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#god its such a small detail but its also SO IMPORTANT. just like the rainbow heart pin camila is always wearing
kraviolis · 1 year
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my blood fucking boils about how it isn't just a coincidence that the 'afro' part of luz & camila being afro-latina only started being shown more after season 2 in the same exact way the owl house crew got super explicit with how queer their characters are, because it wasnt like they could cancel it twice
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muzzleroars · 3 months
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I'm sure you've seen that post about Gabriel finding out how V1 sees him, this post in case you haven't, it's pretty funny.
I was thinking though, what about the opposite of that? What if when V1 and Gabriel were in a safe space together V1 chooses to crank up it's graphics and look around. Partially since it gets a chance to actually look at how things are without having to worry about someone getting the drop on it in such an inefficient state but also so it can look at Gabriel in his entirety. A kind of love language exclusive to machines.
It's most likely that V1 probably wouldn't be able to articulate what it's doing to Gabe or that it's a form of trust/compassion, but what would Gabe think of it anyway?
GOOD POST....and yes i absolutely love this little thought...v1, as a war machine, likely doesn't even consider its capacity to have improved "eyesight" and would never otherwise utilize its higher resolutions. it's set at what it considers to be optimal, not only as it conserves its power properly but also because simplifying its field of vision is actually highly beneficial to the chaotic combat of hell. but being with gabriel makes it consider a whole world of things it never could before, its mind growing rapidly in unexpected trajectories and producing thoughts and feelings of a complexity far beyond what it was ever meant to be. and something like this, though it seems small or simple, is relinquishing its capacity to fight in that moment which should be against every protocol v1 has. yet gabriel takes its priority, overriding such concerns to be deemed more important...to be deemed safe from combat-readiness. it sees him in full clarity with a rush of its vents, hot air blasting through fans as gabriel as he truly is renders in its vision - the radiant gold of heaven, the pearlescent armor highlighted in luminous rainbows, gabriel himself gently lit from the inside in a form so solid yet gently shimmering as though on the edge of being a mirage. his wings and halo are unlike anything it's seen, light made manifest, air and glass melded together into brilliant blue hues that contain an entire spectrum within them when they shift - he is full of light and color, and all it wants is to process every pixel of him when it sees what's it's missed all this time.
gabriel is a bit worried at first, v1 going so still and so hot never being a good sign, but soon it's looking all around him in different angles, taking him in enthusiastically enough it's no longer too concerning just. unsettling lol it's hard for v1 to explain this to him when he demands to know what's gotten into it, but once it's able to offer a basic idea of how its visuals operate...gabriel is quietly stunned. v1 is so different from himself, from anything god had made, and he had never considered how it sees the world. how special it is to see it now, taking up so much of its capacity just to look at him, to know that it cares to see nothing else in its true reality but him. he even asks it if there's anything else they might look at, but v1 just flippantly shakes its head, that nothing else is worth the effort. what does it care about the world? and for gabriel, that's striking...to be the one thing in the world that v1 wants to remember in true detail, that he will stand out in its mind against a backdrop of polygons and textures clearly divorced from their realities. so he lets it take all the pictures it wants, and his wings show how they can change their color with a very true, very unique sense of love.
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rosequartzwriting · 4 years
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Green and Gold
Pairing: Doctor Strange X Fem!Reader
Description: During a visit to Asgard, Stephen is protective over you since Loki always seems to not be able to take his eyes off you. 
Warnings: Non
Word Count: 4.1k
A/N: Originally posted to Quotev / I like this one :3
Masterlist | Fic Reading Recs | Ao3 | Quotev | Coffee
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The frantic rainbow lights disappeared and you stumbled to get your balance on the solid ground that you were thrown on. Stephen was there to help steady you, at hand at your waist with the other at the ready to prevent you from falling over. You wondered why you all could not just travel here through a slingring portal. But Thor insisted you take the Bifrost. To 'get the experience' he had said before he called for it. The knowing smirk on Stephen's face in that moment told you that you might regret this.
In little time you found yourself in Asgard.
Stephen would come here occasionally to discuss relations between mystical threats and threats to the realms. You came along this time. You wanted to see Asgard, Thor wanted you to come along, but Stephen was hesitant to let you come. He told you that someone needed to watch over the Sanctum while he was gone, you made Wong do it instead. He said Asgardian magic is hard to understand, you reminded him that you were advanced now in your mystical studies that you could keep up. He said that it would only be a night or two, you said that you did not want him to leave you for a night or two.
You won and had convinced him. So now you were at the entrance of Asgard, having just experienced being magically thrown across the universe with possible whiplash and your lunch threatening to come up.
Thor, holding his beloved hammer in one hand, looked over at you. "What did you think, Lady (Y/N)?"
"I think I'm gonna be sick." You mumbled.
Stephen patted you on the back, "You'll be alright." There was a slightly amused tone in his voice and that gave you a sudden urge to kick him in the shins.
You had ended up in the middle of a room that was golden and shaped like a dome. There were circular patterns on the walls and in the centre golden steps that lead to a little pedestal that held a sword. Someone was holding that sword, and you were introduced to Heimdall who was the protector of the Bifrost. He bowed to you like you were important and you returned with a bow of your head. Just outside the room, you could see the bridge sparkling with the same rainbow colours as the way you had gotten here. Beyond the long bridge was the castle in the distance.
Thor gestured for you to follow him, so you fell into step beside Stephen as you exited the small structure. You were now walking on the Bifrost bridge. The view you saw before you was absolutely breathtaking. The glittering bridge was just the beginning. Underneath it was a roaring river of clear water. The palace was beautiful, the structure standing as tall as the mountains in its background. The buildings of the surrounding city were sparkling everywhere. You have seen so much since becoming a sorcerer, but this was something else.
Stephen saw the smile on your face and the look of awe in your eyes. This made him smile, and he was suddenly glad he brought you here. He always loved showing you new things, fueling your curiosity and experiencing new things with you. But there was a little worry in the back of his mind that would not go away.
There was one reason, above all others, that Stephen did not want to bring you along.
Loki would be here.
He hated the way he looked at you. He hated his very being because of it. And the knowledge that you and him would be in the same place made his blood boil. Ever since that time Loki showed his face in New York and he had to take him to prevent him from doing anything, and he looked at you up and down like that, he disliked the god so much. And he was so nice to you, and you were nice to him. Whenever Stephen went to Asgard and ran into Loki, he would ask about you. Stephen did not like it.
But your reaction to the city and planet, and you had just gotten here, made the worry go away a little. He would be by your side anyways, to keep Loki away if he was going to try anything. He would throw the cloak around your shoulders to have it hide you away if he needed to. But at the moment he focused on being with you for your first impressions of Asgaurd and not worry too much.
~~~
You were awoken by a light touch and someone softly shaking you awake. The sleepiness was not shaken however, you groaning in protest as you cuddled up even more into the covers of the soft, silken sheets and thick comforter.
There was a chuckle and you new who it was from the deep tone. You lazily opened your eyes and saw Stephen looking down at you, already dressed and seeming wide awake. The sun was shining through the large window with the beautiful view of Asgard. It looked like the world was awake, but you were not ready to drag yourself out of bed.
"I have the first meeting this morning. Thought maybe you would want to come along but looks like you don't want to get out of bed."
You simply let out another sleepy groan.
Then you did a double take, noticing what he was wearing.
He had on his Cloak of Levitation, but underneath that was something different. He had swapped out his regular blue robes for an Asgardian version. It was made in a different style, but it still resembled his old robes. The blue was more rich in its colour, more royal and regal looking. The wrappings were lined with a golden fabric on the edges, it went really well with his signature red and blue. It was a very stark contrast between the one you were used to seeing him wear verse this new one. But you loved it. Seeing all the beautiful clothing everyone wore here made you happy, and seeing a piece like that on Stephen was astonishing.
"You like it?" He caught you staring.
"I love it," You said groggily but happily, running a hand through your hair and sitting up in the bed.
Straightening the cloak over his shoulders, he leaned over and kissed you on your forehead. "I should head to the meeting now. We'll be done before lunch." With that he left your shared guest room, closing the large door behind him.
You wanted to fall back asleep, but it did not overtake you. It was one of those moments where you just laid there cause you were already awaken. But you wanted to sleep. But you couldn't. So you stared out the window, looking out at the pretty mountain peaks and wondering what that first meeting was about. You also wondered about the other things you were going to do while on this foreign planet. Tour of the scenery, trying more of that delicious food (you were dying over it last night at dinner), learning about its history. Maybe you would learn a little Asgardian magic while you were here. The idea of that gave you a little excitement.
A little while later, while you were lost in a daydream, there was a knock on your door. You got up and grabbed a silk robe that was on a chair by your bedside. "Come in," You said, wrapping and tying the robe over yourself. Two women came through the door, maids of the castle you assumed.
One was holding a pile of neatly folded up fabric in her hands. You got excited.
The two introduced themselves and said that Frigga sent them to wake you and get you ready for breakfast. Since the meeting was going on between Odin, Stephen, Thor, and a few others, Frigga decided to have a little breakfast gathering for you. The women were so sweet, making small talk and asking you about Midgard as they prepared you a hot bath and did your hair in a fancy braid down your back that resembled a French braid.
The moment you were anticipating soon came, and they helped you get dressed.
The dress you were presented with was a deep forest green with golden embellishments. Silk fabric sat in long layers down the skirt, trailing out longer at the back. The neckline did not dive too deep down your chest, just enough for subtlety. The  short sleeves clung to the sides of your upper arms, shoulders exposed above the folded layers. The gold piece wrapped around your waist as a belt helped bring out the details. The length slightly dragged on the floor, looking elegant and glittering in the sunlight. You felt like an Asgardian princess wearing it.
It reminded you of someone. Then you wondered who had picked it...
One of the girls topped off your look with a golden pin in your hair, shaped like a flourishing lily tucked above your right ear. The two admired their work and you thanked them from the bottom of your heart. The girl you saw in the mirror was so different then yourself. You saw an Asgardian goddess, not a sorcerer.
You asked them for directions after thanking them a second time, knowing you would get lost in the giant palace. They told you where to go, curtsying to you as a goodbye. You did it back, pulling up the fabric of your dress to feel a little more into it. With one last look in the mirror, and pulling your shoulders back, you made your way out of your guest room and down the correct hallway.
You were directed to a drawing room that was down a tall staircase and a few doors to your left. There was a guard in front of the wooden door, but upon seeing you he bowed and held it open for you. The room inside was not too large, but the big open window gave the impression that it was. Decorated just as nicely as the rest of the place, this room was no exception to the royal aspect and medieval aesthetic to the palace. There were a few comfy chairs surrounding a low table, where Frigga greeted you with a warm smile.
Sitting in the seat beside her was Loki. You had not seen him yesterday when you had arrived. This made you wonder why he had not said hello to you then along with everyone else. He also was not at dinner last night. Weird. He held a tea cup in one hand as he leaned back in his chair, cradling its saucer in the other hand. Seeing Loki sipping tea from a pretty cup with his pinky finger jutting out was a different sight, a contrast to his darker persona you knew was hidden beneath.
You hugged Frigga, which she insisted on, and you sat down with them. You all chatted over breakfast and you sparking up conversation with Loki was a little awkward at first, but once you opened up a little it flowed easily. The tea was amazing and the little pastries laid out on nice platters were absolutely delicious. Frigga asked about your magic skills, and you both began to exchange stories about magic. You had a great time and you were glad you got out of bed for this. Soon Frigga had some business to take care of and had to cut this little gathering short.
When you left Loki caught up with you in the hallway.
"It has been a while since we have seen each other, Lady (Y/N)."
A lot of the people here were calling you that. And people you did not even know knew your name, which always kind of threw you off for a second or two. That told you that you were known here, from either Thor or Stephen talking. The whole 'Lady' thing was out of respect you assumed, and you did not mind.
"It has." You replied as you both walked down the hall together, "It was nice to see you again, Loki."
"How are you liking it here?" He asked with a smile.
"I love it!" You beamed, "It's beautiful, the food is amazing," You then gestured down to the dress you were wearing, "and the clothes are stunning."
He chuckled, "Green looks good on you."
"Easy for you to say, it's your favorite."
"No no," He sputtered, and you thought he looked a little...flustered? "You genuinely look beautiful in green."
A little heat ran up to your cheeks. "Oh, thanks."
There was a balcony up ahead where you saw sunlight streaming in. You picked up your pace to go look out of it, Loki right behind you. It was overlooking the back of the castle, where you could see a beautiful garden down below, before the landscape stretched out into more of the city and the mountains beyond.
For a second or two you wondered what was past those peaks. If the planet simply stopped there, or if there were forests or towns or lakes or anything else that you wanted to discover. This whole place was full of beauty and the idea that there was a possibility for more was just a little overwhelming. But you loved it.
"I'm happy you like my home." Loki leaned on the railing, looking out at the city with you. "Although it was not always considered my home."
"What do you mean?" You asked. You noticed a sadness in his eyes now.
"You know my history."
At that moment you realized what that sadness was. Probably memories flashing through his mind. You did know his history. Lied to all his life, being overcome by the sadness and anger and wrath and desire for revenge. You knew what that lead to, the New York event and everything that came with and after that. Right now, he was allowed freedom back in his home for 'rehabilitation' of sorts, offered a second chance. Not knowing what that was like, you could not relate, but you knew he had gone through pain. It was even painful to see it in his eyes.
"So do you consider it home again?" It was all you could think of to say.
He shook his head in a light nod after a second to think, the look on his features exchanged for one with a small smile. A weird thought crossed your mind, you had not seen Loki smile this much before.
The two of you stood there looking out at the city below, watching the people of Asgard go about their days. It was a calm silence that fell, not a line of tension or heavy weight of awkwardness at all. Just a calm.
"Hey," Loki said out of nowhere, and you turned your head to look at him as he spoke up, "your outfit is missing something."
You raised an eyebrow at him, coming off as almost sarcastic. "Oh?"
A smirk sneaked up on his face and you knew he was going to do something. You braced yourself for whatever it might be, good or bad or a mix of both. With a flicker of green magic, an object materialized in his hands. It was his helmet, shining gold with the curved horns. It was so polished that you could see your reflection in it.
Then he was holding it out to you.
"Oh no, I couldn't."
Loki cocked his head to the side and shrugged with a smile, again with the smiling, "Why not?"
A pause, you did not say anything because you had nothing to say. Something about it was very tempting, but it also felt forbidden. Like if you were to put it on you would be overcome by some spell or just a wave of emotion. Or just the thought of wearing something that was considered 'crown-like', because you were not royalty or a goddess or someone with high power. But it was all calling your name, with a glint of gold.
"I insist." Loki added.
After another moment's pause, you let him put the helmet into your hands. It was lighter than you expected it to be, with pure gold usually being heavy. Probably not made of pure gold then. Just a trick of the eye.
Without waiting anymore, you slowly rested the helmet on your head. Right away you noticed it was a little big on you. It was not made to fit your head, obviously, but you felt something while wearing it. Maybe honour, or pride. Or maybe just pure 'slyness', the same energy that Loki often channeled.
"Looks good." Loki beamed.
"I'm dressed like you," You snapped jokingly, "that's why you think I look good."
He laughed and you did too. Maybe I should wear more green, you told yourself.  
As you both continued to watch the city below and make small talk, from down the hall you could hear footsteps. Maybe guards or other people of the palace, you presumed. But as they approached, they got louder. And they got quicker. Heavy boots, you deduced. But suddenly they stopped.
"Nice view."
You nearly jumped out of your skin as Stephen had suddenly appeared right beside you. So those were his footsteps. You had not expected him to be out of the meeting for another while, but there he was. Him and that damn short-range teleportation spell he just loved to use for some reason. There were too many instances of him appearing out of nowhere back home and it resulted to you being more jumpy nowadays. He had positioned himself between you and Loki you noticed. Loki looked just as surprised as you were, the trickster being tricked.
"Where did you come from?" Loki scowled
"Down the hall." He answered blankly. You stiffed a laugh at his demeanor, sly and confident, when realization hit you that those were aspects of his jealous and protective side coming out. Oh boy, here we go...
"I'm surprised you're out of bed," Stephen looked down at you with a raised eyebrow, which made you chuckle. You saw a tiny twitch in the corner of his eye, and something told you that it had something to do with the god opposite you and the headpiece you were now wearing.
Stephen reached forward and gently lifted the gold helmet off your head, care in his eyes and shaking fingers. Once it was off, he (not so subtly) aggressively threw it at Loki's chest who stumbled to catch it, all trace of gentleness gone. Loki gave him a mock offended look, but Stephen's own hard expression was not phased. Your eyes quickly darted between the two, seeing the tension that had now thickened the air.
"Should't you be at a meeting with Odin?" Loki said. You noticed he did not say my father.
"Oh we finished early," Stephen replied in a light tone, trying to one-up the god while bringing out his ego's confidence. "we're having another one this evening however."
Loki looked like he did not know what to do, which made an amused smile spread across the sorcerer's face. Then he straight up asked, monotone voice dropping to sound flat and serious, "Why was she wearing your helmet?"
"Because...it matches her outfit?" The god struggled to find and answer only to come up with a question instead.
"Yea, sure." Stephen mumbled, "Wonder where she got that outfit."
"Some palace maids dressed me," You chimed in, but it felt like you were invisible at the moment. There was too much testosterone in the air that was covering your existence, which made you roll your eyes.
"Green and gold are nice colours." Loki said while trying to sound convincing and innocent.
"Coincidence she's wearing them?" Stephen shot back, suspicious.
"I had nothing to do with it, Strange."
"Oh sure."
"Oh my god." You slumped against the railing and rested your face in your hands. The two went on to snap at each other and argue for a little, but it felt like an eternity. after a period of you just standing there listening helplessly, the heat started to die down.
"If you'll excuse me, Sorcerer Supreme," Loki enunciated Stephen's title like it was a forbidden word, "I should be headed to attend some business."
He tried to walk off but Stephen cut him off, "Oh what kind of business do you have to do?"
"Business that does not require a mere mortal sorcerer to stick his clever nose into!"
"Well, it looked like it was no more important then taking my girl somewhere to be alone with!" The low rumble in his voice made it a little more threatening.
With that, Loki rolled his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt. And he walked away without another word, flipping his helmet over in his hands before jabbing it on his head with visible frustration.
"Well that was a show." You said, having stood there watching the whole thing like it was a theater drama.
Stephen shrugged, "I try my best."
You laughed, "Your jealousy gets to your head."
His facial expression recoiled, "Do you enjoy my jealousy? Do you enjoy his company?"
Your jaw dropped for a second in offence, "God no, why would I enjoy making you upset?" At that you shrugged, "Although it can be amusing."
You felt a pinch on your arm which made you let out a sound of distress. Stephen chuckled, and wrapped an arm around you lovingly as you leaned against the balcony railing together.
"He was just trying to be nice, Stephen."
"I don't think he can be 'nice',"
"He was nice at breakfast,"
"You had breakfast with him?"
"I was with Frigga. He just so happened to be there."
"Okay fine."
You laughed and he gently kissed the top of your head. After a moment of quiet and peace, you felt his softly shaking hand fiddle with the sleeve of your dress, "You look very beautiful."
Blushing, you looked up at him with admiring eyes. His expression mirrored yours. He was still wearing the new robes you last saw him in, the gold linings glittering in the Asgardian sunlight. You were about to say the same thing he said to you, when his expression changed. It was his thinking face.
"What?"
Stephen must have realized something as raised an eyebrow, "There's magic in your dress."
Before you could react, Stephen waved his hand in a quick motion. Suddenly, green waves of energy flowed out of the fabric of your clothes. But they soon changed to orange sparks, Asgardian magic to Earth sorcerer magic. As they flowed over you, the colour of your dress changed. The green was replaced with blue and the gold was replaced with red. There was still a little gold here and there, lining the edges in a familiar way.
"I knew it. He must have tampered with it." Stephen grumbled.
Now your dress mimicked the colours of Stephen's clothes, their original colours. You laughed a little, the person who made your clothes thought they were clever. But also Loki thought he was clever to change it to his colours. You wondered when and why he did that, but you shrugged it off and instead admired the dress in this new perspective.  
"That's better." Stephen said, a little proud of himself for some reason.
"I like this more." You giggled.
"Me too."
The dress felt lighter and the fabric shined a little more. It was made for you, perfectly tailored to your body and with the perfect colours to match. It was perfect. And it reminded you of him so it made it all the more special. If they would not let you keep it, then you are just going to bring it home with you anyways.
"Well since the meeting was cut off early, lunch is not for another half an hour or so. What should we do till then?"
"Well~" You drew out, a smile creeping up your face, "I was looking at the gardens from here and I wouldn't mind going to see them."
Stephen smiled. He offered his elbow to you, "Then do you care for romantic stroll, Lady (Y/N)?" He put on his best English accent (which was surprisingly flawless), his naturally low voice making it all the more amusing.
With a giggle, you took his arm. Together you made your way through the castle in a swish of red and blue fabrics.
"Although," Stephen started as you both made your way down the last set of stairs that lead to the ground floor, "you did look good in the green. Even though I hate to admit it."
"Hate to admit it?" You looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Well it was Loki's trickery, but you look good regardless. As always."
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lunarianillusion · 3 years
Text
A change in fate
a maribat fanfic
Chapter 02
Along with the changes to her room, Marinette had also changed her wardrobe. She now wore a cropped baby blue hoodie over a grey-purple shirt, that matched her leggings. Over her leggings she wore a high waisted demin coloured skirt with matching heeled ankle boots. A new larger purse, more a satchel really, hung from her shoulder. It allowed her to carry her sketchbook and other tools more easily. Her hair now mostly hung lose over her shoulders with two braids coming from the sides and connecting at the back of her head.
Once she was ready Marinette walked at an easy pace to the agreed meeting spot. Duusu Had taken to hiding within her hood, so that they could drink in all of the sights. Being both not used for a hundred or so years and being broken, made this a real treat for the little peafowl. Marinette could practically feel the little god vibrating with joy, to be outside in the world again. 
The sun was shining through the clouds and a soft breeze made the early autumn leaves rustle in the trees, as the two reached the park. Marinette could already spot the red-haired omega sitting on a bench close to the pond in the shade of a willow tree. He was fidgeting with a pencil and his sketch book lay on his lap. His posture looked tense.
By the look of it he too had a wardrobe change. Marinette was gonna bet that Marc had helped with the ensemble. Those two were inseparable. He wore a white long-sleeved turtleneck shirt with grey stripes on his chest. Faded navy pants and a jacked tied around his waist. A black and white backpack with rainbow details sat beside him.
“Hey, Nathaniel,” Marinette called out, gaining said boy’s attention as she neared.
“Hey, Marinette,” Nathaniel greeted, his shoulders losing the smallest amount of tension. “Glad you could come. I hope you weren’t too busy.”
“Circumstances made it so that I had nothing scheduled today. But I do hope you were not lying about it being important. Otherwise I will send the Fury’s of art upon thee,” The blue-eyed girl exclaimed in a posh voice. Marinette hoped that it would lighten some of the tension that was flowing through the air and it seemed to work. There was no need for an Akuma today.
“Oh, I beg mercy of thee. Do not condemn me to such a fate, for I would not dare to break my vow,” Nathaniel exclaimed in kind, placing his hand on his heart. It made both of the omegas chuckle and the hidden kwami purr softly.
“So, what is it you wanted to talk about?” Marinette asked, as nonchalant as possible. As she sat down on the bench and pulled out a thermos from her satchel. Which held the gods elixir, coffee. “It sounded quite urgent from your text.”
“Yeah, it is,” Nathaniel said sheepishly, scratching his neck. “But it is not an easy subject to start a conversation with. Or to talk about in general, I believe. So, let me first ask you how you are feeling. I know you have probably had this question asked to many times already. But I know what it is like to be akumatized and of the nightmares that follow so don’t try to say that all is just hunky-dory great.”
Marinette hummed at his words, raising an amused eyebrow at the last bit. Before turning her gaze away from the redhead. Her sharp eyes scanning the surroundings for any uninvited guests. While she knew Nathaniel would keep to his word the scent anxiety kept her slightly on edge. Paranoia had settled deep into her over the past few years. Only the little hidden kwami’s presence was what kept her calm. For Duusu would inform her if someone with bad intentions was to come close.
After a moment of thought Marinette answered. “I was a bit shaken after the whole event, who wouldn’t? All considered though, I think I am doing pretty good.”
After the whole reveal of her being a true soul, Duusu had helped sort out her emotions. They had given her a few suggestions on how to more healthily coupe with the more negative ones. Who knew writing your problems down on a slip of paper and then watching it burn could be so therapeutic.
She turned her gaze back to Nathaniel. “As for the subject of our meeting. Just be blunt about and we will go from there. Keeping it bottled up and it will only stress you out over time and I really don’t wanna deal with an akuma right now,” She accentuated the last part of her statement.
“Yeah, that would really kill the mood wouldn’t it,” Nathaniel sighed. He took a small breath to collect his courage as Marinette took another sip of her coffee. Then Nathaniel bluntly stated: “I know that you are the original ladybug.”
Cue spit-take from Marinette. Mental panic has reached its peak! Abort!! ABORT!!!
“Uhm…I don’t know wha-”
“Don’t even try Marinette. The amount of times I saw ladybug land on your balcony only for you to leave through the front door and vice versa. Was a big enough give away. After that your physiques just matched up,” Nathaniel boldly interrupted. Leaving Marinette in a stunned wide-eyed stare. “Hey, I might not be a fashion designer, but I am an artist and have an eye for these details just like you.” He said quickly with a small stutter. Since he was feeling a little unnerved at her wide-eyed stare. It was as if she was staring into his soul.
“How long have you known?” The female omega asked tentively, her scent spiked with anxiety. Her body language screamed that she was ready to bolt.
“For maybe seven months now,” Nathaniel replied carefully.
“Did you tell anyone?” Marinette asked further, the tension not leaving her.
“I told no one, not even Marc. I know of the importance and reasons behind a hero’s secret identity,” Nathaniel told her sincerely, allowing Marinette to breathe a small sigh of relief. The redhead then let out a small growl of annoyance. “Unlike a certain tabloid reporter and two-faced liar.” Now that that really got the noir haired girl’s attention even more than him knowing her secret.
“The spell broke,” Marinette whispered as his words settled into her brain as her eyes widened even more, if that was even possible, in surprise. While she had been frightened at the fact of him knowing her secret, but he had not told anyone. She could tell that he was honest in the fact that he had not told anyone.  Since otherwise her identity would have probably been public news by now. Secrets like this would spread around like wildfire with the slightest slip off the tongue.
So, she was now more interested in the fact that he called Rossi a liar. It meant that he had broken through her spell and she wanted to know how he came to this revelation. Had it come after he had fond out about her hidden I.D. or was it something else. She was practically vibrating with a curious need to know and asked him about it.
Nathaniel turned his eyes to the sky, several emotions running trough them. Most prominent was the look of shame and pain. “It did weaken her hold over me, but what really made me realise she was a liar was when she promised to introduce me to one of my idols. One I know to have passed away. I won’t say their name, but that really broke the illusion for me,” He spoke bitterly.
Marinette let out a pained hiss at that. Knowing how painful it is to have someone disrespect your inspirational idols in that manner. She softly rubbed his shoulder in comfort and gave a small apology. Nathaniel let out a gloomy laugh and turned his eyes to the ground.  “You have nothing to apologize for Marinette. I should be the one to apologize. For never mastering up the courage to stand up for you even after I realized Lie-la’s grandeur was nothing more than empty words. And I am truly sorry for that. Because after everything you have helped me with, I really should have.”
Marinette felt her heart flutter at his apology and then he just kept on rambling about how he should have stood up for her. How he should have trusted her. Making her feel hot tears gather in her eyes. She had waited so long to have one of her friends back and here was one. Trying his best to make amends and unlike the rest of her class, he had never hurt her in the same way the others had. He always remained kind to her even before he knew of her secret. He may have been afraid to stand up but did not try to ruin her life like the others. So, she had no trouble pulling him into a hug. At first it shocked the boy, but he gratefully returned the gesture.
“Don’t blame yourself. You did not do anything wrong. You did not turn your back to me like the others did. I don’t blame you for not standing up against Rossi. You would have only painted a target on your back, and she would have made you feel miserable. Like with me,” Marinette whispered. “And I need to thank you for keeping my secret all this time. It means the world to me.” Nathaniel tightened his hold on the girl as a few tears of relief and gratitude fell from his eyes, as the words left her mouth. Duusu nuzzled against her neck in comfort. A feeling of pride washing over the kwami of emotion at his little bird.
_____________________________________________________________________
After they let go of each other they settled back into more comfortable sitting positions. The atmosphere feeling lighter than it had been around them for a long while.
“If it is okay to ask,” Nathaniel spoke carefully. “Is the new ladybug permanent? Because if I am being honest, I don’t really trust her.”
Marinette let outa pained sigh. “I made a grave mistake and because of that this new ladybug has the ladybug miraculous. I don’t know how to rectify this mistake, but I will find a way. That is a promise.”
“You always find a way,” Nathaniel assured. “I’ll keep my eyes open as well. I might not be the bravest, but I want to help. After everything I need to help. Even the tiniest bit.” Marinette wanted to say he did not have to. He did not let her say it. “You have forgiven me, but now I need to forgive myself. So let me help. Paris is my home to.”
It made Marinette smile as she felt the sincere emotion and determination flood of her fellow omega. “Now if only I knew how Lie-la is capable of keeping our classmates and others at her bag and call. That might help take bit of stress of my back,” She sighed. Her eyes scanning the sky, hoping it held the answers.
This made Nathaniel scratch his neck again sheepishly. “Marc and I may have a theory on how she keeps everyone under her spell, actually,” He mumbled off.
Marinette whipped around so fast it was a wonder she did not get any whiplash. She grabbed the redhead’s shoulders and looked straight into his turquoise eyes. Her own silvery blue crystal eyes were ablaze with a cold fire. “Please explain how that two-faced bitch is killing all the fucking braincells of the people around us and turning them into fucking sheep,” Her voice had an icy chill to it that sent shivers up the Nathaniel’s spine.
“I didn’t know you could curse,” Nathaniel said trying to curl away from the internally raging female omega.
It resulted in Marinette raising an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Trust me when I say Chloe can swear like a bloody sailor. So, I learned a few things from her,” She huffed a small smirk on her face. She then let go of his shoulders, giving the redhead some room to breath, as a curios gaze replaced the once cold fire. “Please share. My curiosity is going to kill me.”
Before Nathaniel could start telling her about the theory however, a loud explosion penetrated the air. Both omegas turned to the source of the sound. A good distance away they saw a person a top a glider. They cackled madly as they threw loud explosives around.
Really Hawkmoth, can’t they have one day of peace? 
The answer: Nope.
“How about we continue this conversation tomorrow over lunch. Chloe and Marc can join in on the theory. I do believe Chloe will be thrilled to know how Lie-la is capable of maintaining the utterly ridiculous situation at school,” Marinette proposed. Her eyes never leaving the new akuma.
“You are going to investigate, aren’t you?” Nathaniel asked nervously. Marinette simply nodded not looking at him. He sighed, “I won’t be able to change your mind, will I? How can I help?”
“It would be best for you to get to safety,” Marinette advised. Turning to look him directly in the eye and stopping him from objecting. “You have no need to worry about me. I still have an ace up my sleeve. So, trust me,” She assured with a mischievous look in her eyes.
Nathaniel stared uneasily at his fellow omega before nodding. “Alright but be careful, okay, I better see you at school tomorrow.” Was the last thing he said before grabbing his stuff and turning away to go to one of the akuma shelters. Leaving Marinette alone.
Taking a quick survey of her surroundings, to make sure the coast was clear, she asked Duusu to come out. “Are you ready?” the little god asked. Marinette smirked in reply. Let’s see what they were capable of.
“Duusu, Spread my Feathers”
Authors note: hey i hope you enjoyed reading this chapter. a few people have been asking me about adding them to my taglist and being honest i am not sure of how to do that. i am still very new with tumblr, but once i finally stop being dumb i'll be sure to do that. i hope you will stick around to the rest of the story. stay save.
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hankwritten · 3 years
Text
Lies, Damned Lies, and Valentine’s
Day 7 of the valentine’s day event, Whole Team
“Have the RED team vandalized us in the middle of the night?” Medic asked, gazing around the common room which had been papered with tiny hearts. “What is with all the pink?”
“Ach, it’s Valentine’s day, boyo!” Demo told him with a hearty slap on the back. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
Medic adjusted his glasses, which had fallen out of place with the overzealous display of masculine affection. “My wife and I are…estranged. I have not celebrated a Valentine’s day in a very long time.”
“Well, so long as you made your cards, you’re celebrating just fine.” When Medic didn’t respond, Demo pressed a, “you did make some cards, right lad?”
“Cards for who? I told you I have not spoken to-”
“For the team ya quack,” Demo snorted. “We always make cards for each other on Valentine’s day.”
“…Like kindergarteners,” Medic asked drily.
“Don’t be such a stick in the mud doc,” Demo elbowed him. “It’s a tradition.”
Medic crossed his arms, and kicked a small paper heart that had fallen on his shoe. “Well no one told me about it.”
At that, Demo finally paused. “Ah, I suppose everyone forgot to mention it to the rookie. Don’t worry though!” This time, Medic dodged the pat aimed at his shoulder. “Everyone knows you only got here a month or so ago, they won’t hold you to any obligations.”
“What a relief.” Medic rolled his eyes.
He was able to put the ridiculous conversation out of his mind thanks to the oncoming battle, slinging on his pack with a feeling of purpose. Dealing with REDs and avoiding Spies took most of his concentration, as a day that he went about distracted was a day he’d find quite a few Sniper shots through his head. However, as much as he’d dismissed Valentine’s by the midday break that afternoon, it appeared his teammates hadn’t.
He’d followed Heavy to the cover of the sentry nest, but as his partner was filling up Sasha, he noticed that Engie had laid out a few pieces of folded paper on top of the dispenser. Medic wandered closer. It took him a moment to parse what he was seeing, but then he remembered the travesty that had become of the common room and realized Demo had been dead serious about Valentine’s Day. Engineer’s valentines were spread out neatly, all unique, all cheerfully signed by members of the team. Scout had draw a rather good rendition of the man himself standing next to his sentry, a little heart between them. Sniper had written ‘THANKS TRUCKIE’ in block letters. Even Soldier had put in some effort, as he had used red, white, and blue construction paper to make what might have been the shape of Texas if you squinted enough.
Nearby, Pyro was showing off their own collection. Scout had also drawn a picture for them (of Mayor Balloonicorn), which they had delicately set in the grass, their other cards out before them. The one from Engie they were attacking with vigor, since the Engineer had been forward thinking enough to glue tiny pieces of candy to the folded paper.
“They’re all real nice Pyro,” he was chuckling. “Though maybe put them back in your pocket? Don’t want them to get dirty.”
Pyro nodded, and began shuffling them back into a pouch within their chemsuit.
“They take this very seriously, don’t they?” Medic noted absently about the pair.
Heavy, having loaded on the ammo required, turned and saw Medic mulling over Engineer’s cards. “Oh, da! Every year. We do not spend holidays together, so for team, is closest thing.”
As he spoke, he reached into his front pocket. Something with Demo’s handwriting dashed all over it appeared in his hand, obnoxiously saccharine with its copious hearts and overuse of the color red. Yet the Heavy Weapons Guy displayed it proudly, and Medic offered him a wry smile.
“I had no idea,” Medic mused.
“…Team forget to tell you?” Heavy rumbled. “Heavy see. Heavy wondered why doctor did not give him one.”
Medic coughed lightly into his hand. “I wasn’t aware until this morning-”
“No, is alright. Heavy’s little joke.” He patted Medic on the shoulder, which was (surprisingly) more reserved than Demo’s attempt at the same. “We kill RED babies, that is gift enough, da?”
Medic agreed, and followed him off into battle. However, this time the threat of the loving spirit stuck, and Medic found himself skewered on the end of the Spy’s knife more than he was comfortable with. He tried to shake himself, to forget his teammates’ foolish obsession, but one thought kept rankling him: he might have not known to send out cards, but why hadn’t anyone gotten him anything?
They returned to BLU base with an embarrassing loss on their collars, though you wouldn’t know by looking. Everyone was in the common showing of their haul, passing around heart shaped cookies that someone had made last night and stuffed in the fridge. Medic tried one, and nearly gagged on how much sugar had been crammed into such a small package.
Apparently everyone had gotten the same memo about Demo’s cards, as each one came with a tiny novel vodka attached. Demo peeled off the last one (from Soldier with a picture of a shovel on it, saying simply I Dig You) with the utmost care, lining them up next to his whiskey bottle.
“Look!” he grinned to Soldier. “Me scrumpy’s birthed a litter!”
Soldier, who had taken to taping his own cards to his helmet, slapped him on the back. “Congratulations! You’re a grandfather!”
Scout, like Pyro, couldn’t help but flaunt his, claiming that he got the most out of anyone. When Sniper pointed out that everyone got seven cards, he pivoted to say, “yeah well mine are the best, quality over quantity Snipes.”
Medic shouldn’t have been irritated. He didn’t care about Valentine’s Day, not in the slightest, so why was he getting so terse about his teammates’ holiday cheer? Of course they didn’t get cards for the rookie, they probably would have gotten cards for their old Medic, not him.
That thought itself would have put anyone in a sour mood, but the tipping point was when he walked the corner and saw Spy delicately arranged bits of red-hued paper into a manila folder, smiling slightly as he set the last one down. Medic was close enough to read, saw Sniper’s handwriting, and also that the poem it was quoting was incomplete. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. / I love thee to the depth and breadth and height. The next two lines were missing— Medic knew enough of poetry to glean that—which meant Sniper probably had the other half. All shuffled always with the other ones he’d gotten from Scout and Engie and Demo and whoever, but the most important thing Medic could determine from the display was all those people had given Spy valentines too. Spy. Medic’s eye twitched. Before he knew it he was barreling past Spy, out past the others in order to get to the hallway. There were a couple exclamations of confusion, a few calls asking what was wrong, but Medic ignored them all.
He didn’t need their obligatory attempts to include him, he could see when he wasn’t wanted.
“Doctor! Wait!”
He considered not stopping for the deep voice behind him, but unless he wanted to go charging off onto the battlefield, his path would eventually take him back around base. He sighed, and turned to face the man behind him.
“Can I help you?” Medic snapped. There was no use pretending he wasn’t miffed.
“What is the matter?” Heavy asked. “Have not seen you this angry before.”
“Well that is not a big surprise considering we barely know each other, apparently.” Medic crossed his arms.
Heavy furrowed his brow. Always a man of few words, he either didn’t know what to say, or figured it was better not to antagonize Medic further, and so he settled for waiting for his teammate to elaborate.
Medic relented eventually, shoulders sagging as he exhaled. “I realize I am not…part of the team so to speak. I understand I am not as close to you all as your old Medic was, and I do not blame you for not including me, but it is still…difficult to watch everyone open cards and…not receive any myself.” God it sounded so childish when he said it allowed. He was a doctor for god’s sake! He should be above such petty jealousies.
As his self consciousness closed in, he hunched, and failed to look at Heavy. It took the man saying, “doctor did not get valentines? Is not possible,” for Medic to turn back around and see him shaking his head. “At very least, Heavy give card.”
“You…?” Medic unfolded his arms. “When?”
Heavy raised an eyebrow. “Did doctor not check locker?” When Medic blinked, Heavy added, “is where we put at start of day, so none get lost.”
“…Just like in kindergarten,” Medic finished the thought and pinched the bridge of his nose. “God I am such a dummkopf.”
Heavy chuckled, clearly glad to have resolved the situation. “Medic is far from. Come, we look now.”
So Medic did come, entering resupply and walking to his locker, taking a moment to brace himself as he grasped the handle. He turned it. Immediately, he was hit with an avalanche of purple, pink, and red, an absolute tidal wave of valentines rushing out to greet him from where they’d been conglomerating inside his locker like a clogged artery.
There were so many, decorated all with his class symbol or words of thanks. Pyro had made at least four, decorated with crayons and rainbow drawings, sticking slightly where the paint hadn’t dried. Medic picked one off the floor. Scout had drawn Archimedes beautifully, which was astounding considering the two hadn’t gotten along since the Über incident, and it must have been quite a strain to sit still long enough to capture the bird’s likeness. Engie had detailed out a list over every time Medic had saved his bacon in the past month, Spy had written something long and oddly heartfelt, Soldier had gifted him a coupon for one free haircut. The list went on.
It took Heavy gently touching his shoulder while he read Sniper’s uncharacteristically kind letter to realize he was holding his hand over his mouth. He cleared his throat, but despite that still couldn’t find words.
“Medic is part of team,” Heavy stated, matter of fact. “We appreciate. Do not forget that.”
Medic’s eyes fell on a large card, tucked behind the Quick-Fix in the back of the locker so it hadn’t come tumbling out with the rest. This one was unquestionably from Heavy. Medic wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did.
Delicately, he reached out and took it, seeing it was nearly the size of a proper book, made out of two pieces of paper tied with a string. He gently gazed over the words inside, drinking them all in, and then softly spoke, “thank you mein friend.”
“Is no trouble.” Heavy squeezed his shoulder, and Medic could tell his friend was smiling by the chuckle in his voice. “Now! We go. Back to party, doctor should get to show off his cards too.”
“Yes, lets. But ah…not this one though,” Medic finished, softly folding Heavy’s card back up. “This one I will keep here.”
Heavy smiled. “If doctor likes.” With that, Medic followed him back to the party.
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imaginesmai · 4 years
Text
Peter Parker - Far From Home
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This is long, angsty and fluffy! It follows the film, mostly. 
Plot: Peter Parker has just been run over by a train. However, he has biggest worries. Like, Beck having you in his grasp. 
“Oh my god, Happy”
Peter let out a loud hiss when the needle hit his skin once more, and swallowed down the tears that threatened to leave his eyes. He bit his lip, closed his eyes and endured the pain for a while longer. No more than a few hours ago, he had been all over the moon because you had asked him to go for a walk through the city. He had been inches away from kissing you, had gripped your hand and had told you the truth about his identity; well, you had figured it out, but no one needed to know that. It felt like a dream, that had turned into a nightmare because of his stupidity.
“Just a few more to go, don’t worry” Happy said, using a soft voice that Peter thought he didn’t deserve.
Another pinch, another hiss. The needle, however, wasn’t what hurt him the most. It was a mash up between the betrayal of who he thought he could trust, the guilt crushing into him like waves, and his mind running a mile per hour with the possibilities of the disaster that he had caused.
He tried looking out of the window and focused on the low hum of the plane. It was hard to disassociate from Happy stitching up his shoulder without any anaesthetic, and just when he thought he had managed to keep his breathing under control, the careful man hit some nerve and Peter jumped on his seat.
“Happy!” Peter slammed his fist on the desk, an empty cup making its way to the ground.
“Relax, Peter!” Happy tried to calm him down, but it only angered Peter more. The boy got up in a sudden move, with half of his wound still bleeding. Happy was about to drag him back to the chair when Peter turned around and faced him, showing the angry tears on his eyes.
“Don’t tell me to relax!”
Happy had known Peter for some years by then. He had thought he knew the boy fairly well to say that Peter was nothing but sunshine and rainbows. The kid made videos, introduced himself to everything – and anything – , and sometimes brought sandwiches for him when he thought Happy might not have eaten yet. But the way Peter spoke, showed him that the pain he was feeling was nothing like sunshine and rainbows. In fact, Happy thought no one should ever felt it – especially not a kid, his kid.
“How can I relax when I messed up so bad?” his voice broke at the end into a messy sob, and Peter pressed the back of his bloody hand to his lips. “I trusted – I trusted Beck. I thought he was my friend, I gave him the only thing Mr Stark left behind for me.”
“Kid, maybe – ” Happy started, but Peter cut him off.
“And now, he has her.” Peter let the tears run down his cheeks, supporting himself against the side of the plane. “He has the most important person for me and the deadliest weapon, because – because I can’t take care of anything without messing up”
His legs gave up and Happy didn’t have time to catch him before he stumbled into the nearest sit. The autopilot was, once more, the only thing that could be heard in the plane, besides Peter’s quiet sobs. Happy didn’t know much about what had happened, just that he had received a call from a very long number and had to fly through half of the world to get Peter. Since then, he had had to calm the boy down from a panic attack twice, where he had only muttered your name and asked if everything was real.
“So, please… do not tell me to relax.” Peter breathed out.
He let his body fall down until his head was nearly hitting his knees, and ran a desperate hand through his hair. It was damp with blood and sweat, and he missed so, so much the brief feeling of your hand running through his hair. It had been just a second, after he had freaked out after the whole discovery with Mysterio, and you had done it by chance. But he wanted so desperately to feel it again. Peter and Happy let the silence take over for a few minutes, and Peter used that time to get his shit together.
Finally, he heard movement and raised his head. Happy was sitting now in front of him, leaning towards him with his hands clasped together. There was only a desk between them, and that reminded him of the abysm that dissociated both of them in that moment. While Peter was witnessing his whole word crash, Happy still had to understand where that awful wound came from.
“You have to talk to me, Peter” Happy tried to sound as friendly as possible. He searched Peter’s eyes with his own, and held the smile even when he saw the pain in them.
“Y/N… she’s the girl I had the plan with” Peter started, lowering his gaze again. “I was supposed to kiss her at the top of the Eiffel tower, because she loves those awful love movies and I really, really like her Happy”
Peter started to tell him how Nick Fury had crashed his plan by changing the trip, how Beck had appeared from another universe and he had been fooled like a kid. How you had found a drone that proved his lies and had showed it to Peter, discovering his secret identity in the way. Peter avoided the details about how you had almost kissed in the bridge and how you had hug him for a while longer when he had jumped from that window; not knowing Beck was already at the hotel and had targeted you before Peter had the chance to do anything about it.
“It was all a trap. It – I-I fell for it. A-and he had her all the time, but I couldn’t… reach her” Peter tried to explain how the illusions had messed up with his head, and hadn’t let him save you. “Then – the train, I was hit by a train and I fell unconscious. I woke up before I called you”
“And that guy still has Y/N” Happy finished for him, and Peter nodded.
The shadow of you reaching for him, in Beck’s grasp, just before the train ran him over clouded if eyes. Peter wondered if you knew he was alive; you hadn’t known he was Spiderman until that night, and his powers were still some mystery for him sometimes. He wondered, too, if you were alive. If Beck wanted to, he could have killed you just after the crash.
But his ‘peter tingle’ told him you were still alive, with Beck, in case the plan had gone wrong and Peter came back. That was, probably, what scared him the post. That you would have to endure just an inch of what the illusions made to him.
Peter pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes and rubbed them until he saw white spots, and then looked up to Happy.
“I don’t know what to do, Happy” Peter wasn’t afraid of sounding weak, or childish, in front of him. The man sighed. “I just – I just want her back”
“You’re Spiderman. She counts on you” Happy told him with a small smirk, and his eyes were the most real thing Peter had seen since the fight with Mysterio. “You’ll figure something out”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That Flash had a public account with no self-preservation, where he announced himself the biggest fan of spiderman and uploaded the most embarrassing things, came in handy. Peter decided to take care of the suit while Happy drove them to London, where the students were and where he hoped Mysterio would be. Ned also knew about the fiasco of the monsters, and probably MJ did too, so they were probably a threat too.
The suit he was creating was nothing like the old one. He decided to go with the original colours, eliminating the blue and using only black and red. He added a few new webs designs he was working with Tony the last time in the lab, something similar to a parachute so that he could fly down from the plane, and a thicker cloth around his body so that he wouldn’t be defeated so easily.
Like last time. Where he had seen you for the last time.
Breathing through his mouth and giving Happy a hesitant thumb up, he decided to rip the band-aid at once, jumping out without looking back. Suddenly, he was surrounded by air, clouds and pressure. Peter fell through the sky like a crumb, right into the bigger mess he had seen in a long time.
A bus was in flames, flying in the sky and being torn apart like if it was made of clay. People were running everywhere, screaming and looking for their loved ones. As Peter went down, he could see more of the scenario; like Ned gripping Betty’s arm with one hand and leading MJ away with the other, or Mr Harrington trying to calm everyone down while screeching like a fire alarm.
Peter landed on the top of the bridge, hidden from plain sight but still in a good position to see everything above him. Like, Mysterio controlling the drones with a big helmet from inside the glass tunnel, while gripping your arm and dragging you around. He sucked in a breath as he quickly searched for any injuries. You seemed fine, wearing the same floral drees you had been wearing for the opera, then stained by grease and blood. Your hair, that had been pulled up, was obstructing your face as you tried to break free from Mysterio.
But you were alive, still having the will to fight against him, and Peter could almost laugh in relief. He didn’t waste much time in relaxing, instead going for the plan that he had made up in the short trip there.
“Happy?” he muttered against his earpiece. “I – Y/N is down there”
“That’s good, kid” Happy muffled voice came through the earpiece.  “You know the plan then. Turn off the earpiece and cause a distraction. I’ll be waiting on the ground, just bring her to me and I’ll put her to safety”
“Alright” Peter smiled shakily. For a moment, he hesitated. He knew he was far from just a kid, but he had really, really wanted to be a trip without any problem. Where he could talk about his feelings with you, and maybe kiss you. His hand trembled for a second; then he pressed the earpiece. “See you in a minute”
The lines of drones designed to protect Mysterio failed to detect Peter when he entered into the cloud, and the boy let his mouth hang open. There were, at least, one thousand drones flying around an open air, shooting and creating an illusion for the rest of the world. In the middle, stood the real Beck, talking angrily with someone and still holding your arm.
From where he stood on one of the drones, he could see some kind of wound on your ankle, that stopped you from moving freely. Peter gripped the end of the drone where he was resting with so much force that the mental bended under his fingers, and he had to stop himself before throwing everything through the roof. Instead of just going for Beck, he focused on the drones.
They seemed to be following a path. Move left twice, then right once, up and down three times. The plan was simple; destroy one of them so that Beck would be forced to check it out, and use the opportunity to lower you to Happy, who would put you in a safe place while Peter ended up the fight.
Peter decided to go with one that seemed lonely. It was probably in charge of something small, like the monster’s finger or his eye. He threw an explosive web to it and hid under the glass bridge when it exploded. From there, he could hear everything.
“No, I want the cape – what was that?” Beck turned around like a maniac, hissing venom into the earpiece. “Why the fuck has a drone exploded?! I said I wanted a perfect job this time!”
A unintelligible response came out of Beck’s helmet, too low even for Peter’s ear to pick up. He watched, from his place under a piece of metal, how his face became redder and redder until a vein popped out of his neck. It seemed that Peter was finally seeing Beck’s true face; a mad man that couldn’t control his emotions.
“I don’t care! I don’t – if this goes wrong, you’re dead! You hear me?! I’m gonna fucking rip you apart!” he threatened into the earpiece. Peter winced each time you were shaken around like a piece of rag, but forced himself to stay in place. “Like everything, I’ll go and solve it. But be fucking prepared for when I come back”
Beck took out the earpiece and threw it over the bridge, emitting a low grunt. Your lip trembled and more tears fell down your cheeks when his grip on your arm became more rough. Over the past few hours, you had cried, begged, yelled, insulted, sassed and said everything you could think of to the man. Still, the only thing you had received had been a nasty bruise on your cheek and a hard stamp on your foot that probably was broken.
“Now, listed to me” Beck kneeled in front of you and frowned. When he talked, spit hit your cheek. “You stay here. Quiet, still and being a good girl. If I find you an inch to the left, I’m going to throw you to the river tied to a drone. And that’s not gonna feel nice. You hear me?”
“Yes” you answered, knowing that if you didn’t he would only get angrier. “Yes, I won’t – I won’t move”
“I know you won’t” Beck scoffed, and inched closer. “But if by any chances certain spider boy comes around, you will stay put too. Because I don’t think his body would take two thousand drones shooting at him, alright?”
You nodded quickly and another sob rose up your throat. Beck got up and dragged you to the side of the bridge. He didn’t bother in tying you, because he had played with your mind enough times to know you wouldn’t move.
A drone appeared in front of him, simulating a small platform where he could step on. Beck spared you a final glare and drifted away into the mass of drones.
Peter, still hidden under the bridge, saw his chance and crawled up to where you were. He took his mask off with one hand and clenched his jaw. His body hurt and his spidey sense was screaming at him to leave, but he kept moving until he was besides you. He took a second to look at you thoughtfully; from head to toe, from how your hair was messy from being dragged and the way you hugged yourself.
It took him a while to move, because he could feel the panic attack rise to his throat, and the bile with it. He was tempted to turn to the side and empty what he had left in his stomach, but swallowed and gave you a hesitant smile. You didn’t move, neither, and he was afraid you thought he wasn’t real. Been there, done that.
“Hey” he whispered, and stepped – or crawled, since he was still in fours – forwards. “Hey, Y/N. It’s me”
“Oh my god” you squealed out, and unfolded the protective shell you had created around your body to put your hands on your mouth. “Oh my –“
“I know, I know” he stopped you, and looked quickly around to check Beck was still busy. “But I’m here. I’m – I’m real. And I can prove it! Ask me –“
“Oh my god, you’re alive!”
Peter barely could do anything before your body crushed into him. He wasn’t prepared for it, so he fell onto his butt and caught both of your bodies with his elbow. Swallowing the hiss of pain, he wrapped his free arm around your middle and hid his face on your neck.
Suddenly, he felt like a kid.
Spiderman wasn’t supposed to do that, but Peter let the first sob break through his throat and pressed you tighter against his body. Time was hot on your trails, and Peter knew that; yet he only took shaky breaths against your neck. You were talking, saying something about Beck, your class and the drones. It was all white noise, compared to his heart beating loudly against his ears.
You smelt like blood, sweat and Beck. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, because Peter was sensitive to them and, after hours of captivity, they weren’t nice. Behind them, there was also your natural smell, the one he found himself sniffling in class when you sat in front of him. It was there, just like Peter’s sanity, hanging by a thread.
Slowly, Peter pulled you back until your faces were only inches apart. He had to shift his gaze to see your features, and his lip shook dangerously. There were tears on his cheeks, and his eyes were glossy.
“I’m gonna get you out of here” Peter whispered. He didn’t want to sound weak, but it seemed that he was the one seeking your comfort. “I – Happy is down there, and he’ll take you to a safe place. I’m sorry… I couldn’t save you. Sorry.”
“It’s okay” you reassured him. “You’re saving me now, Spiderman.”
“But I couldn’t – “
“We can discuss it later” you cut him off with a small wet laugh. “I think I’m going into cardiac arrest if I spend one more second here”
Peter nodded once, twice and a last one more firmly. He got up and helped you to stand by his side, your ankle making your lean against him. Again, with just one hand, he put on his mask and jumped out of the bridge in a blink of an eye. Wind rushed past him like the familiar feeling he was used to, and he felt as if he was just in Queens, swinging back to his apartment after a rough patrol.
The occasional yelp from you and threat woke him up from his daydream.
He landed in an alley, away from the mess and destruction. Happy was waiting for you like the loyal friend he was, with a black car already on and a gun ready on his shelter. The plan was to run in the opposite direction, run by a hospital in case it was needed, and wait for Peter to go back home. It was a rushed plan, open to many problems and obstacles, hence the gun, but Peter didn’t have anything else. With a sigh, he unwrapped his arm from your waist and let you catch your breath.
“Peter – that was – we were, they were just seconds!” you smacked his shoulder lightly, and Peter didn’t have the heart to tell you it had been stitched in the ride there. “Why didn’t – I’m taking so many advantage of that.”
“We can… talk about that. At home” Peter said, voice muffled under the mask. He didn’t want to risk breaking down again, so he didn’t take off the mask. “I’ll see you there. I have, you know, to go back”
“I guess” you shuddered, and Happy honked. Neither of you cared. “Be careful”
“I will”
There went his plan, probably. The beautiful blue necklace he had brought you in Venice was probably destroyed in his backpack, wherever it was then. The kiss, shattered by an improvised kidnapping. His date, ruined by a mad murderer. And the girl he wanted to do all of that with, in front of him ready to go home.
Peter swallowed around nothing, because his throat felt dry.
“I, uh, we could do that again. No the swinging. The – the other part” Peter blushed under the mask, and you raised a brow.
“The part you got it by a train? Or the kidnapping?” you teased.
“No! No that’s – isn’t happening again. I promise. Never, ever again” Peter shook his head and raised his hands. “Like in a million years? Never. I’m sorry. Not that, it shouldn’t –“
Happy honked again, and both of you jumped a bit. He shouted something to Peter and signalled inside of the car and behind you. The place wasn’t ideal, but neither was probably kissing Spiderman. After all, you had just been kidnapped and Peter was going to risk his life for the sake of the humanity.
So nothing wasn’t ideal, but Peter wasn’t either, and that was where the magic of things laid.
There was a sudden breeze hitting the lower part of his face, and the mask rested uncomfortably against the bruises on his cheeks. Shivers ran down his spine and for a moment he was afraid, because his vison was being blocked because of the mask and his ears were covered. Probably a second before having a breakdown, he felt your lips on his.
They were soft but decisive, your hand cradling the back of his head. It wasn’t as good as what he had planned, yet he could live with that. Leaning forward and ignoring Happy’s indignant shout, he responded to the kiss. There were no fireworks or angels singings, and his body still hurt from the beating. Nothing was being solved by kissing, but he surely felt a lot better.
The kiss was awkward because of the mask, and Peter was too petrified to even think about removing it. One of his hands was resting on your hip, while the other just clenched and unclenched at his side. Your fingers cradled the baby hairs of his neck and he shudder, making you smile and push yourself tighter against his.
As quickly as it had come, it went away. You stepped back, lowered his mask and the world screamed for him again. Peter wasn’t sure, for a second, that it had been real; but then he saw the blush of your cheeks, the angry-proud smirk in Happy’s face, and the tingling on the tips of his fingers.
“Yeah, we can repeat this later” you said, and kissed his masked cheek. If he hadn’t had the mask, he would probably had been as red as it. “See you later, Peter”
Not the first date he had imagined, but he was fairly okay with it.
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fencesandfrogs · 3 years
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cloudtail’s daughter au
so i decided to do a full write-up of this au instead of doing a second post to cover books 4-6 and then everything will be self-contained.
the essence of this au is pretty simple: dovewing does not, imo, fulfill the prophecy by being the granddaughter of firestar’s nephew, because that’s at least 3 “kin” away from him. so while i think she’d actually have to be princess’ daughter to fit, i’ll let her be firestar’s grandniece and call that “close enough” because it’s better.
anyway, there’s no real reason for this to change anything, but i think given who cloudtail and brightheart are, and how close dovewing and ivypool are to whitewing, it would probably change quite a few things.
[4k words. 15 minute read. proper section headers.]
this is a big summary so i’m sure i’ll forget things, i’ve already had to add in the events caused by the dovewing/tigerheart romance/conflict that carries through the first three books, and that cloudtail being an atheist has a major effect on ivypaw. i know i wrote a detailed summary of the first arc, where i didn’t forget any of that, but nothing exists for the second arc. anyway this au is tagged cloudtail’s daughter and apparently i have a lot to say about it so i’m sure if you click on the tag you can find info about it. assuming this isn’t the first thing i post. which it might be.
section one: things that don’t happen
so i don’t want this to be a po3 rewrite, which means i’m going to take a moment to explicitly discuss what doesn’t change.
first, po3 stays pretty much exactly the same. i want jayfeather to be a warrior too. i also want him to be dovewing’s brother. but the au where brightheart gives birth to dovekit, anxiety child, and jaykit, blind, and feels like a failure despite the fact that its not like her half-blindness is genetic, is not this au. that is another au.
anyway, hollyleaf does keep herself more together, because she needs to be alive for some family drama. she’s in background character hell (BGCH) for a while, though, especially the first book.
she still goes to the tunnels, mind, she just comes out sooner.
but otherwise, despite my personal tastes, i’m not changing po3 very much.
section two: brightheart’s litters
okay so cloudtail and brightheart have four children, i believe, and my choice is either to replace whitewing, or to replace the others. now, i don’t particularly care for either of these options, but i’d rather they have their second litter younger, so we’re replacing amber/dew/snow. this still lets you have old queen drama, but not so much that you’re like “brightheart how on god’s green earth did you have 3 children with no issues”
instead, she’ll have dovekit and ivykit at about the same time whitewing had them.
now, for complicated cat genetic reasons, cloudtail could have been a black cat. now, here me out: what i mean is, if he wasn’t white, he could be black. basically, white is a masking color in cats, it goes on top of whatever pattern they would have displayed. both he and brightheart would have to inherit one dilute gene (princess was not dilute, so she had to carry it), and then either dovewing or brightheart are tortie, and that’s the best i can do for keeping dovewing grey.
i, personally, lean towards tortie brightheart, because i always pictured her that way, but i have seen some pretty cute tortie dovewing.
ivykit inherits red from her mother, and is tortie either way, because tortie ivypool is cute.
in fact, i’ve been tinkering with the idea that ivykit and dovekit have kind of mirrored grey and cream spots. not, like, perfectly mirrored, because that’s not how tortoiseshell/calico (they would technically be calico, since they have white) works, but close enough to be cute.
section three: arc one (summary)
these books are going to have six protagonists (dovekit, lionblaze, cinderheart, hollyleaf, jayfeather, ivypool, in that order) with a secondary character who gets less chapters but the most important b-plot (ivykit, hollyleaf, lionblaze, jayfeather, cinderheart, dovewing).
arc one focuses on “two braincells” i.e., dovewing, lionblaze, and cinderheart (sorry bb, ur not like the other two, but i’m putting you somewhere) and the main theme is dovepaw learning to manage her power. it’s a tug and pull between dovewing: glass canon, and dovewing: can’t do shit.
cinderheart and lionblaze also have a romance going on, which irritates ivypaw, who has a bit of a catalyst with the dark forest in the middle/end of the arc (like in the original). we only get this through external perspecives, though, because when this happens, lionblaze is in the secondary position.
one of the ways to fix this book series is to decouple it from ivy and dove, much as i love them. both the beavers and the dark forest make up a b-plot in this arc, while the quest for the third prophecy cat, as well as growing tensions between clans, take center stage, and lionblaze and cinderheart work in the second and third book to give us the adult perspective of the tension that dovekit and ivykit can’t in the first book.
mostly, this is fairly low stakes. part of that is because characters are having stakes appropriate for them, rather than smeared around in a book. (looking @ u, flametail buddy). so dovekit/paw spends her first book worried about apprentice things and doesn’t get to narrate again until the end of the series.
section four: book one — growing shadows
i think the fourth apprentice is a stupid name, okay?
so book one is dovekit and ivykit, for pretty obvious reasons.
although actually i’m pushing off the beavers in this to book two or three. i’m not 100% sure where i want that, yet.
so anyway, dovekit is born and wow is she anxiety child. (i call dovewing anxiety child a lot, because, well, she is? i feel like it’s sort of implicit in the books and i’m making it explicity.) anyway, she’s in sensory overload like 100% of the time. see, she was born late, and so she didn’t have her powers kick in over time like lionblaze and jayfeather. nope. she got the adult version right away.
so she spends a lot of time hiding with cloudtail because he’s big and fluffy and not complicated to look at. cloudtail and brightheart are understandibly pretty worried about her, because no one really knows what to do about it. she’s skittish and distractable and extremely sensitive. she hates going out in the rain, hates bright sun, etc.
(side note: dovekit’s powers extend to pretty much all her senses. she can see, hear, and smell much farther than she should, and she can taste and feel much more strongly than an other cat.)
ivykit doesn’t feel unloved, but she does know her sister is getting more attention, and that always kind of hurts, even if you’re understanding.
cloudtail and brightheart work to try to help dovekit get on her feet, but they’re not super successful. she learns to cope enough to be able to function as a kit, but she’s always kind of a strange, quiet kit. she doesn’t know how to talk about seeing too much because she doesn’t realize its too much.
dove is given to cinderheart, because lionblaze is a terrible mentor for small anxiety child, and ivy is given to lionblaze. this will also create drama later, just wait.
so the main plot of this book is keyed into dovepaw learning to hunt. the stakes are pretty low, honestly. they’re mounting around dovepaw and ivypaw, but the girls are too young to properly understand everything.
dovepaw is initially successful hunting due to some luck and being good at spotting prey, but she can’t replicate it. ivypaw only trains with her a bit at first, and she sees this success, and feels like her parents’ attention on dovepaw made dovepaw better than her.
this gets ivypaw into the dark forest. this is the b-plot: ivypaw training, realizing she made a mistake, and not knowing how to get out. plus, she doesn’t have to mind her sister. (ivypaw is raised by an atheist, so while she’s smart enough to eventually work out that these cats are evil, she doesn’t have a sunshine and rainbows view of starclan. that’s the only way i can justify her not being smart enough to nope the fuck out of there, even if she is really young and really angry.)
in clan life, ivypaw knows she needs to look out for dovepaw. she doesn’t mind, but she gets to experience a life without that in the dark forest.
dovepaw does mind how everyone treats her like she’s made of glass. she sees cinderheart talking to brightheart and jayfeather and firestar and feels like everyone thinks she’s useless. so she decides to go out on her own and prove she can function.
dovepaw starts sneaking out at night and she finds the tunnels. her senses dampened, she panicks, running deeper and deeper, getting lost. fallen leaves will find her, and help get her strength up and then get her out. kind of like with hollyleaf, who is out of the caves by now.
ivypaw sees everyone searching for dovepaw and starts to feel guilty about wanting more attention, and the fact that part of why she wants dovepaw back is so people pay attention to ivypaw again. she also feels responsible for this.
cinderheart is distraught, because she really did care about dovepaw, and it’s been three days, her scent tracked to the tunnels but it was raining and no one has seen her since, so she’s probably dead.
ivypaw, grieving, refuses to accept that dovepaw is dead and she hunts outside the tunnel mouth until she thinks she hears something.
dove and ivy reunite and return to the clan. ivypaw’s convictions that dovepaw needs to be protected are strengthened, and dovepaw knows she failed in her goal. everyone is happy to see them.
we get some fretting about how washed out everything is, how the rain didn’t even stick because the soil is so dry. that’s a cue to the drought, which will be a bigger deal next book.
section five: book two — fading echoes
honestly i’m not attached to book titles, but this works here too.
so this book is split between lionblaze and hollyleaf. i’m pretty sure hollyleaf is out of the caves by now, but i haven’t decided if she’s rejoined the clans. she feels strongly for fallen leaves: they’re listed as mates on the warrior cats wiki, and if hollyleaf and jayfeather are both going to have ancient dead ghost mates, she’s at least going to visit hers. her end goal is to get him to starclan so they can be together after her death.
anyway, this is beavers book. i don’t have a ton to say about it because it’s pretty much the same, except hollyleaf goes with dovepaw and cinderheart and she’s our pov as dovepaw falls for tigerheart because (and this is my understanding of her logic in the books to begin with): “big fluffy tom is safe fluffy tom.”
lionblaze feels the disconnect between him and ivypaw, but he can’t help that cinderheart is away. ivypaw is clearly preoccupied, but he can’t tell with what. his larger conflict is in finding the third cat.
this isn’t a filler book, per say. the tree falls and that happens, and lionblaze gets thrown into rebuilding camp. ivypaw feels doubly abandoned. lionblaze tries to win her affection, but he doesn’t know how.
beaver crew gets back. dovepaw has stars in her eyes. ivypaw is close to passing her warrior assessment, but lionblaze can tell she’s holding back because she doesn’t want to leave dovepaw. dovepaw can hunt by now, but she can’t really split her attention.
she’s scared of going into battle.
after a border skirmish where dovepaw just freezes, ideas of her being a medicine cat are raised.
ivypaw sees tigerheart in the dark forest, and she goes all bluefur being like “snowfur ur bf has rabies” on dovepaw, who is not happy with this. ivypaw pushes dovepaw to be a medicine cat because of this. the sisters are squabbling and barely talking.
book ends.
section six: book three — distant whispers
again not 100% sold on the names.
so this is cinderheart’s book, and she’s going to figure this out, because dovepaw and ivypaw are falling apart, and dovepaw deserves to be a warrior. so she convinces firestar to let her and lionblaze take ivypaw and dovepaw to the mountains. she believes, well, i’m not sure i haven’t worked that part out.
anyway, they go.
the tribe is like “yeah the world sure is a big place with a lot to look at. that’s why only half of us look.” (i know that’s not exactly how cave guard’s work but close enough.)
cinderheart is like “hm. what if, dovepaw, just a thought, what if you just, you know, avoid battles? i know it’s part of clan life but judging by the two souls crammed into my body, i’d say there’s been very few major conflicts over this and, reasonably, you should be able to avoid being chosen for battle control.”
dovepaw says, “but cinderheart, i’m a main character! unless i’m being punished or taught a lesson about duty, i’ll be automatically registered for every battle patrol until i die!”
cindheart says, “you’re right, i’m so sorry. hey ivypaw, [whoops yeah ivy and lion are here too sorry i forgot to mention that] what if you two learn to work as a team.”
dovepaw says, “i don’t want to work with her.”
ivypaw says, “that’s a great idea.”
because dovepaw talks very quietly (she forgets not everyone can hear as well as her), ivypaw wins.
they spend at least a month in the tribe, maybe longer, i’m not sure. eventually, they decide to go back. dovepaw is never happy in the tribe, it’s way too loud all the time, but she does manage to sort out her hunting issues, and so fighting is left.
so there’s still a big push for dovepaw to consider maybe being a medicine cat.
but that is not this au. this is the jaywing/dovefeather au where they basically switch roles. there’s a really good fic where dovepaw goes to riverclan for a while that i love and anyway this au is a as-close-as-possible to canon au for me to rectify my issues with dovewing in canon (nominally, i don’t have any, but i think her character was displayed…curiously, and i’m mad about the prophecy.)
ivypaw is team medicine cat. cinderheart and lionblaze are struggling. cinderheart eventually teaches dovepaw an extension of the techniques of the tribe, and they work out that dovepaw can kind of, track the cats she’s with to anchor herself in battle. this means dovepaw no longer is tied to ivypaw for her success, and so they both become warriors.
while they’re still in the tribe, ivypaw has time away from the dark forest and lionblaze finally puts two and two together, and that basically makes up the b-plot for the back half of the book, lionblaze trying to get ivypaw to admit what’s going on and then trying to help her.
dovewing’s senses begin to return but since they come back slowly she’s able to manage them. so she quickly excels in hunting.
ivypool cottons on to the dark forest breeding loyalty between its members, not to their original clans, and realizes that this is going to threaten all four of the clans.
end book with a bang, end first arc. we will now turn to the actually-have-more-than-two-braincells crew (sorry cinderheart, you don’t deserve to be in this group, but your prefix doesn’t end in -y, so you can’t be with jay/holly/ivy in the brainy crew.)
section seven: arc 2 (summary)
so this arc is when the main conflict (dark forest battle) becomes obvious. dovewing’s problems have been sorted out, so she’s pushed into BGCH for a little bit while the smart adults sort things out.
book three ends with ivypool realizing the dark forest isn’t a personal problem, but a clan-group (like, all of the clans together? not sure how to call it) sized problem. ivypool, jayfeather, and hollyleaf together manage to sort out a lot of the dark forest’s eventual plan, and they try to sort out a way to solve it. then the battle happens. that’s basically the summary?
in here, the clans start working together way sooner and the prophecy comes out way faster.
section eight: book 4 — the forgotten character
alright, hollyleaf is liberated from BGCH. actual title is still the forgotten warrior.
hollyleaf and ivypool start to bond, and hollyleaf is convinced all the clans need to know about what’s up.
ivypool disagrees, and they talk about it like rational people.
hollyleaf and fallen leaves are still cute.
jayfeather has his timetravel thing in this book so he can do flametail’s job in the next book. he gets to talk to hollyleaf and fallen leaves about it.
i don’t think i’d mess with jayfeather and briarlight’s relationship in this au, because i think it’s sweet in canon as is, but you know i have thoughts about half moon and briarlight. anyway, jayfeather gets his book next, this is about hollyleaf.
fallen leaves helps hollyleaf learn to control, idk, spirit dream travel? jayfeather helps with this too. hollyleaf has to share extra hard with jayfeather because she took up a disproportionate amount of time in lionblaze’s book.
so anyway, hollyleaf is learning to travel into the dark forest. similar to the way dark forest cats leave it? but in reverse. this is the main plot.
like the second book, it’s not really filler, so much as lower stakes, and like the second book, i don’t have a ton to say about it because the plot is self evident. unfortunately, hollyleaf has the two “chill” books. sorry bb.
anyway, this is building into jayfeather going all angry old man yells at sky at starclan next book, so the biggest conflict in this book is hollyleaf realizing she can just, leave. she can go back in time the way jayfeather did, but on purpose, save fallen leaves, and they can be alive.
i mean, that wouldn’t actually work, not the least because i’m not keen on hollyleaf being a reincarnation, espcially in the reincarnation-lite universe, but also because she can’t save fallen leaves, then he wouldn’t be a sharpclaw, not really, and like a whole host of other issues but anyway
at the end of power of three, hollyleaf runs away from her problems. this book is about her standing up to defend them.
i don’t know if she explicitly breaks up with fallen leaves, but they have a falling out that won’t get resolved until after the great battle. this is a mutual/not mutual thing where they both know that fallen leaves is stopping hollyleaf from fully committing to helping her clans now, but they love each other.
relationship conflict that isn’t forbidden romance.
speaking of, ivypool getting close to hollyleaf means that the two of them start to reconnect with their siblings. hollyleaf’s actions alienated her from jayfeather and lionblaze and she kind of just was sad and apologetic but they didn’t want to forgive her.
(sorry hollybush, says jayfeather,
that’s not my name, says hollyleaf,
oh, says jayfeather, guess i forget. well anyway, i have a new sister now. her name is dovewing.
dovewing?, says hollyleaf. but you don’t like her.
it’s okay, says jayfeather, she never tore my family to shreds and then abandoned me to deal with the fallout.)
(jayfeather and hollyleaf always seemed closer to me than lionblaze and either of them, until hollyleaf’s whole event. anyway he remains petty about everything and lionblaze stands by him because, well, he’s not wrong, also dovewing is important to cinderheart so he feels like he should be on her side on this which means jayfeather’s side. even though cinderheart is friends with hollyleaf look i said lionblaze is a loveable dumbass already, didn’t i?)
so anyway hollyleaf is sad and ivypool sees that and is like “hm maybe i shouldn’t be a petty bitch for no reason” and this is fine until after this series is over when dovewing and tigerheart are like “bitch we gon b together”
dovewing’s emotions get jayfeather to, well, not go back on his actions, but recognize hollyleaf is the most effective person to work with. because lionblaze and dovewing are just. so dumb.
and yeah this book ends with things feeling almost hopeful.
section nine: book 5 — sign of the moon
i cannot overstate how little i care about the titles of these books.
anyway, jayfeather and cinderheart.
i don’t have a ton of thoughts about this one. jayfeather reunites starclan, cinderheart helps convince ivypool and dovewing to work together. this is the book where clans find out about the propechy but not the dark forest that is for next book
they know something is coming, but everyone agrees not to give ivypool away yet. they like her, you know, alive.
anyway, i don’t have much to say because it’s pretty obvious what happens, because this is just a bunch of events from other books crammed into this book, now, and they’ve been written and i don’t see the need to make many changes.
cinderheart and lionblaze have kit drama, maybe? cinderheart counsels dovewing about tigerheart, maybe? my point is it’s not super important.
the book ends with the two warriors to every camp. and dovewing, jayfeather, and lionblaze, are going to get split up.
this is my biggest change so far imo because it’s the most plot relevant.
dovewing is going to shadowclan with ivypool. jayfeather is going to windclan with…i’m not sure yet? i don’t want him going to riverclan because leafpool has ties to riverclan and, well, i want jayfeather to get a chance to stand on his own. and lionblaze goes to riverclan, with either cinderheart or hollyleaf.
jayfeather is super grumbly about this, but admits that it’s important as a show of unity, and also, he’s pretty functional in wind clan? like they’re all playing to their strengths.
jayfeather learns to navigate pretty quickly, dovewing appreciates quiet and also not being that-strange-cat who everyone is super careful around, and lionblaze is big and gregarious and enjoys riverclan being chill and friendly. so yeah, people get a chance to chill and be happy.
ivypool is in position to be angsty next book.
end book.
section ten: book 6 — the last hope
despite my claim that the biggest change is sending the three to different clans, i don’t have a lot to say about it.
basically, well, okay
first, we see ivypool and dovewing again. reminder that last time we were in one of their heads, they were apprentices. in book one.
dovewing couldn’t even hunt last time we had her pov.
so there’s a few chapters to some characterization that happens. dovewing is no longer anxiety child. she’s somewhat shy, she’s soft spoken, but she’s not skittish. you can’t surprise her. and she’s intense. she’ll just stare at you with wide eyes if you come talk to her until you say something she wants to respond to.
ivypool sees why dovewing and tigerheart are good together. she’s still not supportive, but, like, he understands her. he doesn’t treat her like she’s fragile, but he also is kind and forgiving and soft to her.
plus he’s a total simp for dovewing. that helps.
anyway, ivypool gets along fairly well in shadowclan. i don’t have ton of thoughts about this.
ivypool, hollyleaf/cinderheart, and jayfeather’s companion, as well as half of the other cats away on missions, are acting as messengers between their host clans and their home clans. that’s how ivypool gets to find out about info. they meet on the island every morning. or something.
anyway, this bit is where i most hate the set up of this with two pov per book hard cap because it’d be cool to see into everyone else’s head but that’s for novellas and side stories.
the battle happens.
everything sucks. dovewing has basically committed to tigerheart, but bramblestar’s storm messes with the timeline.
and that’s pretty much it.
section eleven: what’s next?
so i swore i wasn’t starting new fic and then i thought of this and now i do want to write it so, maybe?
the most important thing is:
tl/dr: the reason dovewing shouldn’t have been a prophecy cat is because she’s not the kin of firestar’s kin.
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mycosmicvoid · 4 years
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The Real Kentucky Goblin Case, “Hellier,” and Interdimensional Beings
“Remember, something really did happen that night! Enjoy + Believe!” writes Geraldine Sutton Stith on the inside cover of my copy of her book, “Alien Legacy.”[1] Geraldine is the daughter of Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, and “Alien Legacy” is an account of, as she autographed, what “really did happen” on the night of August 21st, 1955, better known as “the Kelly Hopkinsville UFO case,” “the invasion of the Kelly Green Men” or simply: “the Hopkinsville goblin case.” Through reading her family’s story after I thought I knew it well enough, I felt my own compulsion to vindicate them, just as she does. In the prologue, she asks the reader to “see if you can feel and possibly understand what this family went through. And with that being said, this is my story, this was what was left for me. This is my legacy.”[1]
As the reader you can’t help but feel a bit of guilt thinking about the constant fetishization of real stories existing in real family lineage, UFO-related or not. However, sentimentality aside, I was determined to know the real story. First, the set-up of events in the book were slightly confusing, as I previously was not aware of exactly who everyone was. Geraldine is the daughter of Lucky and Glorine (who was not present, although his current wife at the time, Vera, was). Lucky and his friend Billy Ray were the two to battle the creatures that invaded the property that night after Billy Ray witnessed something “round and metallic”[1] fly across the sky followed by a streak of rainbow light. Lucky’s mom was called Miss Glennie, June is Billy Ray Taylor’s wife, JC is Lucky’s brother, Alene is his wife, O.P. is Alene’s brother, and Lonnie, Charlton and Mary are Glennie’s children and Lucky’s little siblings from her second marriage, who were all present that night.
The first I heard of this case was in the first episode of “Hellier”[2]- After all, it was the very case that influenced the crew to follow their email lead, which happens to be a plea from a man named “David Christie” (in quotations as it is now understood to be an alias), asking for help from Greg Newkirk and his paranormal hunting group, as little creatures have allegedly been harassing his family. Greg acknowledges the similarities and differences between the descriptions of creatures in David and the Suttons’ story: David’s were “the size and stature of a small child, devoid of any facial features save for large, oily eyes and lipless mouths. They frighten my children by peering through their bedroom windows, chirping at one another. They actively attempt to enter my home… I assure you [they] are not ‘wild animals.’”[2] He claims his daughter witnessed them playing together in the yard, and called them “‘bald like grandpa and weren’t wearing any clothes.’”[2] When he finally “witnessed” them for himself, David describes a “chirping” sound, “much like a skunk, if more guttural,”[2] and a “small, humanoid figure, with sickly pale skin, completely hairless...”[2] In the last correspondence with Greg before disappearing and deleting his email account, David sends pictures of a three-toed footprint[2] allegedly found on his property and claims he is fleeing.
The “Hellier” crew never claimed that the creatures from the two stories were the same - just too similar to ignore. Geraldine doesn’t go as far into detail with physical description, however I have not read her other works. The one I did read describes the creatures as “a figure standing about three feet tall.”[1] “It glowed, and as it got closer, they could see that it had its arms in the air as if to surrender.”[1] It looked as if it had “two huge eyes that glowed yellow”[1] and “its legs weren’t moving; it seemed to float on top of the ground!”[1] The men would shoot at them, and “it sounded like a metal bucket being hit…” They explained to the police that the “little men” were “one color all over except for the glowing eyes”[1] and they had “a luminous glow, but when a light hit them, it changed to a dull metallic.”[1] The glow “got brighter when they were shot at or yelled at,”[1] and Lucky thought this may be their way of responding. Unless I had let the detail slip by, Geraldine makes no mention of the creatures chirping, or any sound. Moreover, these creatures made no effort to enter the house despite the windows and doors being open, and made no effort to physically hurt the family - they seemed to be toying with them, by returning unaffected after being shot at, touching Billy Ray’s hair, scratching the roof, and peering twice into the living room window. As terrified as the family was, Miss Glennie felt no need for Lucky to be shooting at them: “I don’t think they’re here to hurt us. Didn’t you all see how they were holding their arms up in the air? I think they are as much afraid of us as we are of them.”[1] In David’s case, the creatures went so far as to allegedly take his dog and break into his home.
Greg mentions the term “goblin” as a label witnesses used due to having no other way to identify the creatures.[2] Lucky thought they “look like some kind of little goblin or demon!”[1] and in Billy Ray’s response to Glennie wanting to see what the two men saw, he exclaims, “I hope that God-awful thing went back to whatever deep dark depths it came from!”[1] Despite Greg mentioning that the family thought they were from outer space[1], all Geraldine mentions (in this account, at least) is that the family knew for sure the creatures were “not of this Earth,”[1] but also clarifies that since they were deemed goblins or demons, “I guess at first it was easier to think that they were something from hell than from another planet.”[1] Another factor regarding the description of the “goblins” was that they were silver/metallic, not green. Early writing describing them as “little green men” stuck, and this infuriated Lucky; he wanted every detail to be told as it happened. In fact, early police drawings of the goblins display very large, pointy ears,[2] however this is another detail not mentioned in “Alien Legacy.” The morning after the attack, the family decided to try and carry on as normal. Billy Ray went hunting nearby with a friend while Lucky, JC and O.P. went to Evansville, and because Billy Ray was the first to return home, he was the first to hit the interviewers’ notepads. As everyone seemed frustrated with repeating themselves and not being taken seriously, he seemed to be enjoying the attention. Lucky came home to Billy giving a description that was slightly different, and he was being “a little more colorful than the rest.”[1] Billy’s descriptions were starting to be “a little more than what they seemed,”[1] much to Glennie and Lucky’s disapproval. This part of the story, to me, feels like an important detail often looked over, and because I hadn’t seen or read much of the story apart from what was described in “Hellier” until now, I assumed the large protruding ears were part of Billy Ray’s fabrication. Upon searching the drawings with captions included from Bud Ledwith (announcer from Hopkinsville radio station WHOP) who interviewed the family, Lucky, JC and O.P.’s goblin[3] did have “ears,” however much smaller and less pointed than Billy Ray’s.[4] In a correspondence between Greg and Geraldine, described in a 2015 article by Greg, Greg actually proposes, “...What if the creatures’ ears aren’t actually ears at all? What if they were part of a helmet? In fact, what if the creatures were in some kind of a suit? It would make sense of the glowing eyes and the tin-can sound when Lucky and Billy Ray shot at them.”[5] This was slightly strange to me, as the article does not mention Geraldine’s reply regarding the ears and suit, or it is possible she didn’t have one. However, it is explicitly quoted in “Alien Legacy” (published in 2007) that when Lucky was describing the goblins to police, he explained that “their body surface looked like skin, not a suit.”[1] If they also had the luminous glow that got brighter when shot at, their “suit” would be a little more visible in the moments they were hit. Nevertheless, Greg had an incredibly interesting theory: that the Kelly goblins had goggles and a helmet, but had evolved enough not to need them by the time they reached David’s house 60 years later, which is assumed to be directly connected to the 1955 location by the underground Mammoth Cave System.
Super-specific story details, while important, were not the main point of Geraldine’s retelling. She focuses largely on the aftermath of psychological and social torture the family endured after the incident. Like many cases, and despite its popularity now, it was swept under the rug, given the label of a hoax, and/or brushed off with multiple “reasonable” explanations. When hearing the many different versions of the story, it is assumed that when the family sought help from the Hopkinsville police, only the Chief and a few officers were called to investigate. Chief Russell Greenwell was the current Chief, and he contacted the Madisonville headquarters of Kentucky State Police, all state troopers available, and Fort Campbell Army Base, from which four military police were dispatched. Christian County Sheriff’s office also sent a deputy sheriff, and plenty of others showed up at the scene, including a hoard of residents from the surrounding area. Chief Greenwell apparently had mentioned that Air Force intelligence from Fort Campbell were present, but according to “Alien Legacy,” 1975 Blue Book documents state that the incident was never officially reported to the Air Force. Geraldine wonders, “There was no official investigation ever made… But if there was no investigation made, how was it possible to get copies of the investigation?!”[1] The government’s general response was that there was an issue of credibility. Glennie was described as a God-fearing woman who never wanted to do wrong in the eyes of God - she didn’t even want the two young men shooting at the creatures. “Glennie Lankford would not lie… And she certainly wouldn’t have raised her children to tell false stories.”[1] “Was it a lack of credibility because Billy Ray and Lucky worked for the carnival?... It was said they made up the tale from something they had heard before… Was it because the carnival traveled and they probably heard all kinds of tales?... They didn’t want any kind of publicity, and they definitely didn’t make any kind of profit from this story.”[1] Geraldine wonders if they were treated this way because they were poor and not well educated. “How does being poor and uneducated make you less honest? How many rich ‘honest’ people do you know?”[1] The Sutton property was littered with people from the moment the family returned from seeking help. It is often told that the morning after the incident was chaotic and crowded, but it lasted far longer than this - the commotion did not slow down for weeks after that night. Often mentioned in articles is the fact that the family began charging admission, but according to Geraldine, this was their method of keeping people away as not many had money to spare at the time. “[The Suttons] never collected one penny. This made people think that it was all a big hoax after all, and it just made things worse for the family.”[1] People ignored their wishes and privacy, continuing to camp overnight at the property, walking into the home, and even taking things.
To add to this, I personally do not understand why the story is deemed “the Hopkinsville goblin case,” as the family property was in Kelly, Kentucky. The family drove about 8 miles to the Hopkinsville police station to ask for help, and drove back with police (except for June, who was terrified and refused to ride back until later), where the goblins had apparently fled before the family returned. A version of the story that I’ve come across explains the “battle” as something more urgent, where police were called and arrived to join a shootout with goblins. The police found nothing and didn’t return until the next day, however the goblins did return, peered at Glennie through the window at 3:30am, and the battle continued until 5:15am, when they disappeared with the darkness of night. The Kelly goblin case was actually featured in season 2, episode 4 of History Channel’s “Project Blue Book,” but to my disappointment, it adhered to the narrative that maybe the witnesses had too much to drink on a hot night and hallucinated the creatures. When the police checked the Sutton house the night of the invasion, “it was suggested that they check for alcohol. None was found; nothing was found to suggest that there had been anything wrong going on there that night. The family was asked all kinds of questions, and they all stuck to the same story.”[1] “Miss Glennie didn’t believe in drinking or smoking or any of the bad things you could do to your body.”[1] 
The way “Hellier” describes the Sutton story was just their general way of conveying the similarities to David’s email, and in no way am I attempting to pick apart their details or “prove” them differently. I think they did a wonderful job making the connections, and I can say with good confidence that the series changed my life. However, I would like to point out that a large part of the stories mentioned in the series was the downright terrifying detail of the goblins terrorizing the children. While explaining Geraldine’s story, Greg reports that the goblins were “were looking in the windows, especially at the children,”[2] and compares it to David’s claims of the children being targeted and frightened of the creatures. It is often mentioned that the Sutton story is peculiar because all eleven family members had witnessed the goblins. According to “Alien Legacy,” “The children didn’t really see much, because they were hidden away in the back bedroom most of the night. All they really remembered was hearing the shouts and the gunshots.”[1] It is a possibility that the David email was a “creepypasta”-esque retelling of the Kelly case, in which he either overlooked the actual details, or made his story just different enough to pass as original, if it were meant to be a hoax after all.
Aside from all the misconceptions that undoubtedly come with stories like the Suttons’, the heartbreaking reality is that the family was forever haunted by not only the terror they experienced that night, but the everlasting public scrutiny and harassment. When Lucky and friends had to leave Glennie’s to go back to traveling for work, Glennie became worried that JC and O.P. wouldn’t be able to handle the situation like Lucky and Billy Ray could. She and her younger children moved to a Hopkinsville apartment, and she and JC sold the house to her niece and nephew. JC and Alene found a place to stay, but JC struggled with holding a job, the incident continuing to haunt him. Lucky refused to talk about it for years, but would occasionally tell his kids his story, realizing he “wouldn’t be with us forever.”[1] “The night changed his life, and the days after that made him bitter.”[1] Lucky passed in 1995, and Geraldine reveals to Greg that there are two other living relatives, but they refuse to talk because they were made fun of so much in the media.[2] “This family wasn’t only invaded by something possibly from another world, but by our own kind.”[1]
When the “Hellier” crew decided to do some “goblin hunting” in a sizzle reel for a separate production company, they went to Cave City, Kentucky, near the middle of the Mammoth Cave System. In a strange off-camera moment, a little girl approaches them and mentions excitedly that they’re monster hunters, and she replies that her parents, friends, and herself see “monsters” all the time. Jokingly, Greg asks if they’re under her bed. She replies, “No! They come out of the caves!”[2] She is asked to draw them, and first, strangely, she starts with feet that have three rounded toes,[6] incredibly similar to David’s footprint pictures, and to throw my hat in the ring: my sister’s drawing. The feet my sister drew[7] have four toes rather than three like these other two examples, but none of them show an existence of heels, and it’s uncanny. The child they met in Kentucky draws a head, with bulging round eyes and large ears.[8] My sister’s drawing also has these features[7], and so do the interview drawings from the Kelly goblin case.[3][4]
The second episode of “Hellier”[9] brings the crew to Hellier, Kentucky to investigate David’s claims and learn more about what these “goblins” really are. Documentaries like “The UFO Deception”[10] and “The UFO Conspiracy”[11] explain a bit about Jacques Vallee’s Interdimensional Hypothesis (IDH): Vallee speculated that beings that mask as aliens may be interdimensional rather than extraterrestrial, and that their appearance throughout history is planned to fit with cultural and religious perceptions of specific time periods (in 50’s religious Kentucky, a being with a description of “goblin” or “demon” fits perfectly into culture). Researchers that support IDH believe that beings that mask as aliens are not technically specifically from another planet, they are from other dimensions or realities that coexist alongside our own. With this hypothesis, Vallee compared UFOs to phenomena created by mythological creatures such as gnomes or faeries (that are also known to abduct). “Hellier” episode 2 documents the investigators asking the residents about local folklore and if they know of any stories or have seen anything strange themselves. Among the stories is the strange and all too common detail of hearing a baby’s cry coming from caves, where strange creatures are sighted most often. Greg’s wife and fellow crew member Dana begins making connections. Hearing crying babies “is a common thing that often happens around elementals or nature spirits.”[9] Greg interjects, “It feels very fairie-ish!”[9] and they mention that it “sounds like there’s a level of trickery there… Trying to trick you to go into a certain place, knowing how to play on human emotions to lead you to certain areas that you probably shouldn’t be in.”[9] Going back to Vallee, John Keel mentions Vallee’s term “metalogic” in his famed “The Mothman Prophecies,” explaining it as a concept suggesting that entities have a logic system different than ours, so when they try to explain something to humans, it ends up being absurd. However, either way, they have a need for deceit and urge to manipulate us through our beliefs or acceptances.[12] In short, they may create crying sounds to lure humans intentionally, knowing most humans would not ignore it. Keel is mentioned in “Hellier” as well, noting his concept of “audio hallucination” and his claim that the two most common sounds heard during times of high strangeness are a baby crying and car door slamming. Keel writes himself that since ultraterrestrials live outside of our space-time continuum, they fail to adjust, slowing speech and noises down or speeding them up too much.[12] They make all sorts of similar mistakes due to confusion of the time period, similar ideas to Vallee’s IDH. These theories point to possibilities that the “cries” could be malicious and intentional, but if not, they may be due to distorted attempts at communication or mimicking noises familiar to humans. The “Hellier” team decides to stay in Kentucky in a secluded cabin, and figure it makes the most sense to do some searching in their own backyard. Dana makes a general offering to earth elementals as she isn’t quite sure specifically what kind of entity they’re dealing with. Connor, another crew member, begins an experiment he and his ghost hunting partner Karl invented, the Estes Method.[13] It’s an incredible session for the group, but there was one part that stood out to me after reading “Alien Legacy.” Connor asks the entity in contact, “Who’s in the caves? Who’s in the mines?”[14] and it replies, “Talking rooster.” There is a second of confusion, then “it” follows up with, “No it’s not.” Everyone laughs, however this reminded me of the theories and explanations in response to the Sutton story. They all sounded ridiculous to Geraldine, except for one at first: the theory that the “little men” were actually eagle owls.[1] Could this entity be telling them that the creatures coming from the caves, and the ones seen in Kelly in 1955 are absolutely not owls? As mentioned above, it is believed that interdimensionals would have trouble communicating. Surely they would not be able to name every (if not any) specific animal by name with much ease. Later in the series, Dana performs a session with a device called a God Helmet[15], and senses that “they” communicate in what feels like colors or emotions, and only refer to a small database of English words.[16]
Regarding the type of creature goblins really are, I want to point out that they are not the only ones of their kind; they appear in folklore, UFO lore, cryptozoology and the practice of invoking elementals. Often when discussing goblins, I have noticed that John Keel and garudas are mentioned. Garudas are bird/human-like creatures popular in Hindu mythology, and he uses them to describe the bird-like creatures that plagued West Virginia from 1966-1967, which we have come to known as mothman sightings.[12] However, Keel does describe ikals: tiny black men endowed with the power of flight who live in caves and kidnap humans.[12] After Dana makes an offering to earth elementals in the cabin’s woods, they begin hearing wooden knocks. Greg decides to whistle to see if he would get a response, and he hears one back. Connor didn’t hear it as a whistle, but more like a “guttural croak” mimic,[14] immediately reminding me that David used “guttural” to describe the sounds his creatures made.[2] Later on, during Connor’s Estes Method session, Dana hears something peculiar: “It sounds like they’re throwing rocks the size of baseballs.”[14] This made me think of rock babies, popular folklore creatures in the Great Basin area that are faerie-like creatures with the ability to pass through rock. Apparently they are heard from caves, have the ability to steal human babies and replace them with non-human look-alikes, and will reward you with new skills (primarily musical) if you successfully enter their caves. At one point in their journey, the “Hellier” group enters a cave, and through the Estes Method, an entity instructs them to perform what they call “the tones,” a three-note melody, and “it” replies with “Very good,” when they sing it correctly.[17] This brings me to another connection: “faeliens,” a concept author Joshua Cutchin spoke on in an online lecture[18] to explain the ever-present connection between faerie and alien lore: for one, stature doesn’t have to be of a certain size. Light phenomenon is present in UFO, ghost, witch, and faerie lore (“faerie lights”). A sort of weapon/prop, or more commonly, “wands” are found in both alien and faerie lore. They are used to paralyze, which Joshua defines as being “faerie struck.” Both creatures worship the stars and are often seen as negative for not being directly connected to a certain religion, and they can fly, levitate other creatures or objects, and/or teleport. Faery rings and crop circles are not the same things, but both are very similar happenings. Faeries and aliens are both known to exist in underground habitats: “faerie land” is often considered to be underground or in caves, and the idea of underground bases has been a staple of alien lore or conspiracy. They are both popularly connected to animal mutilations and an obsession with children and reproduction. Changelings are a type of fae that are known to take children and replace them with sickly faerie babies (it has been a popular thought in culture that sickly children were deemed the evil work of changelings). This all connects to folklore creatures like rock babies, or the supposed alien obsession with human reproduction and creating alien/human hybrids. Along with many other similarities, alien and faerie lore share the common ability to create “missing time” for humans, and draw them to places (reflected in Dana’s concern with the crying sounds), an experience Joshua explains as being “pixy-led.” In “Hellier,” when discussing different terms that have been used for these specific “goblins” in question, Greg mentions tommyknockers.[2] Author Alexandra Chauran offers a kind of encyclopedia of elementals, and I found some interesting similarities in the descriptions. Knockers, black dwarves, coblynaus, gommes, paras, or wichlein, are earth elementals that dwell underground, popularly in European mines. They are short, seemingly appear out of thin air, enjoy making funny faces at people, and are named because they make knocking noises to communicate with miners. They “can be a friend or enemy”[19] depending on how they are treated, and if befriended, they will knock to warn miners of danger. They appreciate offerings, and dislike swearing or whistling (which would make sense of the croak in response to Greg’s whistle). Goblins do not necessarily match Alexandra’s description of gnomes, but I found two details especially interesting. Gnomes are earth elementals that “seek to understand the nature of earth’s molecules and with it, perform magic and alchemy,”[19] which is seemingly what the goblins in Kelly were doing when showing so much interest in the humans, floating, and deflecting bullets, almost like magic. They “experience time and space differently,”[19] which gives them the time to focus on “monitoring earth’s processes,”[19] but in her description, unlike the goblins, gnomes are not exclusively interested in humans. However, the concept of gnomes differing in time and space connects directly to Keel and Vallee’s breakdown of interdimensionals. Alexandra makes a point to mention that elementals can be dangerous, and one reason for this is the fact that they will often choose to stick to one person or place for a lifetime, (giving reason as to why the goblins stuck around the Mammoth Caves for so long) which can be detrimental as they have the ability to cause “negative real life events.”[19] This is a broad statement, but the series of events after the Kelly situation seemed to have tormented the Suttons forever, and belief in David’s story or not, he supposedly was traumatized enough to pack up and leave town.
As you can see, there are endless connections that can be made when discussing fringe topics, and maybe that’s why people have such a hard time accepting and understanding them. For example, Keel uses the term ultraterrestrial, and it can apply to a myriad of creatures, things, and phenomena. Joshua Cutchin, even when discussing “faeliens,” does not keep the discussion exclusively to faeries or aliens, and often even connects them to bigfoot lore. Everything makes more sense when you understand that it all, essentially, is interconnected. When the “Hellier” investigators venture to the woods surrounding their cabin, they have a moment of contemplation about what they’re really there looking for. Connor confidently tells Greg that it doesn’t matter - he received the email for a reason. “Maybe that’s this trip. Maybe that’s to find out what’s going on in this place.” Greg, seemingly more calm now, agrees: “Maybe it’s more than goblins. Maybe the goblins were just the key to getting people here… Maybe there is something stranger than goblins here. Or more important than goblins here.”[14] They soon realize that this rings true, but there is an overarching point here. It’s never really about the goblins. As the great Allen “F******” Greenfield says, you cannot chase one entity or phenomenon without researching and/or connecting everything, so: “Stop mistaking one phenomenon as the whole deal.”[20]
[1] Geraldine Sutton Stith, “Alien Legacy”
[2] “Hellier Season 1: Episode 1 | The Midnight Children”
“Goblin” print photo sent from “David Christie” to Greg Newkirk, as shown in Episode 1:
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[3] “Little Men” as described by Elmer “Lucky” Sutton, JC Sutton, and O.P. Baker:
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[4] “Little Men” as described by Billy Ray Taylor:
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[5] “Return of the Kentucky Goblins: New Leads in a Case of Strange Creatures, Crashed UFOs, and the Men in Black” - Week in Weird
[6] Child’s “goblin” foot drawing:
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[7] My little sister’s “goblin” drawing:
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[8] Child’s “goblin” head drawing:
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[9] “Hellier Season 1: Episode 2 | Ink and Black”
[10] “The UFO Deception” (2018)
[11] “The UFO Conspiracy” (2004)
[12] John A. Keel, “The Mothman Prophecies”
[13] The Estes Method
[14] “Hellier Season 1: Episode 3 | Trapped in a Maze”
[15] The God Helmet
[16] “Hellier Season 2: Episode 3 | Borderlands”
[17] “Hellier Season 2: Episode 6 | The Altar”
[18] This lecture is no longer publicly available, but you can find Joshua Cutchin here
[19] Alexandra Chauran, “Faeries & Elementals for Beginners: Learn About & Communicate with Nature Spirits”
[20] This lecture is no longer available, but you can find Allen Greenfield here
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Elmer Sutton, John Sutton, and O.P. Baker
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Kentucky Goblin, Greg Newkirk, Geraldine Sutton Stith, and Dana Newkirk (photo shown in “Hellier Season 1: Episode 1 | The Midnight Children”)
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Handmade goblin by Geraldine alongside her book, “Alien Legacy”
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Ufologist Ivan Sanderson with a scale model of a goblin
You can find the Alien Legacy website here
You can read the famed Kentucky New Era August 22, 1955 article here
3 notes · View notes
whetstonefires · 4 years
Note
"the top three of its forty floors are filled with brass telescopes of every size, pointing in every possible direction, including several that do not exist within the normal three dimensions of space." thats SUCH a cool image / "If any harvest will come." ooh i wonder whats going on / "The roofs are of red tile, the stucco of the houses painted in shades of blue. It stands empty, but has not had time to fall into disrepair." the little bits of detail getting added to the picture im LOVE (1/?)
I’m gonna do these all as one post but broken up for ease of reference, I think.
Thank you! 🥰 Deciding the theme for the Tower and giving it that visual anchor really helped to pull things together. If you consider the whole setup, it seems unlikely the Tower was originally built as an observatory, since those tend to benefit from height (especially if you’re looking around you rather than up, but for the up ones also) and the builders could easily have put it on top of a mountain or at least some hills, but instead put it by the river. It’s above sea level, and it’s away from light pollution, but there were better locations. Nearby.
So either it wasn’t an observatory, and it’s been refitted as one, or they had so many observatories they didn’t care about locating them optimally, there was some other factor making having the tower there important even if it was suboptimal in terms of observation capacity. Or, potentially, it’s been moved since it was built!
:} Yay thank for being interested by the foreshadowing. I tried to put just enough in without actively overshadowing the actual place-setting-up and making the reader impatient with the description. 
"If you look through an enchanted telescope you may see trees without needles fail halfway up the nearest of the great peaks, and even these fail before the top, though there is a span of nearly barren stone past that line, before the snow begins." you: mentions different plants living in different climates me: :0 / there's so much good description!! its all so pretty!! (2/?)
sflka;l;jlk i mean yeah, that’s pretty straightforward isn’t it. But! It establishes How Much Mountain it is visually rather than by saying ‘it was a big fucking mountain’ or ‘it was tall enough for the thinness of atmosphere near the top to create a small tundra region.’
o(* ̄▽ ̄*)ブ
<3 Thank you! I kinda cut loose lmao.
"blocks veined with every color, pale blues and purples, reds and greens and golden-duns all mottling toward white and grey and black" god i want to live there so badly!! this tower is meeting all my standards!! cool pretty magic tower with rad telescopes!!! / "make a remark no one present understands about a Doctor named Seuss. His guide, the dousing tracker Amnaphi, will assume this person to be a famous astronomer from his homeland." im love!! misunderstandings about references!! (?/?)
💗💖✨ Yay! That’s an important feeling to create in fantasy, imo. The wanting. 
I really enjoyed playing with the standard forms for ‘thing made of marble’ here, because all these marbles really exist, but in spite of the existence of the word ‘marbled’ our narrative uses of it tend to be tied up with Neoclassical aesthetics. So very white and smooth, yeah?
Also idk if it’s obvious to the reader but this Tower is to some degree in dialogue with Orthanc, which made a great impression on my mind as a child as the iconic wizardly tower, and while I don’t disagree with any of Tolkien’s use of symbolism for the purposes he was deploying it, there’s so much potential in Isengard as a setting that LotR had no space to explore, even if Tolkien would have noticed those angles at all.
Like...the parkland around the Tower is shown being despoiled for the orcish war machine and then reconquered by the forest, but of course it wasn’t forest to begin with. What was it for before Saruman lost his shit? Ordered gardens, for peaceful contemplation? Who dedicated the space that way? Who maintained it? 
Did Saruman employ a gardener? Did he design his own gardens, or did they come with the keep, which we’re informed was built not by him but by the Numenoreans? 
(“I liked white better” is still one of the greatest lines in a fantasy novel, Tolkien does not get enough credit for his contextually hilarious one-liners that rely on pointed code-switching, but Saruman’s evil rainbow oil-slick robes also sounded really baller and it’s kind of a shame they were not attempted for the movie lol.)
The fact that this is a world designed around a kid getting portal-fantasied into it and staying for 30 years really gives me some options which are fun to deploy but also like. Risky lmao. Because it encourages the reader to surface from the setting-logic and apply their own perspective, which can really break up the magic.
Being able to zoom out on the Tower after all that detail and be like ‘it’s awesome but also it looks like something Doctor Seuss would draw’ was fun though.
"Within the even hexagon of its outer wall, the Tower encloses a great parkland, enough that if it was all put under cultivation it could easily feed as many people as could live in the Tower itself." the tower has PLANTS i love it so much / "Ten Years’ Winter" god PLEASE tell me this is going to get into the agriculture and society stuff game of thrones didn't about long winters that would be SO cool / "Watchers of the Stars" AND they have a cool name holy shit (?/?)
Plants are important! As is food supply. As everyone who’s been reading this blog for a while already knows I think lol.
I mean, it’s not about that, really? The Ten Years’ Winter is a historical event--the most recent meteor impact severe enough to have global climate fallout. The dust it kicked up took a while to settle, and the famines were pretty severe.
But the cultural consequences of something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago exist, and are important, including the relationship between governance and disaster preparedness, which varies a lot regionally as you may imagine. 
Astronomy has a long history as a wizardly sort of activity in the real world, both because it’s had continual overlap with astrology and just because the process has always been mystical and abstruse. In this setting, with a history of both devastating meteor impacts and being invaded from the Moon, but also actual magic, it’s got more obvious practical importance. Although since neither of these are remotely everyday occurrences, the average person on the street might not agree lol.
So it’s on the one hand a purely descriptive title, and on the other hand a serious boast, suggesting as it does that they are primarily responsible for Watching The Sky For Stuff. While also having broader philosophical implications and just sounding nice lol. 
You gotta have good marketing if you want to persist as a wizardly order, because if talented students aren’t motivated to come to you how will you gain new members? Natural replacement is not an ideal strategy to say the least. That’s how you turn into a cult instead of an intellectual powerhouse.
"The northern third of the Tower’s park contains neatly regimented orchards, apples, pears, plums, and a few rows of carefully tended peaches and apricots, all clipped flat against low brick walls angled south and slightly west." hhh t r e e s / "wizards, while enthusiastic about innovation in the abstract, hate change." me too, wizards. me too / "The Tower grounds are filled with refugees." ooh now we get to why everything was empty earlier (?/?)
Trees! Which are also food!
And technology lol. Greenhouses built against fruit walls with good insulation are so much more sensible than ones heated from inside. Obviously as a passive solar-powered technology these only work when the sun is available and not, for example, cut off by a giant dust cloud. 
These people are fairly acutely aware of their dependence on the sun and it figures prominently in a majority of their religions and their magical theory, even more than in ours.
There seems to be a mild consensus that the wizards are relatable. In truth: we are all wizards. :D
Yup! At long last lol.
"This division corresponds imperfectly to the usual split of the town by the course of the Meroda." because people!! take comfort!! in what normalcy they can find!! / "Makeshift pallets line the spaces between every fruit wall—the injured are being laid out here, now that the Tower is full, to get the benefit at night of the warmth meant to mature fruit." the awesome magic tower people trying to do everything they can for the injured who come to them for help in case i thought i couldn't be (?)
more in love / "Half of them are making ready to turn south along the Meroda." oh nooooo / "but the Moon People are the successors of the ancient magics, and just because they could not break the walls the last time they came, according to legend, does not mean they have not worked out a method now." im so worried for the people oh no (?)
Yeah! It really seemed natural. But of course they also aren’t recreating it obsessively; lots of people are grouping up with relatives who normally live across the river, or with people in the same line of work on the river, because people also adapt to circumstances.
No institution is ever perfect, of course, but I’m glad the Watchers have come across this way so far. They’re broadly well-intentioned and mostly well-organized.
And they were not ready for this.
A significant fraction of the reason for the order of the Watchers to exist at all, particularly in this observatory with its great eye fixed ever on the face of the green moon, is to be able to warn the world if this ever happens again. But the Moon People knew they were being watched, this time, and they kept all the build-up to mobilization that might have given them away on the far side of the moon until the last minute.
What the Magister is doing, as I hope was made clear or at least successfully indicated--I wish your commentary on the ending had come through!--is summoning what turns out to be an actual child from another world to do hero stuff.
Even if he’d gotten an adult that would be kidnapping someone to help with your problems, a routine element of the portal fantasy whose ethics have been addressed in a variety of ways, most famously ‘is Lion Jesus and always right.’ 
The reason they need a hero from another world is that the Moon People build a lot of their wards and their offensive and disabling magical attacks around a targeting system based on what planet people are from, because even though they’re originally from the same stock--they’re the descendants of ancient moon colonists who evacuated ahead of a major meteor impact somewhere approaching four thousand years ago--on a magical level having been born and raised on the planet or the moon makes a pretty huge difference. 
So no one can get into the place their magic space elevator is anchored and fuck it up so they can’t keep bringing troops and supply in and loot out. Their single supply line is their only strategic weakness, and they’ve taken appropriate precautions.
Getting someone in from a third location is the best idea anyone’s been able to come up with in the very limited time available. Since no one can figure out how to turn one of the Moon People against the cause they came here for, on short notice, when they aren’t even stopping to talk to anyone so far. Like, that’s clearly not going to happen.
Heron Yl Fanult isn’t unaware that it’s ethically questionable, but he’s doing it anyway.
So I’m glad the ominous imminent oncoming of the Moon People can really be felt, because that atmosphere is fairly essential context for the decisionmaking going on at the top of the Tower.
"Young wizards sit in their bunks, six each to rooms that were previously individual, and hold lighting cupped dancing in their palms." a quick break from being worried to point out that this is rad as hell / "some with their heads decorously covered..." cultural differences!! especially with regional purposes like the Hedro!! 
Thank you! 😆💖 I thought so too lol. 
It also establishes the parameters of the magic system a little more. Throwing lightning bolts is pretty iconicly high-powered, right? And here it’s what most of the student wizards are practicing in anticipation of a battle, because most of them aren’t specced into combat and this is actually one of the easier lethal spells to master, especially if you have an academic background.
‘Electrocute’ isn’t a very flexible spell and it’s easy to lose control of, but it’s actually easier than, say, ‘set on fire to a significant degree in a non-electrical manner’ because concentrating a lot of heat in a certain location takes a lot more brute force than encouraging ionization. 
You can pull most of the actual destructive force for the palm lightning spell out of the physical air and/or earth if you grasp the principles, which is much easier than channeling a comparable amount of magic directly because it doesn’t have to go through you. 
The limiting factors on magic in this setting are how much power you can tap into and how much of it you can actually use without hurting or killing yourself. It’s not usually a lot, though the amount can be increased by things like choosing your workspace, prepping your workspace, and a whole lot of practice and meditation and things like that.
Magical traditions that get bundled under the heading of wizardry tend to focus on force multiplication, obtaining enough contextual understanding of a subject to make whatever power is applied go further. This means a lot of studying theory and using magic to make observations (such as the existence of microorganisms and their connection to disease) and often results in making clever devices based on what you’ve learned that may not actually wind up being magical at all. 
Which is why the solar greenhouse proposal is considered ‘more wizardly’ than the fruit walls, which are wizardly in the first place even though the technology is pretty widespread at this point--it’s carried the principle of minimizing the energy you have to invest to get the result you want to the logical conclusion, where you don’t have to do any magic at all, you just set up the situation and get out of the way and the sun will do the work for you.
Other schools of magic, particularly religious ones, are more likely to emphasize just getting better at handling energy for yourself, which tends to yield a lot more in the way of immediate practical dividends and in a lot of quarters wizards who don’t do something obviously practical like physic or smithcraft with their theoretical background are considered crackpots or dilettantes 
An impression helped along by the fact that being taken on as a student of wizardry at a basic level tends to focus more on your reading comprehension than your ability to actually do any magic, so in places where religious and wizardly institutions coexist the most talented students have a tendency to gravitate toward the religious life. This is particularly marked in areas religiously dominated by the Compact of the Golden Circle, wherein full ordination is contingent on being able to pull off certain fairly hefty rituals, so if you aren’t physically or mentally up to that kind of magical heavy lifting your religious career will stall out in one of the lay fraternities. In some of the cities on Sutouchel, the landmass to the southeast where the Compact is based, a slang term for wizard is ‘sanctum washout.’
But of course force multiplication is something that can scale up pretty far, and studying theory doesn’t stop you from also putting work into your practical skills, and not having talent isn’t the only reason someone would choose not to seek out a clerical career, if it’s even an option. Religion along the Meroda is pretty localized; communities tend to have local deities who correspond to a natural feature like the nearest mountain or the river or something, and if that deity rates a fulltime shrine the keeper also tends to be the major local medical provider, and since the wizards got settled in at the Tower it’s become pretty popular for shrinekeeping families to send their kids there for a year or two to get some educational polish in addition to what their parent already emphasized.
So depending on where you live and what your personal experience has been you’re going to have very different ideas about what wizards are good for.
Hrm. I’ve gone on a tangent. But that wound up taking so long you came back! :D I love it when being turtle works out in my favor.
Or was this actually the meta I was supposed to be doing in the first place? Aaaaa who knows.
im fairly confident you said eight asks survived so this is number nine? anyways onwards! "The hale survivors of the First Battle of the Second Descent sit waiting in their leathers, jack-chains and helmets laughably inadequate armor against the coming danger, and yet the best hope now just as they were on Carun Tol once the wizard fell" i have a lot of emotions about how their best bet is also a terrible bet but its all they have (9/?)
Yes 8. 
Woo, thank you! ^^ & I love that you described it that way because that also describes the ‘summon alien’ spell Yl Fanult is casting and echoing the same emotional theme throughout the scene was very much the goal here.
"Threads have escaped from the braids pinned across the top of her skull: she has not had the chance to take them down for two days." god just the continuation of how desperate everything is / "He leans forward to peer through the narrow glass that has been turned on its articulated base to face the middle of the room, and relaxes very slightly. At least there has been no catastrophic alteration there, either." what does that one do id assume theres no approching army in the middle of the room -
:D Yeah, the fact that one of the chief medics available is already overworked to the point of neglecting nonessential personal hygiene and the enemy isn’t even here yet I hoped would resonate.
Well, remember how some of the telescopes at the beginning point in directions not included in the normal three dimensions of space? :}
- "trained as it long has been upon the face of the moon" also forgot to mention their enemies being from the moon is Rad As Hell / "He snaps his fingers for a spark that falls into the deep circular groove full of distilled spirits, and steps through that as well. He is not burned." ooooh whats he doing / "At his feet lie a glittering piece of gold ore, a moonstone, and a carefully sanded round of pumice." i see the connection to the moonstone bc moon army but i wonder about the others -
Thank you! It took a fair amount of poking before I decided it was a solid approach; it provides just enough physical alienation that there’s no direct cultural relationship and you can have that ‘everyone in the entire world Disliked That’ vibe, without needing to create any complicated magical and cultural explanation for such a long run of isolationism. They were out of contact because they were On The Moon.
Also I really get a kick out of putting space invaders in a fantasy setting in a way that stops just short of turning into sci-fi.
I’m glad the ritual lead-up is exciting! Even if the foreshadowing wasn’t as obvious as I thought it was lol. That’s fixable. 
Gold is for the sun, moonstone is yeah for the moon lol (although in other circumstances people also use jade, because it’s been a long time since the moon was uniformly silver on account of it having been terraformed a few thousand years ago) and pumice is for the world--it’s a stone full of air that floats on water, so it’s popular as an anchoring device for rituals that call on all three local celestial bodies.
"He cannot take much time. He has only until the ring of fire dies." whats he doingggggg / anyways i love this so much!! the descriptions are gorgeous and im so invested in all of everything!! i hope you write more im so curious about it all!! 
XD Ok I covered this already, I would have saved it for down here or Been Mysterious if tumblr hadn’t eaten the last few asks the first time lol. Thank you so much again! For encouragement! Before and now! I’ll try! To keep it going!
Here’s hoping this successfully posts, tumblr just kicked me onto New Dashboard again and disabled the turn-it-off button, so now my alternate posting strategy is borked up too. 🤞😅😘
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mikeshanlon · 5 years
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Happy Pride! .... Like... more than halfway through the month lmao sorry, better late than never ig! I’ve compiled a list of some of my fave LGBT+ books, as well as a few I’m planning to read for pride/in the near future. Please feel free to reblog and add some of your own recs, especially for the sexual and gender identities that are lacking in my list!!!!!
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: This beautiful, wholesome coming of age novel is pretty popular on tumblr and with good reason! It’s set in the 1980′s and follows Aristotle, aka "Ari”, as he grows up an tackles with his identity-- he feels like his story is written by someone else, that his path is not up to his control. Whether this is due to his complex relationship with his family, or societal expectations/stereotypes of Latinx men, or the fact that maybe his friendship with Dante might be more than that, and that kinda terrifies him. (Rep: Gay, Latinx, (I believe this is own voices) Warnings: it’s been a minute since i’ve read this but i believe some racism, internalized homophobia, and an instance of violent transphobia)
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: LGKNLKNGRG okay this is truly one of my favorite books of the year so far and part of the whole reason i wanted to make this. This is a New Adult Contemporary romance set in sort of a like... parallel America where a woman won the presidential election. We follow The First Son, Alex Claremont-Diaz, who’s charming, smart ass, genius icon. Him, his sister June, and their best friend Nora are easily marketable and loved by the public for the most part, but when Alex and his rival Prince Henry of England get into a public spat at a Royal Wedding, Alex and Henry must pretend to be friends to patch up relations and public image for his mother’s re-election campaign. Eventually their fake friendship turns real, and then becomes more as they get to know each other, Alex and Henry begin a secret romance that we follow over the course of the re-election year. This book is fucking HILARIOUS (like I have so many tabs for funny moments and i was trying to be restrained), but it’s just so. Like full of love and hope and it’s so beautiful???? It’s definitely political escapism from our current situation in America but still deals with current issues such as racism and homopboia, etc, but gives the reader hope for future progress. Alex and Henry’s relationship is so fun, and sexy, and beautiful and the friendships are so iconic and Alex’s journey with sexuality is... chefs kiss. Also like. Casey McQuiston mentioned that she listened to Texas Reznikoff by Mitski a lot while writing this in the acknowledgments so. what more do you need... (Rep: Bisexual (Own Voices), Gay, Biracial-- Mexican/White (Own Voices), Warnings: Racism, homophobia, mentions of a past sexual harrassment/assault. Since this is a New Adult, there are smut scenes. I wouldn’t say it’s like. Super explicit or anything but there is sex, though it’s often during Important Moments of their relationships so it doesn’t feel like p*rn-- again the sex is happening but its not in hella explicit detail or anything or for the same goal as say an erotica. P much proceed with caution if it’s not ur thing but it’s not too wild!)
Blanca y Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore: This is sort of a Snow White/Rose Red and Ugly Duckling retelling following two sisters, Blanca and Roja, who’s family curse destines that one of the sisters will be trapped into a swan’s body, never to be seen again. (So this is magical realism lmao). We also follow two boys, Page and Yearling, who were wrapped up in the magic of the nearby woods, but have returned to society. Page is a gender queer trans male, and his whole arc that was so beautiful and made me cry, but in a good way (also warning that I’m cis so like. I would love to hear what gender queer trans individuals think about the rep in this book bc I cannot really attest to it.) This book is really about sisterly love and love in general, with all the complexities that come with it. (also wlw grandma’s who grow apple’s it’s p iconic) (Rep: Latinx-- colorism plays a huge role in the story as well (Own Voices), Gender Queer Trans, Queer (Own Voices) Warnings: Some transphobia, racism, and abuse). (I believe most of Anna-Marie McLemore’s books are magical realism and have some Latinx and queer elements to them as well)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: god..... This (gay ass) novelization of The Illiad is just so tragically romantic and beautiful... We follow Achilles and Patroclus as they grow up and grow closer, and eventually fight the Trojan War. There are so many beautiful quotes and scenes but like. You will most likely cry so keep that in mind eklrgerg. (Rep: Gay Warnings: Violence, there’s like..... a weird r*pe/homophobic scene)
Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan: YA Fantasy set in a world where there are three castes: Moon-- the highest caste, demons with animalistic features in a humanoid form, Steel-- humans with part demon physical features and abilities, and Paper-- fully human, the lowest caste. We follow our protaganist Lei, who despite being a Paper caste, has beautiful golden glowing eyes that end up garnering attention from the Demon King. She’s stolen from her home and forced to join The Paper Girls-- a group of paper caste concubines in training at the palace. As she tries to find a way to escape, she ends up falling for one of the other paper girls, Wren, who might be just the key to freedom. I love Lei and Wren’s relationship and I’m excited to see it play out in the sequel! (which i believe ngan said will introduce more LGBT characters) (Rep: Asian (Own Voices), WLW (I believe this is Own Voices as well). Warnings: As their role as concubines suggest, a large part of this book revolves around the patriarchy using women for power and sexual assualt/rape. There are no explicit rape scenes-- though they do occur ‘off screen’, however there are a couple attempted sexual assault scenes that I believe could be p triggering. This book is also largely about the Paper Girls taking back their power, and I don’t believe these scenes are done for shock value, however please proceed with caution. Subsequently, sexist and patriarchial views are present within the authority, though shunned by Lei, however there’s a lot of internalized sexism and objectification among some of the other Paper Girls.)
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell: I probably don’t have to talk about this one much since it’s super popular, but in what is like essentially Harry Potter but like gay and wholesome, we follow Simon Snow, the Chosen One who’s actually not that good at magic, his best friend Penelope, and his roommate and arch nemesis that’s totally a vampire but won’t admit it, Baz. (Except Baz is, like, totally in love with Simon and Simon’s just too dumb and wrapped up in his own shit to realize it). Truly just,... an iconic enemies to friends to lovers story that unfolds as the three of them try to uncover a mystery surrounding Baz’s late mother. Ik some people have found it confusing bc it’s sort of like starting the Harry Potter story off at book 7 and only getting some background info along the way but honestly I really enjoyed that lmao. Also there’s a sequel coming out this fall, Wayward Son. (Rep: Gay, Some POC rep. Warnings: not rlly any i dont think??? There’s  like. some Homophobia lmao bc we can’t have a gay book without it.)
Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins: This is a cute YA contemporary following Millie Quint who, post being cheated on by her best friend and wanting to have a fresh start, flies to Scotland to finish off her senior year at her Dream prestigous boarding school, joining a handful of other girls as the first female class in the institution’s history. Plus like. Cool Rocks and Scotland. Only problem is that her roomate is sort of a bitch and also the Princess of Scotland who she totally just told off. So yeah yet another royal gay enemies to friends to lovers with a dash of and they were roomates LMAO. This book could be like.... a bit cheesy and rushed but overall it was cute and like...... The Cover.... (Rep: Bisexual, Lesbian, Warnings: Some homophobia. Also this is a companion novel to Prince Charming but you don’t have to read that first, there’s just some references to the couple in that book as the Prince is well.... The Princess’ brother and where they end up so if you don’t wanna be spoiled read that first ig!)
The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman: I talked about this some in this post, but I feel like I did kinda a shitty job so. A YA fantasy/paranormal series about the descendant’s of the town’s four founding families-- Violet Saunders, Justin Hawthorne, Harper Carlisle, and Isaac Sullivan (the most iconic one). The latter three have lived in Four Paths their whole lives, protecting the town from The Gray-- p much the Upside Down from Stranger Things lmao, using powers specific to each of their families. Violet and her mother move back after Violet’s sister died in a car accident, and she’s thrust into helping save the town as the Gray grows more restless and having to uncover the secrets of her family as well as all the history brewing between the other three. The Stranger Things and Riverdale comparisons are p valid, (but like. Riverdale in the sense of small town secrets and a bunch of tense history that the kids don’t really understand and must uncover, and some like love triangle but..... not Rlly Love triangles just a mess of ppl being like oh shit i like this person and this person.... Bisexual Chaos if u will... not like. The I’m cuckoo bananas for u let’s go get high and play dungeons and dragons and smash in a bunker LRGKJRLKGJ), the Raven Cycle comparison’s are kind of a stretch, I can see the abstract comparison’s if i squint but like. Don’t go into this expecting TRC lmao. I really enjoyed the theme of grief throughout this book and seeing the powers unfold (and one of the dynamics a lot) and while not perfect the series has a lot of potential and like. Bisexuals. So. (Rep: Bisexual (two mc’s are bi and say the word!!!!!!!! As well as some secondary characters), Disabled (one of the mc’s is missing one arm from the elbow down). Warnings: Grief, Violence)
The Gentlemen’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee: Also talked about this in this post and did a better job there, but to sum it up it’s essentially a friends to lovers, bed sharing, road trip au with a dash of magic but set in the 1700′s! There’s also a sequel/companion, The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy that I have yet to read but it follows Monty’s sister, Felicity, and I believe goes more in depth with her identity. (Rep: Gay, Black, Disabled, Aromantic, Asexual, Warnings: Period typical homophobia/biphobia, racism, ableism, sexism)
Simon vs. The Homosapien’s Agenda by Becky Albertalli: Like. I don’t think i really have to explain this one LRKGJJRG but added it just in case. YA contemporary following Simon as he e-mails another gay student at his school and falls in love. (Rep: Gay, Black, Jewish, Warnings: Homophobia)
All For the Game Trilogy (The Foxhole Court, The Raven King, The King’s Men) by Nora Sakavic: If y’all have been on my blog at all you know i’m back in aftg hyperfixation mode after another reread lmao. Is it a lil messy is it a lil dramatic... yes. but i love it!!! We follow our protagonist Neil Josten, who’s been on the run from his crime lord father, The Butcher of Baltimore, since he was young. After his mother dies on the run, Neil finds a new place and adopts yet another identity, and ends up playing high school exy (a made up sport but like we’re barely here for the sports lmao), something he used to play as a child. Despite playing a new position, he attracts the attention of the PSU Foxes, who’s coach David Wymack specifically recruits players with a troubled past to give them a second chance. Neil really shouldn’t sign-- it goes against everything his mother told him, it puts him at risk of being in the spotlight for his father’s men to find him, and puts him on the same team as Kevin Day, someone from his past that knows his true identity. Still, something draws Neil to joining the team, to finally try to live instead of just survive. UGHHHH like truly this book just makes u fall in love with all the characters and the beautiful and broken found family that develops over three books and one of the most iconic and amazing (ha....) slowburn relationships ever.... Also if i recall they’re super cheap on iBooks (at least when i bought them, the first book was free and the other two were $1.99). (Rep: Gay, Demisexual, POC, Warnings: MAJOR trigger warnings for like. everything bc all the foxes have fucked up pasts. But the biggest ones are probably rape, abuse/torture, and substance abuse)
Six of Crows Duology (Six of Crows, Crooked Kingdom) by Leigh Bardugo: Idk how much I really have to talk about this bc it’s popular but I am physically unably not to reccomend this duology bc its just. So. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The most barebones summary is that this is a YA Fantasy about six people coming together to perform an impossible heist. This is truly like...... a masterclass in developing characters and has one of the best m/f ships i’ve ever read... But also since it’s on here there is some gay shit going on, 3/6 mains are Not Straight and there’s a cute m/m couple! Also you don’t have to read the Grisha Trilogy to read this but u can if u want (I have yet to). (Rep: Bisexual, Gay, Disabled, POC, Warnings: Again these ppl have fucked up pasts, biggest are PTSD, past sexual abuse)
The Raven Cycle Series (The Raven Boys, The Dream Theives, Blue Lily Lily Blue, The Raven King) by Maggie Steifvater: Again i don’t think I really have to explain this one but like. In case you haven’t read this series it’s truly iconic..... Idk even how to explain this LKGJLJRG just like magical realism wonderfulness and found family and amazing relationships and shit.... (Rep: Gay, Bisexual, Disabled, Warnings: Abuse)
The following are books I plan to read for pride/in the near future. I can’t wholeheartedly reccomend them obviously, or fully detail all the rep/warnings, but I’ve heard some great things about these books and a lot of them have representation that the first part of the list is lacking, so I figured I would add them! (Also if I use ‘queer’ that’s because that’s the only label I have been given by the authors or reviewers, or the characters identify as queer)
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman: To my knowledge this is a really emotional YA coming of age/college story that has to do with like. A podcast? Idk a lot of people love it and side note I’ll be suing B&N bc they NEVER have it relkj (Rep: Bisexual, Demisexual, I belive Latinx.)
Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand: I believe this is a YA horror-ish novel where there’s a monster stealing girls on and island. (Rep: I believe all three main girls are queer Warnings: Since this is horror im assuming. Horror stuff LMAO)
I Wish You all The Best by Mason Deaver: A YA contemporary romance about Ben who comes out as non-binary to their parents and gets kicked out, and moves in with their estranged sister. They soon are taken under the wing of a senior named Nathan Allan and begin to fall. (Rep: Non-Binary (Own Voices), MLM/Queer, Black (im assuming from the gorgeous cover lmao. Warnings: Misgendering, homophobia, anxiety, depression)
Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno: YA Magical Realism about Georgina, who has yet to inherit the magical powers that have been passed down her family, including her twin sister Mary who, unlike Georgina, is coming into her powers. (Rep: Lesbian, Queer, Aro/Ace, Warnings: Rape and sexual assault, underage drinking, animal death, drug use.)
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bucklemonster · 4 years
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2020 08 19 Orange man dream 4 restaurant
2020/08/19
Another dream I had. I also would like to say. Right now I'm looking for work. That means I have time to write this all down. But if I have work not sure if I will be able to ask so many questions and write it all down. 21 to 23 August I will be at my boyfriends house so might not be able to write and sent stories. However if there is info that could save us all I will let you all know ASAP. If I find work I might ask Orange Man to appear every two nights, or every week. Unless he has info that might save us all then he must tell me and as much humans possible. I have a feeling his interest in humans is sincere. I think after this dream I had lost my connection with Orange Man. But he will return. Thanks for reading and understanding. TW: possible doomsday, mention of nazis Remember: big claims need big evidence. I don't think there will be an apocalypse. Just weird dreams.
I dreamed vague images of a jungle, a cave, and creature with multiple legs, blue and bat like. It could shoot arrows. When it attacked me, I went to another place. Then I saw a swimming pool with orange water and green tiles, I think. I could not see details. Then this vivid dream began:
I'm sitting in a restaurant. In front of me is the orange man. The restaurant is filled with orange men. We sit at a window. Outside of the window is green grass. Sheep are eating grass. The sheep have orange wool and light blue skin. They kind of remind me of the pokémon wooloo. The music of the restaurant sounds like a mix of jazz but weird and very slow. It sounds there is heavy metal thrown in there and electronic music with some biological gurgling sounds that make melodies. Its hard to get used to but I guess it is music from another world so yeah. The music goes slow and is not loud at all, so its not too distracting. There was singing but in a language I could not understand, and the voices sounded a little to low to be human.
An other orange man came up to us with a plate. On the plate lay blue eggs, covered in brown slime. It smelled like tomato soup, I don't know why. It smelled good but looked disgusting.
I got a plate of spaghetti, it looked normal. I asked: "I don't want to be an A**hole but, is this vegetarian?" OM (The orange man): "Of course, if we want to communicate to humans we must respect their wishes."
I took a small bite, it was delicious. I think it had fake vegetarian minced "meat" in it.
"Thanks, how much should I pay you?" OM: you have to pay nothing. It is merely a projection, electrical signals within the brain. Money too is an illusion, it is a system but for now it works.
I: Did Jesus come in the flesh and was he the messiah?
OM: If Jesus inspires to do good and helps you than you can follow him. I do not have connection with the information crystals referring to Jesus but he was most likely a product of man and myth. Perhaps he was guided by someone inhuman. Perhaps he was guided by his heart and the will to do good. We must follow that will and help humanity.
I: Did he come first?
OM: It does not matter if he came first or came last, the things he did, the myths that came, the power in the present is what counts. I believe he came somewhere in the middle, not to slow, not to fast.
I: What is that supposed to mean? OM: It means what the words create in your cerebral structure.
I: A friend wanted to know. What do you know about ___ of sheep?
OM: Humans are like sheep. Sheep are like humans. They are lucky often they do not realize it. They have feelings, they stay together and together they are stronger. Black sheep, brown sheep, green sheep they are all sheep and must be accepted in the herd if they want to. Do not blindly follow, do not blindly hate. Nazi Germany was a deadly combination of hatred and following a wolf blindly. We must stand together for together we are strong. I: I, think you might have misunderstood me. I'm referring to something that might be a potion or a spell.
OM: I cannot offer everything. I understood you completely even more than you understand yourself. What I told you, you needed to hear. You are special, like every human, full of potential. Yet you are merely a machine made of flesh. Programmed by DNA and the outside world. We shall not deprogram, the program might be useful. We shall add new ways of thinking into the human intellect. However I am no god merely a servant. I have no acces to all the information crystals. My responses are limited. You mask ask the right questions.
Now to focus more on your question. Perhaps she must find the spell within herself. Perhaps the luck is within her heart, in being with someone else. If this answer does not satisfy she needs to find someone that is important to her, but someone that has not heard her question. Perhaps a simple conversation, might provide more answers. It is the journey that is important.
I: Do you know a woman with an afro-haircut?
Om: I have not retained all my credits. There are some humans that look like that. I cannot give definite answers. I am in a sorry state.
I: Don't be sorry. I'm glad you are willing to share information with my friends and I.
The Orange man looked at his food, staring at it, frowning a little. Then two green beams came out of his eyes. Sparks from the food went towards the beams, followed the beams and went into his eyes. The food was shrinking. I realize this must be his way of eating. "Light goes trough the eye and nurtures the soul. All kinds of people must unite, like a rainbow and like a rainbow is made up of light it nurtures the soul. Yet we must have food and use our mouths too."
I: Do you know if my friend comes from another world? Om: We all come from other worlds, souls are recycled. The soul is like a wave and memory is like water, it goes forward but it lets go once it is to far away. We are connected and flying around looking for connections, or enjoying life alone. Lucky is the one that can be happy alone. Goodness comes when people gather and share their knowledge. Your friend can perhaps use the world she came from as a source for creative energies. Perhaps setting that world on a paper sheet might offer answers she may not have found. One must also not loose track of ones life. Enjoy the present, happiness is in front of us, hiding in plain sight.
I: How do we defeat the anti-Christ?
Om: If you want to call the servants of self and evil the anti-chirst than he is called the anti-christ. The anti-christ wants to divide. divide and conquer. There fore we must love and connect each other. If we cannot love at least we can respect and understand.
I: Why would people be disappointed when Sept 5 comes? Om: There wont be a collapse of society yet, we think it will happen someday, maybe within 1000 earthly years. Unless the nature gets revenge for all that was poisonous and thrown into it then the collapse will be sooner. Yet even if there is a collapse, humans will cooperate and survive. All that is destroyed will be rebuild in a better way, yet that must not be a statement for war and destruction. There will also not be a great act of saving, no vessel shall land only spiritual baby steps will be taken. Those who are sensitive will feel the shift
I: What form might the cataclysm take?
Om: The cataclysm is the step towards adulthood, it might get ugly and very emotional but only if you let it to be that way. It will simply a baby step. A castle is build brick by brick.
I: Why did I have to sign your papers? Om: We need the full cooperation of our participants. Signing is a symbol an act of consent. It is a way to build bridges and keep them strong. You have consented to spread the words of the organization.
I: A girl I know wants to know her future. Om: I am not a predictor of future, but if she does the things she likes and takes steps towards what she wants to achieve she can do a lot more than she first thought she could.
I: Will the cataclysm be local or global. Om: We spark minds locally, when our work is going as intended, the fire of salvation will spread slowly across the globe. Not many will notice it, yet the effects can easily be undone. Humans must build roads of friends and goodness, these roads must be kept alive. The roads can easily be torn. Yet we must stay strong and always be ready to rebuild what is lost with love.
We finished our food.
OM: When the food is gone, we are full. It is time to go back to the world of the living. Remind the mortals that the day is close, a baby-step towards a higher plain will be taken, all is not forsaken. Most will not notice, only the sensitive ones might see a little shift from all that will be. And remember, remember the 5th of September 2024 that is what its for!
I woke up.
1 note · View note
furuba-imagines · 5 years
Text
A Glimmer of Hope [1]
A/N: I shall be posting requests over the weekend. I started writing this story around 2016 (it’s on my quotev and FanFiction.Net) but bc of the rebooted anime I decided to reboot my own story as well the new anime’s honour :3
Word Count: 2706
Warnings: Swearing, mentions of sad character past, mentions of family abuse. Crappy format bc it was posted on mobile app. I’ll fix it up later. For now, enjoy!!
Pairing: Eventual Kyo x Oc
Story Notes:
Bold text is Amélie’s thoughts and inner dialogue.
Italicised text is when Amélie is narrating bits of the story like Tohru does in the anime as well as flashbacks (I will let you know what’s a flashback and what’s not though)
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ONE - ENCOUNTERS
Amélie smiled to herself as she breathed in the fresh morning air. She marvelled at how beautiful and blue the sky was and how the white fluffy clouds looked as if they were painted in gentle strokes.
'Oooh yeah, that sun feels so warm.'
The sun shone bright, warming up her pale skin, erasing the goose bumps that littered her exposed arms. Turning back to the small black tent that she currently called home, her lip twitched and formed into a forlorn smile as she looked at the photograph sitting atop a folded pile of clothes in a simple brown wooden picture frame. It was a picture of her when she was six, posing with her mum and dad. Everything was so happy and bright back then... but a dark storm washed all that happiness away and she hasn't really felt it since. Despite the accident that befell them happening so long ago, it still got to her. It still haunted her dreams at night and plagued her thoughts during daylight. She wished she could just stop feeling – it would make things so much easier.
With a heavy sigh, Amélie grabbed her school bag and guitar and secured them both around her back and shoulder respectively. She cast one last glance at the picture before zipping up the tent and making sure it was secure, not that she was worried about anyone breaking in. Not many people passed by this area.
'See you guys soon. I love you.'
Even so, she didn't keep her more valuable belongings in the tent, like her piano keyboard. She kept that safely locked up in the school music room. Normally, she'd leave her guitar there too but she wanted to work on the new song she was writing. But she never kept both instruments in the tent at the same time in case something did happen. She didn't want to risk it no matter how small the chance. A part from the picture, her guitar and piano were the only things she had left of her parents. They were both musicians – her mum sang and wrote and her dad played. Music was one of the only things she still found happiness in. She hoped that one day her music would be played across the world for people to enjoy.
Amélie tugged at her uniform, wishing she had a mirror to check herself with. Amélie was never very fond of the girl's uniform so she wore the boy's one instead. She traded in her skirt and blouse for the pants and collared shirt and paired it with her own plain black Doc Martin's. She felt more comfortable in them than the lace up shoes the school provided. The school faculty stopped carding her after the first two weeks she refused to change. She also liked the fact that she didn't have to worry about boys trying to sneak-a-peak up her skirt. The last boy who tried walked away with a swollen cheek, bruised eye and busted lip. She stood by her actions however.
'The little shit deserved it. He had it coming if you ask me.'
Amélie hadn't always lived in a tent. After the death of her parents, her French side of her family were given custody over her but she wouldn't really call them family. The first thing they did was disown her, cast her out and hand her over to the state orphanage as soon as they could. She ended up living there until she was thirteen after her Japanese side of the family finding out about her and adopting her. Amélie would've preferred to stay at the orphanage since they were more of a family than her actual relatives. By the age of sixteen she had endured enough of their abuse and torment and ran away. She ended up staying at both her friends, Uotani and Hanajima's place for a while upon their insistence but the guilt became too much so she lied about having found good accommodation. In reality, she kept moving from hotel to hotel until she was forced to live in the tent she was living in currently. A glamorous life she liked to sarcastically call it, but she was grateful at least that she wasn't living on the sidewalks or under a bridge somewhere.
"Il ya toujours un arc en ciel après la tempéte!" She quoted to herself. There's always a rainbow after a storm. It was something her mother used to quote quite often.
The forest that she walked through she found to be quite calming and beautiful with all the tall trees and lush greenery. With that being said, feeling a little adventurous this morning and wanting to delay school as much as she could, she decided to take a different route. The more she drifted away from her usual path, the more the forest became increasingly unfamiliar until she had no idea where she was going.
"Fuck sakes," She cursed. 'Why would you even try straying from the main path with your horrible sense of direction? I'm such an idiot sometimes.'
However, much to her surprise, something in the peripherals of her vision captured her attention and halting her steps. To her far right, down a hill was a large clearing that lead to a traditional Japanese looking house. Amélie should've known that a forest as beautiful as this one had to have some kind of estate built upon it. With her curiosity piqued to the max, she couldn't help herself and decided to investigate.
‘A little snooping wouldn't hurt anybody.'
"It's called trespassing Amélie and its illegal," she reminded herself but proceeded to ignore her own warning.
Amélie was careful as she made her way down the hill. Hiding behind a bush, she did a quick look around to make sure the coast was clear before approaching the house.
'At least they don't have to worry about annoying neighbours. Must be nice to live here.'
Coming up close to the porch, Amélie couldn't help but be drawn to little ornaments sitting on a wooden rack. Upon closer inspection, she recognised them as the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. She smiled to herself.
"They look so well made and detailed. I wonder how long it took to paint them all..."
"Hello, this is a surprise. We don't get many young girls wondering around these parts."
Amélie bristled at the sudden voice and stumbled backwards, almost falling flat on her ass.
'Shit, shit! You've done fucked up now! Run before he calls the cops on you for trespassing! On second thought... he doesn't look too mad. Just play it cool and maybe you can leave without getting into any trouble.'
"I'm so sorry sir! I was just admiring I swear! I'm not here to cause you any trouble." She barely managed to string her words together without fumbling over them.
The man just chuckled and waved a hand at her. "It's quite alright, no harm done." The man's smile turned pensive. "I just find it hard to imagine that a teenager like yourself would find this place interesting." He mused.
'Oh thank goodness, I'm not in trouble.'
Amélie was quick to shake her head as she knelt in front of the rack, the man following suit. "No, it's a very lovely place. And I especially love these little zodiac ornaments here. Did you make them?" She asked.
"Yes I did. They're a favourite of mine too you could say."
Amélie scanned every rock that had been painted with detail and precision but a frown soon formed on her face when she noticed something missing.
"Of course you left out the cat just like everyone else." She muttered. It was more to herself than to the man in front of her although she realised she must've spoken too loud because of his surprised expression.
"The cat? Oh right, I see. You're referring to the old zodiac folktale." He said in realisation and Amélie nodded.
"I used to get dad to tell me the story sometimes before bed. I've always thought the cat had just as much importance to the story as any of the other animals did. I always felt for him."
_____________________
>>>Flashback<<<
_____________________
Little Amélie laid in her bed all snuggled and tucked beneath her plush blankets.
"Goodnight princess," Mr. Hoshimi smiled down at his daughter and placed a gentle kiss to her forehead. As soon as he stood up to leave though, Amélie grabbed onto the sleeve of his shirt and tugged on it.
"Wait! Can you tell me that story about the animals again? Pwease?" She pouted, putting on her best puppy dog eyes. The elder man quickly fell for her doe eyes and hopeful smile and found himself smiling along with her.
"Oh wow could I ever say no to that cute face?" he cooed, sitting back down onto the bed.
"A long, long time ago, god decided to invite all of the animals to a glorious banquet. He sent out word for all of them to come to his house the following evening and he told them not to be late.
"Can you name all the animals Amélie?"
Amélie sat up straight and proudly listed all the animals – The dog and the dragon, the rabbit and tiger, the rat and the pig, the cow and horse, the sheep and the rooster, the monkey, the snake... "And my favourite, the cat!" She cheered.
Mr. Hoshimi just laughed and tucked Amélie back underneath the sheets and continued with the story.
"However, when the mischievous rat heard the news, he decided to play a trick on his fellow neighbour – the cat. He told the cat that the party was the day after tomorrow."
Amélie turned her nose up and scowled. "I hate this part," She grumbled with a huff. "The poor kitty cat deserves better..."
"The very next day, all of the animals lined up for the celebrations with the rat leading the way, riding all the way on the back of the cow. Everyone had a wonderful time, except for the foolish cat who missed the whole thing." Mr. Hoshimi finished.
When he looked down at his daughter, he chuckled at her grumpy pout and furrowed brows.
"Amélie honey, why so grumpy?" He asked, but he knew why. She always got mad at the rat for tricking the cat, even though it was only just a story, Amélie had vowed to be the protector of all cats.
"Because the rat was so mean! If I was the cat, I would've kicked the rats butt for being such a... well, a butt!" She exclaimed, balling her hands into tiny fists.
"And if mummy heard you talk like that, she'd have yours."
Amelie giggled sheepishly before a thought popped into her head. "Do you think the cat would like it if I started a year of the cat?!"
Mr. Hoshimi just smiled. "I'm sure he would love that honey."
_______________________
>>> End of Flashback <<<
_______________________
The kimono wearing man smirked and tapped his fingers against his chin in thought. "Funny, I wonder how he would feel after hearing that story, knowing he has a little fan."
Snapping out of her reverie, she looked at him with a confused tilt of her head. "I'm sorry, who?"
The man shook his head and part of her wondered if she was actually meant to hear what he had said or not.
"Oh nevermind. So, what year were you born in?" He asked, quickly distracting her by changing the subject and Amélie went along with it.
"Year of the Ox," she replied.
The man nodded but Amélie noticed his eyes drift to her uniform. Most people found it odd that she wore the boy's uniform so she was used to it by now. She was about to speak, but he beat her to it.
"I apologise, I don't mean to stare. I've just never seen a girl wear the boy's uniform before. I must say though, you pull it off quite well."
Amélie's cheeks flushed at the compliment. She was the worst when it came to accepting flattery and compliments.
"Thank you."
"You're not from around her are you?" He asked suddenly in a curious tone.
Amélie had been waiting for that question. Something she was often asked about also.
"It's my accent isn't it?" She supplied with a smirk.
'I'm glad it isn't too thick for people to understand me.'
"It is quite nice to listen to. I mean, aside from your pretty fa-"
Whatever the man was going to say next came to an abrupt stop and was replaced with a pained gasp as something landed on his head. It was a schoolbag, just like the one Amélie and most other high school students had.
'Oh shoot, did not expect that.'
"My head!"
"Will you at least try to control yourself?" A new voice sighed.
Amélie's eyes trailed up the person's arm that held the bag until she reached their face and her eyes widen in shock.
'No way, Yuki lives here?! If I get caught with him, that stupid fan club of his won't let me hear the end of it.'
Yuki turned his attention away from the man to Amélie. "Good morning Miss Hoshimi, I'm sorry for my cousin. He's bit of a flirt but's he's harmless. It's best to just ignore him."
"Oh no, it's alright. We were just talking is all; he's good company."
The man, Yuki's cousin, rubbed the sore spot on his head. "What do you have in there? A dictionary or something?"
Yuki barely batted an eyelash at his whining. "Two dictionaries actually," he sighed in exasperation as he slid the schoolbag onto his back, adjusting the straps so it fit comfortably on his shoulders.
Yuki's cousin rubbed his head one last time. "So, you two know each other?" He asked, pointing between the two of them.
"Miss Hoshimi and I are in the same class."
Amélie dipped her head in a respectful bow. "The name's Amélie, pleasure to meet you." She officially greeted.
"Same here. I'm Shigure Sohma and Yuki here is my little cousin." He explained with a friendly smile.
"And what brings you to our house this morning?" Yuki asked in his usual soft and polite voice.
Amélie offered them a nervous smile, rubbing the back of her neck. 'I can't exactly tell them that I live in the middle of the forest. They'll probably laugh at me. I need to think of something good to say and fast!'
"Oh uh, well you know, I live... nearby." She trailed off lamely. It wasn't a complete lie.
'Oh yeah, that's such a good cover up.'
She gulped when she noticed their stunned expressions and wished they would change the subject. She didn't do well under pressure.
"Around here? Really?"
"You do? Where?" Yuki pressed. Amélie was hyperaware of how clammy the palms of her hands were becoming.
'Abort! Abort!'
"I don't mean to be rude but I should probably head to school. I haven't been late in a while and I wanted to keep my record clean this semester."
'As if they cared or needed to know that last bit.'
She bowed to them once again. "It was nice chatting with you. Have a good day." She said in a hurry, quickly turning on her heel and walking away.
'Don't look back. Just keep walking...'
"Miss Hoshimi?" Yuki called out after her.
Amélie sighed inwardly. 'Dammit.'
Putting on a smile, she turned to face him. "Yeah?"
"Since you're here, why don't we walk to school together?" He suggested.
'Say no. It's not worth the wrath of the fan club.'
"Sure, I don't see why not?" She accepted with a forced smile.
The entire walk was done so in an awkward silence as neither Yuki nor Amélie spoke a word or even looked at each other. And to make matters worse, they did eventually run into the Prince Yuki Fan Club, prompting both teens to ignore their chants and poses which only made it all the more awkward until they parted their separated ways.
'I better prepare myself for their onslaught of pathetic questioning.'
Amélie groaned. She could feel the headache coming on already...
72 notes · View notes
snkpolls · 5 years
Text
SnK S3E13 Poll Results (Manga Reader Version)
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The poll closed with 539 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!
Please note that these are the results of the manga reader poll. Anime only watchers are suggested not to read if you do not wish to be spoiled about certain events! Anime only viewers, click here to view your poll results!
RATE THE EPISODE 534 Responses
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WIT kicked off the arc fantastically according to the viewers! This episode got overall positive reviews, with 95% of respondents giving it a 4 or 5 rating.
An ideal opening episode in my opinion!
Incredible start for possible the best season yet ♥
Awesome opening episode to set the stage for the arc to come. Pacing was just right, imo.
HYPE MY SOLDIERS
I think it was a great ep and did pretty well with the chapters it adapted. The dialogue was there and so were the scenes, the ending hyped what is coming so much so I'm already in love!
Lack of creavity when it come to the OP and ED visuals, but the ep overall was good.
The soundtrack slaps, voice acting is on point, and the animation proves to be very promising. Overall, it's a great episode to start off the second cour!
Awesome episode with awesome soundtrack.
One of the best episodes of the whole series, which was surprising.
RATE THE OP 533 Responses
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Overall respondents liked the new Linked Horizon opening, which was a great summary of the current arc, but overall it fell flat as a song that most would be willing to label as their favorite.
OP depicts the upcoming battle well!
Great adaptation, just wish the opening was a little more original
It is the worst OP of all. The song is disappointing; it sounds like typical, boring song from random shonen series.
The opening definitely had some parts to it that felt recycled from previous openings, but I guess it's just Linked Horizon's way of linking them all together.
SPACE OPERATION RAINBOW!!!
To me it looks like they ran out of time to make an OP so they slapped a green filter on what they had done already.
RATE THE ED 530 Responses
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The 104th-centered still-frame ED has some mixed reviews with most of the fandom sitting somewhere in the middle between loving and hating it. Respondents overall are leaning more toward the positive, however.
ED is perfect with the time skip just over the horizon
WE GOT A FEW NEW SAWANO TRACKS. HOW ARE YOU FEELING ABOUT THEM? 530 Responses
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Well over half the fandom are already pumped for new music from the series’ composer Sawano Hiroyuki! A whopping 76% already feel that he’s killing it. 22% need more time to decide how they feel. A small sliver of respondents don’t really care for the OST. Who hurt you?
ost perfect as usual
It was good but at this point everything sounds like it's been reused a bunch of times. Hopefully we get some new great tracks later on..
Hyeh
The bassline in the new rendition of "Attack on Titan" (or however Sawano spells it) is amazing. I cannot wait for the S3 soundtrack to be released.
WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT? 532 Responses
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The scene with the Beast Titan appearing with his army of titans took 30% of the vote, with Levi attacking Reiner as a close second with 22% of the vote. 10% overall liked the entire episode, and 7% favorited the cliffhanger staredown. We can all agree the battle to come has us all hyped!
I repeated the scene where Reiner appears until the end of the episode tons of times already
Did they really had to skip Levi's frustrated expression after he failed to kill Reiner? It was my favorite moment…
Levi attacking Reiner and everything after that has become one of my favorite scenes in the series. Damn!
Nice Erwin Screentime, nice Levi nyooming behind Eren
Best girl makes her appearance
the last three minutes of the episode where the warriors show up was fucking amazing
ON SCALE OF ARMIN TO ERWIN, HOW GOOD ARE YOU AT GIVING ORDERS? 526 Responses
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The majority of respondents relate to Armin’s timid nature a bit more when it comes to overall confidence in giving orders. Just a small 6.3% of you guys feel you have the charismatic swag that Erwin brings to the table.
I loved Armin giving orders politely.
How was Armin overcoming social anxiety a billion times cooler then eren flying over a 60m wall, becoming a titan and basically saving humanity.
ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT TO GO HORSEBACK SURFING? 528 Responses
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This was in no way a serious question. But at an almost even split, 35.8% of voters would totally try their hand at horseback surfing, while 35.2% would never risk their life doing such a dangerous activity!
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE ANIMATION QUALITY IN PART TWO SO FAR? 529 Responses
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Overall respondents are pleased with the animation in the first episode of the RtS arc, with 54% stating that it’s the best animation they’ve seen from the series yet. 42% feel it could be better, but is also not the worst. A small percentage don’t find the animation all that impressive.
I can’t believe how clean all of the animation is looking. SUPER impressed with the difference in art-style compared to season 1 as well.
The animation is on the highest level.
i miss the thick lines the show used to have
i really love the colour palette of this season and the op especially.
IMO the color tones on this episode could've been handled better, it was too gloomy on some scenes :(
The animation & art style was almost as good as season 2’s (which is one of my favorite pieces of animation of all time) but still lacked in some areas.
Looks like they went all out with budget on this season and I'm loving it
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE CG COLOSSAL TITAN IN THE OPENING? 532 Responses
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57% of respondents aren’t too upset about the GCI Colossal Titan in the opening and say they don’t mind either way. 35% aren’t happy at all with the decision to make the Colossal CGI, while a few actually find the effect super cool.
ON A SCALE OF 1-5, HOW EXCITED ARE YOU TO FINALLY SEE THIS ARC ANIMATED? 533 Responses
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The overwhelming majority are extremely excited to see this arc animated after all these years. With its high levels of action and drama, it’s no surprise to us to see that the fandom is looking forward to getting this arc in an animated form!
IVE WAITED MORE THAN 2 YEARS FOR THIS IM NEVER BEEN SO FUCKING HYPED IN MY WHOLE LIFE
I've waited so many years that I'm satisfied and ready to pass now that my favorite arc is being animated
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE ADAPTATION OF RTS SO FAR? 532 Responses
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67% of respondents are feeling very satisfied with the way the arc is unraveling in the anime, finding that it’s a very close adaptation of the original source material. 23% feel that it’s still too early to judge the adaptation properly, and a few less feel that the adaptation so far is somewhere between good and bad.
Fantastic adaptation.
Good pacing jumping right into the action, while staying faithful to the manga.
Overall very good, but could be a TAD better
I think the adaptation so far has been great, but I need to see how the action is handled before I say for sure whether it's well adapted or not.
It was ok.
It was very well-adapted! All the important details were there and nothing important seemed to be missing, which was something I was sad about in the last arc. It seems like everything I want will get covered.
How do we come back from there without breaking my heart?
PART 2 IS SLATED FOR 10 EPISODES. DO YOU THINK THIS WILL BE ENOUGH TO ADAPT THE ARC WELL? 531 Responses
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Voters are confident that WIT knows what they’re doing by shortening the amount of episodes that will air for this action-heavy arc, with only ¼ of respondents feeling that they haven’t given themselves enough screen time to cover every last detail. 10% don’t want to say either way.
i was disappointed in knowing it was a 10 episode arc, but seeing the quality and taking into account that this is an action-heavy arc, i'm bouncing off of the walls to see what wit has underneath their sleeve. hopefully they don't ruin the best arc
one advantage of the short season is that they cant draw out the serum bowl for too long. God, that was a painful wait when the manga was dropping those chapters.
Really well done, the pacing in particular was great. After seeing it I was convinced 10 episodes was perfect for this arc. A 6-4 split is perfect.
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE VERY SPOILERY OPENING? 532 Responses
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61% of respondents agree that the opening, while spoilery, is a great summary and teaser of what is to come for those who only watch the anime. Without context, they can’t know what every last symbolic image in the opening means, after all! 23% of voters expressed distaste at how much WIT is spoiling the viewers, however. 9% aren’t even concerned about it.
The whole opening was just one big “fuck you” to people who don’t read the manga.
it only becomes obvious b/c manga readers keep pointing stuff out. Yes, the intros have always hinted at things but it goes so fast that I don’t think every person will know exactly what something means if they’re anime only.
The Opening is good representation of this phase of the story ending.
I don't get why people are making a big deal over the "spoilers" in the opening when they're not even anime-onlies themselves in the first place.
Man, it only seems spoilery for those of us who know what's coming. Anime onlies don't understand the context of the images, so they can't recognise them as spoilers unless it's directly identified as such! We gotta stop judging this stuff from the perspective of someone who already knows what's coming.
It's definitely not holding back on the indications that'll happen in the arc
HOW DID THE NEW ED MAKE YOU FEEL? 527 Responses
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61% of manga readers felt nostalgic seeing the images of the 104th during their trainee days coupled with a somber song. 20% felt sad about the ending, and 15% were just disappointed with the entire thing.
Lazy ending.
WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE RED EYES ON THE TITANS? 533 Responses
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Just over half of the fandom feel that the red-eyed pure titans was a cool aesthetic to add to show that they are under some form of control by a shifter. 33% feel it’s a cool addition, but not really necessary. 11% don’t care.
I was on board with the red eyes until the cart titan also had them. No longer made any sense.
I don't get why Pieck's eyes are red when she's not a mindless being controlled by Zeke…
Like the red eyes but why does Pieck have them too.
WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 530 Responses
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, over half of the fandom is most hyped to see the Eren vs. Reiner showdown in Shiganshina. Although not far behind, 28% of respondents are excited about Erwin’s badass unhooding moment as he challenges Reiner.
THUNDER SPEARS FOR NEXT CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!
ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?
Even though I totally know what will happen, the episode is written and directed in a way I still get goosebumps and forget I actually know what will happen. And the music, oh god. That's amazing. These two together have a really good effect.
I need the next one RIGHT NOW.
AAAAAHH!!!!
It was an introduction episode, so imo, it's just there to put the basis for the rest of the season. There was a good balance between the "emotionally charged" scenes and the more quiet ones, all this accompanied with an increasing tension in the background.
I wish theyd reanimated the scene of armin talking to eren about the opening instead of just reusing the animation from season 1.
that Zeke smile is like : hey there, i am here to euthanize you all. Love it !
I'm buying tickets into denial islaaand, bye, bye!
Airpipes. AIRPIPES. p.s. cracking soundtrack
Reiner has been enjoying himself some Marley protein, he extra swole now.
Armin was the MVP
PIECK!!!
I don't like the fact that WiT decided to spoil a lot. Some anime onlies already have guessed that Armin is going to be burned and then will become the next CT. So the serumbowl won't be as emotional and exciting for them anymore. I don't understand why WiT decided to do such thing. Don't they want anime-onlies to enjoy the show?
Exactly as expected you'll find a strange titan next to the beasty
I love Mikasa’s improved design and hope they show more of her working in a team like the manga. Focusing on the mission ect without pandering
RIP nameless soldier killed by Reiner.
Very happy to get a glimpse at best girl Pieck
Really no questions about our exactly right girl in this poll ? I am dissapointed :/
Watching this episode is bringing back all the suspense and awe I felt when I read this part in the manga. What a treat to be able to relive it!
They did a great job at keeping the tension and the "well shit everything's about to go wrong" from chapters 73 and 74, and managed to make the explosion at the end worth it, despite the fact I still think Reiner's continued survival throughout the arc is stupid and wish the anime had changed it so it'd be more believable, but here we are.
WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 514 Responses
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Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll see you again in a few days!
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statusquoergo · 5 years
Text
Credit where credit is due, Gabriel did a nice job directing this episode. He had more screen time that I’m used to from actors pulling double duty, and he seems to have handled the extra workload well.
That’s not to say the episode was flawless. Yeah, by Season 9 standards, it was pretty good overall, but I mean. Season 9 standards.
We start off at home with Louis and Sheila having a terse exchange over tea as I wonder, yet again, why they’re together at all if they’re always so goddamn pissy about everything. Louis bemoans his demotion as Sheila irritably directs him to drink his rooibos and asks him what the big deal is, being that he didn’t even want the job in the first place (true). Louis parries that he only said that because Donna offered it to him the same night he found out about Sheila’s pregnancy (true), but at any other time in his life, he would have taken it (false). On the contrary, you may remember this fairly unambiguous exchange from “Pecking Order” (s08e02) between Doctor Lipschitz and Louis: “As I recall, you accepted Harvey becoming managing partner after Jessica left.” “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be managing partner.” I suppose I’ve never accused this show of internal consistency before, why bother starting now?
Louis then delightfully compares himself to a ball-less cat and laments that though “the job wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, [he] was getting really good at it,” and excuse me but what? Forget that disastrous hearing that summoned Faye to their doorstep, his most recent acts as managing partner include trying to bully Professor Gerard into letting him be the keynote speaker at Harvard’s Ethic Conference to talk up his failing firm, and going completely off the rails trying to fire the poor IT guy for failing to digitally break into the New York State Bar Association. Louis sucked at being managing partner.
Next up is a reminder that I need to be careful what I wish for as Donna and Harvey discuss his reflexive support of her impassioned but quite incorrect argument against Louis trying to fire Benjamin, and how much she didn’t appreciate it. Turns out it wasn’t so reflexive; he did it because she thought she would like it, which is its own magnificently flawed concept—thinking she’ll get mad at him for disagreeing with her doesn’t say much for his respect for her integrity—but then Donna realizes that he’s afraid she’s going to leave him if he doesn’t unconditionally support her, and you just know the writers thought they were being real clever with this. (Wait, isn’t one of Harvey’s defining character traits his ability to read people? “You read books, I read people” was actually one of the first things he said to Mike in the pilot… Gosh it’s been a long time.)
As I was saying about this show’s internal consistency, two things about this whole exchange: One, all through Season 7, Harvey had no trouble calling Paula out when she was being ridiculous and disagreeing with her about all kinds of shit. Two, as recently as “Everything Changes” (s09e01), Harvey cooed that “[he’s] finally where [he’s] supposed to be” when he’s with Donna, to which Donna replied “We both are,” and like, are they a match made in Heaven right out of the box or what? His trust in their relationship is wildly inconsistent. Unless he wants to forfeit his autonomy for some reason? I don’t know, it’s weird and I don’t like it.
I also take issue with Donna’s dismissive “Oh, my god. Of course. Harvey, I’m not gonna leave you.” This has been an issue for him since forever, as she well knows, but rather than ask him what’s wrong—is he really afraid she’ll leave him over something so small?—or point out that he needs to go to therapy (if she wants to be tactful, she could ask if he wants to “talk to someone” about this), she treats it as an endearing character quirk, and someone needs to save Harvey from all this shit yesterday.
The interruption to this…reconciliation isn’t quite as cringy as the can opener bit from the last episode, but I’ve gotta call it out for being just some truly lazy storytelling. Gretchen appears out of nowhere to tell them they “need to go see Louis,” on account of his demotion, and Donna’s deer-in-headlights response is “Oh, my god. We need to go to him right now.” Yeah, no shit, that’s what Gretchen just said, except this framing affords Harvey the opportunity to mount his noble high horse and declare: “No. You go to him. I need to go see Faye.” Which he does, dramatic music and all, declaring that “dammit, not everybody has to do everything by [her] book,” and I must point out that she demoted Louis for trying to fire the employee who he asked to perform an illegal activity that he failed to perform only because he was caught; in what book is that okay? He then asserts: “You want consequences, I’ll give you consequences,” which is delightfully reminiscent of that old classic, “I’ll give you something to cry about,” in that it makes absolutely no sense, and Harvey, you adorable impetuous dumbass, if your goal is to convince her to leave, I think you might be going about it in a little bit the wrong way.
Roll title crawl! (No seriously, that was all just the cold open.)
Anyway Donna does go to comfort Louis, already treating herself and Harvey as a unit when she assures him that “if [he] ever [needs her] or Harvey during any of this Faye bullshit,” they’re there for him, and dropping the much more interesting detail that she has a much older sister she doesn’t want to talk about who “turned every man she was ever with into an emotional doormat,” which I don’t have time to fic right now but I feel like might explain a lot. Then Alex and Samantha have an endearing little exchange wherein Samantha proposes doing something to help Louis and Alex clarifies that it has to be ethical, and it’s nice to know that at least a couple of people around here aren’t completely insane.
Speaking of things being insane, I won’t fault Gabriel for this because the direction itself is fine, but from a writing perspective, the narrative construct of this next scene is terrible. Harvey shows up at a meeting with Some Guy whose nondescript company is apparently, thanks to his board and the company’s lawyers, being taken over (by someone) against his wishes, and the only hint of context for any of this is that “the people” orchestrating this takeover are “related” to Faye. The obvious conclusion to this exchange is that Harvey is going to help this guy, who is apparently the CEO of this random organization, sue the company by acting as a shareholder rather than a C-level employee, and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on.
Back at the firm where I do kind of know what’s going on, Susan the Associate approaches Katrina with a problem she found in the VersaLife case Katrina’s working, and as soon as they gave her a name in the last episode, I know she was going to be important. More to the point, it looks like Katrina’s got herself an associate! (Remember when senior partners were required to hire their own associates? It was a whole big thing back in Season 1, I think.)
Next up, Louis is having lunch with an old friend, Saul the Judge, who informs him that some other judge is retiring or being fired or something, and offers him a judgeship, and there is so much wrong with this scene that I don’t even know where to begin.
Yes I do. Since when has Louis’s lifelong dream been to be a judge? This is literally the first time he’s ever expressed any interest in it, at all. And another thing, that is not how judicial selection works.
In New York State, judges, depending on the court, are either appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate, nominated by a commission and approved by the governor, chosen at a partisan nominating convention and elected by the voting public, or appointed by the mayor. Qualified individuals can apply to be considered, such as by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, but there’s no one-and-done offer/acceptance transaction between someone currently on the bench and his lawyer pal, so either this guy is offering Louis a job that doesn’t exist or, more likely, the writers don’t know shit about the New York City legal system.
Moving on. Harvey shoves a recusal form in Faye’s face as he informs her that he “got” a case against her old firm, and he’s “taking it,” as though he didn’t go way out of his way to hunt it down in the first place. He then throws a stupidly juvenile hissy fit, claiming he’ll use whatever he fucking has to to “win,” and prove his system his better than hers, but he won’t have to cross any lines because she de-balled (second reference, just as charming as the first) the guys at her old firm so much that “they’re shaking in their boots” at the mere threat of lawsuit. This whole exchange is basically a showcase of Harvey acting like a spoiled child, and I know he’s a passionate guy but I gotta say, I’m getting tired of this whole act.
Back to that clusterfucking disaster of a judgeship offer, Louis fesses up to Sheila but admits that he doesn’t want to accept the drop in salary with a kid on the way, or leave his friends in the lurch, and she in turn fesses up that she asked Saul to make the offer in the first place because “being a judge has always been [his] dream.” (SINCE WHEN?) Louis is incensed until she tells him that it was basically Saul’s idea, but that if he doesn’t take it now, he’ll never get the change again, which… Why? Well, I guess they haven’t pointlessly manufactured any tension in awhile. Anyway, Louis promises to sleep on it.
Elsewhere, Samantha proposes committing conspiracy to get Faye out of their lives and Alex shuts that shit right away, and I’m actually really enjoying their dynamic right now. Susan asks Katrina what she should do about a smart, funny paralegal she clicks with; Katrina, having “seen that before,” recommends finding a new paralegal, and I’ve never had this question before but is Katrina anti-Machel for some reason? Doesn’t matter. Susan proposes reaching out to opposing counsel, who just so happens to be an old family friend, and Katrina wisely tells her not to, but somewhat less wisely starts and ends her rationale with “Because I know,” which I’m sure won’t motivate Susan to act in any sort of way.
Now, I’m no dream theorist, but luckily this show has all the subtlety of a Liberace action figure, so it’s not too difficult to figure out what Louis’s subconscious mind is trying to say: He wants to humiliate Faye (for demoting him and taking over his firm), he wants to bang Donna (and maybe also Alex), he thinks of Harvey as his peer but also his inferior (who he wants desperately to impress and probably also to fuck), and his confidence is mainly derived from the approval and admiration of others. Also he wants to have sex with basically everyone. Maybe not Gretchen. But everyone else.
Dr. Lipschitz, to whom Louis was evidently relaying the events of this dream, finds the whole thing quite amusing, but points out that if Louis takes the judgeship, he won’t have his friends around him anymore. Double-edged sword and all that.
Part II
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puppetwritings · 5 years
Text
Please! This isn’t a Game! || Pt. 2 || Jeonghan
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Pt. 1 // Pt. 2 // Pt. 3 // Pt. 4 // Pt. 5 // Pt. 6 //
➢ Word Count: 3259
➢ Genre: sci-fi, fantasy, fluff, comedy, transmigration
➢ Summary: What do you do when you get thrown into an unknown world? Well, Jeonghan sure as heck does not know.
——–
Just outside the outskirts of the city, past a forest and on a hill, stood a large, haunting Victorian castle. Near it was a large lake and behind it was an even larger yard that carried high-tech machinery and weapons. Inside, were students that range from twenty to twenty-eight years old, all mingling from first year to fourth year.
Down a hall with portraits of the previous deans on the wall, walked the student body president. You made a left, then a right, and then halted and stared at the crowd of students breaking their necks to stare out the window.
“Ah! Y/N,” Mari, your friend, rushed over and grabbed your hand. “Y/N, there’s a new student.”
“Of course, there are new students,” you said. “The testing just finished.”
“No, but there’s an amazing new student,” a boy named Don piped up. “My sister said he’s a hero.”
Another student nodded. “I heard he was used as a diversion so General Yoon and Major Yoon could take out a large portion of the Mutated Butterflies.”
“Is that so?” you tilted your head and inched forward. You looked out the window to see the sleek, black limousine that belonged to the Yoon family.
The dean was stooped down to speak into the car window. A long moment later, the door opened and a slim young man walked out. His hair was a soft brown and rested against his forehead, only to be moved by the spring breeze. He already wore the uniform. A crisp white…wait.
“White! Y/N, he’s wearing white!” Mari excitedly shook you. “That means he’s part of the elite class, isn’t he?!”
“The tie. He’s also in the accelerated class,” another student pointed out.
“Y/N, he’s the same year as you then!”
“Oh god, I wonder what class he’s in?”
“Do you think it’ll be E24 or E13?”
“If he’s good enough to be in the accelerated course, he must be in E13!”
Your brows furrowed in annoyance and you pulled away from the crowd. You patrolled the halls for about thirty minutes longer before entering your classroom, E13.
No one was there yet. There was still twenty minutes before class but you sat down at your desk and pulled out the materials for class when the door swung open. The slim young man walked in. His eyes quickly scanned the room before landing on you.
He smiled.
You frowned.
Jeonghan awkwardly cleared his throat but walked over anyway. “My name is Yoon Jeonghan. This is where class E13 is, right?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” Jeonghan waited a heartbeat for you to give our name, but when you didn’t he cheerfully brushed it off and went to find a seat far away from you.
You stared at him. This was Yoon Taewook’s brother. He looked like him, despite having different mothers. Their noses were inherited from their father but their other features seemed to be from their mothers. They were handsome, as their father was back in the day. While Taewook was the same unapproachable handsome, Jeonghan felt like a warm summer’s day—especially when he smiled. Yet somehow, behind his eyes, you could feel the same hardened soul that Taewook had. Maybe it was their father that made them this way.
Jeonghan felt you staring at him but did nothing. He silently called the system over. “Who is she?”
“She?” the system shifted through the colors of the rainbow. “Not sure. She’s not in host’s memory files and she isn’t in the system of the world, so she must not be anyone important.”
“Then what of the school? Search smaller, won’t you?” Jeonghan said, sounding exasperated.
The system did as it was commanded. “Her name is Y/N. She’s a third year in the elite course. She’ll graduate a year after you. However, in the original timeline, it says that she dropped out before she finished her fourth year.”
“Huh…”
“Does host have something on his mind?”
“Yes, I always have something on my mind. How else would I remain so brilliant?”
The system turned an impatient orange but Jeonghan didn’t expand on the subject. The small ball of a system floated to a corner and began to sulk. It was drained. It’s only been a week and it was already drained.
Jeonghan felt eyes on him all during class, but he only turned his head to ignore them and stared out the window the entire time. This created an ethereal picture of a fairy prince that just walked out of an oil painting. The girls sighed in admiration at such a lovely image but the guys’ expressions turned ugly.
When class was dismissed for a day, a few of the friendlier students walked over and started up a conversation.
Jeonghan awkwardly glanced out the window and sheepishly packed up his things. “Sorry, I have to go. My ride is here.”
“You don’t live in the dorms?” Mari asked.
“No, I, uh,” Jeonghan turned pink. His voice grew quiet and he seemed to shrink back a little, creating a pitiful image. “My father wouldn’t allow me to.”
The looks on the surrounding students’ faces turned sour. With Jeonghan’s appearance and his words, it seemed that his father was really mistreating him. Taewook was allowed to stay in the dorms, so why wasn’t Jeonghan? And why did Jeonghan look so scared about going home?!
“I’ll—I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” Jeonghan quickly pushed passed the crowd and jogged out of the school building.
Mari wandered back over to you with a frown. She put a hand on your desk to get your attention. You pulled down your headphones and looked at her expectantly.
“Do you think Jeonghan’s dad abuses him?” Mari asked, concern laced in her voice.
You raised an eyebrow. You looked back at the door. “I think he’s acting.”
“Acting?” Mari looked surprised.
You nodded. “If he’s so powerful, like you all say, then how could he let his father abuse him. Maybe he’s just trying to defame him.”
“That’s not true,” the students that had surrounded Jeonghan’s desk migrated over. “I heard he doesn’t have a magic root.”
“He doesn’t have a magic root?” a girl gasped. “Then, how did he pretend to be Taewook to fend off the army?”
“Was that just a rumor then?”
“It wasn’t a rumor!” a boy spoke up. “My sister said that his moves were very textbook and elementary. He most likely studied how to fight by himself and got lucky.”
A dreary, pitying air surrounded the students.
“He could have died,” someone finally said, their voice quiet and barely above a whisper.
“I doubt his brother and his father would have let him die,” you rolled your eyes as you stood up.
“Wait, Y/N, where are you going?” Mari asked.
“It’s Wednesday,” you replied sullenly.
“Oh. Well, come back soon.”
After you left, the gossipy students merged on Mari.
“What does she do on Wednesdays?”
“Yeah, she always leaves campus on Wednesdays and doesn’t come back until the next day!”
“She visits her boyfriend,” Mari said with a long sigh. “I hope they break up soon. He’s honestly so awful.”
The students, excited that there was something substantial to talk about, asked more questions and Mari willingly answered in the most detailed way she could.
  ——–
When Jeonghan arrived home, he was faced with a locked door. He frowned and went through his bag for his keys and even rummaged through his pockets. He turned to find the chauffeur that had dropped him off, but he had long left, leaving only the smell of heated magic in the air.
“Navi, could you open the door?” Jeonghan asked.
“I can, but as this is an electronic system, it will act as if you broke in and alert the authorities.”
“Great.”
If he remembered correctly there was a statue just by his bedroom window. If he could climb that and push open his window, he would be able to get in. With this in mind, Jeonghan began walking around the large mansion to look for his room. He stepped onto the premises of the garden but froze when he heard voices.
Jeonghan had integrity. He had morals. But he had also long abandoned them when he was a child.
Jeonghan quickly jumped into the bushes and poked his head out just enough so he could see. The system circled his head until it was pulled down and held in place as Jeonghan quirked up his ears and listened. A male voice…and a female voice?
“There are no females in this household other than the maids,” Jeonghan said. “And Taewook would never speak to a servant.”
“How do you now it’s Taewook, host?” the system asked curiously. Its host was right.
“I never forget a person’s voice,” Jeonghan mumbled. He strained his ear before moving closer as silent as he possible could. A soft “ah” escaped him. “It’s Y/N.”
“What’s she doing here?” the system mumbled in confusion.
“Let’s just listen,” Jeonghan said.
Jeonghan frowned with brows furrowed. If he remembered correctly, you had still been in the classroom when he left. There was no way for you to arrive before him.
“Taewook, I—”
Your words were cut short by the stinging sensation that appeared on your cheek.
The system gasped and it bounced around angrily, turning a bright crimson. This guy was truly scum!
“You’re so stupid!” Taewook hissed. He gripped your shoulder tightly until his fingertips left bruising marks. “Couldn’t you tell that wasn’t me?”
“I—”
“I thought you said you love me,” Taewook said. “How could you mistake that wimp for me, huh? That’s already offensive in itself.”
Jeonghan held back a scoff.
“He just…held out so well,” you replied, your voice not wavering in the slightest. You pushed aside his hand and took a step back though, your head slightly lowered. “You said you weren’t feeling well recently, so I figured it must have just been the cold acting up.”
“Even if I was boggled down by a cold, I wouldn’t be that weak!” Taewook said, his voice raising before falling again. He pinched his nose bridge and let out a heavy sigh. “Well, now you’ve done it.”
You raised your eyes and watched as he paced.
“He’s actually joined the academy!” Taewook said, throwing up his hands. “That useless trash did! And father praised him! Can you imagine?”
You remained silent.
“If this continues, father might actually accept him despite him being a disgrace. He’ll be more impressive if he makes it through the military without magic,” Taewook grumbled. He glared at you. “What was he like in school today?”
“Timid but polite.”
“Anything else?”
“He…”
“What?”
“He acted pitiful.”
“Acted pitiful?” Taewook waited for you to explain.
“I think he deliberately worded some things to paint you and your father in a bad light,” you said without hesitation. “His eyes were a little moist and he’d flinch when he thought about his home situation too.”
“That brat…”
Jeonghan smirked to himself. You were right. Taewook and their father were public figures so naturally, news about them mattered. They rarely mentioned their home life. It was only known that their father had no wife and Taewook’s mother had long passed. They had a brother and a son but he was a magical waste so no one paid attention to him. There was no sympathy for those who are weak in this world but if the weak suddenly gained a voice and spoke about their difficulties, it would spread like wild fire.
“He can’t stay in the academy,” Taewook finally concluded.
“What should I do?”
“Make him hate his life,” Taewook said, his voice so low Jeonghan had to strain to hear him. “Make everyone else hate him too. I want him to willingly quit himself.”
You nodded obediently.
Taewook reached out and patted your head, a warm smile on his face. You were dazzled for a moment but you couldn’t help but think his brother had a warmer smile. To get away, you shyly smiled and ducked back.
“Are you busy next week?” Taewook asked.
Your heart jumped and you turned back to him expectantly.
“I need the floor plan for the Mutated Butterflies new hide out. You could pass it over to me and after we could go grab lunch.”
You nodded quickly. “I’m free any day next week.”
Taewook grinned and moved closer to place a kiss on your forehead when the bushes rustled. Taewook’s eyes grew dark. He pulled out a throwing knife from his belt and sent it into the bushes. A strangled scream emerged and Jeonghan stood.
At first, he looked alarmed, but then he looked sheepish. He shrank and began to frantically wave his arms. “I—uh—I didn’t see anything! Uh, just, there was this cat! And the cat took…took my key.”
“Key?” Taewook raised an eyebrow.
“Housekey!”
“Why do you need a housekey?” Taewook’s brows furrowed in distrust.
“Because I don’t have a chip,” Jeonghan subconsciously rubbed his wrist.
As an illegitimate child who was not born in an official hospital, Jeonghan did not get a chip implanted in him. Legally, he was documented but as illegitimate children are usually abandoned and left to rot, resources such as citizenship chips are not wasted on them.
“Oh,” Taewook smirked. “Right. Well, wait at the front, I’ll let you in.”
“Okay!” Jeonghan nodded, looking stupidly excited as he ran off.
You frowned. “How come we couldn’t sense his presence at all?”
“Most likely because we’re used to those with magic,” Taewook grumbled. “He’s so useless you can’t even sense that he’s there.”
You nodded. Even if he didn’t have magic, at least one of you should have noticed. “He must have just arrived.”
“Must have,” Taewook agreed. “Otherwise, he probably would have confronted us about all that shit we said.”
You hummed in agreement and began to relax.
“Well, I’m going to let that idiot in. I’ll see you next week, alright?” Taewook patted your shoulder and turned to leave.
“I’ll message you when I get home?” you called out but Taewook said nothing in response.
Taewook reached the front where Jeonghan was waiting. Jeonghan jerked slightly when Taewook walked past and unlocked the front door. Jeonghan quickly grabbed the door as if he were afraid his older brother would close it on him.
“How was school today?” Taewook asked offhandedly.
“It was fun! Everyone is really nice,” Jeonghan said sheepshily. “I thought I would get bullied since I don’t have magic.”
“Well, do they know you don’t have magic?”
Jeonghan thought for a moment. “I suppose they don’t know that…”
“You better keep it a secret then,” Taewook said.
Jeonghan nodded seriously, as if he were really taking the advice to heart. “Say, Brother?”
“Hm?”
“That…that was Y/N, wasn’t it? Are you and Y/N…”
“No.”
“But before I saw you were going to—”
“Y/N and I are nothing. Don’t make assumptions,” Taewook harshly reprimanded.
Jeonghan pursed his lips and nodded.
“And do not tell father about what you saw in the gardens today.”
“Don’t—” Jeonghan’s eyes bulged.
Taewook stopped walking and turned to look at him. “If I hear a peep from you about this matter again, I will make your life a living hell.”
Jeonghan gulped nervously and nodded. “I swear, I won’t tell father.”
“Good,” Taewook began walking ahead again.
Jeonghan let out what sounded like a relieved sigh and followed his brother until he got to his room.
“Host, what’s your plan?”
“Why do you expect that I have a plan?” Jeonghan asked, shedding out of his school uniform.
“Because you always have a plan.”
Jeonghan hummed. “Since you have such high expectations for me, I guess I should have a plan, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Are you curious?”
The system stared at its teasing host. “Yes.”
“Then I won’t tell.”
“Host!”
“I’ll finish the first mission,” Jeonghan said.
The system stayed silent.
“In order to do that, I’m going to need to move into the dorms,” Jeonghan let out a long sigh and fell back on his comfortable bed. “I’m going to miss this bed.”
“How is moving into the dorms going to allow you to activate your powers?”
“In the dorms, there’s a lioness. If you provoke her enough, she’ll bite,” Jeonghan grinned. He curled into the sheets and closed his eyes. “I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow. I haven’t been in school for so long that I’m drained.”
The system hovered beside Jeonghan a moment but then went back to its corner and decided it should get some rest as well.
  ——–
“You’re back?”
You jumped at the sound of another voice in your room and you turned to find a projection of your brother.
“Gosh, Joshua, don’t do that!” you let out an irritated sigh.
“You must be distracted if you didn’t even realize I was here,” the projection stepped forward and sat down at your desk as if it could get tired. “So, where did you go?”
“I went to see Taewook again.”
“How many times do you have to see that guy?” Joshua sighed.
“I go whenever he calls.”
“And what’s that on your face? Did he hit you?” Joshua raised an eyebrow.
“Joshua.”
“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t get so invested. You don’t have to answer him whenever he calls. You’re not a slave.”
“Josh.”
“You’re supposed to be our family’s baby!” Joshua said. He stood with some determination. “That’s it, I’m going to tell mom and dad and—”
“Joshua, please,” you rolled your eyes.
“All I’m saying,” Joshua sat back down, “is we shouldn’t have sent you over there. They could have sent me.”
“Taewook is straight.”
“Romance isn’t the only way to a person’s heart,” Joshua replied neatly. “It’s all because of some stupid prophecy that you’re getting abused. You have to get out of there as soon as possible, you hear me?”
“If I can’t find the person, how am I supposed to get out?” you grumbled at your brother’s nonsense.
“Just grab any old Joe and leave,” Joshua said. “If our parents figure out something’s wrong, just blame it on me. The mission would fall through because you already left and then you don’t have to go back.”
“Joshua.”
“I’m just saying,” Joshua said. He paused a moment. “But, really, have you found anything?”
You shook your head. “There’s no one in the academy or the army that I’ve come in contact with that has dark magic as strong as the prophecy says.”
“See? It’s a dead end,” Joshua quickly concluded.
“But…”
“But?”
“There’s someone new,” you said.
“Oh?”
“Taewook’s younger brother. I don’t know what it is about him but I think he’s special.”
Joshua grew stone faced. “Y/N…we’re talking about serious business here, how could you go off on a tangent about a new crush?”
“This isn’t—! Brother!” you glared at him as your face flushed red. “I’m serious! I think there’s something off about him.”
Joshua frowned. “Then investigate him more.”
You nodded.
“Is that all there is to report?”
“Yes, brother.”
Joshua’s projection stood and he walked over. He placed a hand on your head. “Then, I’m signing off now. Make sure to stay safe. Don’t let that Taewook guy take advantage of you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.”
You watched as the projection vanished. You kicked off your shoes and laid down on your bed, staring up at the ceiling. Taewook’s smile blended with Jeonghan’s for a moment and you frowned. How could an angel be related to a devil?
~~~
(A/N: check out the description or the pting ff tag on my blog for new chapters!)
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markusstrayya-blog · 5 years
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Once In A Freak (Part 1)
Support Me? | MASTERLIST | Who Do I Write For?
Pairing: Loki x Reader (eventual), Logan Howlett x Reader (Father figure), Avengers x Reader, X-Men x Reader
Word Count: 2670
Summary: Being a mutant has more downsides than upsides. How will your peers feel when you catch feelings for a certain trickster god. WIll your friends and family support you, or have they done enough already? I mean, you are a mutant, how much harder could life be?
Warning(s): Fluff, HYDRA mentioned, Infinity War Steve (God he looked delicious with that beard!), Language. I’ll probably add things as I go along.
Authors Note: So, this was originally posted on my other account, as all these repeated fics were, but Tumblr sucks. Anyway, I didn’t edit this one, as I already loved it, but I’ll be rewriting the entire series. I’ve got the writing bug! Anyway, I’m planning on posting this story to Wattpad, but I’ll probably wait until I have the first few chapters ready to go.
All I did for this one was combine the two parts I’d already written because I felt that it wasn’t going to read well if I didn't, so here we are.
Anywhoozy, requests are open, and so’s the taglist, so enjoy!
PROLOGUE
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If anyone had told you all those years ago that you would work for the X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D. and more recently, the Avengers, you would have called them insane. But alas, here you are, in your own spacious room at the Avengers compound, curtesy of Tony Stark, with your back pressed against a painted wall, viewing your handy work on the other 3 walls. Your (H/C) hair had been tied into a messy bun that had been slowly falling out over the past few hours, evident by the thick strands that had made it their job to block your view. Your white t-shirt and old denim overalls were blotched with a rainbow of colour. Your skin didn’t fare any better.
Your aching legs assisted in lifting your small frame from the ground, as your feet carried you into your ensuite bathroom, which, you had also painted last week. Peeling off your clothes and undoing the tangled mess upon your head to reach the tie, you sigh. That’s the last coat. Once your hair has been released from its elastic restraint and begins to flow over your shoulders and down your back, you enter the shower and begin cleaning yourself from the day’s activities.
The comforting feeling that the steamy water brings will always be something that you cherish, as it gets to work on cleansing your multi-coloured skin, the coloured water pooling atop the tiles surface around your feet. Running the soapy loofah over your wet skin, the hardened paint flakes off, leaving your skin to return to its natural colour. Now for my hair. Grasping the shampoo bottle in your right hand, you squeeze the liquid contents into your left palm before closing the lid. You moan as your hands begin to massage your scalp, making sure that all the paint is removed from your hair. Once your hair is rinsed, and the shower head returned into its slumber, you step onto the bath mat and thoroughly dry your hair with your hairdryer, combing it every so often.
Moving into your walk-in closet, you pick out your favourite pair of skinny jeans, and your Deadpool-themed tank top, curtesy of Wade (of course), both of which will fit nicely over your matching black undergarments. You slip your feet into your black converse before taking one last look at your masterpiece of a room. You’d had to paint all the walls white, as they were previously cream, whilst covering one wall, the one that your bed rests against, you’d painted lightning striking a darkened landscape, and in the center, a blue orb with a figure, watching the storm overhead. You smiled at the memory and headed out into the kitchen.
Spotting the cupboard, you race forward, opening it with such force that it almost swings off its hinges, reaching your hand in and grabbing a packet of (F/F) chips before slamming it closed. You tare open the packet and shove the largest chips you could grab into you salivating, hungry mouth, closing your eyes in ecstasy. BUZZ. BUZZ. Ugh, what now? Checking the caller ID, you hastily answer your phone. “What’s up Wolvie?” You could hear him groan before taking a swig of what was most likely whiskey.
“I told ya to call me Logan, but that’s besides the point. I wanted to know how you are settling in?” You snort, before eating another chip.
“Well,” you begin, “I think it’s going very well. I’ve just finished painting my room and I’m already on to (F/F) chips.” You knew he would be shaking his head, smirking at your antics. “Hey, don’t laugh at me! I’ll have you know I’ve been here a week and I’ve settled in just well.” He laughed at that.
“That’s good Bub, that’s really good. Y’know if they annoy ya too much, I’ll kick their asses for ya.” Giggling, you begin to reply before you are interrupted by a certain AI. “Ms. (L/N), Mr. Stark says that you’re needed in meeting room 8 as soon as possible.”
“Thanks F.R.I.D.A.Y. Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.” You shook your head. “What did you really call me for Gramps?”
He gasped in feigned horror. “Well, I was asked by the Professor himself to tell you that we’re gunna have a party o’er next week. You’re welcome to come, but after that insult I don’t think-“
“Okay! Okay! I’m sorry, I’ll come!” Humming he ended the call wishing me luck and promising to text me the details. Speed walking over to meeting room 8, you munch on a few more chips. What does he need me for? Surely it can’t be a mission! Mentally throwing those thoughts away, you opened the door, before stepping in, making sure to close the door behind you, moving to stand next to Cap. He has told you many times to call him Steve, but you like to mess with him, calling him Captain or Cap most of the time. Your eyes meet, and you smile up at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. His blue t-shirt does nothing but to hide his broad shoulders and the protrusion of his large muscles. Even his jeans look too tight. How does he fit such a fine ass in those? He smiles back, before clearing his throat, gaining the attention of those present in the room.
As soon as Tony’s eyes see me, his face instantly lightens. His expensive suit does nothing but help him prove his importance and influence he has on the team. He’s loaded – with cash, that is. “(Y/N), you made it!”
You looked at him and around the room, confused. “Uhm of cour-“
“Now,” he interrupted, “I need to introduce you to an old friend…and a…seemingly new one?” You looked at him then, sensing his uneasiness. Logan had taught you how to read moods after he took you in as his own when he found you in the woods. You also noticed how he seemed to be trying to convince himself that this new person was a friend. Strange. He pulled you further into the room, stopping in front of two men. Men? Snap out of it (Y/N), this is Thor and Loki. They’re Gods! “No wonder…” you muttered.
Thor leant down to your level, his long blonde hair replaced with short hair. It suited him. “Pardon, Lady (Y/N)?” Shit. He heard me! You look up at him, taking in his missing eye, covered with a golden eye patch and his attire. Asgardian armour, or a king’s attire?  He was smiling at you. “Nothing. Sorry, I’ve just been busy.” You smile back, hoping he accepts the lie. “There is no need to apologise Lady (Y/N)! I assume you know who I am?”
Smirking at him you nod and hold out your hand. His hand, that is much larger than your own, pretty much engulfs yours, as he greets you. You turn and face his brother, clad in green, gold and black attire, who’s looking down at his feet. “And you’re Loki?” You could’ve sworn his head would have flung off his neck due to the speed in which his gaze raised to yours. “That’s me, Lady (Y/N).” Taking your hand in his, he slowly lifts it to his lips, placing a feather-light kiss to your knuckles, before lowering your hand back down. Even though he was much taller than you, he wasn’t as big and muscly as his brother. His hand was much smaller, making yours fit into it nicer. “Just (Y/N) will be fine.” You extend the chip packet towards him, his face, framed by that luscious raven hair, contorts into a look of confusion. “Chip?”
Glancing over at his brother, as though he’s seeking permission, he extends his own arm out, his slender hand reaching into the packet, before emerging with a good-sized chip. Still looking uncertain, you take your own chip and elegantly place it into your mouth. You can feel the stares of your teammates boring into the back of your head, they, themselves unsure about what’s happening. Thor, though, just smiles at the both of you and gestures for a chip himself. Loki looks up at his brother in what you assume is disgust before placing the chip into his mouth, taking in the mix of flavours that would be dancing around the inside of his mouth. “Thank you.”
--
After the whole chip fiasco, in the meeting room, you decided to leave and make your way back into the spacious kitchen. Placing your large phone on the counter, you turn, and tear open the fridge door, reaching your arm through, until you grasp the large bottle, pulling it toward yourself. Plopping the bottle of Coke down, you begin your search for a large glass, and once found, you begin to fill it to the brim with the dark liquid, returning the bottle back to its place in the fridge.
“Ahem.” Looking up, you spot Tony staring at you from the doorway. Rolling your eyes, you grab your glass, gulping down its contents. The familiar fizz that enters your mouth brings tears to your eyes, but you pay no mind. Staring over at Tony, you continue to chug the entire glass.
Placing the empty glass down on the counter, your hand lifts to your mouth, wiping the stray liquid on the back of your hand, before placing both hands on the marble top. “Yes, mister Stark?” It wasn’t that you don’t like him, it’s just you’ve begun to get a weird feeling about him, like something’s not right. Eyes still on Tony, he steps into the room, stopping a metre away. “What’s up, Tony?” You place your right hand on your hip.
“Why did you do that?” You looked over at him, quizzically.
“Do what?”
Rolling his eyes, he replied, “With the chips. Why’d you offer him some?”
“Look, Tony, I was just being friendly. You’re always telling me to make friends, so here I am, trying to do just that, and yet you’re here, saying I shouldn’t?” You couldn’t believe this guy. First he tells me I need more friends, and now he tells me not to make any. Make up your damn mind! Your inner thoughts cease as two new presences slowly enter the room. You’re not sure if Tony notices the two Gods, tiptoeing behind him, as they try not to disturb us.
“He’s dangerous, (Y/N). He’s killed before, and he will probably kill again. Just keep your distance, okay?” You scoff at his poor attempt to sway your opinion.
“What, and I’m not?” That makes the brothers stop. “Tony, I don’t think you realise this, but he’s not the only one in this building with a bad history. Just look at what happened to me, I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I?” It’s only when you stop talking do you notice Loki’s eyes on you, as they stop flickering back and forth – from you to Tony, and back again. “You see, where I come from, everyone had to fight for where they are now, for their place in society. I don’t think you realise how much people can change, Mr. Stark,” picking up your phone from the kitchen counter, you begin to walk towards the hallway, leading to your room, “Look me up, I’ll probably be in one of those old S.H.I.E.L.D. files!”
You storm into your room, lightly slamming the door behind you, before you slide onto the carpeted floor. What’s so wrong about making friends. We’ve all done things we regret. UGH! Allowing your fingerprint to unlock your phone, you take notice of a new text from Logan. Good ol’ Wolvie.
 Wolvie
 Wolvie: Tuesday at 6. Bring a plus 1, or whoever ya want if you’re up for it! 😉
Wolvie: At the Mansion. I’ll be expecting ya bub.
 Lips tilting up into a smile, you typed in your response.
 (Y/N): Not sure about the plus one old man, but I will be going! I can’t wait to see everyone again!😊
 Placing your phone back on sleep mode, you can feel the familiar tingling sensation as it runs up your spine, stopping, only for a moment, when it reaches your head before the feeling explodes all around you. You close your eyes, relishing in its addictiveness before you open them once more. Your body, covered in a purple and blue mix of electricity, zaps and pops around you, calming you down. It’s in this bubble, of sorts, that you can use your abilities without affecting the world around you.
“Miss (Y/N), Loki wishes to enter, shall I let him in?” Taking a deep breath, the bubble dissipates, the stored electricity evaporating into thin air. You nod at the AI. “Of course, let him in.” The soft thud of leather boots fills your room, as the god enters your room, quietly closing the door after him, before turning to you. He’s still wearing his Asgardian clothing.
“I heard what Stark said out there, (Y/N), and I-“ You interrupted him.
“Nope. Not hearing it. He told me to meet new people, and that’s what I was doing. He can shove it, if he thinks, even for one second, that you don’t deserve to have at least one friend.” He looks at you in complete shock, almost as if he wasn’t expecting that. “Let me guess,” you walked closer to him, “the silver-tongued God of Mischief didn’t see that one coming?”
Shaking his head with a small smile, he replied, “I am unable to be your friend, Lady (Y/N), although I thank you for standing up for me.” You give him a questioning look.
“What do you mean I’m “unable to be your frie-“
“I am a dangerous villain who does not deserve such kindness.” He turns, heading back towards the door, his arm outstretched reaching for the metallic handle. You grab his arm, spinning him back towards you.
“Now listen here Mr. Mischief,” he swallows hard, “yes, you may be dangerous, but that does not mean that you can’t receive kindness. Trust me, I may not be as old as you, a literal God, but I have been down that road before, and trust me, it gets you nowhere.” You take a shuddered breath, before continuing. “I don’t care what you’ve done in the past, but I swear to you I will not let you travel down that path of no return, the path where you believe you don’t deserve anything. The past does not define you. I learned the hard way.”
You can feel tears prick at your eyes, threatening to break free. You are aware the god in front of you knows. He’s been studying you throughout your entire outburst. “What…” He begins, “What do you mean you had to learn the hard way? What happened?” You bow your head, shaking it, as your eyes close tightly to stop the tears from shedding.
 Loki’s POV
 I’ve only known this mortal for at least an hour, and yet she stands before me, a God who will not hesitate to end her life, after standing up for me and proclaiming herself to be my much-needed friend. “What…what do you mean you had to learn the hard way? What happened?” I knew she was already close to tears before I asked but I couldn’t help myself. This fierce little mortal had stood up for me, and now was breaking down because of what others had done to her.
I wasn’t much of a hugger, let alone someone familiar with comfort. I was never the favoured child, always coming second, but this mortal had awoken something in me. The urge to comfort her was overpowering. Never, in my many, many years had this urge come over me. The only thing I could say it was like how I felt towards my moth-Frigga. Hesitantly, my arms wrapped around her small form, as I pulled her towards me, rubbing her back. How could something so foreign to me feel so natural?
What was happening to me?
Once In A Freak Tags:
@bluegirlusa1 @stupidlysarcastic @mirtaqueen @marvelest-marvel@wishrains @nhievyenne @excuse-you-dickwad @blackcat995 @missaphrodite23 @li-ssu @gay-hufflepuff16
Loki Tags:
@baoxiii
Forever Tags:
@theonegirlunderyourbed @jemjem-chan @reading-in-moonlight
Apologies if tags don’t work!
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