I'd sort of half-ass promised my mom I wouldn't do back when I had medical genetic testing done so insurance would cover a few things back in 2016.

That testing was the one where the genetic counselor asked me several times if I was "absolutely sure" I had no Ashkenazi ancestry and after the third time I got a cautious response of, "It's just that you have a lot of markers only found in those populations; the chances of them all being spontaneous mutations are next to zero." then moved on going over the rest of the results.

Insurance ended up covering what it needed to cover, and I had asked my mom about it as she's been really into tracing both sides of the family trees back as far as possible and it's been possible centuries back due to very good paper trails.

She didn't know what I meant by Ashkenazi which is fair enough as most people in the US only know the word because it shows up on medical forms as a yes/no checkbox.

"Jewish. The sort that wasn't just a conversion."

That got a LOOK, and not a confused one a vaguely frightened one and asked where I got that idea.

Told her I had to do medical genetic testing earlier in the year and the genetic counselor had mentioned it and told her in what context.

Got told to "leave it".

Whatever, I'd recently had fairly major surgery anyway so wasn't really in the mood to dig or push about it.

The next year my ex bought one of those "23 and me" type tests for me because I like completely useless things like that, and that one came back with a not insignificant amount labelled Ashkenazi in the mtDNA haplogroup, which would be on my mother's side.

I asked her about it again and showed her two genetic test results, one a formal medical one, and one that had matching genetics that was, you know, not a formal medical set of genetic testing.

Got told to leave it again.

Fine.

She'd also forgotten that she'd added an account I'd made on Ancestry so I could look through the family tree and all the scanned documents (parish records, birth, death, marriage certificates, immigration paperwork, etc...) because it all went back sometimes until the 1600s.

...and I noticed most of went back that far was on my dad's side or on really remote branches of my mom's side.

On her more closely related side, the family she had that emigrated over from Germany in the late 1800s went back to the 1700s, but she's Polish as well.

And the Polish branches stopped at 1930.

They were extensively documented in 1930, with birth certificates, parish records, and immigration papers as they'd all come over to the US from Poland--right around 1930.

For the hell of it, I saved copies of all of that documentation she'd uploaded, and also figured, hey, they're running a 'join for 3 months get a silly DNA kit!' thing, I'll do a third one.

Did a third one.

Got the same results.

Also found that it was less that there was somehow a convenient lack of parish records older than 1930, and parish records don't just disappear, parish records, especially from Europe, are typically very easy to find with minimal difficulty, but I couldn't even find these NAMES earlier than 1930, including the family names.

The thing is, my definitely influenced by being on the autism spectrum special interest period of history is 1900-1945.

One thing you remember, if you do enough more than casual reading, is one of the chief ways Jewish families both got out of Europe more easily AND into the United States more easily in the 1930s was paying to have entirely new identities forged.

New names, new notable dates in terms of births, marriages, etc, and parish records proving they were either Catholic or Protestant. Usually anyone coming from Poland would have gone with Catholic as that's one of Poland's major religions.

Any previous records that would indicate they were anything but Catholic was typically destroyed out of fear of it being dug up and used to deny emigration or immigration (and remember, the United States routinely turned away refugees fleeing Europe if they were found to be Jewish).

So, I went back.

This time, instead of asking, I took the paperwork I'd saved and printed with me, handed it to her, and said, "These are forged. They weren't Catholic. These aren't their names. Does anyone still alive have the older records?"

Her response was, "I thought I told you to leave it!"

"Does anyone alive still remember?"

"...no. Leave it alone."

Turns out, she'd figured it out based on the cutoff date of the records and knowing history in general, but never said anything because, as the conversation later brought up, "It'd throw too many people's identities into chaos." and reiterated multiple times that they converted which, technically true, but it really doesn't...count if you're forced into it out of fear of ending up dead.

That's also the side of the family that, even by 2017, I didn't speak to most of them unless forced to do so because they're a lot of very rural, very right wing, very openly neo nazi jackasses.

That last part? That part is important. That last conversation about it happened in late 2017.

My mother knows me well enough to know that the first set of thoughts through my head absolutely ran along the lines of, "I'm telling these assholes at the next family reunion because they deserve to have their entire belief system and sense of identity shattered."

Also, that's the side of the family when, back around 2012 or so, one of my definitely unpleasant cousins cornered me to talk about the "shared interest" we had in what that dumb motherfucker termed "world war 2" and got his nose broken by the cousin with purple hair and multiple tattoos for saying we had a lot in common so--saying I don't get along with that side of the family is kind of an understatement.

If they're not afraid I'll also break some bone they possess for existing within punching or steel toed boot kicking range, they openly dislike me, which is fine, it's a very mutual feeling.

And there was a long talk of, "Could you not? Just ignore them, they're stupid, but they're harmless." which was mostly "it's kind of a hassle when you physically assault one of your asshole cousins at a picnic".

By that point I rarely went to those things anyway as free food didn't make up for having to listen to them say words where I could hear them so, whatever, I told her I wouldn't say anything.

Most of them hadn't spoken to me in years anyway but a few of them stayed in spotty contact on Facebook and in an often not used outside of planning reunions group that they'd invited me to join partially so it looked like they were 'making an effort' and also because the place we use for those stupid family reunions is owned by my parents (and I'm also on the deed) so I'd be one of the few people that would have a legal right to tell them all they weren't allowed to be on the property.

I accepted the invitation, just never really paid attention to it because, again, I do not like these people on any level.

Turns out, this evening, I stopped thinking they were even remotely harmless and was reminded that they still existed because they started using that group as their apparent safe space to talk about their views on current events; it’s very possible they may have forgotten I was even in the group as they added me close to 3 years ago and I’ve never posted anything.

So, I’m sitting there after work, watching these absolute shitstain excuses for people be smug about some imagined ‘win’, and I decided to remind them I still exist.

My first, last, and only post to the group: "FYI, none of your grandparents were Catholic. They were all Jewish. You're all ethnically Jewish. See you in July! :)" posted all of my genetic test results, the family trees where they were all included because, shocker, we're all related, scans of the forged records with large notations over all the forged information, and left the group.

Blocked the rest of them, and let them blow my phone up for awhile with calls I didn't pick up, texts I didn't read, and voicemails I didn't listen to--and blocked their numbers as well.

Earlier in the evening I mentioned in Discord that I was probably going to hear from my mother about it and I did (they’d long since removed my dad from the group over the MAGA hats in the firepit thing that happened last July, and my parents share a Facebook account), but it was a short and lovely text exchange of:

"What did you do?"

"I told them."

"Oh. Well, they're all assholes anyway. We should be back on Friday."

Also, nobody is going to see them in July because LAST July after they turned up after my parents told them there wasn't going to be a reunion due to Covid, about 30 of them showed up and that was the summer that I got the text from my mom asking if I was going to stop by.

"How many MAGA hats are out in the yard?"

"Hang on, I'll ask your dad."

20 minutes later:

"About a dozen."

"How many would I be able to throw in the fire pit before it'd cause an issue?"

"Hang on, I'll ask your dad."

20 minutes later, and a reminder for those who don't know, my dad is 6'8", built like a tank even in his 70s, and has a white beard down to his waist (Pointless bonus: When he was younger it was orange and his hair was a slightly darker orange than his dad’s was.). Ex-Navy Vet, took a fish bait he was grinding hooks on to the EYE a couple years ago and just sort of calmly walked upstairs to say, “I think I need you to drive me to the ER.” to my mom (whose response was to start laughing and tell him she TOLD him to put safety goggles on so they’re both a little...odd.) about it, not generally the sort of person anyone wants to even begin to fuck with despite the fact that he’s incredibly calm and even tempered:

"8 and they all left about five minutes ago."

#ooc #politics #I NPC those jackasses all the time as relatives that Calleo either generally fucks with and occasionally kills #they definitely deserve that treatment in fiction too #family #I got to shatter the general identities of at least 16 people tonight #and do not regret it #30 if you count their spouses and older children #16 if it's the actual direct cousins #long post

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ambientstars · 4 years

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Can we please get the one with fire posted first? I’m curious! 🤔

A dance between fire and love (13th Doctor x reader)

Warnings: character death (and I guess fire? If that’s not obvious)

Note: I can only apologise for this. My heart hurts too and I’m gonna go sit in the corner now and think about what I’ve done. - - -

Today was the day. The end of the world. It had been a long time coming, inevitable.

The Master had finally done it, beat his own record of truly horrific acts. He knew just how precious Earth was to The Doctor, so in his spite, he set the entire planet on fire and stole the TARDIS so that you, The Doctor or anyone else couldn’t escape from the now burning rock.

You and The Doctor took shelter in your home, more specifically your bedroom, the fire coming into view just over the hill. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The surrounding fields adorned by tall, proud sunflowers were engulfed in flames. The once green grass turned to soot on the burnt ground. The fire travelled quickly, making a path to the cabin. Who knew how long you had left? Neither of you wanted to take a guess.

The Doctor moved across the room towards your record player and silently looked through your collection, using her fingers to quickly and carefully move the sleeves along in search of the perfect song.

Despite your lack of time before the fire caught up to you, she took her time. She remained calm, composed, something that gave you a slight bit of comfort in your pounding chest.

“Dance with me.” She reached out her hand once she had chosen a record, her smile soft and the music light.

You knew that inside, she was scared. Scared for the destruction, the pain, the loss of her favourite planet, but most of all, scared of losing you.

It went without saying that although she’d most likely suffer some damage to her body, either externally from the flames or internally from the smoke, she would regenerate and go on living.

She’d be scared and alone on a planet turned to soot with no way out. No hand to hold or shoulder to cry on, no one to talk to or grieve with.

Sure, she could walk the world in search of parts to slowly build another machine, but even that wasn’t guaranteed to work and where would she go after that? Her home had been turned to rubble, just like this one was becoming, and her reliable ship had probably been dismantled by force by now, the poor thing.

After countless years and multiple attempts, The Master had finally succeeded in bringing her the worst torture she couldn’t even bring herself to dream of.

You took the offered hand and allowed her to pull you close, your bodies flush against each other. Her arms encircled you, holding you tighter than she probably meant to and so you held back with the same vigor.

The hot air gently whirl-winded around you as you danced in slow circles. Heads on shoulders, chests together, fingers entangled. Your feet effortlessly moved in perfect rhythm, never missing a beat.

You both had your eyes closed, but you could see as clear as day. The Doctor projected images into your head and you saw the precious memories, the countless laughs and every opportunity you had snapped up to be with each other, dropping everything to have each other close.

It was bittersweet, reliving the memories and enjoying the feeling they brought you, but also knowing that you’d never get the chance to make more.

Your adventures had been incredible. You’d seen the world from outer space, met species unknown to mankind and watched the stars die and fade, only for a new one to be birthed in its place to shine for an unfathomable amount of years.

The melody of the song began to fade against the crackling and the roaring of the wall of flames, now just outside the window.

You squeezed your eyes even tighter shut, willing your ears to focus on the words, mumbling along to keep the concentration.

The Doctor had played this song on board the Tardis before and just like now, she had asked you to dance. As uncoordinated as she was, when she let her body move freely, she moved with a smoothness that could only come from a soul completely fuelled by happiness.

You had danced with her for hours, staying close and moving slow. It was intimate and full of love, skin innocently on skin and smiles pressed into each other’s shoulders. You would miss that day the most, the day you really connected with The Doctor on a deeper level.

The glass of the window nearest to you shattered into small pieces, the wooden frame allowing the fire to enter your safe haven.

Both of you flinched at the ear splitting sound, but didn’t dare let go or lift your heads.

Hands gripped sides tighter, breathing became quicker and sweat began to bead on goosebump adorned skin.

The smell of burning overcame your nose, the polished wood of the cabin walls, the soft fabric of bed sheets and the chemical bubbling of plastic - all of it burning into cinders.

“Doc,” you whispered, not daring to bring your voice up to the volume of the destruction around you. “I love you.”

Salty tears stung The Doctor’s eyes as they welled up. Her throat tightened, the pain hardly noticeable over the ache in her heart. “I love you, more.”

You had spent many years joking around about where you would end up when you died, always hinting that you would be spending the rest of your afterlife with the big man downstairs, but here in this moment you were truly scared that it would come true.

The Doctor was pure, full of light and the only goodness you had known in this world of pain and ugliness, she was definitely going somewhere meant for angels, but would you be joining her? You silently prayed that you would.

“Was I a good enough person to get into heaven?”

Your movements slowed, the dance confined to a small corner that the fire hadn’t reached yet. Smoke was filling the air, the oxygen travelling to and from your lungs grew thick, irritating the soft flesh of your insides.

You knew that The Doctor didn’t believe in all that. She had travelled across the universe right until the end, she had gone in every direction possible and she made it very clear that all there is after life is darkness and sleep, no heaven or hell. Only stars and space, and the souls of passed ones between them.

“You know I-“

“I need to know.” Coughs forced their way up your throat, the metallic taste of blood tinged your tongue as the delicate lining of your oesophagus tore from the pressure. “Please.”

The Doctor could feel herself becoming light-headed, her concentration on the song, that had changed to something slower, slipping more and more with every second.

“Yes, of course!” She wanted to elaborate, describe all of your incredible qualities, let you know that wherever you went, she would go too - but her words failed her, her mind swimming in a smoky haze.

You decided not to argue, you didn’t want your last moments with your best friend to be used up disagreeing.

Your feet began to trip over each other, legs weakening, the dance uncoordinated, barely one step at a time. You both knew this moment was coming and accepted your fate, but neither of you were prepared for just how gut wrenching the feeling of slowly falling apart in each other’s arms would be.

You were the first to fall, your weak knees giving out. You hit the ground with a thud, your protective reflexes unable to do their job with the lack of clean oxygen in your system.

The Doctor quickly followed, bracing herself on her hands just in time to not hit her head on the floorboards. Even the body of a timelord couldn’t withstand the blaze of annihilation.

Her eyes snapped open in reaction, but her vision remained black as the room was completely full of thick, dark smoke, and in her surprise she inhaled the poison deeply, her lungs rejecting it with violent coughs.

Your hand blindly grabbed hers and she held on tight. Deciding she’d be more comfortable lying on the floor where she wouldn’t have to use up all her energy just to keep herself steady, she laid down next to you, the person she loved so dearly, your shaking hands keeping contact.

You couldn’t hear the music now, not over the roaring of flames and the cracking and crumbling of wood. You wondered briefly what The Doctor’s favourite song was and if you’d even be able to understand it.

The roof fell in on itself in the corner of the room opposite you, the force shooting settled dust and soot back up into the air. You watched absentmindedly as it floated back down again, feeling some fall onto your face and knowing that you were breathing it all in with every shallow breath.

“Look at me.”

You used all your strength in your rapidly weakening body to turn your head and look at The Doctor. Her face was almost unrecognisable with it covered in smoke residue and ash, her hair frizzy from the humidity of the atmosphere.

Under her eyes were wet spots and you knew that she had been trying her best to hold back tears, but a few had slipped past. The crease between her brows was deep with concern, but she smiled reassuringly anyway, her teeth sparkling white in contrast to the rest of her face.

“You’re gonna be okay.”

“You’re a bad liar.” You laughed a little, but it only encouraged a cough to tear at your chest, followed by another and another.

The Doctor patted your back to assist as if it would help, but you appreciated the gesture and it was nice to have her hand on your back again.

She moved hair away from your eyes, her thumb stroking your cheek ever so gently. “I’m sorry.”

Your head pounded and your insides burned, your body becoming useless and the taste of metal sat heavily on your tongue.

“Not your fault.”

She shook her head, rejecting the statement like it was a lie. “If I had just fought harder against him. If I had just kept you safer. If I-“

“Doctor,” now it was your turn to comfort her. “You couldn’t have done anything more.”

Again she shook her head, but this time remained quiet, her bottom lip between her teeth.

Your vision was starting to blur at the edges. “What will you do next?”

As she began talking, your hearing gave out. Your eyes fell completely closed and you couldn’t move your muscles. You wondered if you were even still breathing.

Already you missed her voice, her northern accent and the hundred words per minute. It would always bring you comfort in your hardest moments and right now was definitely one of them.

It was quiet now, peaceful. The darkness had taken you in, holding you close in a thorough hug that relaxed your soul and allowed you to fall limp against it.

You were calm at last and blissfully content. You felt as light as a feather and your thoughts were finally clear and free from pain.

It felt just like those last few seconds before falling asleep in bed. All cosy and warm, quiet and numb, your mind winding down into unconsciousness.

The last thing you remembered thinking about was The Doctor. How she had saved you from a life of evil and shown you the wonders of the universe, and that you could live a wholesome and fulfilling life just like you had dreamed of.

You hoped that whatever may come to her now, it was good. If you could feel in this moment, you knew that there would be a pain in your heart at the thought of her continuing to suffer and cry all alone, she was the last person who deserved that.

She didn’t believe in angels, said they were a fairytale, but you made the decision in your final moments before nothingness, that you would be her guardian and protect her for as long as she was still breathing. And even after then.

#13th doctor #doctor who imagine #jodie whittaker #doctor x master #thirteenth doctor x reader #13th doctor x reader #thirteeth doctor

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adsfdgsd · 3 years

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thanksjro · 4 years

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More Than Meets the Eye #8- I’m Sorry, the Domain Name thebomb.com is Already in Use

It’s been a hot minute since we last got to focus on the Scavengers- ah, the chaotic nature of comic print schedules! Luckily, we’ve got a Story So Far to remind us where we left off.

Our issue starts 10,000 years in the past, where Fulcrum is riding in a plane and preparing to drop with his fellow K-Cons. It’s crowded, there’s a guy crying in the corner, everyone’s wearing the same outfit, and no one’s got time to go home and change. How embarrassing!

Torque’s never heard of personal space, as is made apparent by his power-stance pelvic thrusting here. Fulcrum is less than impressed by this show of bravado, but there’s no time to dwell on it because it’s time to jump the glory of Megatron.

At least one of them is having a good time.

In the present day, the Scavengers are freaking the hell out, because as it turns out, it’s THEM who’re afraid of the DJD.

Krok keeps trying to reach his old squad, as if anything short of Megatron himself would be able to save them from the horrible death coming their way, while Flywheels grapples with his faith and inferiority complex at the same time.

Spinister brings up a decent point, despite Misfire’s earlier claim that he’s the stupidest creature in the universe- Misfire is kind of an asshole, so anything he says involving just about anything should be taken with a grain of salt- but the problem is, nobody in their right mind would incriminate themselves to the DJD if they could help it. Also, everyone knows that Tarn’s got his head way too far up his own ass to have any sort of rhyme or reason for anything he does beyond the 𝕒𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕥𝕚𝕔.

Krok leans on his career as a military strategist to come up with a few ideas, and the boys decide to fight the DJD, after so much bitching and moaning.

But the DJD… the Decepticon Justice Division… are also Decepticons. Crankcase, are you gatekeeping here, my dude? Because I don’t think this is an internet debate you’re going to win.

The fellas decide that they’ll do what they do best, and use what’s been laying around in the dust and blood for thousands of years to fight off some of the scariest folks in the galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?

Over on the Lost Light, Chromedome and Skids are having a secret rendezvous at the oil reservoir, in secret and behind Rewind’s back, as Chromedome proceeds to call Skids handsome. No, they aren’t having a secret love affair, but are instead going to mnemosurgery the shit out of Skids. Rewind doesn’t like that Chromedome is still doing this, but what Rewind doesn’t know won’t hurt him, surely. We’ll find out just why exactly Rewind isn’t a fan of Chromedome’s line of work later on, but for now it’s time to dig around in a hot guy’s brain.

Just kidding, it’s Scavenger time.

The Scavengers have set up a trap for the DJD, and that trap is Grimlock; still locked in his stasis pod, they’re pulling a “rigged box and stick with a piece of cheese inside” maneuver. Let’s see how this plays out.

Hmm. That’s not a great start.

The Peaceful Tyranny lands, Tarn transforms, comes down the gangplank, transforms, waxes poetic about the brilliance of the Decepticon copy writers, transforms, drives 15 feet, transforms, then, after clearly stating that the big stasis pod in the middle of nowhere is a trap, opens it anyway.

Never has a nut-punch been more deserved than in this exact moment.

Grimlock has a strong start, but almost immediately begins to flag, as he’s put down by Tesaurus. This is why we do warmups prior to rigorous exercise, people!

Misfire tries to sneak off while Tarn’s distracted whispering into Grimlock’s ear like one would a lover, but that doesn’t really work out.

Back over on the Lost Light, Chromedome’s having a time and a half trying to parse just what the hell’s going on with Skid’s head. All his memories from the last year aren’t lost, but rather destroyed, which is concerning to say the least, only leaving a need to escape. There’s also some nasty beast in Skid’s more distant past that Chromedome can see. However, it would seem that Skid’s brain took the out when it saw one and buried that nightmare so deep it’ll take multiple sticks of dynamite to wiggle it loose, so Chromedome’s leaving it where it is.

What this tells me is that Rung has no business referring patients to Chromedome for treatment, if this is how we’re meant to handle repressed memories. Remember back in issue #6, when Fort Max claimed he didn’t remember what happened in Garrus 9, and Rung was all “oh let me just call my guy Chromedome and have him stir your brain around like a martini”? Turns out, either that’s a terrible idea and Rung hasn’t paid attention to the work that half his coworkers on Kimia were involved with, or he was making an empty threat, which doesn’t seem like great practice for a therapist.

Pretty fucked up of you, Rung.

Anyways, Skids is less than thrilled by this, and demands Chromedome do it anyway, which Chromedome promptly refuses. He’ll play around with his own life, but not his friends’. Skids walks off in a huff, because I guess no one’s ever refused his pretty ass anything before, but asks a question before he leaves.

Well, I’m sure that won’t be a major plot point later on.

Let’s check back in with the Scavengers.

Between Tesaurus’ line here, Tarn harassing Grimlock, and Skids’ asking Chromedome why he pulled out during their secret meeting, this is probably the most sexually-charged issue of MTMTE so far.

Flywheels’ only purpose as a character was so that Roberts had a stand-in for the word “fuck” last issue. Sorry, dude, you’ve done your job. Off to the shredder with you!

No time to worry about him, Krok, because it’s time for your face mask treatment at the universe’s shittiest spa.

The worst part about this is the fact that he’s being held a full nelson by the DJD’s record-keeper, who turns into a fucking chair and doesn’t even have eyes. Oh, the indignity of it all.

Misfire tries to save Krok, but all he manages to do is prove that his nickname isn’t ironic in the slightest. Then he’s attacked by a dog.

That shadow being tossed towards the horizon in the background is Crankcase, who lands right about where Fulcrum’s been hiding this entire time, like the giant coward he is, as he watches these guys who tried to steal his organs get murdered to death. He runs off, and Crankcase plays to stereotype and gripes about the whole situation, until he notices something above him.

Then he immediately drops dead, because as it turns out Misfire wasn’t exaggerating when he said Crankcase would die if he ever even thought about smiling.

Over in Tarn’s soliloquy corner, he’s managed to stab his thumb so hard into Grimlock’s throat it’s literally bleeding, as he trash talks the Scavengers, calling them the “six biggest failures of all”. Harsh. Grimlock’s not contributing to the diatribe, probably because there’s a hole in his throat that’s about where a trach would go.

Then Tarn has a bit of a problem, as he’s stepped on by a robot that’s roughly twenty times bigger than him.

I guess Crankcase must be the sixth worst Decepticon, because he’s gotten himself hooked up with this massive Jaeger Cybernought, one of the many that are strapped to the back of the Worldsweeper they found last issue. It’s a big friggin’ ship, we can forgive the oversight.

The DJD aren’t impressed by this new toy, and almost immediately take it down. Tarn, really starting to get peeved off about not getting to what they actually came here to do, yells for Fulcrum to show himself. Fulcrum, as it turns out, has managed to climb on top of the Worldsweeper, and is at least a few hundred feet above them. Because none of the DJD can fly, they have no choice but to listen to Fulcrum’s little speech.

Fulcrum was forged at the height of the Decepticon Empire, when the rhetoric was more “space eugenics sucks” and less “murder everything while Megatron has weird sexual tension with Optimus in the background”. Of course, they were still hunting organic species to flex, so maybe things weren’t perfect… though it isn’t like Fulcrum minded that aspect. Dude’s a little space racist.

Spacist.

The way Fulcrum sees it, folks like Tarn went and fucked up a good thing by being all murderous and violent just because they could, unlike his good pals the Scavengers, who are only murderous and violent when it’s necessary. “Necessary” is a word that’s played with kind of fast and loose with them, mind you, but they seem like pretty swell guys to Fulcrum. They’re definitely better than the DJD.

With one last “fuck you” to Tarn, Fulcrum takes a running leap off the top of this astonishingly huge ship and finally reveals just why exactly K-Cons aren’t known for doing fear.

Because who the fuck has ever asked a bomb how it’s feeling?

Everyone clears the area, as he hits the ground… and nothing happens. Fulcrum is marked off the List, the Scavengers are added, and the DJD fuck off without checking that their target is actually dead so they can go find Overlord and kick his ass.

Fulcrum’s fine, by the way.

This is why we check our work, Tarn.

Fulcrum, who is, again, a bomb, is a bit curious as to what’s happened here. Turns out, prior to the boys riffling through his torso for spare parts, Spinister- master surgeon Spinister- removed the explosive charge tucked up against his robot liver. Fulcrum is amazed by this news, because it’s apparently a super hard thing to do.

Are we sure that Spinister isn’t just super nearsighted? The world’s been described as a series of vaguely hostile shapes, is he playing it safe and attacking the things he can’t figure out within a few seconds? Maybe all that hand-staring he does is to gauge how shitty his vision is on a day to day basis, and everyone just assigned him Stupid At Birth because trying to understand our friends is for losers.

Then again, we should also remember that everyone in the Scavengers is so incredibly stupid, they couldn’t figure out between the five of them that Fulcrum had been alive while it was happening. Spinister probably wasn’t gentle with that procedure since he thought he was working with a corpse; for all we know, Fulcrum’s got his sparkcase inside-out now.

Crankcase carries poor, faceless Krok over, and Fulcrum laments on the fact that Krok’s squad never turned up. Crankcase implies something ominous about Krok’s method of communication with his old squadron, then we get the skinny on Fulcrum’s whole deal.

Yes, yes, I know B’lahr 39 is a reference to Wizard of Oz actor Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion. I caught that one before I’d even checked TFWiki for interesting notes on this issue. I was a film major in college, I’m legally required to know every single bit of trivia about the Wizard of Oz. It’s the second thing they beat into you, right after watching Citizen Kane for the 87th time.

Also, how many nerds are going to be in this series? Fulcrum’s a technician, Krok’s a strategist, Spinister and 3/4 of the Lost Light are doctors in some form or fashion, Tarn’s a friggin drama kid, the list goes on.

When Fulcrum was caught, the original plan was to have him tortured and killed at Styx, a Decepticon penal colony, when plans changed and he got reformatted along with everyone else in the joint to be a suicide bomber.

If Fulcrum seems like a bit of a generic name for a giant space robot, it’s probably because it is. Fulcrum’s original alt-mode wasn’t a bomb- in fact, I have no idea what it’s meant to be. Word of God makes the claim that he turned into a leg prior to getting K-classed, but since Combiner teams have to be made in this continuity, that’s not what he came into being as. He’s got a tiddy window like Rung- something that will be more apparent when Josh Burcham is replaced by Joana Lafluente as the primary colorist for the comic run- but that seems more indicative of having minimal armor than any sort of alt.

Anyway, there’s something in the reformat to K-Con that compels one to switch to bomb mode when you jump ship- but it didn’t happen for Fulcrum, because he was so unbelievably terrified that he might have actually defied biology.

The others have stopped listening by this point, and have joined Spinister in poking the still-prone Grimlock with a stick. Misfire, in the first show of something like empathy we’ve really gotten from him, asks the fellas to help the poor guy up.

Sure, make the guy who’s a stiff breeze away from cracking in half lift the biggest motherfucker on this planet. Sounds like a plan.

Misfire does his damnedest to communicate to Grimlock that they come in peace.

Behold, the price of nostalgia!

This isn’t exactly where we left Grimlock last time he was in an IDW publishing. The last guy to have his hands on everyone’s favorite dinobot was Simon Furman, and he was a lot more well-spoken there. It would seem that no one got out of Garrus 9 unscathed.

This development is a bit of a problem for the Scavengers, who now aren’t quite sure what to do with a infamous warrior-bastard who’s mentally regressed to the point that he’s got to think about what his own name is. To be fair, most people wouldn’t know what to do in that sort of situation. Doesn’t help that the guy who usually has the braincell is currently passed out from face-based puncture trauma.

Misfire decides that they’ll take Grimlock along with them for collateral, and everyone is so impressed by him actually planning something out, they forget to think about the logistics of housing a whole entire T-Rex.

The guys, I guess just leaving Grimlock and the unconscious Krok in the dirt, go to find what’s left of Flywheels- basically the hips down is still intact. After a few kind words, the final rites are performed.

You will be missed, Flywheels, clearly.

You never see the Autobots resorting to cannibalism like this. Maybe they��re just better at making it not look like a vulture swarm.

Many, many months later, long after the Scavengers have left the planet of Clemency, a lone figure visits what’s left of dear Flywheels- it’s the Necrobot. That’s right, the Robo-Reaper is real, and it looks like he’s been busy.

…Spoilers, Necrobot! Come on!

After the story proper, we get a Meet the ‘Cons page. Let’s take a gander, shall we?

No.

NO.

NO!

I draw the line at this motherfucking sniper rifle having a college degree. What possible scientific field of study could he possibly-

It’s ballistics. He studied ballistics, didn’t he?

You know what? Fuck this, actually. See y’all later.

…Fuck you, Vos.

#transformers #jro #mtmte #issue 8 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing

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heckyeahepithetswitched · 4 years

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candaru liveblogs reading her own writing: episode 5

redwood arc let’s go

for some reason I remember spending a really long time on this intro; like, the words weren’t coming out right and I couldn’t even think of an opening scene (not that what I ended up with was great)

...but this whole page is my favorite scene xD

it also took a while but when I realized “wait this is the swap version of my brotp” I knew I just needed to dig a little to find a golden dynamic and then boy did I

these two are idiots and I need to talk about them more often

the change from “preferred extracurricular activities” was changed to “astronomy signs” since... let’s face it... most of Percy’s dialogue could remain untouched and still fit swap!Sylvie, so I tried to find excuses to at least change the flavor to be sleep-related when possible

in another screenwriting book I read about how change in location can make a scene much more interesting

so everybody thank the author of that book for the birth of boxer!Molly (because I wasn’t sure where she lived yet and this was a good vague way to dodge showing her room)

(very mild tw below)

this was supposed to just make her vague and mysterious (like how Ramsey is originally shown in silhouette) but I think I accidentally just made her even more attractive

whoops

not as good as the line “well, I do have an... EYE for these things,” but the joke here is that Zora is an antique.

once again I love lines that are like “wait hold on—” and nope we’re just continuing into the scene, never gonna address that again

it actually took me a while to decide which of Molly’s girls got to take Fred’s role; at first I felt it should be Phoenicia or Trixie since they are her best friends, but later on I knew that whoever it was would have to get themselves stuck in the woods somehow, and since the “car crash” joke isn’t funny without— well, Car Crash— I had to find another way to basically leave them immobile for Detective Sylvester to find. Not knowing much about Trixie and Phoenicia, it was hard to come up with a way to do that without involving a bunch of other people (which I’d then have to get rid of before Sylvie came in), so I ended up going with Death Cap since

1) I needed someone with an epithet,

2) I already had the idea that she had mushrooms that could knock someone out via spores, and

3) Jello was probably joking about the “mushroom girl is the final boss” thing so he’s not gonna invalidate my made-up epithet

...on a related note, “Fiona Boss” is a lame pun on “final boss.” You’re supposed to say it with an Italian mobster accent.

I also decided (...back in the Museum Arc but shhhhh) since there’s no canon voice for mushroom girl, it would be cool to have her be mute.

and I was right. it IS cool. mute characters are awesome.

my beta reader thinks swap!Bugsy and Arnold are more interesting than their original counterparts and... I actually kinda have to agree

then again Bugsy and Arnold are my least-favorite canon characters so I may be biased

this ongoing bit is probably one of those jokes that was more fun to write than to read, but I really did have a fun time writing all their constant bickering

yeah I debated whether or not I was allowed to use this gimmick for a LONG time and eventually decided yeah, heck it

kid!Zora is largely responsible for how involved I got with this fandom; I have literally never been this active in any fandom, ever, with people latching so hard onto the ideas that I put out and then making their own works out of them and continually spinning this bigger and bigger web of fanworks and love for these characters

what was I talking about I don’t remember

So, there’s actually quite a bit to this line! In the original, Ramsey says:

“The make alone is pretty nice. ‘Bout 60 years old— Eh, 65, give or take. ‘Prolly worth at least a few thousand bucks.”

As you’ll notice, Ramsey was correct in his estimation— but Zora is even more accurate, because her Epithet lets her tell the age of an object down to the minute. She rounds to half a year for Molly’s sake. And the use of “pesos” rather than “bucks” (slang for American money) was 1) to imply that different forms of currency still exist in EE, and are slowly merging together like the languages did, and 2) as a small shoutout to the ethnicity headcanons of my Zora friends (before Jello actually confirmed her ethnic makeup publicly).

this is code for “I’ll decide Molly’s motivations to join the BB later”

*puts my hand to the screen longingly*

ms lockhart you’re one of my favorite characters and you weren’t even in the show

I’ve stated this on record NUMEROUS times but I can never say it enough

Eros is Percy’s weird uncle figure

I tried REALLY hard to stick with characters’ canon powersets, but in some instances it was absolutely necessary for them to fulfill their roles (i.e. here and with swap!Percy in the museum). anyway people seemed to really dig Daydream so that’s cool

Mela is a reference to Doctorsleepytime’s blog but he never read the scripts :”)

before I had a deadline it was really hard for me to find motivation to work on the scripts and VP Gorou ended up being my sole biggest motivator because I knew batsy would love him and I also knew batsy would actually read the scripts

thanks batsy

the Banzai Bees all having Howie’s disposition but a fierce loyalty to this big soft donut man is probably one of the purest things in the Redwood scripts, if not the purest

we never actually see Molly go fully feral in the museum scripts so it’s fun that we get to here. in my head she’s got the frazzled hair, the foaming at the mouth, all of it. do not mess with Molly.

to take the place of the mildly-customized Banzai Blasters, I needed some mildly-customized Worker Bees

I ended up using the OCs I created once on a whim

I died when I realized I had an excuse to make mistew wamsey canon

I had to add the Jenga tower because I realized Ramsey never fired a gun for Sylvie to hear hgksdaflghdsf

would you believe me if I told you I almost had Zora turn into a kid (and then continue pretending to be one for the majority of the scripts) to convince Sylvie into letting her go

you all know I hold the highest respect for Mr. Blaber as an incredibly skilled creative writer but even legends make mistakes and this is me calling him out on a poor choice of analogy

yes I see how it’s related because it’s about saving/catching the many vs saving/catching the few but STILL

zora: wait you can be a cop and also a good person?? wack

at first when I realized “wait, banzai VPs are supposed to work in pairs,” I was worried that I’d have to find another character to accompany Gorou

but then I realized having a partner who made him do all the dirty work and never went out with him was the most Gorou-like solution possible

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE LINES THAT’S FUNNY IN CANON BUT THEN THE SWAPPED VERSION IS SO MUCH WORSE

I wanted to emphasize how swap!Sylvie’s just a little bit less pure than canon!Percy. Percy immediately refers to Ramsey as “partner” once they start working together, even though he’s a criminal, whereas Sylvie at this point still very much sees Zora as a means to an end. It’s a small difference, but it’s there.

oh yeah I forgot to talk about how I ended up with an uneven number of characters to swap so instead of doing some weird three-way swap with Howdy, I just gave his role to the cat

and honestly that was one of the best decisions I ever made on the Redwood scripts

#candaru liveblogs reading her own writing #epithet switched

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ruinins · 3 years

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— ϟ › ( bae suzy, cis woman, she/her ) ⋆ you know , the gossip in london is insidious , and gossip about a HALFBLOOD ( SEER ) like SYBILL TRELAWNEY seems to constantly be afloat. what i know for a fact , though , is that they’re a TWENTY THREE year old DRAGONOLOGIST who graduated as a RAVENCLAW from HOGWARTS. someone they went to school with told me that roaring flames just tenderly brushing your cheek, the subtle wrongness of a reflection in the mirror, crackling records playing on a phonograph, the gentle flickering light of a firefly, and a million glittering pieces of a broken crystal ball & THE LOVERS always reminded them of HER. maybe that’s why the WITCH has publicly declared their allegiance to NO ONE ?

NAME : sybill trelawney ( no middle name ). NICKNAMES : none, technically, but she does have a korean name she uses at work—sihyeon—which her mother gave her. DATE OF BIRTH : march 9th, 1958. HOGWARTS HOUSE : ravenclaw. ZODIAC SIGN : pisces sun, scorpio moon, sagittarius rising / year of the dog. AGE : twenty - three. GENDER / PRONOUNS : cis woman & she/her. SEXUAL ORIENTATION : bisexual, biromantic. PLACE OF BIRTH : belfast, ireland. EYE COLOR : dark brown. HAIR COLOR : black. HEIGHT : 5’4. SCARS : scar on her lower back ; burn scars littering her arms. ETHNICITY : korean. PARENTS : trelawney, silvius ( father ); trelawney, victoria née kang ( mother, muggle, † ). SIBLINGS : only child. MARITAL STATUS : single. OCCUPATION : dragonologist. LANGUAGES : english, korean, some mandarin chinese.

CARD CORRESPONDENCE: sybill’s card is the lovers, reversed, representing her doubts in herself, her career, the people who surround her, and how cynical she’s become.sybill has always been littered with self-doubt. for herself, for the lineage she’s been born into, for her dubious gift that everyone insists isn’t really there. having no one believe in you takes a toll on a witch. she’s haunted by a need that never leaves her, a need to prove herself and her sight, a need that has only worsened with time ( no one knows how nauseating it feels, to face a portrait of the great cassandra trelawney after receiving a dreadful in divination ). there’s something to be said about fake it until you make it, but sybill never quite manages to make it. slowly, the doubt has been sinking its claws into her, and she’s been shrinking away from her wants and focusing more on other things, practical things––her aimless job, her aimless life.

until recently, sybill wandered through life with a certain naivete. it’s served her well, like most things in life that aren’t the second sight. but then, she let someone close, let herself believe they cared about her, let herself open up only to be stabbed in the back. figuratively and literally, by the scar that still stings whenever she reaches behind to brush her hands over it. she’s changed, become aware of the snakes in the grass––become aware that they don’t always look like snakes. this mistrust in others is slowly bordering on paranoia, but she can’t seem to make it stop. people call her a falsifier, a manipulator, a fool; why shouldn’t she meet energy with energy, insult with insult, distaste with distaste ?

ministry file / pinterest board ( EYES TW for the board ) / playlist

tw: murder ( mentioned, also attempted murder ), neglect ( ? ), parental death ( skip paragraph beginning with ‘sixteen’ ! )

zero.

you don’t know this, you’ll never know this, but it was your father who named you. hunched over your laughing mother and clutching your tiny fist between his fingers, tears streaming down his face, he pleaded sybill, call her sybill. an oracle of delphi born anew. in a few weeks, you will both be the subject of controversy: the girl who’s birth ended the pureblood trelawney line, and the pureblood who fell for a muggle. but for now, you are loved.

eight.

you live in a cottage, small and hidden, tucked into a nook of ireland where there are more animals than people. this is purposeful. your father has a manor in london, a hanok in korea, but it is this cottage where the three of you can live at peace. your father is gone most days; you have no idea what he does. instead, your mother teaches you things, practical things. “what if you lose your magic; how will you cook then ?” you think her reasoning is silly, but you play along - even if your father comes home to a look of distaste when he sees you manually scrubbing dishes.

something happens to you. you’re outside, playing, when you reach out to pet a cat that’s just appeared - and a haze settles in. fog clouds your mind, your sight; there’s nothing. no darkness, no void: there is just nothing. and then there is your mother, frantic, choking on tears as she shakes you. later, your father will grin. “has my little sybill inherited cassandra’s gift ?” he’s joking, of course. no one in the family has had cassandra trelawney’s inner eye in generations.

but when you’re taken to a healer, nothing is wrong. nothing they can find, anyway. and a spark lights in you.

sixteen.

your mother is dead. your mother is dead. taken from you while you couldn’t protect her, while you were in school; your father insists he took his eyes off of her for just a second, but you don’t believe him at all. he’s always wanted you to be more witch than muggle. he’s never understood that she’s both, in a way, and that that’s okay. you wonder if he killed her or if he sent someone to do it, instead. either way, he is a coward and a fool and you hate him; this, you tell him.

the next christmas break, you don’t visit home.

eighteen.

you don’t come home for summer break, either. you don’t come back at all until after graduation, to face cassandra trelawney’s portrait and beg for guidance. for help with your gift. the gift that has abandoned you, it seems, along with your mother.

you apply, young and naïve, for the position of divination professor at hogwarts. as if anyone would hire you. the rejection stings, but what hurts more is having to face your father. he seems to have planned this outcome all along, and when he offers to help you find a realistic job using his connections, you want to do the filthy muggle thing and punch him.

you take his offer, however, when he reveals it’s in korea. away. that is what you need. away from him, away from london, away from that damned portrait. a week later, you’re in seoul. a week after that, you’re a dragonologist-in-training.

twenty two.

you travel, often. your specialty is hatchlings, and the reserve has begun to branch out, so they send you on missions to other reserves - get an egg, bring it back. in one of your travels, something happens, something unexpected: you meet someone. they’re charming, kind. when you tell them about your gift, their eyes light up. they believe you. you trust them fast.

you don’t see them often, but when you do, it’s incredible. you think they might be something special. you want them to be something special.

then, that night. you’re not sure what happened. everything is a haze; you’d been feeling like that for hours, feeling wrong. they were aggressive. they wanted something. and that fog, the one that had only flickered to life once every few years, was returning. for a moment, you knew nothing. and then you knew blood. the taste of iron, the way it stuck to your fingers. they’d stabbed you. surely, they had; there was no one else in your home, no blood but yours staining your floors.

your father is the one that finds you by a stroke of fate. takes you to a healer. you live, but something in you dies.

if you ever see them again, they will wish they’d finished you off with the killing curse instead.

twenty three.

you’re back in wizarding london. it’s been years. technically, you’re here for work - “the macfusty’s have to have a hebridean black egg, sihyeon; do well and find us one.” - but you seem to have fallen right into a budding war. you don’t want anything to do with it. you will go in, get an egg, and get out before anything terrible happens.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

hogwarts friends / enemies / bullies –– for, um, obvious reasons, sybill wasn’t terribly popular at school. i’m literally down for anything from hogwarts, from close friends who drifted after her mother died to people who terrorized her for making prophecies and being a “false seer”, to those she finessed with her you’re going to die in a week-type proclamations.

THE STABBY STAB –– so when i was coming up with this i very much wanted sybill to be stabbed instead of cursed bc a) stabbing is something that can be So Personal and b) it’s more of a muggle thing, and it’s fitting for someone who does often to things the “odd”/muggle way to find her ( almost ) end in the same way. i really..... don’t have much else for this connection; the way i visualized it, this person was probably looking for a seer for Some Reason, and whatever sybill told them during her vision - bc she did have a Real Prophecy that night - it wasn’t something they wanted to hear. or something they wanted to get out. sybill definitely had romantic feelings for them, but this obviously didn’t need to be reciprocated - the relationship could’ve been 100% platonic. does this character regret The Stab ? did they kind of want her to live ? are they prepared for the suplex she’ll give them On Sight ?

ruin me, ruin us, and i’ll let you –– this is, incredibly enough, not a romantic connection. i mentioned in my now-deleted gonetalk post that i love platonic soulmates; this is that. whether they connected instantly or they had to slowly get accommodated to each other, i want someone to have an Unbreakable Bond with sybill. they don’t have to already be friends, maybe it slowly happens, but eventually they’d both do anything for each other. if u have read the poppy war series, yes this is very much a wc based off of rin and kitay, those are the Vibes i’m going for.

this town’s only big enough for one cowboy –– I DON’T THINK THERE’S ONE YET BUT IF U ARE PLANNING A SECOND CHARACTER..... . .. picture this: someone who’s a seer who is actually competent, and can actually prophesize well instead of Whenever The Inner Eye Wants To. the jealousy ! the rivalry ! the mocking ! the shame ! GIVE IT TO ME NOW....

family friends ? family ? cousins ? –– i have sybill’s family being purebloods up to her, so i’d imagine she has a few distant family members or family friends running around ? i imagine her father runs in pro-death eater circles but isn’t one so !

#* intro.#me: i wont do a graphic #me 2 seconds later opening photopea:#uhh warning before u open this it's... Long #eye tw #j-just in case bc one of the little dots is a weird eye #ALSO WCS AT THE END !

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angelkurenai · 5 years

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Living on - Steve Rogers x Reader - Part 1

Avengers: Endgame SPOILERS BELOW read at your own risk

Title:

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader, Tony Stark x Reader

Warnings: Avengers: Endgame spoilers

Summary: After losing your husband and father of your child, Tony, in the big fight against the mad titan Thanos you feel incredibly lost. Thankfully you have your friends by your side all the time, Steve Rogers more than anybody else cating to your every need and doing his best to help you be happy again. If only you could see him as a friend. After lots of time Steve himself admits to having feelings for you and how he is willing to wait for you. The real question is, are you ready to move on from Tony?

“Thank you for this, Pep. Gosh, thank you so much. I really don't know what I'd do without you.” you said with a shaky sigh, holding the warm cup of coffee in both your hands and savoring the scent which always managed to calm you down.

“I swear, you thank me one more time and I'm gonna smack you with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich this instant!” the woman pointed out, giving you a warning yet caring look, before she proceeded to work on the sandwiches she made for the two girls that were currently in the living room.

“Don't give her too much of that jam, please, she tends to get a bit too hyper. Not that she already doesn't have enough energy to run for a lifetime but-” your smile fluttered a bit as the next words left your lips “I guess she takes after her father.”

“(Y/n)...” you heard her soft and sad voice, already able to picture her shoulders falling and her actions stopping.

“No. No, I'm fine. I'm really fine.” you cleared your throat, shaking your head and looking up with a tight smile “It's been... five years. Five whole years, it's time to keep going to. To keep living... for her, right?”

“For yourself too.” she pointed out with a gentle and maybe sympathetic smile, feeling bad for you this time and not so much what had already happened “Besides, Morgan seems to be doing real well. Strong like her father and surely her mother's spark. She's got a hero in her heart herself, you'll see it.”

“I think I see it every day that I watch her grow up. My little Avenger.” you whispered, full of pride as you glanced at the living room, both the girls too focused on the Disney movie playing on the TV to care about anything else “But that still doesn't mean she's like us, she's still a kid and even more she's my kid and I've sworn to keep her safe. Tony's death... shouldn't have been for nothing. He did this for her and I'm going to honor his memory by making sure she's the most happy child in the world, by any means necessary.”

“Tony did it for the both of you, he did it for all of us. There are no more sacrifices needed to be made and I definitely mean you.” she sighed, placing a hand on your shoulder “Don't put too much weight on your shoulders, (Y/n). For all these years Morgan is all you've cared about and I'm not saying to stop now, no. She's your daughter and I know just like you that a mother's love for her child can never be stopped.”

“She's growing up fast, isn't she?” you noted with a small smile, glancing at the younger girl sitting next to your daughter, eyes filled with wonder and a bright smile on her lips “Happy must be losing his mind huh? Feels like yesterday since you two became parents and now look at her.”

“He's spoiling her to no end but I can't complain. He's going great.” she nodded her head, finishing the sandwich she'd started for her daughter and the other for Morgan “But don't try to change the subject on me now.”

“I'm not.” you mumbled, trying to hide your smile behind your cup.

“Hmh sure you're not.” she nodded her head “Then if we're just casually talking... How's Steve doing these days? Heard something about him giving up the shield and role of Captain America. Wonder why...”

It was probably the wrong time to be drinking your coffee but you were anyway and as expected, you choked that very second. Coughing a bit she let you recover before you shot her a dirty look “You know what?”

“What? You said you're trying to change the subject.” she said back with a smirk on her lips and you sighed, shaking your head “Listen to me here.” she said in a soft voice, dropping the teasing tone “I know things are hard, trust me I do. I don't think anybody will ever be able to tell you it will get easier but this is your life too, (Y/n). As I said, I don't mean for you to stop having Morgan as your main priority. I would ever ask that. As a mother myself, I know my little girl will always be my main priority. But just because you're a mother doesn't mean you're not a woman and it doesn't mean you don't need love yourself. The kind of love a man can give you right now. A specific man at that.” she sighed softly “I'm sure even a man like him must have... somehow let you know that, you know, he's interested?”

“He-” you let out a trembling sigh, closing your eyes for a brief moment “He said he's willing to wait. However long it takes, it doesn't matter to him. He'll wait until I feel ready for... well, any of it.”

“Sounds like something he'd say.” she nodded her head “And you? You feel ready or not?”

“I feel scared, Pepper. Scared as hell. The past years have been rough and Morgan was my main priority and I haven't had the chance to think about it b-but-” you forced a weak but absolutely fake smile on your lips “But it's good. It's calm. It's nice being a mother and not having to worry about other things. I'm-”

“Forgetting all about your own happiness.” she completed your sentence with a stern yet caring look on her face “What I'm saying is... you need to live too. And this is not living, not without laughing or smiling or feeling good for once.”

“This is my life now.” you shrugged a bit numbly, eyes casting down at your hands “Besides, h-hey, I smile when Mo makes me smile or laugh, when she makes me proud, when she-”

“That's not what I mean and you know it. She's your main priority, yes but you've made her your only priority a-and pushed away the things... the people that could also make you just as happy. You've pushed away your happiness and that's not a way to live. You need to change that. Not because I say it, not because your friends say it, but because you know... that's what Tony would've wanted. For you to live your life even if he's not here.”

“She's not-” you felt the thick lump form in your throat, so familiar that it hurt all the more. The first few months after you lost him, this kind of lump had always been present and it was always followed by endless tears and agonizing and painful sobs. For a second, you feared you were going to crumble down and become the same mess you were back then but albeit, you held it all back. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath “Gosh, it feels like yesterday that I gave birth to her and look at her now, Pepper.” you said in a soft voice anyway “And the more Morgan grows up the more she reminded me of him and I- I-” your breath came out shaky as you looked away from your daughter “I can't help but think about Tony even more and God help me but I miss him, Pep. I think I'll miss him my entire life, as I look at our daughter, as I walk around in the farm he built for us, as I look at his things. He's always in my mind. I can't stop it... much like I cannot stop what I'm feeling for... for, well, him.”

And she knew very well that you weren't referring to your dead husband but rather someone else in the end. She sighed heavily, placing a hand on your shoulder and giving you a squeeze “You feel like you're betraying Tony.” she said and it wasn't a question, not even a statement probably. She was stating the truth.

“I don't know what to do anymore.” you admitted in defeat “I- I told myself that I was pushing him away be-because of Mo, because she needed me the most and because I needed to be a mother more than anything else in my life. I was all she had left, if I acted like I cared more about my own life and happiness than hers then she'd- she'd feel neglected and hurt and I would never want to hurt her. If I moved on that fast then... she'd even think I didn't love her father enough all that time and that's not the case. But now... now that she's-” a soft pained laugh escaped your lips “She's all but pushing me to go out once in a while, I realize I didn't do it just for her. I did it for me. I did it so that I wouldn't explore this feeling, so that I wouldn't think that...he's always meant more to me.” a tear rolled down your cheek “If I did... this then, would that mean I am moving on or will it mean I have always not only loved Tony but also him?”

“I think that, whatever the case, you have loved Tony more than he could've ever wished or dreamed of and sometimes more than it was humanly possible. You made him happy, you gave him a lot more than happiness, gave his life... and death a meaning. But whatever the case, he's not here now and for better or for worse, you're acting like he is. But if he was really here then Tony would let you know he'd never want you to keep going with your life like this.” she gave you an encouraging smile.

“And what should I do? Am I even ready to... do all this from the beginning?”

“Only one way to figure it out.” she shrugged softly, sad but caring smile on her lips “Now it's time to give your life a meaning too, besides Morgan.”

~*~

“Hey Miss (Y/l/n)-” a reminder that you weren't Mrs Stark and you could see the bitterness and pain on his face that he feared you'd never probably get to be “If you find this recording... please don't put it on social media. It's gonna be a real tearjerker.That is... in case you're alive. My God, I hope you're alive. You- you're the reason I do this for, the only reason. I'll count on you being too stubborn to die and keep going though. So, you're probably wondering when I'm coming comingbut uhm well, if you're watching this, then the answer's probably that I'm not.” he rubbed the back of his neck. You watched, just like every time. But unlike every time, this one you let it play out.

“Don't feel bitter about this, part of the journey is the end. I always think about it, you always told me, remember? I mean, I guess I'm already thinking a lot about you anyway. I- I just can't-” he laughed, rubbing his eyes tiredly “How can I ever get you out of my mind hm? You always had this effect on me, from the moment we met. What with that brain of yours and that face of yours and that- everything, everything of yours that made me fall helplessly and hopelessly for you. It was so distracting at first but truth be told? I could really use the distraction right now. Not to think of the end of the journey and all, you know?”

“You are...” he paused for a bit, the corners of his lips lifting into a small smile as his hologram seemed to stare right back at you right into your eyes “The love of my life. Cheesy isn't it? Should've not spent so much time with Cap.” his smile fell and he frowned, dragging a hand down his face “Cap, that's another thing. So many issues going on and so little time but right now you- you are all I can think about and Gosh there are so many things I want to tell you too. I love you. Plain and simple, isn't it? But my...” he sighed heavily, his features soft as if he'd made his peace with it, with the inevitable end “It's so true. I love you, I love you more than I ever have loved someone before. I wish I had more time, I wish we did but time's running out.”

You clasped a hand over your mouth to keep your tears. He truly thought he was going to die, it was clear in his voice and face and everything he told you, and even if that had not been the end, it did come for him later yet soon. Far too soon if someone asked you. But you held your tears back and kept on watching.

He rubbed a hand against his forehead “You mean so much to me, you mean the world. I'm up here with less than 24 hours of oxygen and I'm thinking... You'd look so beautiful with a baby bump. I just can't get the image out of my mind but above all I can't get the image of that smile of yours. You'd give me hell, sure. You always do. Sometimes it's a torture. Sometimes it's not. And every time it's the sweetest thing in the world and I wish it wasn't just in my dreams but it seems so. And now-” he sighed, his shoulders relaxing “Now that is just not an option. I'll miss you. Hell, I already miss you. Do you miss me?” he paused looking away with a small smirk “Of course you do. I know you do. Don't deny it, I'm still your pain-in-the-ass fiance. Guess... that's what I'm only ever going to be.”

“But that's-” he cleared his throat, shifting in his seat “That's not the point. I wanted to make sure, make sure of one thing and one thing alone...” he leaned forward “That you won't let anything or anyone take that beautiful smile away. It's you, it's always been you and your happiness. I did it all for you and it kills me even worse to know that you might no longer be happy because of this.” he looked away for a second, letting out a small breath “I want you to live your life with or without me. I'll admit, the second part doesn't sound amazing but we don't really have an option, do we? It's not about that though.”

He looked back at you “I want you to live. Period. Simple as that. And probably just as hard. But I want you to do it. I want you to be happy again, I want you to smile. And I want you to sign to your favorite songs again in the shower while I tell I'm not gonna be there to listen to you but I'm really there every single time. I want you to dance while cooking those gosh-darn-awful cupcakes of yours that I would gladly eat right now to be honest. I want you to be the woman I fell in love with all that time ago, don't let my death take that away. It's not worth it.”

But he was worth everything, he was worth the world... because he was our world.

“I know you. I know it's going to hard for you and I know that despite what everyone tells you, you're not gonna listen to them. Granted, that stubbornness got me hooked from the beginning but that's another thing for another time. So I'm here, telling you myself: I want you to do all of it. I want you to live your life even if I'm gone and if you can't do it alone then I'm sure... you'll still have a reason good enough to keep doing that.” his words caused your breath to get caught in your lungs and the lump in your throat to hurt, just as much as the unshed tears. But he paused too, taking a couple seconds that just felt too long when you held your breath and waited for him to say it. You somehow just knew he was going to say it.

“Ah damn you Rogers.” he said the words with a laugh and a small smile that just didn't feel as bad as you thought it would've “Granted, it's not something I didn't see coming but-” he nodded his head “Can't say I'm not jealous. I'm a bit possessive, I know. I'm pretty sure it was kind of a turn on for you though, so we click, don't we? Anyway, Steve-” he sighed but stopped, frowning “Uh Steve? What was I going to say? Oh yeah-” he looked back at you, serious and sincere again “He loves you.”

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