#even just imagining it is maddening. but for whatever reason when CHARACTERS do it-- | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rottenomelet · 7 months

Text

yandere jjk thoughts

warning:: nsfw! i’m eighteen and you should be too! hints of kidnapping, non-con, and coercion. nothing is ever really explicitly stated but - still.

a/n: there’s no real rhyme or reason behind this - winter is just my favorite time to snuggle up and read about crazy ppl. also i wrote this in lowercase originally so u see a spot i missed, no u didnt. u can leave requests for different characters if u wanna

Gojo Satoru

In no world could I ever imagine Gojo Satoru treating you like a real human being.

He is the strongest. There is no one who could destroy him. He can see all. And the issue isn’t just that he’s the best, it’s that he’s been told that since the day he opened his bright eyes. He has a big ego and it’s justified because there is no one better than him.

And sure he’ll indulge you. He'll laugh at your jokes and console you when you cry. But in the back of his mind, in every kiss to your forehead, in every smile, there will always be a domineering aspect. Because he knows that you are insignificant in the grand scheme of the world. you are only important because he deemed you worth something.

You’re not quite a toy or a pet to him. You’re more like - an indoor plant to him. Something that needs nurturing from his caring hands, watering and sunlight granted to you by him. You adapt and grow according to his needs and his conditions. But at the same time, you are to be cherished. never handled too roughly, case you begin to wilt. You don’t have to do much but sit and be nurtured and be pretty while he gives you whatever he deems necessary for your survival.

It fascinates him, really, how simple your little life is. How much you don’t know and never will know because as a flower, all you need to understand is that water and sunlight and love are given to you before you’ll even realize that you need it.

But you still have a job to be pretty and sometimes that’s sitting on the bed, still, as he observes you or bouncing on his cock. It just depends on the day.

Geto Suguru

Suguru is a calm man, a quiet man. He makes decisions based on logic. He is not exactly one for emotional outbursts, and even at his angriest, he rarely raises his voice.

But you.

A little non-sorcerer that can’t even see curses somehow made him look twice. Little unimportant you constantly runs through his mind. What you’re doing, what you’ve eaten, what places you’ve gone to. Who you’ve talked to, who your friends are. Your hobbies, your interests. Your lips and your eyes and that special something between your legs.

Just thinking about you, even innocently, makes him harden. It’s uncomfortable, it’s infuriating, it’s maddening.

He thought, surely someone in your family was a sorcerer, a powerful one at that. But no, your family is normal. You are, genetically, as average as they come.

He doesn’t treat you softly at first, doesn’t have a mind to. You’re a filthy little nothing, after all. When he fucks, he fucks without care. Suguru treats you like a doll, not made of porcelain but made of cloth, one he can throw around and still be in decent condition. He keeps a hand pressed to your mouth, to keep your voice down. A blindfold around your eyes so he doesn’t have to look into them. Your hands are bound behind your back so you don't touch him even by accident. Flat on your stomach, unable to see or feel or say anything is how you find yourself every time. He doesn’t even come inside of you, the only thing you’re grateful for.

It’s scary, how roughly he treats you. But it’s downright terrifying when he begins to lay softer hands upon you, begins to kiss instead of bite, caress instead of pinch.

Nanami Kento

He is a very traditional and stern man.

You are, silly, to him. stumbling and bumping and in general, unsure of yourself and what to do. But he sees potential. Even when you’ve tripped over thin air or broken something by accident, there’s a certain grace to your movements. A grace he wants to harvest and invest in.

And while he wants to give you direction, he also doesn’t have the patience or time to teach you like he wants. So, it’s best to ‘learn on the job’ when it comes to Kento.

Learn how to cook his favorite meals and bake the sweets he loves just right. When he’s okay with speaking and when he needs quiet. Remembering to kiss him goodbye every morning and remove his coat for him every night.

Learn how to suck his cock right - which vein is most sensitive, when to suckle and gag and slurp, what noises to make, and remember to always always swallow. He hates messes after all.

Learn his favorite positions. The lingerie sets he like best. How loudly he wants you to be. Accept his cum in your tummy with a smile.

It’s not hard - please him and you will be rewarded. Rewarded with pleasure, with time outside, with gentle hands.

And if you stumble or forget, he will easily remind you of your job.

Mahito

You’re his personal entertainment. You’re an experiment.

Mahito is incredibly laid-back, even lazy to an extent. He lets you roam and explore and fall. He doesn’t care what you do as long as you stay within the four walls he’s placed you in.

It's hard to understand him. For a curse, he’s always laughing, finding almost child-like joy in the most odd things. Whether that’s watching an animal documentary or wondering if a human’s neck can extend like the turtles on TV.

One thing you do know is that he likes games and he likes playing with you. The only problem is you don’t when the game starts and ends, the rules or even if you’re playing right. Oftentimes, you find yourself playing a game that you don’t know the rules of and Mahito has named himself the gamekeeper.

He usually starts by asking a question. Something simple like “What time did you wake up?” or “What did you eat today?”. You find out the hard way that no matter what you say, you’re always wrong.

Say you woke up at ten? Then you’ll find yourself pressing into the mattress, drooling on your pillow as he drills you, punishing you for waking so late in the day. You had a slice of cake earlier? Then don’t be surprised when you’re in the kitchen licking icing off his cock as punishment for an unhealthy lunch.

Itadori Yuuji

He's the jock that gave you a chance. That made you feel special and pretty and popular.

He's sweet. He gives you his hoodie when you’re cold. He drives you home after school. Buys you lunch when you can’t afford it. Takes you on nice dates.

He wants you sitting front row at all his games, wearing his varsity jacket so everyone knows you’re his girl. He twirls you and kisses you in front of the whole school when he wins, the whole thing right of a cheesy rom-com.

But, surely, you didn’t think he was doing all that for free? No, he wants compensation. He deserves a reward for treating you so sweetly. It's only fair.

It doesn’t matter if you’re ‘not ready’. No, no, you’re just nervous, sweetheart. But he’ll be gentle with you so calm down. Yeah, calm down when he slides a hand up your skirt on a date to the movies. Be quiet when he asks you for head in the janitor’s closet between classes. And don’t make a fuss when he slips his cock inside of you, raw, even though you begged him to use a condom.

‘Rubbers hurt,’ he says. ‘It feels better raw’,’ he pleads. ‘Don’t worry - I'll pull out.,’ he promises.

And you better be understanding when he comes inside of you. Afterall, he’ll buy you a plan b.

Choso

Whatever you do, do not stress this man.

He’s going through enough as is. The last thing he needs from you is any attitude or ungratefulness. Even an upset face will have you with your knees pushed beside your head and Choso making you scream, all while watching you with that same tired expression.

Choso is the oldest of ten siblings. He is used to dealing with bratty behavior. He handles your tantrums with grace - once you’ve finished throwing things and screaming, he’ll only ask if you're finished. And then he will be upon you.

But, beyond punishment, he is caring and quiet. He prefers it when you speak, likes it when you prattle on about your day or your favorite show. He likes it when you’re happy.

#yandere #yandere jjk #tw yandere #yandere gojo satoru #yandere gojo #yandere geto suguru #yandere geto #yandere mahito #yandere nanami kento #yandere nanami #yandere itadori yuuji #yandere itadori #yandere choso #jjk headcanons #jujutsu kaisen headcanons #rottenomelet

2K notes · View notes

heartlurch · 4 months

Note

hai heart !! its me again , anon :3 have you got any so called au ideas of mystery n8 nene ?? nene’s name involves the number “8” , so of course people are theorising that she’ll become the 8th mystery. if so, the mystery of what ? 🤍

Hi again :0

I'm certainly aware of how Nene's name alludes to the number 8, since other characters have numbers correlating to their seat #. A maddening detail honestly... I will admit, it's not the sort of thing I can think of as an 'AU' so much as... 'There's this thing being foreshadowed that I have to brace myself for.' I've more or less just stared at this detail and felt helpless and confused lol. What is sensei trying to tell me!? <- I'm too busy thinking this and crying...

Beyond that, I can't really think of an 8th mystery the same as I would the others, too strugglesome. I mean, if we try and imagine it like 'we tack on No. 8 with the others' it would mean that a new seat could be created that doesn't previously exist. How... do you do that... But like, we don't know how the previous mysteries were made... Were there always 7?? If not, how do you add more, who decides(or decided) that? Would a rumor have to be made to make way for this mystery Nene-? Or could she manifest before having a rumor-?? Is being appointed just a matter of someone saying so, or is there more to it? (More prerequisites?) We don't even know what Sakura does when she appoints someone, and Tsukasa seems to exist outside of the system's typical conventions so I can't base too much on what he does with Mitsuba...

Each mystery seems to have jurisdiction over some, element, aspect of the world. But these concepts are as broad as 'time', 'life/death' and 'records'... While I like the story of JSHK and analyzing it is lots of fun, I feel like I cannot really simulate Iro-sensei's thought process— not enough to conceive of what an '8th Mystery' would dictate...

So... that's me being pedantic about a bunch of things. BUT... What I can tell you, that I've thought of on my own: I don't actually think Nene will 'become a mystery' in the manner we've seen... I think being "8" actually means she's something new, errr... rule-breaking? That's the vibe I get from her... I think Nene's existence is a bit of an anomaly. There are various things about her yet to be explained.

(MY SMALL ADDENDUM TO THIS is the fact that No. 7 already seems to operate differently than 1-6, so we already don't know enough about THAT guy... arghh.)

Why is Nene a kannagi? Aoi's family history explains her position, but somehow I doubt this is the case for Nene as well? So... where is her blessed nature coming from? And it's eerie, you know... how she meets Hanako just in time to be there to commence yorishiro, as the broadcast club orchestrates rumors. Why is that? What were they going to do if Hanako never got his hands on a kannagi...? Their goals are quite exact, with little room for error, aren't they... hm.

Nene has technically, from the twins' chronological perception, been interacting with them multiple times throughout their life. So her fate has been tied to the Yugi 'since the beginning' of this story... The cherry on top is the fact that her lifespan is inextricable from the existence of the mysterys' yorishiro. For whatever reason, if you get rid of all the mysteries, Nene will die. All I can infer from this is Nene's very existence is tied to that of the mysteries, so — I don't think she will become a part of the system, as much as she is already deeply involved in it? ...?? Perhaps she is already... No. 8? In SOME manner? You feel me??

My wife's even pointed out, it's troublesome Nene is already an isolated weird girl who gets whispered about in the halls... what 'rumors' exist of her already, we don't know. I wonder how blurred this line between human/kaii/mystery can be. There's no way to know, but... something to chew over. (The recent ASHK chapter showing an ominous dream that calls to question Nene's authenticity was designed to make me insane btw.)

Last thing I will say, prolly will seem out of nowhere but, my gut tells me Nene's existence... is tied to the well god, and Tsukasa. If the god inside Tsukasa / is the same god the mysteries are deriving power from / then Nene's lifespan is directly correlated to that god's power being unleashed (as the yorishiro/mysteries are simply a means of divying out these powers, controlling things like time, life, death, wishes, etc.)

It's my delusion but I'm holding out that all this information will kiss passionately someday. And-!!!!!!!!! Then I'll explode.

#asks

8 notes · View notes

nightswatchdisbandmentera · 9 months

Note

Me seeing the ask game: *cracks knuckles* Let's go.

I hope you don't mind answering all of these 😅.

10.

12.

13.

16.

20.

21.

22.

24.

25.

Have a nice day!

I won’t answer all of them haha. I had no time to write that much plus I wanted to actually give hOt TaKeS.

8 common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

I’ll start of by saying that I’m not one who wants to police other people’s interpretations of the text. BUT I will say this: Jon is not a below average swordsman! He’s not even average. He may not have many on page feats, but he’s only been in less than a handful of serious fights and they were against middle aged men with decades of experience over him. People like to bring up his loss to Mance, but this fight was against a man who managed to unite the wildling tribes under his rule; Mance is a highly skilled warrior.

Remember, Jon is 15-16 years old when most of these fights are happening. So he’s still young and growing. People will also say “oh, but Jaime Lannister was a god at that age”. Honestly, who cares? How many characters are comparable to Jaime at any age? It’s such a dumb comparison. I’ve even seen people argue that a 13 year old Peck is better than Jon and huh? Jon hasn’t won over any knights….because he’s not encountering them in the first place.

It’s clear that GRRM holds Jon’s skill in high regard. I mean the first Jon POV chapter established him as a noted swordsman. It also clear that Jon isn’t meant to be the warrior type. He’s a deconstruction of the archetypal fantasy protagonist. GRRM has chosen to build his political skills, so he’s not putting much of a focus on how well he swings his sword. That doesn’t mean though that he doesn’t have any skill at all. Just that it’s not the main focus of his character. But I think this fandom generally has the most wretched discourse when it comes to this stuff. Like people on Reddit this past week tried to argue that Brienne is overrated…Brienne, of all people. It’s just insane to me that people think they know more than the guy who wrote the damn books.

13 worst blorboficiation

Has got to be Kevan Lannister. Not so much on tumblr, but it’s a disease in some of the other communities. For whatever reason, he’s quite beloved. And this is rather strange because he is very much complicit in the corrupt Lannister regime. And as far as we know, he’s also fully supported Tywin in everything (which includes legitimate war crimes). He has his moments where he is shown to actually care for family members (e.g., Lancel, Tyrion), and that makes him a delightfully complex character. He’s also really funny. But we shouldn’t ignore his really bad traits. I’ve had to suffer a bunch of “Kevan Lannister is the best guy ever” posts on Reddit, and it’s absolutely maddening. That’s not to say that we can’t like “bad” people! Heck, Cersei is one of my faves. But it’s weird how certain characters get a pass for doing problematic things (e.g., Kevan or even Bobby B), and other characters get lambasted for the most tame things imaginable. It’s just the hypocrisy that’s annoying.

16 you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Powerscaling lol. It can be fun, but the people who engage in these discussions can be so tedious and boring. Tiktok and Reddit are full of this. “Who is the greatest fighter”, “who is the best warrior”, “this is why prime Robert low diffs Barristan Selmy”, and it’s the same old arguments every time. I think we should get more creative with powerscaling if we have to do it. Like “who has the best 🛌 skills”. Let’s at least argue over something fun, damn.

22 your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

This is going to be twofold:

- On tumblr? Easily Jon’s relationship with magic. In fact, people on here will go out of their way to argue that it’s actually not important to the plot, which is absolutely bonkers. Beyond warging, there’s a lot of weird magical stuff going on with Jon that should be put under the microscope. And I’d even argue that Jon’s a pretty special warg and cannot be compared to the other Stark kids (even Bran) because of how his powers manifest. Ghost is also obviously one of the most special animal familiars in the series (maybe even THE most special one), but no one ever talks about how special he is. A lot of people seem to believe that Jon will be KiTN, but it’s insane how we don’t talk about why it’s magically important for him to rule the North, considering his deep connections to Northern mysticism, religion, and lore.

- Elsewhere: the parallels between Jon and Bran. They’re essentially the same character base split into two (Seoman Snowlack, Frodo, King Arthur, Paul and Leto Atreides, Odin, etc). Both arcs parallel each other and are heading to the same destination, but the details will be different. This is getting to my last point, but I firmly believe we’re getting an ending with both King Jon and King Bran. I like to think of them as two competing but complementary sides of King Arthur’s tale. Jon is the one that is true to legend, as he follows the archetypal hidden prince-to-king trope. Jon is essentially “what if Arthur actually went on his hero’s/knightly quest?”Bran is the subverted one, where young Arthur gets a little detour; so “what if Arthur didn’t go on the hero’s/knightly quest but instead had to take up a job as a part time wizard?” Both will end up kings, just as Arthur did, but it will be different versions of the legend.

- Also: WTF is up with the Watch/Wall? What magic was used to build the Wall and who built it? Why can’t dragons cross? And why can’t wights cross either? What magic dictates that? What’s up with the Nightfort? Why does one only need to say part of the vows to open the gate? And what’s up with the NW vows? Why do they give Lightbringer vibes?! Is the NW Lightbringer? The NW is directly credited with the ending of the Long Night so was the last hero a member of the original group? Who was he? What happened to him after? If the last hero inspired AA then did the NW (and their vows) inspire tales of his flaming sword? And why did the relationship between the Watch and the CoF fizzle out? When did it fizzle out? And who are the LCs whose tenures have not been recorded? Why did they only start recording in the 600s (iirc)? What other history has been lost over time? Who was the Night King? Where did his half-human children go? Need that old man to answer these stat

25 common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

Several people will block me for this…but King Bran. Look, I get that Bran isn’t the most popular character out there. But so many people convinced themselves that he would die in that cave or he would amount to nothing which is very, very strange. And it also doesn’t help that a lot of the complaints reek of ableism.

GRRM obviously considers Bran to be central to this series. He is the first viewpoint character (and potentially the last one). He is the most magical character in the story. The scene that birthed ASOIAF came about because of Bran. It’s also said that GRRM considered writing the books through Bran’s POV but decided against it pretty quickly.

Anyone who paid attention to Bran’s story would know that we’re going to get some huge payoff to his story. In fact, I think it’s safer to assume that kingship has always been in the cards for him. I think most of us Bran stans thought he’d be KiTN (actually some of us over at Westeros.org thought he’d end up as the final Lord of Harrenhal). I never once considered King of all Westeros but I’ve had time to think about it ever since the show ended and I’m like, “duh!”. It’s thematically relevant and sound for Bran to end up king. We’re about to enter into a winter apocalypse but Bran’s direwolf is called Summer. Not only is he the representation of summer (which means renewal, rejuvenation, etc.), but he’s also fashioned after the Fisher King. He is also the second coming of Brandon the Builder - who constructed castles all over Westeros, not just the North; and if legends are true, this happened after the Long Night. He’s following after the footsteps of the Last Hero, and is the only other character apart from Jon who is actually fighting in the front lines against the Others. He’s going to be super important!

I can understand some of the questions people having regarding King Bran, mainly those of a political nature. But we’re left with two books. And two books is plenty to move the necessary pieces for Bran’s crowning. Hell, did people expect that Dany would be Queen of Meereen as they started reading ASOS? Most didn’t. A lot can happen in two books. A lot can happen in a singular book. GRRM has enough time to set up a scenario on which Bran is the only one left to rule.

I personally think that the apocalypse will essentially destroy Westeros as we know it, leading to the creation of a new kingdom(s). D&D botched the GoT ending so people have a hard time seeing the thematic weight of a boy who represents summer rising to kingship, but the books lay enough groundwork imo. And I think ACOK shows us that Bran, despite his age, would make a wise ruler. So I’m all for King Bran. Not only is it thematically sound, but I love the idea of a disabled kid rising to power at the end since we don’t see that in a lot of fantasy.

#asoiaf #ask game #jon snow #bran stark #kevan lannister

15 notes · View notes

theowritesfiction · 1 year

Text

'The Waterbending Scroll'

I was really looking forward to this one. It's an amazing episode, where some of the less glowing sides of Katara's personality emerge, and it's imperfections like that which make her such a beloved character to me.

Right off the bat, I feel like Iroh changing the ship's course because he misplaced his Lotus tile is kind of an asshole move? (made even more maddening by him later finding the tile in his sleeve) He's destroying any respect the crew might have had for Zuko by eroding Zuko's authority. 10 Jerk Points.

I really felt bad for Katara when Aang picked up all the basic waterbending moves so quickly and showed her up without honestly meaning to. I can just imagine how crushing that would have felt. Katara wants to become a powerful bender so badly, and she has obviously been working very hard, and someone just doing things half-jokingly does better? What a way to belittle her hard work. I guess I can't give Aang Jerk Points for this, though, because I can't really expect him to pick up on the reason why Katara was upset.

I think it was completely fair for Katara to steal the waterbending scroll, of course. I don't care if her motivation was partly selfish. I love this side of Katara, impulsive and not held back by ethical concerns when she believes the cause is right. It's because of episodes like this, I enjoy modern au's where Katara has no qualms about stealing or shoplifting from major chains and corporations. She's a bit of a rebel. :)

I'm very tempted to give Sokka some Jerk Points for his accusing rant afterwards. Whatever, Sokka. You're going to regret dismissing Katara's waterbending. Plus, stealing the scroll was cultural re-appropriation.

Katara lashing out at Sokka and Aang - completely justified. I love the way she just vented everything that had built up inside of her at Aang - although I suppose Aang deserved that apology at the end. Still, the lack of encouragement from the others - particularly Sokka - Katara gets, makes her anger 100% justified. Katara is always giving encouragement to the others, but she rarely receives it in return.

Zuko tying Katara to a tree (another romantic Zutara moment, I've been told) and taunting her with the necklace... bit of a jerk move there. 20 points to Zuzu.

Iroh pointing out that this whole mess was Katara's fault. FUCK YOU Iroh. Nobody asked for your useless opinion, go soak your head in the hot tub. 50 Jerk Points for to, because fuck Iroh.

Jerk Points:

Bumi - 200 Iroh - 110 Zhao - 90 Aang, Zuko - 60 Iroh really making up ground with this episode!

#my atla rewatch

29 notes · View notes

systematicallycapricious · 3 years

Text

Persona x Soul Eater AU

Spoilers for Personas 3-5 (and their remakes FES, Golden, and Royal), PQ1 (Shadow of the Labyrinth), and the P4: Arena series below, as well as the Soul Eater and Soul Eater: Not! anime (and potentially manga? it’s been a while, so I forget)!

Cast (We = Weapon, M = Meister, H = Human, Wi = Witch, O = Other):

SEES:

Minato Arisato - M | Aigis - Multiform-We | Ryoji Mochizuki - We

Minako Arisato - M | Yukari Takeba - We | Ryoji Mochizuki - We | Aigis - Multiform-We

Junpei Iori - M | Chidori Yoshino - We (presently)

Akihiko Sanada - M or We? | Shinjiro Aragaki We or M?

Mitsuru Kirijo - We (Meisterless and badass; probably a rapier?)

Ken Amada - M | Koromaru - We (a non-human Weapon)

Fuuka Yamagishi - Wi (??? animal)

Investigation Team:

Yu Narukami - M | Teddie - We (potentially a non-human Weapon)

Yosuke Hanamura - M | Labrys - Multiform-We

Chie Satonaka - We or M? | Yukiko Amagi M or We?

Kanji Tatsumi - M? | Naoto Shirogane - We?

Rise Kujikawa - Wi (??? animal)

Phantom Thieves:

Ren Amamiya - M | Morgana - We

Ryuji Sakamoto - M or We? | Yuuki Mishima We or M?

Yusuke Kitagawa - M | Ann Takamaki - We (a whip)

Makoto Nijima - We or M? | Haru Okumura - M or We?

Goro Akechi - M | Robin Hood - We (a bow) | Loki - We (a greatsword)

Kasumi Yoshizawa - M | Sumire Yoshizawa - We (a ribbon wand)

Futaba Sakura - Wi (??? animal)

Etc:

Daisuke Nagase - We or M? | Kou Ichijo - M or We?

Rei - H

Zen - We, H, or maybe O?

Takuto Maruki - H

Sho - M | Minazuki - We (separate entities in this; Minazuki's a katana)

Shuji Ikutsuki - H

Takaya Sakaki - M | Jin Shirato - We | Chidori Yoshino - We (formerly)

Marie/Izanami-no-Mikoto - Wi (??? animal)

More Notes:

The 'Wild Cards' in this just have really good partnership/Resonance abilities with everyone in their groups, so they can work with any of the Weapons in their groups (and even outside of them a lot of times... looking at Ren and Loki for an example. xP) uncannily naturally.

The Navis in this are all Witches, but good-natured ones, and use their magic to support their respective groups/help make the world a better place. For example, Futaba would probably be able to 'hack' souls somehow with her magic, and also her reclusiveness in this would be at least in part due to being terrified of people finding out her true nature as a Witch. I'm not sure how welcomed/persecuted/the general climate of Witches are/is in this AU yet though.

The Arisato twins and Ryoji are all children of Death in this, with Ryoji being the older sibling and the twins being twins. Death is still Death like he is in SE-OG in this AU, more or less.

Ryoji and Aigis tend to float between Minato and Minako as their secondary partners, though Aigis tends to stick more to Minato as his primary partner and much less often swaps to Minako, while Ryoji shifts between his two siblings more frequently. Yukari swaps about as much as the rest of SEES's Weapons do among their Wild Cards, which is more or less situationally or for fun. Despite this, Aigis and Ryoji still don't get along particularly well with one another, only putting up with each other for their Meisters' sakes.

Strega did exist in this, though I'm not sure yet what their aim was, or the fate of its members. At the very least, they were some kind of rogue antagonist group, and Takaya used to be the Meister of both Jin and Chidori. Chidori ends up defecting to DWMA though, or whatever organization Junpei is a part of.

Aigis, maybe Ryoji?, Mitsuru, Labrys, and Minazuki are all Weapons that can fight without Meisters. Loki and/or Robin Hood might also be among them? I'm undecided.

Originally, I was considering having the cast have their Personas as their Weapon-partners, and just have them have personalities based off of their Shadow-selves' but more aligned with their accepted-selves, but I decided against it in the end. Akechi gets to be the exception, because he's Akechi.

Speaking of Akechi-- Robin and Loki are very powerful Weapons in this AU. Loki's 'chaos magic' would become an incredibly chaotic/maddening soul-wavelength that most others wouldn't be able to handle contact with on its own, as well as perhaps some Madness magic or abilities of some kind? Robin's soul meanwhile would be much calmer and help to counteract/cover-up Loki's from those who can sense souls, as well as perhaps provide some tactical abilities; I'm undecided on that for now. I'm not sure who's side Akechi would be on in this AU yet, like if he was being manipulated by a Shido-like person or not, and for what reason if so.

As for Robin and Loki's personalities and appearances in this... Well, the latter would be somewhat similar to their Persona forms probably, including some of the less-human traits given OG-SE characters (*stares intensely at Excalibur*), and the former would also be somewhat based off of those, as well as sort of how Akechi acts in relation to both of his 'masks'? So Robin tends to be calmer and more polite, though he still possesses a small amount of vengeful desire or bloodlust, whilst Loki is a lot more chaotic, hot-blooded, and very vengeful/aggressive. Both share a tendency towards showiness however, and sometimes get in small competitions with one another to up the other to impress their Meister or be the better Weapon among themselves (since they both might think already that they're superior to other Weapons in general? Unsure).

Also speaking of manipulated and abused children, Sho and Minazuki, alongside Ikutsuki, more or less replace Crona, Ragnarok, and Medusa in this. Not fully 1-for-1 however. Ikutsuki is very much a human, albeit a Mad or power-hungry one (still kinda looking to create a Kishin or otherwise bring about some kind of catastrophic destruction), and Minazuki is a separate Weapon, as opposed to how Ragnarok is Crona's Black Blood. Minazuki and Sho might be twins however, just with one a human/Meister and the other a Weapon. They look almost identical physically in this AU, even down to haircuts, but Minazuki lacks the iconic X-ish shaped face scarring that Sho possesses (and overall the two have a different patterning of scars across their bodies), and Sho's irises appear to be more gray while Minazuki's appear to be more blue. Weapon-form-wise, Minazuki looks like Sho's OG katanas, just in different colors and as a singular blade rather than a pair.

Ikutsuki is still forcing Sho and Minazuki to become stronger in similar methods to Medusa in some ways however, such as going out and obtaining/consuming great amounts of human (and maybe even Witch) souls.

Sho's a little less messed-up than Crona is, due to Minazuki being supportive of and dedicated to him as opposed to bullying him into submission like Ragnarok does to Crona. That being said however, I don't yet know why Minazuki hasn't yet defected from Ikutsuki. P: Other than that, Minazuki is kind of like Sho's impulse control and logical reasoning at times, due to being able to control when he transforms into his Weapon form and thus deny Sho access to his weaponry in times where he's being reckless or unreasonable. Soul-wavelengths-wise, too, Minazuki's soul just in general helps to keep Sho's soul/wavelength more stable probably?

Also in terms of replacing SE cast and plots; The IT replaces Maka et al for the sake of the main story most likely, with SEES being their upperclassmen or alumni and the PT being their underclassmen, if they even attend DWMA at this point anyways.

Lotsa dead people in OG are alive in this AU; Minato, Minako, and Ryoji, Shinjiro, Kasumi, etc.

Speaking of Kasumi; she fights kind of like Sumire does in Royal, that being making use of their gymnastics and priorly-athletic builds. Both sisters are gymnists in this still.

Alternatively, Sho and Minazuki's situations almost ended up reversed, leaving a highly impulsive/aggressive Weapon-Sho and a Meister-Minazuki who would have the kinda backwards idealology of trying to protect his Weapon partner in times where it would be best left to the Weapon to defend their Meister, but also really good at getting Sho to focus when wielding him as a weapon/in resonance (and can in general reign him in to some degree while others can't), making them an exceedingly deadly duo. I kind of prefer Minazuki as the Weapon however, as fun as the reverse could be, as it gives Ikutsuki a bit more leverage over Sho's situation I think? Also in that vein, it would make a lot of sense, given OG, for Minazuki to be more like a Black Blood entity like Ragnarok; however, I like Minazuki being able to have his own body in this, so that can be left for another AU perhaps. xP

Ikutsuki would infiltrate/be trusted by the DWMA in this AU at first, like Medusa was, but eventually get outed for his true intentions most likely. He might be a teacher or other kind of faculty rather than a nurse however?

Maruki meanwhile gets to play the role of school nurse in this. He's not a few screws loose like his Royal counterpart is though, he's just a humble nurse. However, he does still have his interest in researching dangerous subjects, though I haven't yet decided if that would be magic, Witches, Madness, Kishins, or what. It could potentially put him in knowing-contact with the Navis, if they aren't already known to be Witches by the DWMA anyways.

I'm not yet sure on what to do with Adachi or Nyx yet. Nyx might be some kind of Madness-related catastrophe, power, or individual perhaps however?

Rei and Zen are probably just civilians in this. Zen just happens to be really devoted to protecting/looking after(?) Rei still. xD

I'm undecided on if Marie should be amnesiac about her Witchhood or if she should be more like Izanami-no-Mikoto from OG in this.

Yusuke is still obsessed with artistry and beauty in this, so you can imagine what he's like as a Meister. He is still capable as a fighter and dependable when needed... more or less, but is also still easily distracted by, and places higher priority on, such things.

Ryuji kinda gets the short end of the stick because I didn't particularly know who to pair him with or what really to do with him at the moment. Mishima's a big tentative as his partner as a result of that, though I think it could prove to be an interesting relationship potentially.

I'm hoping to add more SL/Confidant and secondary/tertiary/background cast peeps eventually into various roles, but I'd need to do more refreshing/research on them first. I also haven't decided on if I should include Metis in this or not.

If the SE info is inaccurate, it's because I haven't seen the anime or read-up on it in like years. I might do clarifying/fact-checking research some day, but for now, nah. xP

#Capri's Persona-AU Musings #Persona series #Persona 3 #Persona 4 #Persona 4 Arena #Persona 4 Arena Ultimax #Persona 5 #Persona Q: SotL #Soul Eater #Persona x SE AU #pretty much involves the casts of all of those games #not the SE cast really though as it's more using the setting of SE with the Persona cast; sorry folks

28 notes · View notes

garrothromeave · 3 years

Text

the hell is mystreet season 6??

(warning, long post ahead)

ok so before i start this

1) ive never posted shiiiit on tumblr before so watch me suffer, im just here to talk about stuff that my friends who dont know anything about aphmau have to listen to me rant about for hours on end

2) i havent seen mystreet in like years (except season 3, i watch that frequently since im laurance and shadow knight deprived) so please bear with me because i might be completely wrong on this lol. it’s just like, pointing out things i remember

3) im sure someones already talked about this but who cares

4) im gonna do this stupid thing where i just explain myself a bit at first, if you dont want to read that just skip to the part where you see “the actual thingy:” in bold and italics

5) mild disclaimer; i am completely aware that jessica is not a professional writer. i know that she did her best to appeal to her fans, and honestly, respect for that. while this post will come off as aggressive and probably look like hate, that’s not my intention in the slightest. it’s just... intense criticism. im sure y’all probably already know that, but yeah, just stating that anyways. i do believe that jess is doing her best, and in no way do i want to dismiss any hard work she’s done. that being said; prepare for a very strongly opinionated post.

haha watch there be 10000+ typos in this making me look like a complete dumbass

ok here we go

one of the main reasons i stopped watching aphmau back in 2017 was the mess that was season 4. like, in the first few episodes of the emerald secret, i thought “woah!! this is kinda cool, im a sucker for mystery!” because of course i was, it was something new and something exciting. the only problem i had with it at the time was kim, but that’s just because i always found her annoying and out of place. i just didn’t understand why garroth dragged her along and honestly i still don’t to this day BUT, moving on.

anyways, as the season progressed, 13 year old me was of course just “:0!!” the entire time--that is, up until the reveal of the main villain. i remember watching the episode, seeing the reveal of ein, and then stopping. like, just for a quick break, but i was still just overwhelmingly disappointed. like, and this was the time when pdh was airing and ein just got made alpha (i think?) and i had really really liked eins character in pdh. either way, that really sucked and actually opened my eyes to a lot of things.

one of the main things bein’ the fact that this was supposed to be a slice of life kinda series that decided to take a turn to a more edgy kinda approach. which, i guess i regularly wouldnt mind? but seeing as mcd was kinda bein neglected at the time it just didnt sit right with me. BUT WHATEVER, point is i stopped watching mystreet all together at the end of season 4.

like, a whole year later my brother tells me that shit’s getting intense in season 5 + 6 of mystreet, and my brilliant self decided to give it a shot--but i refused to watch all of season 5, so i only stepped in when ein made an appearance. so whenever that was, that’s where i picked up because i didnt care enough to see

and y’know--i honestly didn’t hate it at first. in fact, i found it oddly cool. it wasn’t enough to get me into aphmau again, but it was enough to where i was intrigued. i dont know why, but i never watched the finale, so i didnt see the ending until just a few weeks ago--but back then, i thought it was neat. looking back on it however... im just so confused.

side note: only got back into aphmau this time around because of mcd. mainly because like, i adore the first season and the first half of the second season. and being nearly 18 now, im a lot more appreciative of plot and well-written characters n junk.

the actual thingy:

ok back on track. imma stop spilling out my story of how i got back into aphmau, and lets just skip to what rewatching mcd made me realize of season 6′s plot and shit:

-emmalyn. how the fuck does ghost even remotely exist? if she’s emmalyn as claimed, then why have we already seen emmalyn in the mystreet universe alive? look i get that creators can do whatever they want with their stories but at the same time please provide some sort of explanation good god. and maybe they did and i just havent seen it, so if there is one--let me know. but until that day imma just sit here confused as fuck

-ok so imma just be real, the whole ‘ultima’ thing is just... not great. in my opinion, anyways. like... i saw someone mention this in another post, but if this ultima stuff was like, a really big deal, why isnt it mentioned in mcd? though i suppose since its a curse of sorts, it could be later on past the time period in which mcd takes place--but even then, how did it manage to make its way into aaron’s family bloodline?

-WHY IS EVERYONE AT STARLIGHT ITS JUST SO CONVINIENT like what happened to this place being the most expensive shit on the planet or whatever, and how the gang happens to run into like, the werewolf trio and blaze and kai and guy and nate all of these people like god damn life doesnt WORK LIKE THAT

-im sorry but turning people into relics? thats... thats the best you could come up with? plus, like, how does that even work? in mcd it’s established that relics are separate entitles that choose their wielder, based on a ‘personal’ connection (being a descendent of a previous wielder) or if they’re a good match personality and (i think?) moral wise. so the whole turning-people-into-relics doesnt make much sense to be honest.

-irene really over here using her god powers to only keep her friends alive like god damn not a great god if you ask me

-can i talk about how incredibly predictable aphmaus death was? like i just kinda sat there waiting for it to happen and when it did i literally went “haha! wonder when she’ll be revived” because god forbid we actually kill off characters

-when aphmau + demon warlock fought in the irene dimension there was no passage of time whatsoever in the real world whiiiiiiiiich really bothers me because they fought in there for at least a few minutes

-speaking of aphmau and the demon warlocks fight does it bother anyone else that it had to be aaron who took over the fight?? like we get it hes the big protector blah blah blah but god damn it wouldve been cooler if aphmau had fought this battle as her. aaron fighting this battle was so underwhelming

-...love. like, thats the only thing thats needed to break out of a forever potion? love? LIKE YEAH, GOOD GUYS GOTTA WIN SOMEHOW, but its just so cliche and overdoneeee

-oh yeah and also when travis went bonkers and became the demon warlock or whatever, why’d he only take over katelyn and garroth?? like, zane had been influenced by the potions in the past as well? DONT GET ME WRONG--i do love some good brother edge, but uh, the demon warlock was just bein kinda a dumbass by not possessing zane too just sayin’

-can aaron please go to fucking jail for mass murder now like holy shit, he just got sent home on a fuckin boat. also why did blaze forgive him for killing him thats not even remotely realistic. then again, nothing in mystreet has ever been realistic when it comes to characters and motives and personalities, (cough katelyn being actually abusive and travis being an actual pervert) but yknow whatever

-katelyn and kawaii chan literally added nothing to the plot whatsoever. like lets be real, katelyn lost her personality the moment season 5 started and kawaii chan just kinda sits there :I

-ok im sorry this was bound to come up but cmon guys imagine laurances potential if he was in season 6 like god damn this is beyond maddening. AND YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A REALLY REALLY COOL PARRALLEL?? IF IT WAS LAURANCE WHO SNAPPED GARROTH OUT OF HIS MIND CONTROL THING, because it would mimic laurance’s speech to get garroth to snap out of his rage in season 1, episode 100 of minecraft diaries. like how fuckin rad would that have been? missed opportunity

-also?? why does kim/ghost know magicks?? like, if i remember correctly, emmalyn is a scholar--not someone who knew magicks. i mean, i guess research? study?? but its been established that knowing how magicks works =/= being able to use magicks. i dunno, just doesnt seem right i guess. maybe its explained, i wouldnt know (yes i know that makes me look like a dick leave me alone)

-melissa should have stayed dead. LIKE, NO, ITS NOT AS SIMPLE AS “haha it takes more than a few bullets to kill me”??? look ive got nothing wrong with melissa (cough lie cough) but yknow it would have just been cool a character... stay dead? for once? its just too fuckin cliche that shes alive god damn

-can i also just say the only good thing that came out of season 6 was travis’ dads sacrifice like damn that made me actually sad

-howww was lucinda turned into a relic. or yknow, anyone else? like im sure they explain it better in the actual show i just dont remember, but its just that easy? turning anyone into a relic? granted, a normal person wouldnt be able to produce a good relic, but idk man. IM JUST SAYING; that the only really powerful relics that aphmau should have been able to wield is the one that aaron + zane produced because shad relic and esmund relic moment. lucinda isnt even like, connected to a divine warrior. ALSO, another point, if its seriously that powerful of a relic getting one from just a magic user like lucinda, why go through the trouble? i mean i guess ofc youd want the “all powerful” one that the ultima produces but i mean damn whats the point

-ok this is just going to bother me but in one of the episodes (i think might have been in season 5 actually) where that like, guardian dude was chasing aphmau and zane and at one point they split up and the dude just chuckles at zane diverting paths and goes under his breath “youre not the important one here”, suggesting that aphmau somehow is? first of all, id argue that any ro’meave is significantly more important than aphmau was, especially not knowing much about her other than that shes with aaron. i might be missing some bits an pieces, but if i was that dude id forget about aphmau and go after zane

-killing off derek for shock factor sucked, and i know the moment was supposed to be really sad because like “oh :( aarons dad is sacrificing himself for his son” but lets be real dereks still was a shitty father and i dont think his reasons for doing what he did was very good at all

-less about plot or more like: why the absolute fuck did the gang bring kim along instead of, oh i dont know, a life-long friend? like, laurance or dante maybe?? im sure its explained, i never saw aphmaus year or most of season 5, but god DAMN id hate to be apart of this friend group AND GOD LIKE, imagine reconnecting with an old friend who ends up getting closer to your best friends and taking priority in their lives over you (cough laurance) like god damn lol

-im just going to preface this one with: i dont remember everything that’s happened, so if im wrong i apologize in advance--but (you actually can correct me if im wrong and please do) didnt like, irene reincarnate her friends in order to give them better lives? I DONT KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE, ITS JUST WHAT I REMEMBER--however, if im correct, then:

a. why the hell would she bring back someone like zane, or gene, or ivy, etc.

b. why the hell do they all have the same exact names? first and last? again, im aware that the whole mystreet+mcd tie wasn’t originally supposed to be there, but i dont think that means such a coincidence can be excused? its just a bit much if you ask me.

c. why the hell is the fact that (as much as i literally hate this) aaron is a decedent of shad being ignored? like, you’d think that something like this would be something thats actually important, or something the demon warlock couldve taken advantage of. or are we completely erasing every other connections to divine warriors besides aphmau + irene? because even if irene did reincarnate them or do whatever it is she did, does she even have the power to sever the connections between them and their ancestors? my guess is, no.

d. speaking of irene why on earth was aphmau able to talk to/see irene, they’re literally the same person are they not? did she like, fuckin reincarnate herself without actually doing it?? BUT--i will give it to them, the demon warlock did refer to aphmau as something along the lines of being “one of the 3 parts of her broken soul” or something like that. however, my point still remains. also what are the other two did i miss that or is it never explained

now; if irene in fact did not ‘reincarnate’ her friends then please ignore that little bit right there :)

but yes, those are a few of the problems i have with season 6 off the top of my head. i would go into like, season 4 and 5 more as well, but i honestly didnt feel like it. at some point i might go into other things, like how important laurance could have been to the plot of these later seasons, or HELL, even dante. i might also go into what could have made season 4, 5, and 6 actually good--maybe... a rewrite? perhaps? but im getting too far ahead of myself, so i just leave you with this for now.

and i know that as soon as i post this 15 more things are just going to pop into my head BUT im going to try and not edit this post because why stress myself with that even more

anyways thank you for coming to my tedtalk

#in conclusion i hate it here #lets go back to mystreet bein slice of life pls #anyways tune in next week for 'the hell is pdh??'#aphmau #mcd #mystreet #minecraft diaries #please ignore these next tags im just promoting relentlessly #garroth ro'meave #zane ro'meave #aaron lycan #kawaii chan #kim mystreet #laurance zvhal #pls i have no idea how to tag posts #rant

55 notes · View notes

nobodysuspectsthebutterfly · 3 years

Note

Hello! If you don't mind me asking, are you planning on watching House of the Dragon? I'm personally unsure about it. I was cautiously optimistic about it since D&D are not involved, but the recent casting news have been ugh disappointing imo. What do you think?

Hey anon! Sorry to say I kind of mind you asking because my inbox is still closed (to everyone except my secret Santas, which is why the ask page is accessible at all), but then I realized it’s possible if you’re on the mobile app only, you haven’t seen said note in my askbox, or my FAQ, or anything of the sort. And with older metas of mine being reblogged recently, it’s possible you may be confused. (I hope you’re on mobile only and not just ignoring my requests.) So I wanted to inform you of that... but also, y’know, I kind of wanted to make a post about the HotD cast anyway? And this ask is as good a prompt as any... so, you’re lucky, but please don’t push your luck. ;)

So, straight up: I currently have no plans to watch House of the Dragon. HBO is not getting any of my goddamn money, I don’t trust like that. And hunting down illegal livestreaming sites is a pain in the ass and I regret ever doing it for GoT, as well as regretting getting drunk every weekend enough to dampen my senses to ever tolerate that show. Yeah it’s different showrunners and writers, I know. It’s still (mostly) the same executives at HBO and even if the pervert producer is gone (or is he?), you know they still just want to sell sex and violence and dragons to an audience that thinks fantasy is for geeks.

Also, considering that Fire & Blood’s story of Dance of the Dragons has very little actual narrative or dialogue, and the historical record is deliberately untrustworthy, that gives them pretty much full rein to do whatever they like with the story and characterization and words without even being slightly obliged to GRRM at all. Furthermore, since the story is wholly political with virtually none of the magical side of ASOIAF (excepting dragons), and honestly does not have much in the way of themes or depth that main ASOIAF or even D&E has, I think it will be very hard for an adaptation to show even those brief sparks of quality that used to make me wistful GoT couldn’t be that good all the time and eventually just made me frustrated and depressed. Note I do like the history and characters of the Dance despite myself, despite its many many many textual issues, but I don’t need to see an adaptation, I have a very visual imagination. I don’t watch a lot of television to begin with, I don’t see why I should start again with this.

However, I’m not going to avoid spoilers or discussion, and I’ll probably follow the show the tumblr way, through gifsets and video clips and people bitching on their blogs etc. If, somehow, by some miracle of good screenwriting and acting, the show manages to transcend its source material, I’m sure I will be informed. And then, if and only if then, I may try watching. (Without, of course, giving HBO any of my goddamn money.) We shall see.

(Though I certainly don’t know why anyone in Targ standom would ever watch a Dance adaptation considering almost every Targaryen and everyone else in the story is terrible except Helaena and the kids, and considering how the story ends, unless y’all are gluttons for punishment? (I do not comprehend hatewatching, sorry.) It’ll probably be fun at first to see the adventures of those “precious silver douchebags” (to borrow a friend’s tag), but eventually rocks fall, everyone dies, including the girlboss you know you’ll hope the story will be changed enough that she succeeds. Just letting you know now, she won’t.)

That said. I’ve been following the casting news and I think the hate/fear/wild screaming is entirely overblown. Yeah, I know, but wait, just listen. On Friday I officially welcomed @naomimakesart to the “favorite character is now played by an actor who looks nothing like most fanart and is mostly known for wildly different roles” club. I still remember that day in September 2009 when my brother texted me “yarp”... and that right there is the thing. Yeah. Rory McCann looks very little like most pre-GoT Sandor fanart... but many fans grew to love him anyway. (There are some who never did, of course. And yeah the character went off the rails by the end, but truly, who didn’t. Having seen his audition, having spoken to him and heard him wistfully talk about book scenes he loved, I’m convinced if Rory had only been given Sandor’s actual scenes and such, he would’ve killed it. Sigh. Deep, deep sigh.)

And Rory isn’t the only one. Neither of the actors for Jaime and Cersei were considered “beautiful” enough at first. I recall very clearly people bitching about Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (about his nose particularly?) because they had wanted Tarzan-era Travis Fimmel to be Jaime. (Seeing people bitch because current-Fimmel isn’t playing Daemon made me laugh out loud for both BEYONCE?! meme -type “why would you ever cast him omg he doesn’t fit my headcanon Daemon at all”, and amazing amounts of fandom flashbacks.) Lena Headey was “too square-jawed”, “too mean-looking” (since at the beginning you should never be able to guess she’s evil), “too dark-complected”, “too mannish”, not at all attractive enough. (Tricia Helfer was the most common “but I wanted” for Cersei, btw.) And of course “they don’t remotely look like twins, ugh!” Note, there’s receipts for all of this, none of it is made up. (Unfortunately.) Those two actors are just the ones whose casting wank I recall most clearly, particularly because oh how the turn tables.

Also. You know, there’s a post with Matt Smith and Mark Simonetti’s TWOIAF Daemon going around with shrieks of horror... and I’m finding it maddening in a “am I crazy? am I the crazy one???” way, because Matt looks like the painting. Their features are not that dissimilar.

Same deepset eyes. Same cheekbones of doom. Same thin lips. Same protruding chin. Same high forehead. Same invsible eyebrows ffs. Matt has a squarer jaw, and a longer more rectangular face, and a wider nose, but considering that Daemon’s features are not described in the text, and this is the only official ASOIAF artwork that shows Daemon’s face straight on, I can for sure see why he was probably shortlisted to begin with. And that’s not even getting into to his role in The Crown, which I’ve heard is very well played with politics and palace intrigue... and if you doubt Smith can play seductive/roguish and/or evil (depending on how you LARP as a Westeros historian), or look good with long hair... well. I do not want to watch the movie, but this trailer is disturbingly enlightening.

And as for Rhaenyra... y’all know this show is starting at the beginning of the story, right? When she’s a teenager? Not a voluptuous MILF? Yeah, Emma D’Arcy doesn’t look like a Magali Villeneueve painting (though who does, good lord), but you know who she does look remarkably like? Harry Lloyd.

Same jawline. Same nose. Same thin lips. Same sharp cheekbones. Notably, same kind of sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes as Matt Smith. HBO evidently has a concept of a “Targaryen look” that’s a little bit quirkier than supermodel-Greek statue-gods on earth, yeah, fine. But it’s consistent, and they look like family, and that-- that is good casting.

And yeah, in a few months to a year or so, you’ll see them in costume and wigs and makeup, you’ll see them in motion and speaking lines, and go Oh. That’s different. Never mind. And while people will make fanart of the show depictions of the characters and those will probalby get popular, they’ll also keep doing fanart of their pre-show headcanons, and those too will be popular. (God knows when I draw or visualize book!Sandor, Rory does not come to mind, lol.) Either way, there’s no reason to panic. We’ll live.

(Though will we live well? Got to wait on the writing and showrunning for that, alas.)

75 notes · View notes

5-falsehoods-phonated · 4 years

Note

No problem! What if you used Cold Blooded Torture and Trying to Wake Them Up? (I would like it if you used Logan as the victim but you can do whoever!)

(Prompts with boxes have been taken, highlighted have been written.)

Requests for this card are closed for now as I have quite a bit to work on with this and personal projects. An ordered wip post will be made after this one if you’re curious what I’m working on. Also i apologize for this being written so long after you requested it, my hiatus took a little longer than expected. I hope you enjoy this though!

Across The Hall He Waits For You

Summary: Logan wakes up in a confusing environment with an even more confusing man keeping him prisoner. But just when he thinks he's finally free, he only becomes more trapped.

Warnings: psychological torture, physical violence, crying, minor character death, blood, broken bones. If there are more you need added please let me know!

Prompt: Cold Blooded Torture, Trying to Wake Them Up

Ships: Analogical, Logan x Virgil

WC: 4, 805

AO3 Link

Logan's breath caught as the faint screaming finally cut off, the final echoes bouncing around in his cell until they faded out completely. His was a soundproof room, as he expected the other's had to be since it seemed as if under any other circumstances this would be a regular house. The walls were lined with acoustic panels from floor to ceiling, the latter covered with them save for the light source and the former having plush deep green carpeting that was covered with a plastic tarp around where his chair sat. Logan shivered involuntarily as he thought for the umpteenth time what that could mean for him.

The chair was simple and wooden, his bare legs sticking to it uncomfortably with his ankles and knees strapped down tightly with creaking leather strips. The fact that they seemed to be little more than modified belts gave him the barest hint of hope that maybe whoever was keeping him here for whatever reason wasn't experienced in...whatever it was they were doing that Logan carefully pushed to the back of his mind. The window was shut and boarded up with more panelling from what he could see over his shoulder but dim light still filtered through to him from the slightly open door.

He smiled thinly as it reminded him of his son, always needing the door open just a bit with some form of light coming through to scare away the monsters he was sure were lurking in the darkest corners of his room, imagination that was so bright in the sun turned menacing fangs towards him in the dark, making him cry and run down the hall to their room most nights to crawl safely between him and his husband. Something that he now very much understood as slow tears tracked down his cheeks, wrists straining against more creaking bonds that held his hands securely behind the back of the chair. He hung his head low as he once again wracked his brain for any reason he could possibly be here.

A prank? Much too cruel of one to pull on anyone, especially for this long. It had been at least a day from what Logan could assess, maybe longer as he didn't know how long he had been unconcious in the room. Everything was placed just a bit too dilerberatly for this to be a prank as well, his bonds just a bit too tight, the fact that he was naked except for his boxers and the people who knew him certainly knew how uncomfortable he would be with it. So that left more malicious reasons. He was held like he was going to be tortured, that much he could gathe from the screams. The tarp made it seem like it would be heavily physical, though no tools were present in the room from what he could see to give a sense of how. Had a serial killer taken him? He hadn't heard of any cases. Assasination? He wasn't that important to his knowledge, a lowly lab tech for a blood lab hardly jumped out as being anyone with important enough knowledge to warrant whatever he was in for. That left just a random person taking another random person in to do with what they would, which also made very little sense since the room was so well prepared.

All the thinking did was deepen the pit of anxiety curling his stomach muscles tight and making him shake slightly with fear and anticipation, thoughts bouncing from one point in his skull to the next making him even more disoriented than he was before. He craved for something, anything to happen, just so long as he wasn't isolated with his spiraling thoughts anymore, on a chair his clammy skin stuck to with little relief from shifting and creaking leather binding him to it in a way that had most of his extremities falling asleep. His fingers flexed with maddening numbness as he once again tried to shift stiffly in his confines, really only succeeding in making everything worse. Huffing out a breath before holding it in sudden fear he strained his ears to listen.

Boots squeaked on what was either hardwood or linoleum outside his door and as the door creaked open he was mildly surprised that if he hadn't been tied down the man who entered wouldn't be intimidating at all. Wispy brown hair hung messily around bright green eyes that held no expression at all. A mask covered his mouth and nose while a plain rumpled tshirt, jeans and work boots dressed the rest of him. The door creaked as he shut it and he swung a small backpack down to the floor almost casually, making no effort to even look at the helpless man in the center of the room. Logan watched with baited breath as the man rummaged around, gathering his courage and opening his mouth.

"Where-"

The other mans reflexes were quick, a small pocket knife clattering to the ground between his feet before his mouth even registered the pain. It had thankfully been closed when it was thrown, leaving what he assessed to be little more than a swollen lip but his anxiety only climbed to new heights with the split second interaction.

The man continued to rummage in his pack, seemingly pushing around fabric and tools Logan couldn't see until he pulled out a water bottle. He tensed as the man stood and walked up to him, holding the open bottle to his lips patiently. Carefully Logan took a few sips before it was taken away. A folding chair was brought over from against a wall Logan couldn't see and the man sat down heavily on it, drinking from the same bottle lazily as he settled. Logan let out a tiny sigh of relief. At least the water hadn't been poisoned...unless poison could sit on top and he got the most potent dose and the man was leading him into a false sense of security and was just waiting-

Inwardly he shook himself from his thoughts. He couldn't afford to panic, that would be his husband's job, which he winced to think about. He was probably frantic, already suffering from anxiety and now Logan missing...did the man take him too? Is that who the other screams belonged to? His chest constricted as he looked back up.

"Where is-" Again he was cut off with the blunt end to the knife in his face, picked up when he wasn't paying attention and cracking his lower lip this time, falling in the same place between his feet. Leaning forward the other man grabbed the knife back, dragging it slowly against the carpet as he sat up.

"Speak when spoken to." He said simply.

Under any other circumstances Logan would say fuck it and yell and scream until he had no voice, but he needed more information and couldn't risk getting him upset. If he was able to escape he needed to be in the best shape possible and taking the chance the man was throwing randomly and risking getting an eye poked out certainly wasn't in his best interest. So he tried his best to relax, swiping his tongue over the well of blood on his lip and staring ahead expectantly.

The man settled back and regarded him with interest, the only clue into any emotion a slightly quirked eyebrow. He capped the water bottle and set it between his legs on the chair, bringing his hands up to rest on top of his head while twirling the knife expertly between his fingers.

"Logan Brian Croft. Interesting name."

Confused, Logan only nodded, swallowing hard as he tried to dismiss the fact that this man knew his full name.

"And your son, Roman, he's what...four? Five?"

"If you have done anything to my son, rest assured I'll-" He cried out as his lip split further, the knife once again between his feet.

"Speak when spoken to. Answer the questions given. You're smart this shouldn't be too hard." The wiry man picked up the knife again and twirled it aimlessly as he watched Logan squirm under his gaze, a glare fixed upon his swelling face. "So, four? Five?"

"He's seven." Logan spat, blood spattering on his knee.

The man smirked as he settled in more. "Seven then. Young enough to get fairy tales read to him still?"

What in the world was this person getting at? "Of course."

"What's his favorite?"

"...I- he likes so many. I suppose he's been partial to The Twelve Dancing Princesses lately."

"Mm. Bit of a less popular one." The knife was set down to Logan's immediate relief, the man's arms crossing over his chest. "Tell me about it. What's the plot?"

"What?" Thoroughly confused but quick to realize his mistake he hastily amended. "Yes right! It tells the story of twelve princesses being locked in their room each night but in the morning their shoes being worn down as though they were out all night. The king, not receiving any explanation from them, implores any man to discover their secret within three days or be sentenced to death." Here he paused and looked at the other for confirmation to continue, to which he nodded. Perplexed Logan pressed on.

'Just play the game right.' He thought. 'Just survive.'

"Many men try and fail to stay awake to discover their secret as the princesses give them sleeping potions each night. An old soldier on his way to the castle receives a magic cloak and a warning against the wine from an old woman. As might falls he pretends to sleep then dons the cloak to spy, following them through a trap door leading to a grove then a lake then a castle where they all dance the night away. Taking branches and a goblet as evidence to the king, the princess's finally confess. The king makes the soldier his heir and gives him the eldest daughters hand in marriage as a reward."

The man nods thoughtfully. "Odd he likes it so much but I guess that's kids for you. But wasn't it an old man who gave the soldier the warning?"

Logan furrowed his brow as he thought. He was certain it had been a woman but it was such a small detail, and with no means to look it up...he eyes the knife fearfully, his lip still throbbing. "Yes I- suppose it might have been."

Smirking, the man stands not before pocketing the knife and holds up the water bottle again. Getting a few sips before it was taken away the man refolded the chair, grabbed his bag, and left.

Logan blinked. That...couldn't be it. He was expecting an interrogation, more violence, personal questions; though he was thankful it hadn't gone that way it left him no less cofused. He tugged a bit more at his bonds and his heart leapt in his chest at the realization that maybe they felt just the slightest bit looser. Straining his ears for any signs the man would return soon and hearing none he settled back as much as he could and grit his teeth. Flexing his muscles he stretched the belt section as much as he could by pulling his wrists apart, the edges digging even more painfully at the already tender flesh. He didn't get very far but held it there for as long as he could before laxing and stretching his tingling fingers. Rolling his head back to stare at the ceiling he took a breath and tensed again.

-------

Waking up again had Logan flinching back from green eyes violently seeing his captor sat not one foot away from him. The door was slightly open behind him and he could just make out the sound of muffled crying coming from somewhere nearby.

"Who is-" A crack sounded shortly in the altered room, Logan's cheek throbbing and neck bending sideways with the force of the blow. Tears threatened to spill as he glared stubbornly back at the man, who looked on as impassively as ever.

"Forgotten the rules already? Figured you'd be smarter than that."

He shifted to sit straighter as the other leaned back, wrists aching from the strain he had put on them the day prior. He could feel the dull throb of his heartbeat in his fingertips and he tried in vain to flex his fingers, only earning painful spasms in return. A water bottle was again shoved in his face and with it came the realization that he needed a bathroom. Thankfully it wasn't yet uncomfortable but it was enough to make him hesitate taking the offer. Deciding staying hydrated was ultimately more important he earned a few sips against his cracked lip before it was taken away entirely too soon, making him want to whine at the loss but not wanting to give anything away.

Logan noticed the knife in the man's front pocket and cringed involuntarily while his abuser downed half the bottle himself, smacking his lips and laying a hand on the handle as a warning. Through nerves making his chest tighten once again Logan tried his best to concentrate on what the other might want today.

"Your son, you said he's six right?"

"Seven." Logan answered automatically.

"Hm. So that would mean he's in first grade."

"Yes." Llgan nearly smiled at the thought of how much Roman enjoyed school. He did very well, always getting straight A's and B's and making new friends. He was such an outgoing child, so much unlike his fathers and Logan honestly didn't know where he got it from. He supposed someone had to be the personable one in their small family.

"Does he talk about his friends a lot?" This sent Logan immediately on edge. If this person expected Logan to talk about his sons friends and possibly put them in danger- he would gladly take whatever punishment there was to keep them safe. Seeing the look on his face the other shook his head. "You can abbreviate their names, no harm is coming to them. Just making some friendly conversation. It's not as if I don't already have their information."

"I-"

"There's Patton right? Little curly haired boy, rather skittish. And Janus, odd name but he goes by Dee anyway...he's the one with eczema right?" Alarm bells ringing Logan began shaking his head.

"N-no, you have that wrong. Janus is someone entirely diff-" His desperate attempt to throw him off was met with another back-handed slap to the same cheek, making his vision wink with blackness temporarily.

"Don't lie. I have the information already and all playing hero will get you is more than you could handle."

Thoroughly fed up, Logan sat up and spat blood in the other man's face, earning slight satisfaction in the brief look of shock that crossed over it. Cringing slightly at the look he recieved but staring up with defiance none the less he watched as the man wiped his cheek in mild disgust.

"I wouldn't have done that."

"Fuck you." The words felt strange falling from his mouth, he rarely ever swore especially directed at others, but the fear was rapidly being replaced by adrenaline as his body braced itself for punishment, drowning out any and all rational thought. When the man stood however, he turned and left the room, leaving the door open enough that he could just catch sight of the beige hallways walls beyond.

When the screaming started, the adrenaline high he'd been riding left him so quickly it left him gasping for breath, the previous defiance replaced with a cold pit of dread as the persons pitch went up to a painful octave. Both doors must have been left open for how clearly their voice came through now. Shutting his eyes tightly against it he could only listen as wave after wave of guilt washed over him as whatever was happening seemed to go on endlessly.

The screams turned desperate as the other captive began pleading brokenly. "Please stop, please! I'll do whatever you want! I'll stay quiet, I'll talk, I'll die just PLEASE!"

The last word came out more like a pained shriek that made him flinch back violently in his chair. Something was thrown hard and clattered against something solid making the sound echo briefly over the gasping sobs coming from whoever was in the other room. A door was slammed shut cutting off the sounds before footsteps could be heard coming closer. Logan refused to look up as their torturer entered the room, earning a scoff as he hoisted up his pack to leave.

"I think I've given you enough to think about for today." The door was shut firmly as the rest of the fight drained from Logan and he slumped forward, not noticing the bonds pulling painfully at his joints. Screams echoed in his skull on a constant loop that try as he might would not be expelled from his mind.

Enough to think about indeed.

----------

"Tell me a fact."

Logan lifted his head tiredly from his chest, blinking slowly at the blurring man. It had been five or six days by his estimate, sleeping slumped in his chair for who knows how long, waking up to recieve sips of water and once a sandwitch crammed down his throat, using the alotted down time to stretch at the bonds around his wrists. Always with the out of the blue questions that he would get a detail wrong about. Lack of proper nutrition and hydration was leaving him feel slow and dimwitted.

What was his son's favorite fairy tale again? The Twelve Dancing Princess'....or was it The Frog Prince? He had a frog plush he really liked so maybe...but no, he knew his son. That had to be it, but the plot was fuzzy and out of focus, details from too many stories mushing together. Did his son have two friends he talked about or was it three? There was another boy who bullied him often but kids would be kids and perhaps it was more friendly competition...at least that's what the man had suggested. He couldn't verify the information and was too tired to care anymore. He got hurt when he asked questions so maybe questions weren't necessary. His captor knew a lot about them and seemed to be in much better health than he was at this point so maybe he did know better.

His thoughts were interupted with a harsh pinch to the frail skin of his thigh. Both of his thighs were covered in bruises from the days prior, and his face was a constant throbbing ache that made his head pound and thoughts slur even more. He was tired and cold and hungry. His mouth tasted like sour blood and he never got enough water to rinse it out properly. Above everything else he really had to pee, but he hadn't been taken out of the chair since he arrived. He wanted nothing more than to be at home, in bed with his husband and son under a mound of blankets with Roman's stuffed bunny pressed into his face and his love's arms securely wrapped around his waist. All he had instead were screams and a hard chair.

A punch to his other thigh made him yelp and look up. "Focus. Tell me a fact. Come on you're full of them."

He didn't understand the game they were playing. What was the point of talking if he'd be told he was wrong anyway? His memories were failing and just yesterday he had forgotten blood was red because it had no oxygen. That seemed so absurd to him at the time but he supposed in his deteriorated state mistakes were bound to happen. Even mistakes regarding a job he had held for years. What was it he had wanted? A fact, right.

"According to all known laws of aviation-" he slurred, giggling a bit to himself as his captive sat back with a carefully neutral expression. His heart leapt in his throat as he stood up and left the room, weakly calling out that he could do better. Before the door was shut he caught sight of a phone in the others hands, making his brain have a semi coherent thought if he ever escaped where to get to a phone.

The door failed to shut all the way and Logan strained his ears to be able to hear the muttering the other side, faintly catching a bit before he moved further down the hall.

"He's getting more and more delirious I think I'll be able to get it out of him soon. ......husb............breaking...." Logan's ears perked at the nearly incoherent sentence. Husband? His husband? Was he here? Was he okay? What about Roman??

With the door open he could hear faint moaning from the other room, and with it came a burst of numb resolve. He was weak but so were his bonds as he had steadily been working them loose over the last few days. Testing their strength he pulled as hard as he could, feeling the rough edge slice against his rubbed raw wrist until with a dull snap the leather fell to the floor. Eyes widening in surprise he wasted no time in bending over to unbuckle his legs and ankles , nearly face planting in his haste to stand. Taking a steadying breath he shuffled slowly to the door and squeezed through the crack, seeing his captor with his back towards him. Easy then, get whoever was in the other room, overtake the wiry man and steal his phone, call the police and get rescued.

Nodding through his doubt and fear he made his way slowly to another door, inching it open and slipping inside. Letting out a breath he turned around and froze, recognizing his husband's thin frame under the mess he had become. His purple hair was matted and plastered to his forehead with sweat and blood alike, his nose an indecipherable blood clot splattered against his face. His whole frame shook with pain as Logan took in the numerous open wounds dripping with blood and pus alike, fingers twisted at odd angles and twitching uselessly against the arms of the chair he was tied to. Haunted eyes darted to his fearfully as he drew a ragged breath through his ruined mouth, moaning with an urgency Logan barely understood.

"Virgil?"

"Lo-"

He didn't even hear his full name before the floor creaked behind him, bladder releasing in fear and adrenaline making him stumble with the intensity. He was seized by the throat before he could make a sound, vision swimming as the man's intense gaze filled his vision.

"And just where did you think you were going?"

------------

The thick chains ground into his wrist bones painfully while his head lolled from side to side. Wrong. Everything was wrong. He didn't know anything, he didn't feel anything. Virgil's screams had gone quiet hours ago leaving a dull ache in his tired chest. His feet had lost feeling ages ago as his broken ankles swelled beyond his bonds. At least he didn't have to pee anymore. He didn't feel like he had to do much of anything anymore.

He barely twitched as the door opened. He was so, so tired. He had fallen asleep and woken up so many times since his escape attempt he couldn't guess how long he had been here if his brain wasn't already mush. All the facts he felt so accomplished in knowing and studying were wrong. All wrong. Details mixed up and spit out with enough inaccuracies to make him cry if he wasn't so dehydrated. Memories of Virgil and Roman skewed and rotted with the last of his concious thoughts. His husband's smile had forever been replaced by the bloodied face he had seen desperately trying to warn him of his stupidity, and now he had ruined their one chance at escape.

Moaning softly as his chin was pulled down he locked eyes with his captor, who smirked and nodded, holding out his phone. He noticed the call screen running and figured he must be on speaker. What was he meant to do now? Spout off more things that would be proven false with a backhanded slap or a hard punch to the gut?

"The password to your family safe. What is it?"

Somewhere, deep in Logan's subconscious his alarm bells were ringing. He had been beaten, starved and manipulated for days for just this moment, when all his walls were down and he doubted every word that left his mouth. Something wasn't right, the family safe where all their papers were, all their shared stocks and living wills and something else. Something important that he was sure he was forgetting. The thought was gone as soon as it entered as he groggily slurred out some combination of numbers towards the microphone.

His chin was freed as some form of confirmation was given on the other end. His cheek was patted softly, the gentlest he had been touched in so long it made tears prick his eyes. The man hung up and turned to dig through his bag, pulling out a full syringe and uncapping it as Logan watched in confusion, flicking out the air bubbles and turning back towards him.

"Shame my client didn't just recieve the inheritance in the first place, would've been much less painful for you." It clicked then that that was the important thing. The trust fund and pooled inheritance from Virgil's family they had stored away for Roman's future. The last thing that would be left to him if they didn't make it out alive. And he had just given it over to God only knows who.

"Wha-"

"Lethal injection. A mercy really, I have no more need of you and neither does my client. It'll be quick I promise. Just like ripping off a bandaid."

Logans mind connected the dots slowly as the man came towards him, and adrenaline shot through him one last time as he began to panic. Nonononononono! He had to get out! He had to get Virgil, find Roman; he needed them safe! The syringe came closer and closer as if in slow motion and in one last desperate attempt to survive he bucked up violently with everything he had. His ankles protested heavily making him scream in pain and tip his chair back, knocking the needle away and making him fall heavily to the side. As he blinked back the tears he heard a gasp and looked over at the man's shocked expression, moving his eyes down to his thigh where the syringe was now fully dispensed and sticking out of. Too late his abuser snatched it out, breathing heavily as he turned towards Logan.

"What have you done?" He turned and stumbled slightly, falling to his knees and crawling to the door clawing desperately at the handle as his strength seemed to leave him, breathing growing more and more labored until he slumped over limply, the erratic rise and fall of his chest stilling completely after only a minute.

For a moment Logan allowed himself to feel triumphant. He had survived! He had won and now he could- he jingled the thick chains uselessly around his wrists, ankles screaming in pain and head pounding from his fall. Looking over frantically at the body by the door his mouth opened and shut several times, low croaks the only sound working past dry lips. He couldn't get free and Virgil- he was trapped across the hall dying slowly, alone, all because of him. His captor was dead and Virgil was dying and Logan was dying and all he could do was bang his head against the floor uselessly as sobs wracked his frail body.

"Wake up!" He whispered uselessly. "WAKE UP!"

His dry vocal chords felt as if they were ripping apart as he screamed and cried to no avail in his sound proofed prison. They were all dead. And no one was coming.

As he grew weaker his sobs quieted enough for him to faintly hear the sound of someone crying in the other room. His heart broke as he thought of Virgil alone and terrified and hurting, thoughts mixing up and blurring the body in front of him until it more resembled his husband's. He missed him so much. He missed his home. He missed his son. He wished, above all else he could hear their voices one last time. As his eyes slowly shut the crying grew more familiar, sinking him into a dream of what once was, monsters no more real than the ones children ran from under beds. He smiled faintly as he thought back to the simple time, hearing Roman's shout of fear and knowing he'd be able to fix it with a kiss and a cuddle.

"Daddy!"

#false writes #sanders sides #virgil sanders #sanders sides fic #roman sanders #logan sanders #kid roman #bad things happen bingo #bad things bingo #bthb #tw violence #tw minor character death #tw blood #tw torture #tw broken bones #tw caps lock #tw crying #analogical #virgil x logan

38 notes · View notes

jedimordsith · 4 years

Note

You mentioned that you've come to have more empathy for Yoday but still wouldn't recommend him as a direct master for anyone. What were/are your biggest issues with him? There are several I could guess, and probably some I agree with, but I don't want to assume.

Ahahahaha. I’m in a ranty mood this week, so it’s a great time to tackle this ask! Here’s more than anyone ever wanted to know about my Yoda Feels.

My problems with Yoda come down to a couple things.

We have entirely different learning/teaching styles.

I have zero tolerance for cryptic shavit when there’s *actual communication* that needs to happen.

A lot of Yoda’s behaviors make sense when viewed in the context of the PT but I formed most of my opinions based on the OT before the PT was a Thing.

I don’t agree with the approach Yoda took in swanning off to Dagobah post RotS. AT ALL.

Different Learning/Teaching Styles

(In ESB) Yoda very much follows the Greek and Buddhist styles of teaching where masters ask questions that don’t necessarily have solid answers. This is a valid style and something @atamascolily consistently captures gorgeously in her fics. It also absolutely makes me want to stab people.

I’m like Mara Jade: a task-oriented learner. I want to know what I’m supposed to learning/mastering, why, how I’ll demonstrate success, and what the checkpoints are along the way. Meandering philosophical debates as part of an ill-defined training process are maddening. As noted, as I get older I am more accepting of this as a legit style and just not for me; this makes Yoda more sympathetic as a character but not any less annoying.

Also, when Luke asks honest and reasonable questions in ESB (like “why”) Yoda shuts him down flat and I’m extremely not okay with that. Luke is being genuine and respectful despite his own frustrations and as someone who is committing his life to the Jedi path he has both a right and a need to know things. Demanding blind faith when there are or should be reasonable answers of some kind is Not Okay.

Just Communicate Dammit!

With Ben Kenobi and Bail Organa gone, Yoda was the only person around holding a lot of key information. Did he share that information? Nope. He wandered around being a cryptic little troll “because Luke wasn’t ready” despite knowing full well that his health was failing. He gave Luke none of the information he actually needed to make informed decisions and didn’t even freaking write anything down!!

From a Doylist perspective, this is obviously largely because George Lucas et al hadn’t figured out any of the backstory yet. From a Watsonian perspective, this is unforgivable.

If your time is short (as his time with Luke was destined to be no matter how things went), it is critically important to be clear and use your time well. Yoda just didn’t.

Obnoxious Troll vs Grandpa Frog

The PT very much sets Yoda up as Grandpa Frog, a beloved grandfather figure who teaches the younglings regularly and who everyone understands as mischievous but loving. Viewed in that sense, a lot of how he treats Luke in ESB makes sense… but it doesn’t make it okay.

The younglings at the Temple literally grew up around the Force and Yoda. Luke did not. Luke didn’t even know WTF the Force was until he was almost 20. He got like 24 hours of introduction to it before Ben died. Compliments of Palpatine and the Purge and the war, there is almost no information available to him between ANH and ESB except what he figures out himself. Yet Yoda treats him like a disappointment and a failure for not understanding the scope of the Force and having doubts about its power.

Guess what? If Luke had grown up in the Temple, yeah, he’d be all about raising X-wings out of swamps. But he didn’t. He grew on repressed for his own safety on a farm in the middle of nowhere without a hint of a clue.

Now, through the lens of the PT, I can see Luke being a frustrating student for Yoda. He’s used to getting younglings who have been exposed to and trained in the Force by a range of other Jedi. Starting with an older student suffering from a ton of trauma and without any of the basics that he has to train in less than a fraction of the time shaping a Jedi would normally take is a massive undertaking and he’s old and tired besides. The whole family history with Vader wouldn’t make it any easier.

But you know what? Luke is young. He left his found family in the middle of a war and is undergoing hugely stressful training in the middle of a swamp so that he can shoulder even bigger burdens. Yoda has had 20 years of (mostly) downtime to deal with his own trauma and at least several hundred years of practice being a teacher and a leader. He’s the one in a position to improve things and accommodate and he doesn’t. I’m not okay with that.

Let’s Talk About That Downtime BTW

Again, from a Doylist perspective, I get why Yoda was hanging out on Dagobah, why he used things like visions to communicate with people like Kanan, Ezra, etc. periodically, and why he was Luke’s mentor in ESB/RotJ.

From a Watsonian view, though, I’m not freaking impressed. He was the Grandmaster. He was heartbroken over the Jedi and Padawans he couldn’t save. But what did he do for the remaining ones spread across the galaxy? Shavit, that’s what. Kanan, Cal Kestis, Feris Olan, all the Jedi/Padawans who got kidnapped and twisted into Inquisitors — they were on their freaking own while Yoda swanned off to Dagobah.

Oh, sure, he’d pop up in a vision here or there or whatever, but he had a safe place. And, apparently, the ability to reach at least some of them some of the time (see: visions and his connections to people like Bail Organa). Do I think any of those people probably wanted to live on Dagobah? Not particularly. But I think they’d have appreciated the safety and the chance to reconnect with what remained of their Jedi family, even if only briefly.

But no. Yoda hangs out, waiting for the day the twins are old enough to take on the responsibility to kill Vader/Palpatine and then… does nothing?! He just keeps hanging out even after both Luke and Leia have lost everything, lets them get all settled into the Rebellion without a word, and THEN has the nerve to be cranky and disgruntled when he actually does get one of them to train!!

YOU MADE CHOICES YOU LITTLE FROG TROLL. DON’T TAKE THEM OUT ON THE PEOPLE YOU DENIED CHOICES FOR 20 YEARS.

I’m Not Entirely Without Compassion, I Swear

*sigh* I have seen a lot of Yoda meta in recent years that makes me appreciate Yoda for what he was during the PT. He really *was* everybody’s loving Grandpa who worked for centuries to love on the Jedi, protect them, and take care of them well. He legit wanted all of them to be happy and safe… and his suffering when the Purge happened must have been unimaginable. Like Luke and Leia, he lost everything.

Unlike the twins, he didn’t get to rebuild or find a new family. While I believe what we have in the EU suggests he found peace and solace and a new home of Dagobah that was genuinely soothing to his wounded soul, he was alone and (whether he was or not) he did feel mostly helpless to do anything for his few scattered Jedi grandchildren who remained and suffered across the galaxy. He did face decisions in which there *weren’t* good, clear-cut answers.

I think if I’d met him first in the PT or meta I might have liked him better. But I still wouldn’t ever recc him as a Master for any character I like because I can’t imagine learning under him being an experience I would ever wish on anyone simply based on my own vehement loathing for his personal teaching style. I know there are people in the world who would thrive on that approach and I like to think I’ve got a good imagination, but I simply can’t conceptualize it as a positive, productive experience.

*As an end note, if you DO like Yoda or want to like him better please go read @atamascolily‘s fics, seriously. You’ll love them!

40 notes · View notes

let-fans-be-fans · 3 years

Text

STAR WARS Episode 8 - The Last Jedi

Only read after watching The Mandalorian s2 e8

Imagine a Lucasfilm Story Group that has actually worked as a group since 2015. Chuck Wendig’s draft of the first Aftermath novel has been roundly mocked and pulped before ever being committed to print. This isn’t about that, though. This is the germination of the story seed that is planted in The Mandalorian, so join me as we explore one of the possibilities that could have happened within the Star Wars universe: What If Grogu (the Child/Baby Yoda) first appeared in TLJ?

Ahch-To, the steps. Luke Skywalker regards his guest Rey with a quizzical expression, telling her simply but firmly “I can’t take that, but there is a place for it somewhere...” and the two move inside Luke’s little hut. Passing by a large levitating pod, Rey (and the audience) experiences mental flashes of meeting Finn. Smash-cut to Finn himself waking up in the recovery suit in the med-bay. Finn/Rose/whatever sub-plot (this post isn’t about fixing THAT car-crash, let it marinate) ensues, does what it does. This timeline’s Rian Johnson, however, is co-existing with LFL’s Story Group and especially Dave Filoni. They’ve cooked up one hell of an A-plot, and it continues thusly:

Rey never sees what is in the pod, and begins to wonder if Luke is messing with her or starting to go a little peculiar from isolation, on account of how he talks to it. In fact, something is starting to make her feel slightly more at ease. Maybe even a little guilty when Luke’s mood turns sombre and he says, “I know. About Han, and Ben...” We maybe even get a little nostalgia-boost by Luke opting to use the training remote and blast-shield helmet to start training Rey. It’s like poetry, it rhymes.

All through this time, Luke has not withdrawn himself from the Force out of shame. He has always kept himself open to it, learning from the spirits of his teachers. The night that Rey decides to leave and try to aid the Resistance (or to confront Kylo Ren for her own reasons) is the night that Luke receives a visitation from two very unexpected spirits.

That’s right, y’all. The first Force ghost appearance of a non-Force-sensitive character in the Saga. Padmé and Anakin show up to give Luke the news that some strange, dark figure has attempted to kill Leia by shooting at her private chamber on the Resistance flagship, only for Luke to not understand why they don’t know the attacker’s name. “You don’t need to hide it, to protect him. You know, as well as I do, that it was Ben!” Anakin shares a concerned look with the spirit of his wife, and the next thing he says would absolutely blow the cinema audience out of every single seat in the house. “Luke? Son, listen to me. Who is this Ben?”

That’s right. Anakin Skywalker, the former Sith Lord Darth Vader, has absolutely no idea that our sequel trilogy’s Vader-like antagonist (his own grandson) even exists. Even as the Force ghosts watching over Luke and Leia and their families for all this time, both Padmé and Anakin explain that from their perspective, something is bending the Force itself around Ben Solo, pulling him away from not only the Light side, but also from its Dark side. “The boy, Ben Solo, is living his entire life surrounded by a wound in the Force. This wound, it’s very subtly, slowly eating him!”

Luke is still in shock from hearing the ghosts of his parents telling him what is happening to Kylo Ren. Rey is trying to keep him out but the villain is urged by his twisted Master, the Supreme Leader of the First Order. Their telepathic communication is picked up on by Luke, who all at once sees what has truly become of his nephew. Ben Solo appears to his uncle, surrounded by tendrils that look like animated cracks in a pane of window glass. This is the wound in the Force, and its presence is felt most strongly by the eldest living Force-sensitive on the island of Ahch-To. A short cry splits the cracked and bleeding image of Kylo Ren and Rey wakes with a sudden start. Luke is frowning as he looks toward the floating cradle, then he makes his decision. We (and Rey) are about to meet the 100 % physical in-camera puppet. Cast and crew are made to sign an infinite supply of Non-Disclosure Agreements, Rian Johnson is talked into only letting Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley and the puppeteers onto the sets while everybody else is shooting their things.

The cradle pod swings back its protective lid slowly, and there he is making his debut before an audience that paid full movie theater (remember those?) ticket prices. Exuding full fucking “Gizmo in the box on the coffee table” energy, the Child glances sleepily between Rey and Luke. This is why the legendary Jedi Master left the civilized New Republic, he tells Rey. The massacre of his first generation of Jedi students, the betrayal by his nephew, all of it would have been for nothing if he couldn’t save one very important life. Rey is sworn to protect the Child, who is old enough now to speak his own name. “Grogu? Is that what he said?” “One of his protectors told me it’s his name, right before telling me how I looked just like my father. We had a pretty good laugh about that...”

Leia/Poe/Holdo subplot, and [THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH WILL ONLY INCITE SHOUTY BEARDO YOUTUBERS TO SCISSOR THE HEADS OFF ACTION FIGURES THEY BUY WITH THEIR OWN MONEY, THEREFORE IT IS CENSORED TO SHIELD THE AUTHOR FROM PROSECUTION]

Before the Holdo manoeuvre, the Hyperspace Karen or whatever you want to call it, Rey acts out the plan that she and Luke have concocted in secret so that Chewbacca in the Millennium Falcon can safely evacuate both Luke and Grogu. Rey hasn’t been told about the wound in the Force that swirls around Kylo Ren, but for some reason she can now see the same churning mass of tiny cracks in reality, and they spread out behind the Supreme Leader Snoke in much the same manner that Palpatine’s throne sat before the spiderweb-looking window of his tower on the Death Star. This is it, we think. Snoke is the wound in the Force drawing Ben away from his true self. Even as the lightsabre that Rey brought with her ignites and strikes Snoke dead, the audience is thinking along with Rey that the wound is going to close up.

IT GETS BIGGER. AND IT FUCKING CONSUMES SNOKE’S BISECTED CORPSE LIKE A SHADOW VERSION OF THE THING FROM THE 1982 MOVIE

So no. Rey sees it happen, but Kylo remains completely oblivious as he takes up leadership of the First Order. Something about the way he accuses Rey of the murder makes us think he really believes it too. As Rey narrowly escapes, haunted by the sight of the living animalistic wrongness that ate Supreme Leader Snoke, General Hux is rather confused. “Forgive me, ah, Supreme Leader. But you are the first Supreme Leader of the First Order. There was never a previous holder of that position, my Lord.” I know! Right!?

The Resistance’s last ships have limped along the supply line to the long-abandoned old Rebel holdout on the silicate world of Crait. The wreckage of Snoke’s flagship the Supremacy, hangs in space, permanently suspended in the wake of the Holdo manoeuvre. From the epicentre, a single pinprick of darkness begins to expand hungrily to devour the light from the hyperspace explosion. The great wound left in the Force crawls across the destroyed vessel, the thinnest tendril of its immense darker-than-space form now separated from Kylo Ren. Or, so it would seem, anyway... Reunited with Rey, Luke gives her an understanding nod when she informs him of how the lightsabre of his father was literally ripped in half by the destruction of Snoke’s flagship. Some of the elder members of the Resistance don’t have the slightest clue what Rey’s mysterious words mean. As far as they know, Kylo Ren has been the brutal enforcer of the First Order, only recently declaring himself the first Supreme Leader of the faction. Finn and Rose both speak up in defense of Rey, both of them surprised to hear that Leia also knew of Snoke’s death and the destruction of the flagship by her erstwhile friend, Amilyn Holdo.

Nobody can agree what happened, because a large subset of Resistance personnel share vague, half-formed memories of things as Luke, Rey or Leia tells them. No droids, or Chewbacca, share their recollections, and uneasy looks pass between members of the post-war generation and the Skywalker twins. It’s a quirk of the Force! Every sentient born after the death of Emperor Palpatine, the unfortunately waylaid Maz Kanata informs them via hologram, possesses a significantly higher potential for Force abilities than the generation who grew up on the fringes of the rise of the Empire, the clamp-down on Jedi and suspected Jedi.

It would seem that this Force baby boom did not extend to First Order space (being mostly disaffected ex-Imperials, their families would be more careful to weed out any aberrations in the bloodline and try not to be of interest to the Emperor) as only Kylo Ren, their rightful Supreme Leader and master of the Knights of Ren demonstrates any ability to touch the Force. That voice that only he can hear in the presence of Darth Vader’s ruined helmet tells him, its tone and pitch and cadence shifting (starting as the booming bass rumble of Vader’s synthesized voice before being joined by the harsh rasp of Snoke. The low, menacing tone of Maul and the cackling, wheezing Palpatine.) Power is the only thing worth holding onto. Let the past die, kill it if you have to. Cut out the weakness that keeps you bound to things like family...

“This is not going to go the way you think.”

Driven on by the maddening chorus of voices, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has now managed to track his hated Resistance opposition to the deserted world of Crait. Ships entering the vicinity of the mysterious hyperspace blackout are slowly consumed, vanishing into the great wound and becoming officially non-existent. Alone against his crazed nephew, the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker steps out onto the crystalline plain before the bulkhead doors of the former Rebel base. He cannot be hit by the guns of the lumbering walkers that his errant nephew orders to fire on him. Kylo’s attempts to telekinetically barrage Luke with the salted earth of Crait simply do not phase the man. As he calmly reminds Kylo: “The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.” Kylo Ren’s dangerously unstable lightsabre blade harmlessly passes over Luke as he ducks out of its reach. Finally, the angry young man seizes his moment and lashes out at Luke’s midsection. Nothing?

The Jedi Master nods his head slowly, the camera pulling back to reveal him sat in a meditative posture atop a flat-headed rock just off the shore of his home island on Ahch-To. Focusing his will through the Force, Luke appears not only in front of Kylo Ren, but also between Leia and Rey inside the base. The two of them in turn are surrounded by a loose semi-circle of the younger, more Force-sensitive recruits of the Resistance including Finn and Rose Tico. All of them, opening their conscious selves to the Force, are helping to shoulder the burden that Luke has taken on. Proudly, Luke slowly rises from his seat and sends a mocking salute to Kylo. “See ya ‘round, kid...”

The last supplies are loaded onto what few Resistance carriers and short-range fighters they have left, as well as the famous Millennium Falcon. Rey and Grogu both agree that their first priority is to properly re-establish contact with Luke Skywalker. Furious, Kylo retreats to his ship-board meditation chamber, pounding his gloved fists into the ashes surrounding the remnants of Vader’s helmet. Cursing the scavenger girl seems to spark some interest in the bizarre otherworldly whispers, the flash-image of Rey in the dark young man’s thoughts prompting the inner voice to remark, “We shall be re-united soon enough. Yes, you will see what new powers I possess in time, sister...”

SMASH TO END CREDITS!

#megapost #Star Wars #Baby Yoda #The Last Jedi #Luke Skywalker #basic story structure

4 notes · View notes

montagnarde1793 · 4 years

Text

Ribbons of Scarlet: A predictably terrible novel on the French Revolution (part 3)

Parts 1, 2, 4 and 5.

Style Issues

Stylistically, there’s a great deal of “tell don’t show” in this book, especially as regards the actual politics. The only things that are really concrete are the characters’ romantic entanglements and scenes of violence. This is a flaw that runs so deep that correcting it would mean writing a completely different book.

One thing that they could have done that would have made it somewhat more bearable, however, regards the use of language. In a book written in English but that takes place in France and where all the characters are French, please, I’m begging you, do not randomly (and often ungrammatically) insert whichever French words and phrases you half-remember from high school French class into descriptions and dialogue. It doesn’t give the characters a flavor of being French, it gives you a flavor of ignorance.

The key word here is “randomly”: note that I’m not talking about things like terms of address, exclamations, etc., for which there is an established convention, or terms for which there might not be an exact equivalent in English. No, I’m talking about this kind of thing: “[…] running a hand through his short-cropped noir hair” (p. 352). Please, resist the urge!

Also, this isn’t strictly a style issue, as the grammar is the least of the problems with it, but I don’t really know where else to put it... Each of the six parts opens with an epigraph. Here’s the one for Émilie de Sainte-Amaranthe’s (p. 437) :

“It was a sensual delight for l’homme rouge to see fall in the basket these charming heads and their ruby blood streaming under the hideous cleaver.”

—Archives Nationale [sic]

I can’t believe I have to say this to a fellow historian, but just saying a quote is from the archives is bizarrely and baffling amateurish. It’s like saying a quote is from the library, or from a book or from the internet. Without further information, it’s about as useful a citation as saying it came to you in a dream. Why? Because it tells us nothing about the author or the date or any kind of context and therefore gives us no real way of evaluating it — though the lurid, sensationalist language doesn’t inspire confidence. Since the author of this section more than any other seems to take as a principle of novel-writing that whatever is the most over-the-top makes for the best fiction, I would say sure, why not, but as the authors also apparently want their depiction of “history” to be taken seriously… I mean, what is there to even say?

Writing What You Want to Know

There’s a problem throughout this book with characters talking about 18th France like it’s a place they’ve only read about in books rather than the only place they’ve ever lived and therefore the only reality *they* know firsthand. Now, obviously, the authors, like the rest of us, *have* only read about a 200+ year-old setting in books (or come to know it through various types of primary sources), but good historical fiction should be able to make you forget that, or at least come close.

I can’t entirely decide whether we’re looking at a failure of research here or of imagination — or just clumsy handling of exposition. I suspect it’s some mixture of all three.

Allow me to explain. The clumsy exposition is a result of the aforementioned lack of trust in the reader as well, I suspect, of the few pages allotted to each author, which don’t allow for a more natural immersion of the reader into a world that is entirely alien to them but is made up of both new and familiar elements to the characters.

The research vs imagination issue is more complex. I’m a firm believer in the updated adage “write what you want to know,” but if you’re going to do that, the intermediate step between wanting and writing is inevitably research. And well, there’s research and there’s research. For a novel especially, you don’t just want to be researching what happened, the concrete material facts such as who was present for what event or what a given figure’s relationship was to the people around them, but also people’s mentalities/sensibilities. To plausibly write from their point of view, you also have to investigate the reasons they might have believed what they believed and to take that investigation seriously, whether or not you agree.

This was achieved better with some characters than others and again, I’m not entirely sure whether it’s for lack of research or lack of ability to empathize with certain points of view. Ironically, the chapter on Mme Élisabeth is probably the best handled. The author of that section says she wanted to be “fair” (back matter, p. 12) to her subject and I think she succeeds better than her co-authors, while showing that Mme Élisabeth, convinced of the absolute validity of the divine right of her brother, advocates at every turn for violently repressing the Revolution. She’s allowed to articulate her (frankly pretty abhorrent) beliefs in a plausible manner.

Perhaps the author of this section is just a better writer than her co-authors, but I think there’s more to it than that. I obviously can’t read minds, but from the text of the novel itself as well as from the authors’ notes, I get the impression that we’re dealing with a dual problem of epistemology (i.e. how do you know what you know?) and politics. In either case, it’s not a coincidence if Mme Élisabeth is the best drawn character… and Reine Audu and Pauline Léon are the worst.

First, on the epistemology side: whether consciously or not, it seems to me as if the authors largely started out with the assumption that they already basically understood their protagonists. Sophie de Grouchy is so ahead of her time she might as well be a modern woman, got it, no problem… Reine Audu is an avatar of the “mob,” (the author of her section’s words, not mine, back matter, p. 8), pitiable because of her poverty but with no real politics beyond that of hunger and resentment… Pauline Léon is a “well-intentioned extremist” to use TV Tropes parlance — you would think that label would apply better to Charlotte Corday, but the latter ends up being so saintly she basically converts Pauline Léon (in what is quite possibly the most maddening moment in the whole damn book)… and so on. If I’m right, the authors’ assumptions about these archetypes made them not really feel the need to dig too deeply into the question of what made these women tick, either through research or empathy.

We don’t know much about Reine Audu or Pauline Léon, but there has been a fair amount of research into the beliefs of the popular movement and revolutionary crowds from Georges Lefebvre onward (most of it tending to dispel the lazy stereotypes on display here). The authors either didn’t bother with it or made poor use of it (as is evidently the case with poor Dominique Godineau, who does figure in the bibliography).

The book does Pauline Léon a disservice on both sides, mischaracterizing her beliefs for good and for ill. They make feminism as a contemporary audience would understand it her primary cause and her support for the rest of the popular movement’s program (in which we learn that women and people of color are to be included, but not actually what it consists of...) accessory and easily disposable so Charlotte Corday can be proved right and “radical” men can prove to be the real enemy.

(Which… I could roll with it if the idea was just that men of all political flavors can be misogynists, but as usual, the message is all men are potential rapists (except Condorcet, Buzot, La Fayette and Louis XVI, of course) but the further left they are the rape-ier they get. That’s not how that works.)

Anyway, the point is, these are characters the authors seem to have gone in assuming they understood, either because they found them relatable or because they thought they knew what archetype they corresponded to. The author of the section on Mme Élisabeth, on the other hand, writes that this was a character that it took some effort to understand because the character’s worldview was so different from the author’s and that of her presumed readers. This was also the case to some degree with the author of Manon Roland’s section, who writes about having to grapple with her protagonist’s not being a feminist (a position that this author bizarrely seems to think was rare at the time). Regardless, in both cases, the effort to understand, along with the existence of more sources produced by the character they were attempting to inhabit, produced better results.

But again, I think there’s also a political element. Remember how I mentioned that this book’s main flaw is its feeling of artificiality? (I mean, to the point that the rest of this critique is really just about understanding why it feels so artificial.) One of the moments that felt the most authentic to me was Mme Élisabeth’s extravagant shoe-buying habit, her feeling bad about it and her confessor reassuring her that it’s fine because she hasn’t taken a vow of poverty, after all. And I don’t mean ‘authentic’ necessarily in the sense of ‘historically accurate’ — I don’t know enough about Mme Élisabeth off the top of my head to comment on her shoe collection. But I did think: there, consumerism and guilt about consumerism are in fact much more relatable to the middle class authors and their presumed middle class audience than hunger and privation — or activism relating to socio-economic issues, for that matter. Which is how we end up, here as in a lot of other media, with a relatable royal and revolutionary caricatures.

This is also a good demonstration of how research and imagination or empathy play off each other. Marge Piercy didn’t have more information about Pauline Léon than the authors of this book. In fact, she had less: she writes in the preface of her book that she learned that Léon’s mother was in fact still alive at the time of the Revolution when it was too late to change what she had written. Credit where credit is due, once again, this new book corrects that error.

But in every other respect, Piercy’s version is far superior, because Pauline Léon’s views as well as her experience are taken seriously. This is no doubt due in large part because Piercy herself has been an activist for various left-wing causes. Her activism surely allowed her to relate to her characters, but far from writing a simple projection from her own experience, it allowed her, just as importantly, to entertain the notion that there was something there to be taken seriously. And therefore, that it was worth researching what precisely these figures were fighting for and not simply the question of why people get caught up in “extremism.” That’s why Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe’s chapters are the best in City of Darkness, City of Light, while Pauline Léon and Reine Audu’s are the worst in this book.

Next time: inaccuracies big and small!

#en anglais #French Revolution #Révolution française

25 notes · View notes

chilligyu · 4 years

Photo

info: choi seungcheol/gender neutral reader, teen+, soulmate au genre: angst, romance | word ct: 1.5k warnings: major character death, self-harm references, terminal illnesses summary: you were never meant to be loved, you knew and accepted that, but seungcheol was someone you couldn’t help loving. your soulmate, your fate, and you were destined to break his heart.

scars were meant to be ugly things, but to seungcheol he had never seen anything more beautiful. a proof of history, of love and life etched into his skin. a story written in blood. he was never ashamed of the marks he left in despair. they were proof that despite everything he had been through, he was alive.

then the day came when you left one on his wrist.

and then he finally understood what being alive truly meant.

seungcheol met you when both of you were too young to appreciate the meaning of soulmates. too young to appreciate or understand fate. the line on your wrist shifted slowly from white to pink, your eyes widened in surprise, his eyes only softened with love. he was the romantic, you were the realist. and as he stood in front of you, smiling affectionately, he knew you were everything he had been looking for, everything he ever wanted.

you would never admit that you had been looking for him too.

he was ready right then and there to sign his life away, you were a bit more hesitant. that didn’t bother him, and he did his best to prove that he was worth staying with. he did his best to prove that he was worthy of your love. his line was ebbed with red, showing beyond a doubt that he was falling head over heels in love. he fell hard and he fell fast.

things weren’t as simple for you. you were scared.

seungcheol did his best to be patient, it hurt him to watch you smile every day and have no part in it. working in such close proximity to your soulmate and being unable to interact with them; it was maddening. painful. but you were perfect and therefore worth waiting for. he knew you would come around.

and one day you finally did.

it was a late night when you were ready to fall in love. to be in love. you and seungcheol were out drinking at the bar, he was making you laugh, you were making him smile, god it was hard for you to breathe. and everything else melted away. your issues with your landlord, his struggles with his boss, all that existed in that moment was the two of you. two soulmates. two perfectly imperfect beings meant to be with each other. you thought about that fact often, that seungcheol was everything to you. whether or not you could accept it, the universe, fate, had already decided it.

perhaps you should give him a chance. the only chance worth having.

he was surprised when you kissed him. you were surprised too. it was sloppy, reckless, drunk, passionate, and it was everything he had ever dreamed of. you smelled like gin and roses, he loved it so much. months of desperation and yearning, all leading up to that one perfect moment in the most imperfect place. it was all worth it. you were always worth it. and watching the pink line on your wrist throb a reddish hue, seungcheol had seen true beauty.

your relationship was, in so few words, absolutely perfect. you laughed plenty, smiled even more, you felt stubbornly foolish for denying fate for so long when you could’ve been blissfully happy from the start. looking back, seungcheol didn’t care about any of that. you were with him, you were in love, you were happy. that's all he had ever wanted and more. seeing you and your matching red marks, nothing could ever take away from how he felt.

being together wasn’t without its struggles. he assured you every day that that’s how it was supposed to be. love requires work. being in love isn’t always easy, love isn’t always kind. perfection was fleeting. all you can do is enjoy it while it lasts. you both knew that, you accepted it. because there was one fact that was keeping you apart for all those months, the fear of the future.

a future without you in it.

that was something you never really wanted to admit but could hardly forget. you were not long for this world. you knew that you were sick when you met seungcheol, he knew too. when you met, it was already too late. you could vividly remember staring at the white line on your wrist in despair as the doctors gave your life an expiration date. you were going to die without meeting your soulmate. you knew that, you accepted that, you were going to die with that. dying without ever knowing true love, that broke your heart more than your fleeting life ever could.

but then you met seungcheol. then you met the most perfect person you could have ever imagined. and he was yours, every part of him was designed to meld into you seamlessly. the world decided that you would love someone so amazing, so beautiful and kind, and he would then suffer a broken heart for the rest of his life when fate stole you away from him. seungcheol deserved better. better than you.

you cried when your line turned pink, when you were hooked up to an oxygen tank and hadn’t been home in days. you cried and you just couldn’t bring yourself to stop. you cried because you so desperately wanted to be loved but you know you couldn‘t. you cried because you wanted to be selfish. you cried because seungcheol could only smile, he didn’t even care that whatever time you could share would be cut short by things out of your control. seungcheol loved you from the moment he set his eyes on you and god you would be selfish if you dared to love him back.

“my arms are littered with scars; it will be my pleasure to wear yours.”

you dared.

you dreamed.

and you decided to live while you still could.

for the most part, you were happy. which was such a new thing to you. you couldn’t remember the last time you allowed yourself to be so greedy, so self-serving. you couldn’t help it, seungcheol made everything feel so natural. he made you forget how hard it was for you to simply exist let alone live. as you choked on air, as your own body drowned you, it was seungcheol’s perfect smile that got you through it.

then came the lung transplant, something you had never considered until you met seungcheol. the surgery would extend your life for another year, you would get another year to be happy and be so blissfully in love that you could ignore everything else. you would never be cured, but at least you could live without choking on air for a little while. it wasn’t perfect, nothing would be. the only perfect thing in your life was the reason why you decided to live a little longer.

of course, you were only putting off the inevitable. for a few months you were fine, you almost felt normal for the first time in forever. seungcheol asked you to marry him, he put a perfectly plain engagement band on your finger and you felt like your heart had grown wings. you were married shortly after, not wanting to waste what little time you had left.

life was perfect for a short while, and then you got worse. you got worse, and even worse still, until you both knew what was going to happen. you kissed him goodbye on a rainy tuesday afternoon, and he refused to acknowledge what was about to happen. he told you a joke, one that you insisted that you hated but secretly loved. he knew you loved it, and he didn’t cry as you choked on your very last breath.

when you died, seungcheol wasn't sad in the traditional sense. you died smiling, laughing even, happier than you ever thought you could be. he had done that for you, he helped you live for almost two years. which was two years longer than you had ever planned. you met in an unconventional manner, both looking to be gone from a world that only insisted on hurting you, and he never regretted it. you made him feel alive.

as he held your hand, as he watched the red line he had loved with all his heart turn into a grotesque scar, he didn’t think of it as a goodbye. you would forever be etched into his skin, you lived on with him. you saved him as much as he had tried to save you. he kissed the line you left, he kissed you, and knew that he had never loved a scar more. he loved you, and you had loved him.

and that love would never leave him.

you would never leave him.

92 notes · View notes

notamadscientist · 4 years

Text

@asafehavenx Do they remain sentient in a different form? Like would the person who'd become a giant watermelon KNOW they are a watermelon? (and she's one of my favs, a little uptight in the best way)

WONDERFUL QUESTION! :D

Now, you’ve certainly induced my autistic desire to indulge in my many bizarre and wild ideas! So take heed! for I shall now explain the many thoughts and ideas I’ve had on this subject!

First, perhaps it’s because I was born without my sense of smell and most of my sense of taste, I’ve always been fascinated with sensations I cannot personally feel myself. It’s also why I love horror stuff so much. The concept of things that cannot be is, to put it bluntly, good for flexing one’s writing muscles.

In any case, back to talking about transformations, consciousness, and writing.

So!

In fiction, there are lots of horrible sci fi imaginings of people becoming plants, robots, what have you. But often, in fiction, this comes with a loss of sentience. This, to me, is boring. But it makes sense, because the alternative in fiction is often being sentient within some terrible eldritch abomination.

I’m getting off topic. But it also makes for poor rping! Having a person who isn’t sentient is boring to write about. Thus, it’s a hell of a lot more fun if they are entirely sentient during whatever their experience, whether that be horror, comedy, or sexy times. The tone is up in the air, really.

But it also comes down to being able to easily control the pace when writing. I for one tend to take a sort of dance like approach, or a lead/follow approach. Ergo, one partner writes the what of what’s happening, and the other person writes the reaction to that. Ergo, that way one partner isn’t writing everything. Thus, I can always describe what is occurrence, giving my partner free reign to describe how it feels.

For example, perhaps the transformation we speak of now is nothing more than say, a minor physical change. Ergo, skin pigmentation and size. They are, as it happens, still mostly human. Just large and very confused. Or perhaps we go further. Their genetics shift and they become more plant like. They physically become the thing they now are. Conscious? Yes. Sentient? Also yes. But with lots of fun new experiences and sensations! After all, plants and animals interact with reality differently than we do. Their forms have different needs and urges.

Now, we can then take another step and think about it a different way. Let’s say you’re writing the person who has suddenly, for reasons we shall not explain at present, has suddenly found themselves becoming a watermelon, or a dildo, or perhaps even a dog. Whatever it may be, this brings new sensations. Indeed, the mind must now process the rapid realtering of what is occuring to them, not unlike staring upon some maddening elder god or something.

Perhaps it is horrifying and they are terrified. Or perhaps they are curious, as they realize this is some new avenue for science. Or perhaps they are aroused, as new sensations stimulate them. How do they react to these things? Shame? Acceptance? Wonder?

I mean sure, you could go the route of someone completing a transformation and becoming entirely inert. But that seems boring to me. Far more interesting, I think, to say, turn someone into a dildo, have them be aware of their body and all the sensations that they get, and then have them be used, because that creates a certain development when they are turned back. After all, do they now miss the sensations that they had before?

Think about it. If you were suddenly experiencing massive new sensations, and then that suddenly stopped, would you have withdrawals? Would you want to go back? Or would you seek new, greater pleasures?

For my favorite thing about writing transformation stories and threads is that there is no such thing as stasis. No matter what occurs, no matter what the end result, no matter what one is writing, the character it occurs to is not the same as they were before because they have experienced something remarkable and unique, quite like seeing aliens or something.

And indeed, there are many, many unique things one can possibly experience. If we took, for example, the original idea of a watermelon, a watermelon is filled with juice. Does the experience of being juiced please the individual? Does the humiliation, of being naked, huge, immobile, bring feelings of horror or pleasure? After all, transformation often shares a ton with bdsm, because one becomes unable to move a great deal of the time. But even when they do not, they still experience things that put them in a different position than normal.

To me, there are only so many ways I can write someone being tied to a bed before I run out of ideas of what to do. But I never run out of possibilities with transformation writing. The limit, simply put, is my creativity, and my will. And perhaps my skill. But still.

So this is a long and drawn out way of saying that the process is as detailed as you’d like it to be, and if you leave it up to my actually autistic brain, it might get detailed.

#ooc #long post tw #tw long post

3 notes · View notes

cheerfulmelancholies · 4 years

Text

Escape

The car lurched and rocketed down the street in a cacophony of tires and engine. Jet black like the sky and equipped with techno-80's taillights, it stood out with its wheels and the small wing on the trunk. A group of friends strolling over to a theater had to leap back as the vehicle blasted past them, dust and debris in its wake. Anyone in their path had to lunge out of the way. The driver yanked the wheel and the car flew around the corner, bumper hitting something on the way. They kept going as curses and threats echoed after them.

The city sprawled in all directions; a perch on the tallest skyscraper in its epicenter couldn’t yield the horizon. Bright lights, crowded streets, massive constructs and an endless variety of businesses made up the man-made behemoth. It was like a casino with its confusing layout and distracting décor. Every sign demanded one buy something, regardless of what that something was. If it could be sold, there was an advertisement for it.

Progress City, despite its lackluster name, hadn’t quite caught up with the rest of the world in terms of decent society. It got its name from its technological advancements and nothing more. The rest was every bit twenty-first century archaic as it could get and it was maddening, though the populace didn’t seem to care.

Rynn needed an escape and she needed it now. If she stayed put any longer, tending to her father’s affairs and working the shit shift at local dives, she was bound to end up on the news. She’d probably be proud of it too.

She pushed the accelerator and watched the city sights turn into indistinguishable blurs as the needle arched higher and higher. Some of those blurs were people and she found herself far enough gone to not care. She always knew this place was ruining her and wasn’t pleased to find she was right. She should have looked for a way out sooner. Better yet, she should have planned more. The authorities were bound to be on her tail any second now. Driving an old-fashioned car was already illegal, doing so on pedestrian territory–or anywhere on the ground, really–would net her years in jail. There was no way she could pay the fine and she wasn’t betting on her father either.

He’d probably discovered the note by now. If she did get captured, she hoped it would be the authorities.

Rynn spied flashing blue lights in her rearview as several cruisers lowered to her level. She cursed. She’d been hoping for just a little more time.

The car veered left, cruisers in easy pursuit. She wasn’t planning on being able to lose them–they held a maneuverability advantage she could only dream of. Instead, she tried to lead them away to somewhere a little less dense, if such a place existed. She grit her teeth as they closed the distance. When their preliminary time limit wore off and one of them pulled up alongside her she had no choice. Flipping a plastic cover next to her dash, she pressed a button and shut her eyes at the blinding flash. Everything around her went dark and the cruisers fell to the ground and skidded or tumbled until they crashed into something sturdy enough to stop them.

As sparks, screams and fire flickered behind her she could only hope that no one had been struck by one of the vehicles. Robots taken care of, she drove further into the darkness.

The EMP had traveled much farther than she thought it would. The city did become bright again after several miles of shadow but her spirits did not. There was just no end to this place. She grit her teeth and tried to keep her frustration at bay. There had to be a way out. How else would people have any knowledge of places other than here? She’d spent most of her life in this city, always knowing there was something beyond and wanting to get back to it. If it weren’t for her ‘father...’

The radio beeped, startling her to the point of jostling the car. She looked down at it, taking several seconds to overcome her shock and read the I.D.

So he did find the note.

She dismissed the call and kept going. She was closer now, she could feel it. Dark eyes narrowed at the distance and she let out a quiet chuckle. The radio beeped again and she ignored it. She was almost there. She was so enamored in the promise of beyond that the drone of the engine faded like the city lights she passed. Another beep. More cruisers appeared behind her but she was too close to the edge now. Was it really always this close? It was right within her reach and she’d never noticed. She’d never gotten a chance to lift her head above the stifling atmosphere and look before.

The radio beeped once more. Against all common sense, she finally answered.

“What?” came her harsh greeting, tone thick with disgust.

“I just wanted to say, congratulations.”

She snapped out of her longing reverie. Though his voice held its ever-present growl, there was a sort of sincerity behind it.

“I’m actually very proud of you,” he continued in the silence. “Personally, I never thought you’d have the stomach for this sort of thing.”

She was dumbstruck. “What are you prattling on about, you piece of shit?” She bristled when he laughed, the sound raspy and unpleasant. Always was.

“You never were one for intimidation though,” he said when he calmed down. “That’s why I never let you do my work.”

She let out an indignant growl. “Why’d you ever take me in then? You knew from the beginning I wasn’t cut out for this. Why did you do it?” She passed the threshold of the city then, police lights staying behind her as open air encompassed her. But it wasn’t what she thought. There was no real road here, only uneven ground, and though stars began peeking out from the sky, they seemed dull. Haunted. It was as if the beauty of life had been drained from them, spread thin until it was hardly visible.

His voice couldn’t have found a better backdrop.

“I took you in because you wouldn’t know how to survive in the outside world if I didn’t. I’m sure your parents meant well but there’s a reason why they aren’t still around. You’ve seen first hand what happens to kids like you. Did you really think I wanted the same?”

Rynn took a deep breath to calm her nerves. “I always thought you hated me. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course I don’t hate you. I don’t love you, but I don’t hate you either. You’ve seen what happens to people I don’t like.”

“Then why?” She was trying not let her emotions get the better of her. She cursed. He definitely heard how pathetic she sounded.

“The world’s full of too many spineless weaklings. You were never an exception. Like I said, I didn’t do this because I loved you. If I did, you never would’ve seen the true side of the world. I would have shielded you from it and you would’ve ended up like everyone else: blissful, ignorant and happy. I did this because I got tired of seeing the same old thing. I didn’t want to see anymore potential wasted.”

“Fuck you,” she spat, blinking as her vision blurred.

“You can think whatever you want of me, I don’t care. But just know that you will thank me for this, even if you don’t know it yet. Even if you won’t admit it once you do. Goodbye, Leanne.”

The connection dropped and she let the car slow to a stop. For as long as she could remember him, he’d never called her that. Not since she became old enough to understand what was going on. He didn’t even comment on her moment of weakness.

She looked up at the sky. Bleak and depressing and not at all how she imagined. She could make out lights in the distance, no doubt another city. There was only one way to find out who was right.

I wanted to test out a different sort of writing style for some wips I had. This in particular won’t be anything serious, though I’ll probably use it as inspiration. I just wanted to do a little bit of character/world building. I kind of like how vague it is.

#writing #creative writing #wip #inspiration #just for fun #writing practice #should this be a thing?#@anonwrite #writersociety

4 notes · View notes

winterisakiller · 4 years

Text

Get Better - Chapter Fourteen

Title: Get Better

Chapter: 14/18

Character: Tom Hiddleston/Cath Richardson (OFC)

Genre: Romance

Rating: Teen and up

Summary: Love. Companionship. Family. These are all of the things Tom Hiddleston desperately wanted. But his life and his choices left that a distant and unlikely prospect. So he did his best to move on and live his life as is. When an opportunity to return to the theater arises, he jumps at the chance and along the way finds that maybe, just maybe, those distant and unlikely prospects are closer than he could have imagined. Sequel to Brave Face.

Authors Notes/Warnings: So as I was writing Brave Face I knew that Tom’s story wasn’t over, even if that particular part of it was. And while I knew, more or less, what the overall ending to the story would be, its taken me a while to figure out the time in between.

Thanks to @redfoxwritesstuff for being an absolute godsend in regards to this story. I would truly be dead in the water without you.

This story will update on Thursdays.

Tag list: @tinchentitri @theheartofpenelope @noplacelikehome77 @blacksuitofdoom @nonsensicalobsessions @messy-insomniac-bookgirl @wolfsmom1 @just-the-hiddles @theoneanna @hiddlescastle @alexakeyloveloki @echantedbytwh

Previous Chapter

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“You’re back.”

The words fell from Tom’s lips unbidden as he’d rounded the corner into the dressing room. He found Cath standing at her station, her back to the door and head thrown back, laughing at whatever story Zawe was sharing with her. Tom fought desperately to tamper down the rush of joy he’d felt at the sight of her. Tried to write it off as just the happiness of having his friend back. Nothing more, nothing less.

Liar!

He shook the thought off and fought to keep his face as calm as possible. But from the quirk of Zawe’s brow, as her eyes met his, he knew he hadn’t been as successful as he’d hoped.

Bugger.

“Tom,” Cath exclaimed, whirling around towards the doorway, her hand clutched to her chest. Her green eyes were bright and she offered a soft, warm smile as Tom walked into the room and towards her. “Hi.”

“I trust everything is alright?” He queried as he made his way further into the dressing room, pausing before her station. He made sure to keep a respectable distance between them despite the fact all he wanted was to pull her into his arms. And it simply wasn’t something he could, or honestly should, do. “We missed you.”

Cath nodded, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “Everything’s fine. Just a small family matter.” She shrugged and carried on. “I hope Lorna’s taken good care of you lot.”

“That she did.” Lorna’s voice piped up from behind one of the curtains with a note of laughter in her tone. Tom let out a surprised laugh at the sudden intrusion. He liked Lorna, she wasn’t ever afraid to speak her mind. Or put him in his place. “As you well know, oh insulting one.” She poked her head out, rolling her eyes at Cath.

“Good,” Cath laughed back, shaking her head. Her eyes sparkled with amusement and Tom felt the all too familiar flutter in his stomach. Tom couldn’t fight the smile that spread across his face. It was wonderful seeing Cath so amused and content. She seemed so at home here. So in her element. He’d missed her far more than he could put into words. “Now,” she started, turning her attention back towards Tom and Zawe, “let’s get you both dressed and ready shall we?”

“Yes, boss!” both actors echoed as they quickly made their way towards the changing areas.

Tom took his time folding his jeans and jumper after he’d changed, setting them carefully on the stool at the back of his curtained station. He didn’t dare look too closely at just why he felt so suddenly on edge. It was bad enough knowing he was far more transparent than he’d intended (if Zawe’s look was anything to go by). Looking further into the whys would only bring discourse he wasn’t prepared to deal with at the present moment.

Some actor you are, Thomas old boy. Can’t lie to save your bloody life.

“You alright in there, Hiddleston?”

Tom jumped at the sound of Lorna’s voice from just beyond the curtain. He took a slow, deep breath to calm the rapid pounding of his heart.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” He called, running a hand through his hair.

He turned to look once more into the standing mirror and straightened his suit jacket. Taking a deep breath he pushed the curtain aside and headed back into the main room. He could do this.

—

“Glad to see there were no mishaps tonight,” Cath laughed softly as she leaned over to wipe the last of Tom’s makeup from his face. He found himself staring at the point of her pink tongue, sticking out just the smallest of margins between her lips as she concentrated. He was taken aback, once again, but just how striking she was doing something so utterly mundane.

“It was a close call,” he started with a chuckle, letting Cath lift his chin with her small, warm hand to reach the base of his throat. He was grateful for the movement which forced him to break his focus on her mouth, though the feel of her skin against his was maddening. “Very nearly dropped a glass or two during the second scene. That would have been a treat.”

Cath chuckled, “Nothing like trying to avoid shards of glass. I’m sure Zawe’s feet thank you for not actually doing so.”

“That they do,” Zawe called from the next station. She held up said feet, wiggling her toes in Cath and Tom’s direction. Tom swatted at Zawe’s feet while Cath laughed and shook her head. “Fine, fine. Spoil sport.”

“Alright, Tom. That’s you done.” Cath turned to toss the used wipe into the rubbish bin by her feet. He didn’t immediately climb to his feet, instead sat for a moment trying to gather his thoughts. She was so close, he could feel the heat of her against his side. It shouldn’t matter, she was his friend; that was all. He’d made certain of it. But knowing it and forcing himself to accept it where two completely different things.

“Tom?”

He shook himself, immediately bounding to his feet. “Sorry, lost myself for a moment there.” He rocked awkwardly on the balls of his feet for a moment before mumbling, “I’ll just…Go change,” and hurrying towards the curtained changing area.

Once he was safely absconded behind the curtain, Tom lowered himself onto the stool in its corner (once he’d moved his street clothes to the floor) and cursed at himself. Seriously, what was wrong with him? What happened to his ability to play it calm, cool, and collected? He did this sort of thing for a living, surely some of it had to rub off eventually. Wouldn’t it?

Tom took several deep breaths, his head cradled in his hands. He needed to pull himself together before he went off and did something stupid. Again. That was a course of action he could ill afford, with things as shaky between them as they were. With determination, Tom pushed himself back to his feet. He slid the jacket of his suit off his shoulders and carefully onto its waiting hanger. Jumper, shoes, and trousers were next. He slipped quickly back into his street clothing and with one last glance around the room to make sure his suit and accessories were properly sorted (it was a habit he didn’t bother trying to break) he headed back out into the main dressing room.

Charlie was paused at the dressing room door, chatting quietly with Zawe as she ran a quick comb through her hair. He glanced up at Tom and smiled, “Ready?”

Tom nodded, “As I’ll ever be.” He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. “Shall we?”

Smiling the three headed down the staircase, through the hallway and out onto the street to meet with the evenings’ stage door crowd. Tom smiled and laughed as he talked with fans, posing for pictures when asked, signing programs and various other items handed him (within reason) and doing his utmost best to make each encounter as open and genuine as he could. While stage door wasn’t a requirement, he knew how important it was for fans and (within reason) he wanted to give what he could to show his appreciation.

And for the most part, the fans were lovely; giddy and excited as they spoke with him (and with Charlie and Zawe as the moved down the ordered line). There were the few odd encounters, those who wanted more than the usual small talk/photo/signature, but nothing that raised any flags with him or with his security. He still had trouble wrapping his head around the need for them, but several bizarre encounters had made their need clear. So they remained.

He turned his attention to the next fan who approached the barricade, flashing a warm smile. “Hello, darling, what’s your name?”

−

Tom smiled and waved as he headed back into the theatre, doing his best to ignore the groans of disappointment from those still left waiting. A part of him wanted to stay longer and sign all he could (and in years past he would have) but he’d learned well over the last few years just how important limits were, for others and for himself. Once inside the theatre, he climbed the stairs two at a time, suddenly desperate for the comfort of his own home.

The lights were still on in the dressing room and as he rounded the corner he found Cath and Lorna still inside. Zawe was there as well, settled onto the small cushioned chair a few feet from the door. All three of their backs were towards the doorway, purses piled on the chair at Lorna’s station, and they talked as they completed the final bits and bobs of the nights’ straightening.

“I mean it, Lorn,” Cath breathed, hands on her hips. “I don’t want to make a big deal of it. Seriously.”

“But it’s your birthday!” Zawe cut in, disbelief clear in her tone, “We can’t just not do something.”

“It’s your birthday?” Tom asked without thinking. All three women spun towards the doorway to face him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.” He grinned sheepishly at the women standing before him. He hadn’t intended to eavesdrop (let alone get himself caught at it).

“Nosey git,” Zawe teased, flashing him a cheeky grin. “You just have to be in on everything, don’t you?”

Tom chuckled shrugging and running a hand through his hair. “It’s a terrible habit, drove my mother and sisters mad as we were growing up.”

“I can only imagine,” Cath added, laughing and shaking her head. “And it’s not my birthday yet. Next week Saturday, actually.” She paused and let out a soft sigh. “These two seem adamant about making a huge deal of it.” She narrowed her eyes at Lorna and Zawe, who smiled brightly back at her.

“Well then,” Tom started, clasping his hands together before him. “Happy early birthday.”

She smiled warmly at him. “Thank you.”

“Is there any reason why you are so against celebrating?” Tom was most likely pushing his luck, he knew it, but his innate curiosity wouldn’t let him leave the matter alone.

Cath dropped herself onto the chair at her own station, and folded her hands in her lap. “I just don’t see the point. I’ve done the big party thing and it’s honestly not me.” She shrugged. “I would much rather be sat at home with a film and a glass or so of wine. No fuss needed.”

Tom nodded. “My elder sister’s the same way.”

Cath laughed. “Smart woman.”

“She has her moments,” Tom joked. He unconsciously reached his hand up to rub the side of his neck. “Well, I just wanted to say good night.” He smiled softly at Cath and turned to nod at Zawe and Lorna. “I’ll see you lot tomorrow. Be safe getting home.”

He turned quietly towards the doorway and a chorus of “good nights” followed him out of the dressing room.

As he jogged down the stairs he found himself thinking over the conversation they’d had; grateful for another piece of the puzzle that was Cath. She had burrowed her way into his life in a way he hadn’t allowed in so long. She deserved something for that. Something to show her, despite all of his fuck ups and his faults, that he valued her friendship and her warmth.

He nodded at the guard at the door, pausing to wish him a good night as well, and followed his driver back out into the cool early May evening.

—

Tom let his eyes fall to the wrapped gift sitting on his side table. It had taken nearly two days, and more shops than he’d care to admit, before he’d found it. He’d been so focused on finding the exact right ‘something’ (he refused to let himself think on just why that mattered so dearly to him) that’d he’d very nearly missed it. The battered, leather bound book had been half buried in a pile of heavily read paperbacks in the charity shop not far off the main road in Notting Hill. He’d moved the pile at least twice before he’d spotted it. And even when he had, he’d very nearly overlooked just what it was.

Cath had talked about it just once. They had discussed books they’d loved as children during the first few days of the play’s run in their bid to get to know one another. Hers had been a battered copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit which her grandmother had given her when she was a small child. The book had belonged her to grandmother (she’d had it since she was a little girl herself) and had definitely seen better days; the binding was loose, the cover page torn in several places, and there was an odd stain that no one seemed to be able to account for. But she had fond memories of both her grandmother and mother reading the story to her. It had been lost in a move when she was in her late teens and while she could easily find a more modern edition (and initially had done so) she had always hoped to find that particular edition once more.

Tom had no idea if the book he’d found was in fact the right edition, but had purchased it without a moments’ hesitation. How could he not, finding it like he had? When he’d opened the book once he’d gotten home, he’d been startled to find it was a first edition; certainly not in the best repair but a hasty Google search had found it was worth much, much more than the paltry £1.50 he’d paid for it. Pure insanity. He certainly wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He’d spent far longer than he should have making sure the book was wrapped as neatly as he possibly could. He’d thankfully had wrapping paper that was not Christmas themed (Emma and his mother had gifted him several rolls of Christmas themed paper a few years back and he’d slowly been working through the backlog since) hidden in the back of his closet. Plain though it was, it was infinitely better than anything brightly colored and covered in reindeer or Christmas baubles. While he didn’t think Cath would have turned her nose up at seasonally incorrect paper, Tom wanted everything to be perfect.

Now all that was left to do was wait. And he’d never been brilliant at waiting. Yes, he certainly could when the time called for it (and he’d had great practice at it over the years). But this…This was different. Waiting was excruciating. All he wanted was to see her face when she tore open the paper and found what was waiting inside. Tom wanted nothing more than to see the joy spreading across her features, her eyes lighting up as she realized what she’d received. It wasn’t the same book, no, but it was as close as he could come.

Bobby barked twice, breaking Tom from his meandering thoughts. He glanced down to find the spaniel looking up at him with impatient eyes. Tom had been up and about for almost two hours now and while he’d fed Bobby and let him out back to relieve himself, they’d yet to go on their customary run. And that clearly wouldn’t do.

Tom let out a soft sigh. “Alright, give me five minutes and we’ll head out.”

Bobby barked once more and scampered off towards the front door. Tom shook his head and made his way upstairs to change. Bobby was still at the door, waiting with a wagging tail when he jogged down the stairs several minutes later. He barked twice as Tom hooked him into his leash and harness, vibrating with eagerness. He grabbed his phone and wallet from the side table, shoving them into the pockets of his running shorts.

“You, my lad, are a menace.”

The spaniel rapidly wagged his tail in response before barking once more. Shaking his head, Tom pushed open the front door and led them both out into the bright sun of the early May morning.

—

Cath chuckled and shook her head as Lorna proudly paraded into the dressing room cupcake in hand (with a flickering lone candle), singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the top of her voice. Zawe, who’d stopped by the theatre early that afternoon, joined in clapping her hands and laughing as Lorna placed the impromptu cake before Cath at her station.

“I hate you both, just so you know,” Cath threatened, laughing as she blew out the candle.

“Worth it,” Lorna shot back, pulling Cath into a tight hug. “Happy birthday, babes.”

Cath returned the hug with enthusiasm. It had been a busy day thus far. Her mother had woken her far too early with her customary birthday call. That call was followed in short order by calls and texts from her siblings wishing her the same. She’d treated herself to a large latte and sweet treat on her way to the theatre (honestly how was she supposed to resist the gooey cinnamon buns they’d had at the counter? It was her birthday after all).

Cath eyed the cupcake with longing. It was a white iced monstrosity that looked as though you’d gain a stone just by breathing it in; she couldn’t wait to see how it tasted. “You really shouldn’t have though.”

“Like that’s ever stopped me,” Lorna snorted. She pulled out an envelope from behind her back and presented it with a bright smile. “Yes, I know I didn’t need to. I did it anyway. So take the card and deal.”

Grumbling, Cath reached out and took the envelope, tearing it open with a practiced ease. She smiled at the cutesy card Lorna had chosen. Finding the most ridiculous card had become a tradition between them and this time Cath had to admit Lorna had certainly come through. Nestled inside the card was a gift certificate for one of Cath’s favorite coffee shops. She laughed aloud. “You are only feeding my addiction, you know this right?”

“What else are friends for?”

A flash of movement beside her tore Cath’s attention from Lorna. She turned just in time to see Zawe pop a finger covered in frosting into her mouth.

“What?” Zawe started, with a smirk. “I washed my hands.”

Cath stared at her in disbelief. After a moment she grabbed the cupcake, slid it closer, and covered it with a napkin. She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Try that again and talent or not, I will end you.”

Zawe clasped her hands to her heart. “Aw, Cath, I didn’t know you cared.”

“It’s cute you think I’m kidding.”

Zawe just grinned back and pushed herself up from her chair. “Anyone fancy a coffee?”

“Actually Zawe that would be wonderful.” Tom’s voice echoed from the doorway.

The three women jumped and turned towards the doorway in unison. They looked at Tom and then at each other, bursting out in nervous laughter at their ridiculousness.

“Who says I was offering for you, Hiddleston?” Zawe quipped, recovering first. She crossed her arms over her chest in an attempt to look stern. An attempt ruined by the smile that threatened to spread across her face.

Tom laughed, his head falling back. “You did leave it rather open,” he pointed out once he’d recovered, his shoulders still shaking slightly.

“For that, my dear man, you can get your own coffee.” Zawe turned back to face Cath and Lorna. “Any takers?” She grabbed her purse from Lorna’s station top and headed towards the door.

Cath laughed, shaking her head, “I’m good.” She was still vibrating from the latte she’d had earlier. Maybe those four shots of espresso were a mistake.

“I’m game! I’ll have a large mocha latte, please,” Lorna called. She paused momentarily before adding, “With extra chocolate and whipped cream.”

“And I’ll have a double espresso!” Tom called to her retreating form. Zawe flipped him off as she jogged down the stairs.

Cath sighed and shook her head before turning her attention towards Tom. “Like you possibly need more caffeine.”

Tom grinned at her. “I didn’t say I needed it. I fully acknowledge my caffeine over indulgence.”

“Well,” Lorna chimed in looking back and forth between Tom and Cath. “They say acknowledgement of a problem is the first step.” Cath saw the knowing look in her friend’s eye and hoped to god for once Lorna would hold her tongue. This was not what she needed today. Not on her birthday.

Tom chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Lorna let out a snort. “Please do.”

Wanting to stop the conversation from venturing down roads she absolutely did not want taken, Cath clapped her hands together. “You’re early today, Tom.” A flash of movement near his feet caught her attention. She looked back up at Tom and smiled. “And you’ve brought company.”

Bobby barked once, tailing wagging ferociously as he tugged at his leash. Cath laughed and dropped to her knees. Bobby barked excitedly and charged towards her. Tom had brought the spaniel to the theatre off and on during the run, mostly on double performance days. Cath had enjoyed the dog’s company, having unofficially become his minder when Tom was on stage. And Bobby had taken to her as well.

She’d had a dog growing up, a black lab they’d called Shadow. He’d been an energetic, friendly animal whom she loved fiercely. It had broken her heart when they’d had to put him down (he’d had what the vet thought had been a stroke and had lost a good deal of function). Bobby reminded her a lot of when Shadow has been younger (though she admitted with a rueful laugh Bobby was three times the trouble maker Shadow ever was) and she enjoyed the simple joy of doggy companionship without the hassles of actual ownership.

Bobby licked her face eagerly, clearly thrilled to see his new favorite playmate. She laughed at the spaniel’s eagerness and Tom’s admonishment. “Bobby, sit!”

The spaniel paid him little mind and Cath could hear his groan of annoyance. “It’s not my fault he likes me best,” she teased, pulling back enough to look up at Tom with a bold grin.

She couldn’t quite read the emotion that sparked through Tom’s eyes. Didn’t dare let herself think too much on it. Going down that road when he’d been clear it wasn’t what he’d wanted. Or at least wasn’t worth it to him to try. It was gone in a moment though, his smile bright. “He’s a sucker for attention.”

Cath flashed him a cheeky grin. “Well they do say dogs resemble their owners…”

Lorna snorted, covering her mouth with her left hand. “Oh Tom, you’ve walked right into that one.”

“Ha ha,” Tom deadpanned, shaking his head pointedly ignoring Lorna who only laughed harder. He turned his attention back onto Cath who was chuckling away while scratching behind Bobby’s ears. “And to think I was about to wish a certain someone a happy birthday.”

“Aww, Tom, no need to be a grumpy Gus just because you’ve been called out,” Lorna laughed, settling back into her own chair.

“Don’t you have costumes to check or something?”

Lorna clasped a hand over her heart. “I’m hurt, Tom. Truly hurt.”

“Somehow I think you’ll recover,” Cath joked. She gave Bobby one last scratch behind the ears and pushed herself back to her feet.

“Et tu Brute?” Lorna turned towards Cath, eyes comically wide. Cath merely smiled and shrugged. “So ungrateful,” Lorna huffed with a hint of a smirk on her lips causing Cath to laugh despite herself. “I can see when I’m not wanted.” She pushed herself up from the chair and to her feet. Taking one last look around the room, Lorna let out an exaggerated sigh and headed for the doorway.

Tom chuckled and shook his head. “Flair for the dramatic that one.”

Cath quirked an eyebrow, “You’re one to talk, Hiddleston.”

He simply shrugged and let his backpack slide off the shoulder he’d rested it on. He placed the bag on Lorna’s station top, unzipping it without ceremony. From the bag he produced Bobby’s dog bed, a fair bit squished in the journey and a plainly, but neatly, wrapped parcel.

Cath eyed the parcel with a keen interest. She hadn’t wanted to get ahead of herself or to assume, but she couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that it was for her. He’d clearly taken his time wrapping the thing, whatever it was. The paper folded nearly onto itself, edges defined and taped with precision. She watched the way he handled the package with the utmost care.

In the end curiosity won the battle over propriety and Cath found herself asking, “Whatca got there?” Her eyes darted from his face to the parcel in his hands and back as she awaited his answer.

Tom paused, the parcel still clutched tightly in his hands before raising his eyes towards hers and offering a soft smile. He took a deep breath and without ceremony extended his arm and the parcel towards Cath. “Happy birthday.”

“I…”Cath started, taking the parcel from his hands unable to fight the involuntary smile spreading across her face. “Tom, thank you. You honestly didn’t have to…”

“Nonsense,” he chimed back. “I found it and it made me think of you. It’s your birthday and you deserve it.”

She blinked back at him. “Thank you.” She placed the parcel on the edge of her station and without letting herself overthink the action, pulled him into a brief embrace. Her action startled him, it was clear in the way he tensed before relaxing and wrapping his own arms around her. Cath knew she was pushing the invisible lines that had been drawn between them, knew she could so easily tip the scales in a way that would only cause them both distress, but she couldn’t stop it had she tried.

“You’re welcome,” he breathed into her hair.

His heart thumped against her ear as she remained pressed against his chest and she found herself reluctant to want to pull away. Cath knew she needed to, knew letting herself remain in his arms was not smart nor particularly good for her sense of wellbeing. But he was warm and comforting and she wanted to believe just for this one moment in time things were different. That they were different. It was stupid and selfish but knowing that did little to cease the wanting. The yearning.

With great reluctance she made herself be the first to pull away. She could sense the hesitation in his embrace before he let her go. She couldn’t look him in the eye, knowing she’d crossed the line that he’d drawn and she hadn’t protested. Cath cleared her throat and turned her attention back to the parcel on her station top. She tore the paper with great care, more than she usually reserved for gifts, wanting to respect the effort he’d clearly put into the project.

Confusion then disbelief spread slowly across her features as she found the book nestled in folded sheets of tissue paper. She blinked back tears as she looked up at him, words escaping her. Her mind flashed to the afternoon, months ago now, when they’d talked about stories and books they’ve loved. How she mentioned, in passing, her grandmother’s copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit and how heartbroken she’d been when it was lost. A conversation that lasted no more than five minutes. How had he possibly remembered?

“How…?”

Tom smiled warmly. “I found it in a charity shop and I knew you would love it. I don’t know if it’s the same edition or even close, but I just…I had to.”

Cath launched herself at Tom, not caring that doing so was the height of impropriety. They both stumbled backwards, nearly tipping over before Tom had been able to right them. She buried her face in his chest, torn between laughter and tears. He’d given her something truly priceless and she didn’t think she could find the words to express just what this meant to her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you..,” she murmured over and over again into his chest.

She felt the rumble of his soft laughter against her cheek. “You’re more than welcome.”

He ran his hands up and down her back, his touch no doubt meant to be soothing. It sent shivers down her spine and she bit back a groan. He was such a tactile person, seemingly had always been that way. And she loved and hated that about him. Loved the way his hands felt on her, even in the most platonic of touches. And hated the way she knew his touches were meant to be just that. Platonic. Safe. Friendly. He was that way with everyone. And once again she selfishly wanted once, just once for him to touch her because he wanted to. Because it was her warmth and affection he sought with his own.

Cath banished the thought away. If wishes were horses…She raised her face to his and offered a watery smile. “I…Thank you. So much.”

Tom returned her smile but didn’t say anything else. They stood, staring at one another, neither speaking. Cath shivered as she felt Tom’s thumb brush her cheek, wiping away the tears that remained there. His touch was warm, the skin of his fingers softer than she’d expected. There was a flash of something in his eyes she couldn’t place. She licked her suddenly parched lips and watched in dazed wonder as his eyes flicked from hers to her lips and back.

And just like that night they both seemed to move without conscious thought. Cath could feel the warmth of his breath against her slightly parted lips. So close. He was so close…

Bobby’s sharp bark erupted through the silence of the room. They both leapt backwards in stunned startlement. Cath could feel her heart pounding in her throat. Laughter echoed from the hallway. She whipped her head towards the door in time to see Lorna making her way back into the dressing room, Zawe beside her a cardboard container with three takeaway coffee cups. Both women paused halfway into the room their eyes darting between Cath and Tom. Cath felt her cheeks flush and she fought to suppress the traitorous reaction of her body.

Lorna smiled coyly. “Are we interrupting?”

Next Chapter

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston rpf #tom hiddleston x ofc #tom hiddleston x oc #tom hiddleston x original female character #tom hiddleston x orignal character #get better fic #Tom and Cath

50 notes · View notes