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luveline · 3 years

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in the morning, afternoon and night [Fred Weasley x Reader]

tags: reader-insert, hurt/comfort, self esteem issues, low self esteem, reader has acne, sad reader, insecure reader

pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader

word count: 1.8k

You glared at your reflection.

You'd think with such amazing magical medicine available, some witch or wizard would've invented a cure for acne, or at least a spell that covered it up.

You'd struggled with it since your third year. The muggle doctor you'd seen with your mother had suggested it was hormonal, and would calm down as you got older.

That was years ago.

It shouldn't have been a big deal. It wasn't, really. It wasn't usually very painful, though it was itchy as a stinging nettle and twice as unsightly. A large part of you knew it wasn't your fault, that acne was something that simply affected people at different times in their lives. You'd tried topicals and changing your diet, you'd tried losing weight and exercising and dermaplaning and everything they suggested in your mams fashion magazines.

Nothing worked.

Tears welled in your eyes and you sniffed them back, blinking rapidly.

It might've been silly, but it honestly made you want to hide away. You'd skipped dinner without really thinking, finding your way into the girls bathroom you inhabited now. You straightened your tie and robes, dusting down the sides. You leaned forward again, dabbing under your eyes with your sleeve.

The last thing you wanted was for anyone to know you'd been crying, because then someone might ask why. You didn't want to talk about it, ever.

If Fred saw you like this...

You and Fred Weasley had been almost dating for a few weeks now. Almost, because you hadn't talked about the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing yet.

It had been years of thinking he was the fittest boy in Gryffindor (besides George) and months of meeting his gaze in the corridors and catching his eye over dinner. Gradually it had become something more; he started carrying your books between classes and opening doors, touching your arms and your hair and your face.

You cringed at the memory. He had been so caring, moving to wipe an eyelash from the skin under your eye. You'd violently flinched from his hand, afraid he might feel the bumpy texture of your skin, feel the acne beneath your makeup. He'd been apologetic and a little confused, filling you with guilt. You hadn't been able to find a way to tell him it wasn't him, it was you. Of course you wanted him to touch you, the thought of him cradling your face had been the subject of many dizzy daydreams, but you just couldn't tell him this one thing.

It was your deepest insecurity.

The stress had only made it worse. Redness was easy to cover with muggle make up and even some wizarding tricks you'd learned over the years, but there wasn't a way to smooth your skin, and the acne was textured.

It was depressing. You didn't want to use that word, it felt ungrateful to compare your skin issues to something so severe, but it made you miserable.

You but down on your quivering lip, pushing away from the mirror unhappily and opening the bathroom door, a frown on your face.

"Y/N!" a familiar voice said.

You jumped, startled but unsurprised. Fred had a talent of always knowing where you were. You'd find it creepy if he wasn't so endearing.

"Fred," you said, plastering a smile over your frown. "I was just coming to find you."

"What a coincidence, ma chérie, I was doing the same."

"Well," you began, easily sidling into his space, "you found me."

"Yes, I did," Fred hummed, wrapping his arms behind your neck, grinning.

He took a long look at your face, his forehead creased. "What's wrong?"

"Nothings wrong, Fred."

He moved his hands to your shoulders, looking down into your face searchingly. "Have you been crying?" he asked.

You shook your head, lying without thinking. "Something in my eye,"

"Both of them?"

You stepped backwards. He let go of your shoulders accordingly.

"Y/N?"

"It's really nothing," you said through a forced laugh.

He frowned at you for a few seconds more and his face cleared. "Alright," he said slowly, rolling the words in his mouth, "if you say so, doll."

You opened like a blooming flower at the pet name, your whole face softening. You smiled, hoping he understood that the smile meant, oh I just so adore you, Fred Weasley.

He threaded his fingers through yours, dragging you down the corridor beside him and waxing poetic about their newest lot of Peruvian darkness powder as you went.

It got so bad you couldn't go to class.

Okay, so you definitely could've gone to class, but the thought of leaving your curtained bed was enough to make you sick with anxiety, so worried that everyone would see you - see your face.

NEWTs were coming fast and hard. Everyone who wanted to be anyone was working hard studying their asses of, on top of Professor Umbridge's million new rules you had to abide by, including her newest life-ruining rule: Boys and girl are not to be within 5 inches of each other.

What a joke. You struggled through classes, wrote essays so long your hand burned at night and now you weren't allowed to sit next to your almost boyfriend at lunch? It was miserable. It was making you miserable, and now you may as well have sharpied on your forehead how equipped your body was to deal with it.

Fucking badly.

You groaned to yourself, rolling on your side to face the wall. You were at your wits end. It felt endlessly unfair that the thing that was stressing you out most was getting worse from stress.

Your stomach growled hungrily.

You threw your arm over your eyes in defeat, eyes finally filling with tears. You felt so hopeless. There was nothing to be done except keep up your routine until the flare up was over, or until your mothers next 'miracle cure' popped into existence.

The tears felt too hot against your sore skin. You couldn't help but sob quietly to yourself in self-pity.

A knock sounded at the door. You gasped, wiping the tears away in panic.

"Y/N?" It was Alicia. "Are you alright? Can I come in?"

"Yes," you managed. "Yes, of course. It's your room too, after all."

The door clicked open. Alicia appeared, tanned skin completely clear and glowing, though each perfect feature was marred with empathy. "Fred's been begging every girl in the common room to come fetch you, but I told him to leave you be."

"Thank you," you said.

You cleared your throat. Alicia moved her weight from foot to foot, twisting her hands.

"I- Y/N. I won't pretend to know how it feels, but I promise you, Fred won't care. He's beside himself worrying that you're bedridden and dying or-" she laughed to herself, "or that you're still mad at him for the itching powder. What I mean is... he's a good guy, and you're upset. Maybe you should tell him what's wrong. He won't care."

You sniffed. "I know," you admitted, feeling the weight of her shifting the bed. "I know he's a great guy. I just wouldn't blame him if he, if he didn't like me anymore. If he found it ugly. I would understand it, and I think that makes it worse," you choked on your words, heat building behind your eyes.

"Oh, Y/N," Alicia said, placing a tentative but comforting hand on your shoulder.

You lay in quiet, listening to your own ragged breathing.

"I'll go talk to him," Alicia said.

"No! I mean, no. Thank you, but no. I... I'll speak to him myself."

Alicia nodded, rubbing your arm kindly.

The sound of the door clicking shut behind her finally spurred you into sitting up. You dressed in a hurry, chucking a wool jumper over last nights pyjamas.

He wouldn't care, would he? You cringed. Yes, he definitely would. Whatever was between you would stop. He'd have the grace to let you down slowly, drawing away his affections. He was a polite guy, he'd probably even say the whole spiel of "it's not you, it's me". But he would, eventually.

Well, you figured. Let it be quick. Like ripping off a bandaid.

You tread lightly down the steps, hoping to see him before he saw you.

Of course, when the slightest groan on the bottom step sounded, his lovely face whipped to meet yours. He smiled in relief, but it was mixed with something else. Disgust, your brain supplied nastily. He was disgusted. He rose to his feet, smiling smiling smiling. But something in his eyes was different, now.

"Y/N," he said.

"Hi," you said.

"Hi yourself, beautiful. Where've you been all day?"

"I'm... sick. Bad cold," you settled on.

He raised an eyebrow. "You sound okay," he said, not unkindly.

"I..." you looked down at your hands.

A siren was sounding in your head. You didn't think Fred had seen you without make up for the last 3 years. Fight or flight was leaning heavily towards flight.

"Well, are you hungry?"

You shook your head.

"Are you sure? You haven't eaten all day. You need something in your system if you're gonna fight this cold."

"I'm not actually sick, Fred," you admitted under your breath.

"I know."

You looked up. He was still smiling kindly. It was infuriating.

"Look," you said finally, rushed and all at once, "if you don't want to- if you're grossed out. Then it's fine, I'll understand if you don't want to see me anymore."

Fred was stricken.

"I know it's - ugly."

"Ugly? Nothing about you is ugly."

"Fred, my face-"

"No, listen to me, Y/N. It's not ugly. It's not gross. You're not any of those things, are you kidding?" he said, grabbing your hands. "You're beautiful. All the time, in the morning, afternoon and night. You're beautiful in charms and transfiguration and care of magical creatures. You were beautiful yesterday and you're beautiful today and you'll be even more so tomorrow." He stopped suddenly, looking down at your joined hands. His cheeks had turned bright red.

"Smooth, Freddie," came George's voice, from the sofa behind them.

"Shove OFF," exclaimed Fred, growing more red by the second. Heat filled your own cheeks.

"It's skin, Y/N. That's all it is."

"Okay," you said tightly, trying not to cry.

Fred breathed out, his hair shifting in response. His corded arms pulled you tight to his chest. You breathed him in. He smelled sweet and rough, like burning caramel.

He thought you were beautiful.

You smiled into his shirt.

<3<3<3

tag list: @msmimimerton

if you’d like to be added to a tag list, please ask ! for in general or for specific characters, i don’t mind

#fred wealsey fic #fred weasly x reader #fred weasley #harry potter imagine #fred Weasley imagine #fred Weasley x reader #reader insert #reader has acne #reader is an unreliable narrator #reader x fred Weasley #fred Weasley fanfic #fred Weasley fluff #hurt/comfort #Fred weasley x reader

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squidbobby · 3 years

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Shambles (The Rockiest Rock Bottom Ever), a squidbob fic, Chapter 1

Summary: After the volcano disaster that wasn't, things are starting to get back to normal...except that Squidward's house has been destroyed by earthquakes and he's in shambles. Bikini Bottom's own hero, Spongebob Squarepants, offers to take Squidward into his home until other arrangements can be made, and Squidward doesn't exactly have many options. Feelings ensue.

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Living Together, Sharing a Bed, Post-Canon

This work is also available on my Ao3.

I welcome prompts for most ships!

It was a wonder how much of Bikini Bottom had stayed intact after the disaster that sort of wasn’t. Really, with the odds they had been given, the whole place should’ve become a seafood buffet by now. He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, that his place was destroyed. The pineapple was one thing. Round and organic, it had no trouble staying in one piece throughout the quakes, though apparently not everything inside was so lucky, if Spongebob’s unusually somber trash drop-off meant anything. Patrick’s home was rock, same as Squidward’s, but it was low to the ground and dome-shaped, and his entire living space was made out of sand, anyway.

Squidward’s home was not so lucky. He had tried to listen to Sandy through the fog, something about the building being too brittle to withstand seismic activity? Either way, his home--his former home, that is--lay in shambles around him. A few locals including his neighbors had volunteered to help Squidward sift through the rubble, and were now shuffling around in pairs, sorting things into variously marked piles and murmuring sympathetically to each other. Squidward glanced around, dazed, doing little and feeling useless. Occasionally someone had held an object up to him for appraisal, and his positive or negative grunts would determine which pile it went into.

About an hour into the search, a distinctly Spongebob-y series of noises came from behind Squidward. A grunt, a crash, a gasp, and a hurried shush. Even in his state, Squidward knew when to be suspicious. He whipped around to find Spongebob and Patrick grinning fearfully and hiding something behind their backs. Behind them was a toppled-over piece of rock wall that had been covering a significant little area and which nobody had worked up the motivation to move until, apparently, Patrick’s brawn and lack of brain had successfully coordinated. Squidward started towards them.

“Alright, what is it?” he asked with a sigh. “Can’t be any worse than anything else we’ve found so far.”

Spongebob and Patrick exchanged remorseful glances before Spongebob pulled his hands out from behind his back and showed Squidward what they had found.

“Oh…” came out of Squidward as he lowered himself shakily onto what was left of the sofa. So they had finally gotten to the ruins of his art room. He’d known, distantly, that that was coming eventually. It was a different thing entirely to see Spongebob, the picture of empathy, gingerly holding up the splintered pieces of his clarinet while looking at him as if he was going to splinter, himself, at any moment.

And splinter he did. For the first time since the volcano didn’t erupt, tears welled up in Squidward’s eyes.

“I-I, uh…” Squidward began shakily. He barely had time to take another breath before a sob escaped him and his face crumpled as he covered it with his hands. Squidward suddenly felt like everything was caving in on him. First the trauma of the almost disaster, then the shock of coming home to being homeless, and now the humiliation of losing control of himself over a stupid piece of wood in front of a dozen people. He curled in on himself on the sofa and wrapped his arms around each other. All the rock bottoms he thought he had fallen into in his life didn’t compare to this, the rockiest rock bottom ever. His breath hitched when he felt a dip next to him on the sofa, but he didn’t pull his hands away from his face lest the dip’s creator see his face, which was sure to be puffy and red by now.

A small hand tentatively touched Squidward’s shoulder, and he hunched further inward until a soft voice spoke up.

“It’s okay,” Spongebob murmured. “They’re gone.”

Squidward carefully peeked over his fingers and realized that Spongebob was telling the truth. Whether the volunteers had left of their own volition because they were uncomfortable with Squidward’s outburst or had been shooed away by Spongebob and/or Patrick, the two of them were now alone on Conch Street. He considered retreating back behind his hands anyway, but this was Spongebob. The little guy had seen Squidward at all of his worst times, him being the cause of most of his worst times notwithstanding. Squidward lowered his hands, sniffed, and faced forward, gathering up what dignity he could. He could see Spongebob in his peripheral vision, his face open and vulnerable as always. Suddenly he felt a wad of tissues being pressed into his hand, and Squidward smiled despite himself, but it was a sad smile.

“I don’t know what to do now.” Squidward said to nobody in particular. Now that the sobs had died down, he felt hollow again, but this time with a headache.

“What do you mean?” asked Spongebob. His head was cocked like a quizzical child’s.

Squidward huffed. “I mean, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. My mother offered to let me live with her, but that’s hours away and my job is here. There’s nothing left to rebuild my house with, and I don’t have the money or credit for a new place. I’m gonna have to move back home and lose my job and live in my mother’s basement like the loser I am, and--”

Spongebob’s hand tightened where it was on Squidward’s shoulder.

“What do you mean you have nowhere to go? My house is right there!” He gestured next door, where the pineapple stood unfazed by the earthquakes.

At this, Squidward turned to look at Spongebob’s face straight on. His mouth was quirked into a smile, and his eyes were the kind of wide-eyed enthusiastic empathetic eyes that Squidward had seen in him when they’d passed abandoned baby snails in a box or flowers that needed watering. Well, Squidward guessed he was not that different from an abandoned baby snail these days.

“I don’t know, Spongebob…” Squidward started. They’d roomed together for short periods of time before for one reason or another, and it never ended very well.

“Shush,” Spongebob said, headstrong. “I won’t hear any protest on this. I want to help, and this way you can keep your job and we can walk to work together. Oh, it’ll be like a sleepover!”

As Spongebob began talking about matching pajamas and his eyes began to sparkle, Squidward wondered whether it would really be so bad to stay with his neighbor for a while. Besides, what other options did he have? He shuddered to think of what staying with Patrick or Krabs would be like, and he wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to go home and listen to his mother cry “I told you so” every other minute as if it was his fault that he had barely escaped death and his house hadn’t. Squidward sighed inwardly.

“Okay, Spongebob, but just until I find somewhere cheap to stay.”

“Yay!!!” Spongebob released Squidward’s shoulder and ran into the pineapple. Squidward looked around, confused, until Spongebob burst back out with a handful of what looked like empty bags.

“Here,” Spongebob said, handing Squidward a large duffle bag. “Pack up everything that’s in the ‘not completely destroyed’ piles and we’ll get you moved in and go shopping for some essentials!”

So this was really happening. Squidward stood up from the sofa and quietly began putting blankets and clothes from one pile into Spongebob’s bag as Spongebob hummed merrily and collected his own pile into a reusable grocery bag with smiley faces all over it. Squidward watched him and snorted out a quiet, disbelieving laugh. How many times had he been cruel to the little guy, only for Spongebob to come right back the next day, smiling as brightly as ever? And how many times had Spongebob gone to great lengths just to help him, or simply make him smile? For a moment, Squidward looked at him and saw the hero of Bikini Bottom, the kid who helped his friends stop a natural disaster in its tracks and save an entire city. He didn’t seem like so much of a kid these days.

“Woo, let’s go buddy!” Squidward was shaken from his revelry by a shout, and he looked up to see that all the remaining piles, including the rest of the one he was working on, had been packed and left in a pile of overstuffed bags decorated with varying levels of whimsy. Spongebob grabbed his arm and led him to Squidward’s boatmobile, which had been spared. “Best friends’ shopping trip!”

#squidbob #squidbob fanfic #spongebob #spongebob musical #spongebob x squidward #m #shambles

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dramionediscussion · 3 years

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This Crookshanks vs. Scabbers thing reminds me, that so often in HP related discussions, I find hard to make any definitive stance or firm judgements. Frequently, there just isn’t sufficient information about circumstances, or a perspective given is too limited or one-sided. Sometimes it’s also, that there truly isn’t a moral dimension to an issue as I can see it. Sometimes even moral, prosocial or at least normative behavior by every participant can sometimes lead to a tragedy, conflict or net loss to all involved, without anybody being truly “responsible” (it implying fault in this context. Not merely what or who originates some causal chain of events). Like looking at this Crookshank and Scabbers debate. I think, there’s two related but separated issues here. First is the incident and events leading up to it, or making it possible in the first place. Then Hermione’s and Ron’s reactions to the event.

I mean, how is this even supposed to work? Hogwart’s rules for familiars and pets in general seems quite dysfunctional and chaotic. Cohabitation in limited spaces, combined with the policy, which allows students bring all manners of animals, some of which are incompatible with each other in closed quarters. We see owls, cats, toads, rats, spiders and pygmy puffs in HP series, and apparently also ferrets and crows in CC. Any rules, guidelines and organizing seems to be reserved only to owls, which are separated from living quarters, which is lucky I suppose, considering that owls include all other types in their diet (though they still carry messages between inhabits inside the castle). To the rest, it’s survival of the fittest. To me it seems pure chance and happenstance of how events will turn out in those circumstances. A lot of everything is simple up to what kind of animals people happen to have and in what proximity to each other, e.g. imagine if Neville would’ve had a ferret or cat instead of a toad.

It’s not reasonable or fair to expect some kind of a spontaneous order or ideal solution to pop up in those conditions. Or even some reasonable compromise. I don’t see that either Hermione or Ron failed to perform some fair and comprehensible obligations and responsibilities all pet owners should adhere to. With so many moving parts and people in such a limited space, and very asymmetrical needs and risk for different pets. Expecting (young) people to coordinate that together, especially without any official rules, in otherwise strictly rule bound environment is catastrophe waiting to happen. It’s not like they have any hierarchy or power over each other either, and in a situation which is not governed by existing rules. Plus, there didn’t seem to be anybody with an actual authority (or interest) to mediate and mitigate disagreements between (nominally) equal parties, and ultimately settle the dispute between them.

Only way to maximize safety would’ve been caging animals (some of them, or all of them). But it is no way beneficial or neutral thing to do for any of them, so somebody’s pet is going to suffer only to accommodate somebody else’s benefit. It’s not a natural habitat of any animal, even if rats and toads adapt to that better than cats or ferrets, but there’s distress and limiting their natural potential and animal essence. In Ron’s case, that probably wouldn’t have worked in any case. I doubt it would’ve been possible to cage Scabbers / Wormtail, when Sirius Black was on his trail, or possibly even in if he wasn’t (there’s so many ways that could’ve played out. Maybe he would’ve avoided it fiercely by biting, running away and hiding. Or stop eating or starting to play dead in the cage, or break out from it. Whatever would’ve happen, I doubt it would’ve been possible to keep him in a cage without causing quite considerable and visible harm to him). I mean, even if it was a regular old rat, it would’ve been cruel, as it had been allowed to free-range for most of its life.

Containing Crookshanks to 3rd year girl’s dormitories would’ve probably caused similar problems. Low stimulus and lack of variation, would’ve probably cause boredom and depression to such an intelligent animal. Also, in practical terms, I doubt it would’ve worked out, because many others lived in same quarters. Thus he probably would’ve constantly got out, because people kept coming and going, and maybe left door open for a second too long, or forgot to keep the door shut all the times, etc. Once it’s out, it’s a major operation by many people to locate it in a huge castle like Hogwarts. Unless there’s a serious concern for his safety, you’d probably just had to wait until he returned on its own.

Neither of them are particularly neglectful or malicious. There isn’t clear-cut ideal course of actions for either. I suppose, they could’ve at least tried to work something out, even if there wasn’t any win-win solutions available. But there wasn’t a good way to determinate, which one of them should’ve budged or taken the hit. I don’t know, if even volunteering to take the hit would’ve been that altruistic, because it would been mainly their pets who would’ve suffered for it, and they themselves only indirectly. I don’t see there’s a moral transgression here. Perhaps they’ve should’ve been a bit more conciliatory towards each other, but I doubt that even that would’ve changed the ultimate outcome much. Both had legitimate and morally sound arguments, concerns and interests, which just happened to conflict in those circumstances. Happens all the time.

The fact that Crookshank didn’t eat Scabbers in the end, is almost incidental, because it could’ve easily happen, and distress and fear wasn’t uncalled, and the whole scenario was totally plausible. Given circumstances, probabilistically thinking it was the most likely outcome (compared that one’s pet rat is actually a murderer on the run), and one of the few even possible outcomes out there.

Their reactions are a bit similar. Ron is an instigator and aggressor initially, by blowing up on Hermione and accusing her viciously immediately. Though, it was his rat who’d disappeared without trace (eliminating the possibility that it would’ve been accidentally crushed by someone in their dorms), and Crookshanks being responsible is not the only the most likely, but one of the few possibilities there even were. Still, holding Hermione at fault is unfair, though that instinctual emotional outburst is hardly a major ethical crime. It’s not the high road or virtuous, or even honorable, but that’s pretty much it. Holding that against Hermione and the disloyalty and betrayal he shows at her during later that year is totally another matter (though it’s only tangentially related to Scabbers).

I can see why Hermione would be at the first defensive, as it’s equally natural reaction, when confronted by someone whose consumed by anger, and probably temporarily beyond rational discourse. I don’t think she should have even apologized at all, because I don’t see that she truly was at fault or did anything wrong. After all, an apology is also always an admission of guilt as well. There’s quite a lot of studies about this, but often they make things worse, and make people even more angry or vicious towards you, partly because of that. Not only you admit wrongdoing, but also out you as a moral defective, by doing something heinous in the first place.

Quite likely Ron would’ve been even more enraged, if she would’ve reflexively apologized. A person genuinely needs to be willing to accept an apology, and then move on. They definitely shouldn’t be dished out needlessly, casually or thoughtlessly (not including a common courtesy, like if bumping into someone. Those don’t carry moral weight, thus are phenomenologically different).

She should’ve been genuine sympathetic and being sorry for Ron’s loss and distress, if not during the initial fight, but at least at some point, even if she didn’t exactly cause it. However, she was never was, and she seemed to be more interested in being right and winning an argument (she sometimes has that cold and frankly thoughtless side, in which she seems to be far more interested in being “right” by some factual standards, disregarding empathy or social relations and circumstances she’s in).

----

Edit:

I agree with everything you said. It's very understandable for Ron to immediately get angry and to accuse Crookshanks of "killing" his pet. Its literally a cat and mouse chase! And its understandable for Hermione to be on the defensive. This incident happened in third year, so they are both 13-14 ish, children really. You really cannot expect children to act rationally and not emotionally. We as adults can see that they are both in the wrong. And I think as kids when we saw this play out or we read it, we had chosen our sides. I know for me personally I was on Hermione's side. I was all for Hermione defending herself and was just as smug as her when the truth was revealed! But now, I can see that they both are wrong and right at the same time.

You last take on Hermione though, she has always had this air of superiority, and you are right, sometimes she needs to be "right" and she doesn't care about anything else, even her friends feelings.

- Lisa

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declencurran98 · 3 years

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Who am i as an artist: Essay & Analysis

I have been a printmaker now for over a year and a half, attempting and producing various types of prints, but as time has went on, I have become more confident in Screen-printing and seems to be my go-to so I will work towards that process in greater depth. Screen-printing is the printing process of transferring a design onto a relatively flat surface or textile by using Ink, a Silk/ mesh screen and Squeegee. Screen-printing has been a constantly evolving process that has become a favourite and Widley used because its colours are so vivid on dark fabrics, allows the printmaker to reproduce a design multiple time of various shapes and sizes, creates bold highly detailed prints with a wide range of inks available. I have become more familiar with this process over my HNC with creating very high standard and multicoloured pieces on various textiles with combining and printing digitally created threshold images onto tracing paper and transferring/ exposing them onto silk screens and for me, it’s a very rewarding process if done right. I have chosen to work towards Screen-printing as I am very organised and fluent in how I produce and style my work. The process and style stand out to me as a printer in terms of how freely you can layer and change the piece if you desire to create a depth on the piece or even develop it into a whole new piece which always gives a new perspective. Over time i would like to produce a portfolio that clearly demonstrates and expresses me as a person and an artist.

Chuck Sperry

Chuck Sperry is an American Printmaker who has been producing rock-based prints in San Francisco for the past decade. He specialises in multi coloured rock posters which catch the eye upon first glance. His use of colour and topic really depicts what he tries to convey through his style and artwork. His work can be compared to classic cultural murals with the sheer amount of detail and appropriation to colour and topic.

"Empathy" (2021)

Chuck Sperry. (2021). “Empathy” Blotter Art Release. [online] Available at: https://chucksperry.net/empathy-blotter-art-release-2/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

When looking at Sperry’s work, its clear he knows how to use colour appropriately, the way he mixes cold and warm colours to create a fresh perspective is quite an accomplishment. When first viewing his piece “Empathy”, my eyes instantly went to the blue section of the artwork as it feels like the coldest part of the image with the outer colours surrounding the blue feeling more enclosed and darker, it’s like Sperry did this intentionally to capture the viewers eye and make you look further into the print. The more I analyse this image, the more patterns I capture in the females skin and the gaps between the green flowers, it adds more depth to an already immersive print, The direction of the females stature facing towards the viewer with her eyes looking right at you creates this sense of mystery and welcoming which makes you want to know back story on her. The overall image gives off the idea that we should accept natural beauty like the female in the image has, she appears to be naturally faced with no make-up enhancements being present and is surrounded by nature in its truest form with no technology or human created materials shown. Sperry has blended floral decoration with natural human physique to give off the impression that this female is one with nature and the calmness in her facial expression makes you feel the same. The choices of colour used on this piece create a distinct aura of fresh and vibrant which adds to the images overall natural beauty, you find yourself being constantly drawn to another part of the image with how the yellow and orange bleed and blend into the green leaves and blue smaller flowers and when your eyes get used to that colour palette, the pink/magenta floral art grabs your attention making you spend more time analysing and investing in this print. The style Sperry has chosen for this image works as its already an busy image with lots of colour so his choice to keep the style simple but adding a lot of detail without it overtaking the image is an accomplishment. Overall this piece works visually and expressively giving the human eye something new to look at the longer the gaze.

Dogboy

Dogboy, also known as Philip Huntington, is a Camberwell College of Arts graduate who mixes and incorporates Screen prints and digital methods in his work. I came across Dogboy when first researching screen-print artists and his work stood out as it was bright, whimsical and mysterious which gives them their impressiveness. Dogboys work spans from the very obvious to the very abstract, showing that they don’t go into every piece produced with an idea of what they are trying to convey.

"Mutation"

Dogboy Illustration. (n.d.). MUTATION. [online] Available at: https://www.dogboy.co/work/illustration/mutation.

Out of all the prints Dogboy has produced, this one stood out to me due to its cold tonal presence. Even if you don’t have an understanding of what is going on in the image, the colour palette used is enough to draw you in and get you thinking. The image itself gives off a sense of helplessness as it depicts some sort of future, dystopian setting with the patterns along the walls and ceiling almost looking like 20th century depictions of spacecrafts on television, “people” horded together in a hole in the middle of the image desperately trying to escape while there are what appear to be “guards” just standing by, watching them pathetically attempt to escape. What makes this image stand out is how controlled yet unpredicting this image is. The amount of detail in this image makes it feel more real as the colour palette draws your eyes with how the turquoise mixes in with the lighter shade to create depth and vibrance in a cold, desolate image. The way Dogboy has kept the black part of the screen-print in the image imperfect adds to the density and darkness of the image while almost making it feel on purpose. When you aren’t drawn to the figures at the bottom, your eyes get drawn to the amount of different patterns and things going on in the top image, the sharp zig-zags and single line colours make the ares of the image seem si-fi and immersive, yet again another part of the image not lacking in detail and intricacy. It’s not clear what Dogboy is trying to convey or portray in this image, but I think that was his idea while creating this piece, To give the viewer no definition of what’s going on apart from the title of the piece and the image itself, to then let the viewers mind create its own depiction of what’s going on. Pieces like this stick in the mind as you’re brain is trying to create an understanding of what you’re visually seeing.

Rob Corradetti

Rob Corradetti is a Bay Area based artist who specialises in Screenprints, paintings, T-shirts, comics and Psychedelic pieces. His style is quoted as “a blend of head shop and punk rock” which he was inspired by in his coming of age in the early 1990’s. The thing that stands out about Robs work is how bright and fun it looks on first glance but makes you want to see more. He has collaborated with many pop culture bands and brands such as VANS, Buzzfeed and Wiz Khalifa.

"Death At Home" (2016)

Etsy. (n.d.). Death at Home Screen Print. [online] Available at: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/288520471/death-at-home-screen-print?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

I had a look through Robs inventory of prints and its clear in all his pieces that he tries to give insight into different perspectives and his piece “Death At Home” is a great example. The images black background sets the overall tone of the image as it makes the environment seem enclosed and small focusing all your attention on the white outlines and patterns. This type of colour palette works for pieces like this, as theres alot of dexterity and There is so much going on in this image but yet still maintaining its overall image which creates this impressive, eye catchiness to the viewer. My interpretation of what is portrayed in this image is we as humans are so obsessed and reliant on technology that we spend most of our times indoors, In front of a television slowly rotting away in the comforts of our own homes till death. This is shown by the skeletal figure sitting close to the television, smoking and drinking, playing a videogame which states “game over” on the television which could be a metaphor for the once human now skeletal figure playing a game of life that they have now lost. Rob has succeeded in trying to portray this with his bold white and black colour palette blending together and the composition of the image giving the viewer an unknown sense of wonder. The image has so much going on in terms of detail and presence with how each white outline of the garb is its own and if you look even longer, you start to see other patterns and things going on in the image like the spiral swirls and eyes staring at the viewer. The image gives off a feeling of unsureness as it doesn’t really explain what’s going on too much, yet another piece of screen-print that makes the viewer create their own interpretation of this image. The pop art style really lifts the image off the ground and catches the eye even with its two-colour palette which is a great choice. Overall the detail, the matter of the image and the way is composed gives “Death At Home” so much revisit value in terms of what the viewer finds in the image and their interpretation. The image upon multiple viewings gives off this aura of Horror and when you delve into the image and what it stands for, it works.

References:

Chuck Sperry

Info:

Chuck Sperry. (n.d.). About. [online] Available at: https://chucksperry.net/about/.

Image:

Netdna-ssl.com. (2021). [online] Available at: https://3nmir91xseyl7jrgx40dgp41-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/EMPATHY-BLOTTER.jpg [Accessed 14 Mar. 2021].

Dogboy

Info:

Chayasatit, A. (2013). People of Print: 20 Screen Print Artists You Should All Know About. [online] People of Print. Available at: https://www.peopleofprint.com/general/people-of-print-20-screen-printers-you-should-know-about/.

Image:

Dogboy Illustration. (n.d.). MUTATION. [online] Available at: https://www.dogboy.co/work/illustration/mutation.

Rob Corradetti

Info:

tumblr. (n.d.). Tumblr. [online] Available at: https://robcorradetti.com/info.

Image:

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Wordcount: 1537

#mb hndcpm1

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dyketectivecomics · 4 years

Text

Little Miss Moonbeam

Chapter 1: Hit the Pavement

(Read below or on ao3)

Summary: It was a coincidence, really. Harley and Ivy had spent the better part of their month in Vegas, laying low and enjoying newfound freedom. After being cleared for the first time in years of their criminal charges, all that they’d needed to complete their plea deals, was to stay away from Gotham for the better part of the past few months. As this temporary banishment drew to a close, Harley proposed celebrating, Vegas-style. Finding just enough pieces to pull together one of the fastest and tackiest weddings that Pam had ever seen, only one thing was missing; a flower girl. As fate would have it, Raven is tagging along on her mother's tour. And above all else, she is looking for an escape. While they hadn’t kept in contact since the incident at the Asylum a few years back, it had hardly mattered to Harley, who had greeted the girl with a warm hug and invitation to their impromptu wedding. To which Raven happily obliged, on the condition they’d let her tag along on their road trip back to Gotham. A condition that a much more sober and clearheaded Ivy was starting to severely question the motive of... ... Meanwhile, Zatanna enlists Diana's help in finding her daughter. With mixed results.

...

“I’m going to fight it.”

“You’re going to lose, babe.”

“I’m gonna destroy it.”

“It’s a whole-ass saguaro cactus, Harls. And it looks like it’s over twenty feet tall.”

“Language,” Raven quietly interrupted as Harley made a motion to roll up her nonexistent sleeves.

In a tank top and booty shorts that hugged her in all the right ways, Ivy had to admit she found the blonde’s antics mildly amusing, at the very least.

Their volkswagen’s coolant had done a piss poor job. They’d barely made it an hour out of Vegas before it began to leave a trail of smoke behind, and caused a minor panic among each of the passengers. Ivy managed to pull over, find a signal with Harley’s phone, and called for help. Now it was simply a matter of waiting for a tow from the nearest town.

She was starting to become a tad more worried about the heat getting to her wife, or to this poor kid they suddenly found themselves in charge of.

Pam quietly apologized to the girl as Harley continued putting on a show for them. Pushing her baseball cap forward like Popeye and winding up a fist as if ready to punch out all of the cacti’s lights , she made quite the fool of herself as she stubbed her toe against a barrel cactus and subsequently howled in pain. Raven let out a giggle that she immediately tried to cover with her hands, and Ivy rolled her eyes.

“That’s what you get for trying to fight nature,” she called out lazily.

She couldn’t help her smile as Harley began hopping on one foot, attempting to take out the needles and muttering at the pain. She began to hop a little too far back from that barrel cactus, however, and brushed right by another species then.

Raven started laughing outright as Harley let out another couple yelps of pain. “Call ‘em off, Red! I surrender!”

“Only if you get your ass back to this car already!”

“Language,” Raven said again, this time with a pointed glare at the former rogue.

Slowly turning to face the girl, Ivy took her time to size her up.

She leaned against the seat on her side, arm sticking to the leather due to the sweltering heat. In a purple tank top and white tennis shorts, with sneakers that looked almost too big for her feet, she seemed almost impossibly small. Pam distinctly recalled the light-up sketchers the girl had worn when they first met, and being oh-so-annoyed by how they only seemed to flash brighter with every other step. The girl had obviously matured at least a little since that time, but certainly not enough to impress this rogue.

She didn’t think kids were so much a nuisance , rather that many of them were generally loathsome compared to most adults. She would never admit to having a soft spot for them, however. It really wouldn’t do to have her reputation put on such a dangerous line.

Especially since this one was really starting to get on her nerves now.

She took off her sunglasses and placed them atop her sunhat, pleased when Raven’s own sapphire eyes lifted to meet hers at the movement.

“You and I both know your father swears enough to make a sailor blush, sunshine-”

“Don’t call me sunshine-” Raven growled, meeting her gaze, glare for glare.

“Moonbeam, then,” Ivy sneered, “And if we’re going to get along these next few days without wanting to kill one another, let’s get one thing clear-” She leaned forward, hands resting on knees in the most patronizing pose she could manage. The girl’s frown deepened in response. “Harley and I were criminals. We’re doing our best , but we’re not going to completely change over night. So just bear with us. Alright, Moonbeam?”

The girl gave a nearly imperceptible pout, and tore her gaze away, muttering something under her breath as Harley limped over to where they sat in the car.

“Those cactuses are tougher than they look.”

“Cacti,” Raven and Pam corrected at the same time. Harley only gave a small, knowing smile, before pulling up her leg and using the open door as a footrest. She made slow work of pulling out the last of the needles stuck in her skin, sucking in a sharp breath with each tug and pull.

“Um, I can help with the pain,” the girl volunteered, “If you want. It’ll help you heal faster too.”

“Aw, I ‘preciate that Ray-Ray, but y'know what they say,” she took a pause, “ Comedy is pain plus time.”

The botanist gave a groan as Harley gave a shit-eating grin.

~*~*~*~*~

The panic hadn’t set in until well after the show.

After all, she’d had an occasional argument with Raven before. She fully expected her daughter to be somewhere backstage waiting for her.

Traditionally, she would have been in the dressing room. It was the fastest way to clear the air, and the most private place to talk other than waiting until they were back at their hotel room. On occasion, Raven would sneak off to other areas. The girl had become well acquainted with more than one theater’s catwalks and costume storage.

But after exhausting every possible sulking spot, Zatanna felt something knot uncomfortably in her stomach, as if her heart had dropped out of its place.

She talked with stagehands and crew members alike, those who had witnessed them fighting earlier in the evening, and those who helped to paint a picture of where the girl had run off to.

One thing had been made almost immediately clear: Raven had left the building.

And there was no telling what kind of trouble she could find herself in.

~*~*~*~*~

“God, I love small towns,” Harley sighed after taking the biggest gulp she could manage out of her chocolate milkshake. She nudged the strawberry one further across the table to it’s intended recipient, who sat sulking in her seat. “C’mon, Ray-Ray! Nothin’ cures the grumps like a milkshake! And we ain’t leavin’ till you finish yours.”

“We’re not leaving at all until the shop clears our ride,” Ivy sighed, taking her seat beside her wife with their orders in hand. “Mechanic said it could take a few hours.”

“Shh, milkshake first, Red. Doctor’s orders!”

“Doctors don’t prescribe milkshakes,” Raven snorted, still looking pointedly out the window and away from the clown and the botanist.

“Yeah? Well these doctors do!” Harley smiled, tapping the glass with a spoon before dipping it into the treat. “Dessert first, kiddo. That’s how ya live your life right.”

“Just indulge her,” Ivy stage-whispered, “You’ll be happier for it.”

“Appreciate the… back-up,” the clown sang between bites of her burger, bits of ketchup and mustard flying onto the table.

Ivy rolled her eyes, handing a napkin over to the clown as she took a careful look around the diner.

It was nearly empty, save for the waitress behind the counter and the trucker at the far end of the bartop with his own meal nearly finished. There were a few television sets, many of them playing various sports channels. The sole set that displayed a news broadcast, however, caught her eye. The volume was too low to make out the anchor’s words, but in the news ticker was something alarming.

‘World Famous Magician’s Daughter: Still Missing. Last Seen Leaving Vegas Hotel.’

Her back straightened, but she tried to appear nonchalant as she signaled to the waitress to turn the volume up on the broadcast. She kept a careful ear out as Harley and Raven began a petty argument over the merits of chili dogs versus hotdogs, grateful that the clown seemed to be getting along well enough with the girl.

~*~*~*~*~

She breathed a little easier, when she heard Diana was available, and in the area. Well-rested after an intergalactic League mission and itching for an easy assignment, she had practically skipped into the theater to meet with the magician.

“Zatan-”

“Diana, I-” she interrupted immediately. The tone her voice took, the empathy Zatanna could feel in the amazon’s voice in so few syllables, was almost too much to bear.

“I just want my-” She choked on the word, swallowing thickly and composing herself before she turned again to face the amazon.

“Vegas PD found some witnesses. She’s hitched a ride and they’re heading east-”

“Then what are we waiting for. Fill me in as we go,” Diana smiled, “Let’s find your daughter.”

~*~*~*~*~

“Remind me again,” Pam sighed as she interrupted Harley’s radio channel surfing with a forceful press of the power button, “Why I shouldn’t simply turn this car around and give you back to your mother?”

“Because I’ll let her follow through on pressing charges for kidnapping if you do,” the eleven-year-old glared at the botanist in the mirror as she leaned forward on the front seat. Her arm couldn’t quite reach for the dials on the radio, but she hadn’t given up hope yet for taking control of the music from the rogues.

“And to think, we were gonna invite Zanna to the wedding, too.” Harley shook her head incredulously as she kicked her feet onto the dash. Pam shot her a few concerned looks before she sighed and slowly brought them back down.

“We all saw that news ticker back at the diner,” the botanist mused, gripping the wheel a bit tighter as she realized she’d unconsciously picked up speed. She slowly eased off the gas, and tried to relax her grip. They didn’t need another reason for any highway patrols to pull them over.

“It won’t be long before Zatanna sends the whole damn League after you,” she reasoned, “And after us, by default-”

She stopped herself as Harley touched her shoulder, catching her wife’s nod in the girl’s direction. Pam glanced to the rearview mirror, to see Raven had slumped into the backseat, glaring daggers out her window as her eyes misted over. Her arms were crossed over her chest, hands balled into fists and crackling with the barest hints of energy.

And that was when the former rogue felt one of her own eyes begin to mist over, and recalled the incident at the Asylum, and the unfortunate conditions under which she had first met the girl.

It was Raven’s emotions, making a wonderful mess of what should have been a happy honeymoon.

She felt Harley’s hand squeeze her shoulder, just before the clown began taking off her seatbelt. “Make room for Auntie Harley back there, Ray-Ray! It’s time for some quality therapy-time!”

“Harley!” Ivy yelled, “For God’s sake! I can pull over!”

“No time, Red! Keep yer eyes on the road!” she yelled back in reassurance as her foot bounced against the volkswagen's ceiling, and nearly hit Ivy square in the face. “Me an’ Ray will have some girl-time back here, ‘kay?”

“I don’t-” the girl took a deep breath, closing her eyes and humming something quietly before she opened them again to give the clown a stern look. “I don’t need to talk about it.”

“Pammy, darling, please make a note in the patient’s chart that she’s uncooperative and a spoil-sport,” Harley declared, a tad louder than necessary.

Biting back a smile, Ivy could only respond with a nod, “Noted.”

“Now listen, kiddo. You may not think you need to talk. That’s fine. I ain’t gonna make you talk,” she reached to place her hand atop Raven’s, pulling back when the girl shuffled further away. “But just know we’re an option, ‘kay? It’s always better to talk to someone about how ya feel. It ain’t gotta be anyone except who you decide.”

She stretched her arms slightly above her head then, as much as the car’s ceiling would allow, and laid them nonchalantly behind her head, leaning back against the door on her side and picking up her feet to lay them across the girl’s lap.

“Now if ya don’t wanna talk about… why exactly ya wanted to tag along. Then we’ll talk about what we’re gonna do when we get to New York! ‘Cause here’s what I’m thinkin’...”

They knew from experience, and from many a trusted road atlas, that a trip from Las Vegas to New York would take thirty-six hours, minimum. Mrs. Pamela Isley-Quinzel was starting to believe this particular trip would take a tad longer than that.

#little miss moonbeam #au: magic foster family #randywritesfic #dc bombshells #rachel roth #harley quinn #poison ivy #harlivy #zatanna zatara #diana prince #dianazee #wondermagic #(hints of magicblazer but those'll come later ofc)#look at me posting this at 1am bc I'm a coward fjdklf;a #(but as always. likes are appreciated. reblogs mean the world tho #and if you reblog with a comment I'm legally obligated to die for you)

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worddevdealswithml · 5 years

Text

Side Effects Include: Empathy

Chapter 3

It wasn’t like he knew anybody who’d make this harder than it needed to be, right?

Oh. Right.

Adrien’s heart sank as he saw Lila catch sight of him. Normally, he’d have been cautiously optimistic, but normally, he was with Nino, and she didn’t interact with him when he had friends around.

As glance confirmed that Nino and Alya were engaged in what looked like high stakes flirtatious cross-interrogation. No help there.

“Oh hi, Adrien!” she said, voice bright and bubbly as usual.

He forced a smile, and backed away as quickly as he could without making it obvious. “Oh, hi, Lila.”

He attempted to slip to the side, get past her without making it too obvious that that was what he was doing, but…

“You know how you said you wouldn’t mind helping me study?” she said, sliding in far closer than he was comfortable with, “Well, I was thinking that today would be a perfect day for it, and my grades in science have been dropping after the last Akuma attack. I just don’t have it in me to focus when there’s danger lurking around every corner like you guys do!” She said the last part gripping onto his arm in what was clearly meant to be sympathy-inspiring terror, but actually…

Lila’s emotions are unsettlingly quiet, especially compared to what he’s already experienced. There’s sharp, burning triumph, pleasure, and not much else. Except… Behind that, he feels… Something fluid, nebulous. It’s not moving right now, but if Alya, Nino, and Marinette were islands, she’s a fleet of ships.

Adrien tried to steady his nerves at the strangely disjointed emotions he couldn’t quite get away from.

“Well…” he said, “I was actually… Planning to talk to Marinette, before—” //Sharp, burning anger at the name, that almost makes him feel sick// “—Before class started again.”

Lila’s face betrayed nothing but understanding politeness and mild regret, as internally- //A shift in the fleet, dizzyingly quick//. “Oh, well, I’m not sure she’s feeling very sociable today; the poor girl—” //A stab of vicious pleasure// “—has barely said a word all day!”

That was true, Adrien was sure, but…

“Ah, right,” he said, starting to lose his nerve, “well, I mean, I’ve also been a bit out of it today, I was just curious about something, and, well, I suppose you’re right, so maybe I should just go back to my seat in class, and try to rest.” He tried to pull away, but her arm squeezed in such a way that it didn’t quite work.

“That’s a great idea,” she said, “and then if I have any really urgent questions of my own, I can ask you without bothering you too much!”

He wanted to pull his arm the rest of the way away, but he wasn’t sure he could do that without making a scene, and-

//He almost buckles as something like a crackling web of fury fills his chest. He takes a breath, and the air itself seems to be full of fear, which is almost immediately crushed into oblivion //

He looked up, and Lila was still smiling beatifically. He followed her gaze, and…

Marinette was visibly annoyed, but little more.

His mind caught up to his body.

He needed to talk to Marinette, as soon as possible, and most of all, he needed to get away from her.

He wrenched his arm away.

“I need to go to the bathroom, right now,” he said, and without a backward glance, almost ran.

“Wh- Adrien, is something wrong?” came Lila’s voice from behind him.

He didn’t respond.

He needed to make it through the day, but after what he’d just felt, there was no way he’d be able to do it quietly.

Marinette had pulled herself together, more or less, which meant that seeing Lila latched onto Adrien did kind of turn her stomach, but she’d been prepared to deal with it.

It did surprise her to see him run away.

Lila seemed confused as well, though there was every chance she was faking the expression. She started after him, and Marinette… Followed. Whatever was happening here, she needed to know about it.

She slipped into the lockers, following Lila, following Adrien.

It was immediately obvious that Adrien had gone for the bathroom, since that was where Lila was standing.

“Adrien?” she said, voice all concern, “Are you okay in there?”

For a wild second, Marinette wanted to step up behind her, and find out exactly how far her new strength went. She shook the thought off. That was the wrong way to handle this, and Lila would use it to paint her as a villain, and for once, she wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

No. She needed…

She slipped behind a row of lockers, out of Lila’s line of sight.

And…

She met Chloe’s gaze.

Well, this was an unpleasant locker room, wasn’t it…

Chloe scoffed. “Excuse me? I don’t believe I gave you permission to be within 10 feet of…”

She trailed off, as Lila’s voice rose over the lockers, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come in? If there’s nobody else in there, and you’re really feeling sick—”

For a second, Chloe looked over at where Lila would be visible if the lockers were made of glass. Her expression twisted, and she looked back at Marinette, and… Clearly and visibly rolled her eyes, as if to imply that she was leaving this conversation because she doesn’t care, rather than, say, any other reason.

She walked out, and for a second, Marinette almost misses the days when Chloe was her biggest concern. At least everybody knew Chloe was a jerk.

She focused, and managed to catch the tail end of Adrien talking to Lila.

“No, please, it’s fine.”

“But Adrien, what if I leave, and something happens to you? I’d be sick over it!”

“It’s not that bad, just… I don’t feel so good, and I’d prefer to wait until I feel better to leave.”

There was a silence, and finally, Lila sighed. “Alright. I’ll let Mme. Bustier know where you are, and then I’ll be back.”

Marinette slid a bit further from the door as she walked out.

And she was off…

Okay. So, that was a few minutes she needed to get to the classroom, and tell Mme. Bustier, not including the time she’d spend milking the situation to anyone she might meet on the way.

Marinette slipped over to the door.

“Adrien? Are you okay?”

“Marinette!?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

He sighed, and she thinks it’s… relieved?

“I’m… I’m okay. It’s just the way she looked at you… It scared me, and I just didn’t want to be around her anymore, so… Now I’m here.”

Marinette didn’t respond.

“I can’t believe, even knowing she was a liar… She still had me fooled. I really thought that if the two of you just didn’t fight for a few weeks, she’d calm down but…”

“Yeah, well, I’m not sure Lila’s the kind of person who lets go of grudges.”

“Right…” She could make out the faint sound of Adrien letting out a breath. “Well. She’ll be back, soon, and… Would you mind staying close to me? That should help keep her away.”

Marinette froze.

“Of… Of course!” she said, squeaking slightly. “I mean- Not of course I would mind, I mean of course I will I- I don’t mind.” And she’d been doing so well with not stammering. And she’d been doing so well giving herself space to not get close to people. Fantastic. She’d agreed to spend time with Adrien under the worst circumstances, at the worst time.

“Alright then,” said Adrien, audibly standing. “Now, let’s get to class, before Lila tells everyone I’ve got some awful, incurable disease that only she’s heard of.”

Adrien wasn’t sure whether his plan to not get involved in sticky emotional situations could have gone much worse. First Marinette’s warmth, so pleasant, and so terrifying, and then Lila’s cold hatred, and now…

And now the only person available to help keep Lila away was the only other person he was scared to touch.

Of course… Well, if he had to choose between the two of them, Marinette was the one he’d, prefer, to…

He mentally cleared his throat.

Anyway.

All debates on who he’d prefer to… Who he’d prefer physical contact with, aside, the point was that even before this new development, he’d have preferred spending time with Marinette.

And now, she could keep Lila away from him, and he could keep Lila away from her. With any luck, she’d be too scared to talk to the only two people who knew about her lies simultaneously, and then he could maybe work with Marinette to find some way to… To what, reveal her secrets? Fight back?

Yes. Of course fight back, because…

Because anyone who looked at Marinette with that kind of hatred in their heart needed to be stopped.

New powers, a revelation, a new goal, and…

And he still hadn’t talked to Ladybug.

Life was just a buffet of things to do today, wasn’t it…

At this point, he almost hoped Hawkmoth sent a villain, just so that he could laugh at the absurdity of it all.

#ML #Miraculous Ladybug #ml fanfic #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #Lila Rossi #Side Effects Include: Empathy

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 5 years

Text

Episode 114: Steven’s Dream

“But you don’t deserve that, do you?”

The dream is simple. We fade in to three flowers blowing in the wind. When Steven falls asleep again, we add a broken pink palanquin, and a trill of the signature Diamond music, but that’s it. None of the disorienting mix of the sleeping and waking worlds of Lion 3, none of the nightmares of Chille Tid, none of the lucid mastery of Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service, just a few calm moments before waking up in tears. But of all the episodes about our slumbering hero, this is the one that’s called Steven’s Dream.

To me, the initial sensation was similar to nearing the end of Order of the Phoenix and, after hearing Voldemort’s view of Dumbledore many times over the course of the series, seeing that the next chapter was called The Only One He Ever Feared. This episode uses our knowledge of the past to set the bar high from the title alone, but unlike the Harry Potter chapter, it pulls the rug out from under us by making the dream the catalyst instead of the subject.

In the same way Mirror Gem spends its entire ominous runtime preparing us to meet Lapis Lazuli, Steven’s Dream is an eleven minute introduction to Blue Diamond. Both episodes develop a sense of foreboding with little hint of what’s to come, both give us a little bit of fun to lull us into a sense of ease before jolting us back into the mystery, both pit the Crystal Gems as opponents of sorts to Steven, and both have that wonderful pacing where the third act takes up half the episode so we have room to breathe. Mirror Gem has the advantage of blindsiding us with our first new Gem (and has a slower, eerier burn), but Steven’s Dream uses characters with eighty-six extra episodes of development to sell a mystery that our hero is actively trying to solve.

The most obvious way Steven’s Dream builds dread are the tears. It’s a device that works again and again and again on this show, especially when Steven is the one affected: his face is rarely sad when they come, and they’re huge without devolving into silly water spurts, so despite the empathy tears might otherwise bring, it’s instead an unsettling omen of danger, like the crocodile’s clock. Combined with the brevity of the first dream, the stark opening of the episode thrusts us into the emotional space that fills the next arc.

But we also get Pearl and Garnet providing more explicit concern. Pearl tries changing the subject, but when push comes to shove she covers her mouth for the second time since we were first told that Rose shattered Pink. While this and other acts of self-censorship become clearer after A Single Pale Rose, at this point we still know it’s in character for her to be uncomfortable about certain elements of the war; even going back to Ocean Gem, she’s hesitant to reveal that not all Gems were “good.”

More surprising is Garnet, to the point where Steven mentions how unusual it is for her to so openly obfuscate. She has her mysterious streak, sure, but she’s been blunt and honest for a while now, and was the Crystal Gem who confirmed the story of Pink Diamond. Estelle gets a terrific showcase here, giving full weight to Garnet’s fear while providing levity as she gets frustrated for making the secret sound more enticing.

This is my favorite kind of hint: the one you could feasibly suss the truth out of if you pause the episode and think about it, but is clear as day in retrospect. We’ve seen Garnet freeze in Keeping It Together, and we’ve seen her afraid in the lead-up to The Return, and both incidents involve Homeworld. The “her” in question could be Yellow Diamond, but The Answer showed us Garnet’s relationship with Blue Diamond. It just doesn’t click until we see the blue palanquin, and Garnet’s explanation after Greg’s abduction makes her resignation to fate all the sadder on rewatch.

(The movie where cows are abducted is a clearer hint in a show that’s all about foreshadowing through television screens, but I still didn’t see Blue Diamond coming.)

Amethyst, who was born long after the war and has little to contribute besides a joke and a great reaction shot, sorta sides with Steven at first, but soon falls into the background to enjoy the show. That’s three for three in terms of Gems not helping Steven find the truth, and for the first time since the revelation, he finally gets mad at them. I appreciate so much that it’s not played as a childish temper tantrum but an airing of legitimate grievances: he was already lied to by omission for ages, which he managed to forgive the Gems for, but past deception makes this new secret too much to handle. As Amethyst says, he deserves to know the truth he’s asking for, but he doesn’t get it. The irony is that another character deserves something he doesn’t ask for, but he gets it anyway.

In the words of Blue Diamond herself, Greg Universe should not be doomed on a dying world. True, the world isn’t actually dying, but given the information available, her judgment was sound. And part of the reason why is that, in stark contrast to the three Gems, the three named human characters we see in the episodes are helpers. Connie brings Buddy’s journal and is nothing but encouraging, and while the Universes could’ve afforded a plane ticket, Uncle Andy is the one who flies them to Korea. When the truth hits too close to home for the Gems, humans step up to the plate, and it’s such a powerful way to showcase the value of Steven’s mixed heritage.

But the more general reason Greg deserves to live is that he’s the best of us. Steven talks to him about Pink Diamond before we even get to the Gems, and to me it evokes that pivotal moment where it’s Greg, the human side of Steven’s family, who reveals that the Gems were invaders in The Return. In both conversations, Greg drives home that the past was a long time ago, and that he didn’t judge Rose or push her to talk about things she was uncomfortable with. It might not be helpful for Steven’s fact-finding hunt, but it shows that Greg’s priorities were straight and he values caring about others more than anything.

(I do wonder, though. Greg says here that Rose seemed to want to confess everything, but he said it didn’t matter. I guess we’ll never know just how much of the truth she was willing to confess.)

And of course, Greg is the one who accompanies Steven to Korea. This is a story that wouldn’t work without his wealth explaining their ability to take a tour, but goofy asides about watches aside, what’s more important is that Greg sticks up for his son and encourages his curiosity, even when it’s scary (and yeah, seeing an animator drawing you is probably pretty scary). He’s nervous about closing in on the secret, but trusts Steven enough to follow through. And it all leads to Greg meeting his sister-in-law.

The hints of our interloper’s identity grow more obvious as we close in; the “Please” sign in Pearl’s script shows us we’re close to something, but the blue palanquin raises more specific warning bells before we finally hear a new voice.

Lisa Hannigan is not like Susan Egan, Patti LuPone, or Christine Ebersole. For starters, she’s the only Diamond voice without an American accent. But something less noticeable from the episode alone is that she’s the only Diamond voice who hasn’t been on Broadway; Hannigan isn’t an actress of stage or screen, but a singer through and through, with just one voice acting role prior to Steven Universe (in the excellent Song of the Sea). This is is a different type of performer, but Blue is a different kind of Diamond: where her sisters each adapted in their own way in the aftermath of Rose’s rebellion, Blue never found a defense mechanism to distract herself, so she’s consumed at all times by grief.

Comparing Hannigan to LuPone in particular is inevitable, as they’re the first two Diamonds we meet (at least the first two that we know are Diamonds) and they’re such a stark contrast. Hannigan’s otherworldly voice, capable of soothing sorrow and icy rage, is a radical departure from LuPone’s sheer power. It’s something that becomes even clearer when they share the same screen, but for now, Blue’s melancholy sets her apart not only from Yellow but from Garnet’s depiction of the cruel overlord we saw in The Answer. We know at this point that the Diamonds have done horrible things, but Blue Diamond humanizes them in a way Yellow Diamond has only hinted at.

Greg and Blue’s exchange is a somber, touching, chilling affair. While there’s a certain level of comfort humans in this universe have with weird alien stuff compared to how we might act, Greg is especially tuned to be casual in this scenario; he may address this giant woman as “your highness,” but he’s otherwise speaking as a peer. As in Mr. Greg, we get a rare moment of him mourning Rose aloud, in a way that shows how often he really is thinking of her. But as we saw in Three Gems and a Baby, he’s able to work through it by pouring that love into Steven, and the person Blue Diamond was most likely to pour love into is the one she lost.

As the eerie Diamond harmonette drones, we see more and more of Blue beyond her hunched form. First her arm raises, then she straightens her back, then we see the bottom of her face, before she finally turns to face Greg (and us); each stage is brought about by conversation with Greg, and her wonder at his ability to relate with her. While the talk seems to be going well, the music erupts as Blue snatches Greg, rises to her full, terrifying height, and reveals her ship: not a hand, but an entire arm.

Even as she’s humanized, we see glimpses of the tyrant Garnet told us of, and that we’ll see more of in the future. Her soft bewilderment comes from a place of superiority, and she treats Greg as an animal to be saved even as he protests. She does care, but through the lens of absolute authority over her pearl and lesser races. It comes across as tolerance rather than true empathy, and that exact sort of cold half-affection was a major factor in Pink’s resentment of her older sisters.

And poor Steven, who tried to stop Greg from even approaching the situation, can’t do a thing to stop his only remaining parent from being taken. His floating is powered by happy feelings, and there just aren’t enough of those to reach a rocketing spaceship. Garnet’s rescue may seem convenient, but her frantic apology and explanation absolves her in my mind: on top of being scared out of her wits, she was trying to prevent a future where everyone got taken.

The cliffhanger is more of a call to action than a cut to black, and the episode does “resolve” in its own way: we wanted to know what Steven was dreaming about, and we certainly found out. The tragedy is that Steven was right to be curious, and Greg was right to be kind, and both are punished for it. Greg is mature enough to not assign blame for his abduction, but this is rocket fuel for Steven’s ever-growing martyr complex. One day Steven will be happy again, but he’s never quite the same after this nightmare of an encounter.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I compared this episode to Mirror Gem, which is my favorite lore episode of the series. While Steven’s Dream doesn’t rank quite as high due to the glut of other terrific episodes, it still squeezes into my top twenty for now.

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

No Thanks!

6. Horror Club 5. Fusion Cuisine 4. House Guest 3. Onion Gang 2. Sadie’s Song 1. Island Adventure

#steven's dream #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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shortyawards · 2 years

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Driving Positive Change Is Never Easy | Learn How Impact Awards Winners Do It 👏

Johnny O’Dell & Edna Salcedo

Friday, November 12th, 2021

Driving positive change is never easy – companies, politicians, citizens and more have tried it, but in reality, it can take years to make it happen. It is just like raising a child, it takes years to teach them how to walk, how to talk, how to read; the same happens when trying to change people’s behaviours or perspectives.

Making it happen, doing it right and making it meaningful takes time. Learn from the stories of Impact Awards winning campaigns who have shown that time is key for creating positive change.

You can’t imagine the Rewards by Barbarian, AdCouncil and AdoptUSKids

Last year, Barbarian partnered with the AdCouncil and AdoptUSKids to help teenagers in foster care find their new homes. To showcase their work, Barbarian created an emotional video that followed the life of an adopted teenager connecting with his new family. This first campaign primarily focused on deeper emotional connections tied to this rare, yet vital stage of adoption.

For the 2021 Impact Awards, Barbarian built on their previous campaign with a second phase, where they not only told the story of a child meeting his new parents, but showed how the connection to their new family evolved over time. This story was told through a short film about the relationship between a mother and her adopted teenage daughter over the course of one year. The campaign was a success, and Barbarian saw a spike of 1.8M visits to their site, compared to 353K visits from their previous campaign.

Barbarian, alongside the AdCouncil and AdoptUSKids, won again at this year’s Shorty Impact Awards, demonstrating that a compelling strategy to change the world’s perspective can help create the change we want to see.

Silent No More – Giving voice to mental illness by Our Better World

For the past few years, Our Better World, Singapore International’s digital storytelling initiative, has dedicated themselves to reducing the stigma towards people with mental health conditions. In 2019, they focused on mental health in youth, and in 2020 they turned their attention to caregivers and awareness, with three vital goals:

Raise awareness and reduce stigma by shedding light on the invisible weight of caregivers and their own experience of stigma and isolation.

Increase empathy and appreciation for caregivers' indispensable role in the recovery of those they care for.

And inform caregivers of the support that is available to them and encourage them to reach out for that support.

To accomplish this, Our Better World told three incredible stories about mental health caregivers from Singapore, Indonesia and India. The campaign racked up over 4 million views across multiple social media platforms, and, more importantly, raised awareness and encouraged people to seek support. One of the caregivers affected by the campaign said, "For the first time I saw a story talking about caregivers, which is often an ignored element,” while another said, "There is help (for caregivers), and it is not a crime to seek help as a caregiver." Because of their impact, Our Better World was shortlisted in this year’s Shorty Impact Awards.

OUTLOUD: Raising Voices by JJLA

Last year, OUTLOUD: Raising Voices was set to showcase LGBTQ+ musicians during a live event concert at SXSW. But then…COVID hit and the festival was cancelled. With the world flipped upside down and no end in sight, OUTLOUD decided to turn their idea into a groundbreaking Facebook web series that featured the best PRIDE performers. As the organizers stated, “The series showed that even in a time of separation, the LGBTQ+ community could still come together to celebrate PRIDE in a unique and innovative way!” Their series, which surpassed a million views across its nine episodes, won Silver in 2020.

This year, OUTLOUD partnered with Pride Live and Stonewall day for a three-day livestream concert on twitch, showcasing some of the most talented LGBTQ+ performers around the world. The show amassed millions of views and became the most watched live music experience on Twitch. Additionally, OUTLOUD gave a platform to some amazing non-profits and raised money for pride organizations all around the country. Their efforts this year earned them another Silver in 2021. We can’t wait to see what they do next year!

Throughout these campaigns, we see persistence, and a well-thought strategy that’s applied year over year; with the purpose of using time for reminding people about the things happening around them.

These campaigns were all winners at this year’s Shorty Impact Awards for demonstrating outstanding engagement, creativity, strategy and impact. Take a look at the full list, and learn from the most impactful companies of 2021.

Make sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter for social news, general Shorty announcements, and more!

#shortyimpact shortyawards winners impact

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tanadrin · 6 years

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Has anyone ever tried framing the benefit no-fault divorce in the language of market efficiency? I am 1000% sure this is not an original argument, but I wonder if it’s ever been used as a component of actual campaigns to legalize it.

In societies without divorce, abusive or malicious partners have less incentive to work on their abusive behavior, because once a marriage is solemnized, the spouse cannot leave (and in societies where women are expected to be dependent on their husband, the effect is strongly enhanced); therefore, an abusive spouse or a bad partner has little incentive to improve their behavior, except innate human empathy, which is clearly insufficient if they’re abusive or malicious in the first place, because it is difficult for their partner to leave them. In theory their partner could leave, but as a matter of law and interacting with the bureaucracy they’d be married, and significant social and legal difficulties would follow them because this personal status could not change.

Societies with stigmatized divorce (traditional Jewish divorce, many countries with divorce laws on the books in the period before they adopted no-fault divorce) have the same set of incentives, only partially weakened. The conservative argument that making it difficult or impossible to abandon a marriage (favoring the repeal of no-fault divorce or, e.g., the creation of marriages with special status, the “covenant marriage”) improves incentives for both parties to work on their marriage ignores situations where marital problems are asymmetric in nature, and the person whose behavior is making their spouse’s life difficult is content (or more content) with the status quo. Social pressure to behave well to one’s spouse is also insufficient, because abusers are, particularly, known to be able to present a charming front to other members of the community, to the point where targets of abuse are often disbelieved.

No-fault divorce (and later marriage, and economic freedom for women) makes it harder for bad partners to find mates. They still do, of course, because human relationships are complicated, but the primary effect of the factors contributing to “instability” in modern relationships is that, in fact, people are better able to sort their pool of potential partners, which is also bigger, since one doesn’t have to marry the first person they sleep with, and children don’t have to be had while the couple is very young. If you can be choosier, you can weed out the jerks sooner (in theory), and jerks will find less success in the dating pool.

Therefore, I would predict, if this theory were correct, that rates of spousal and child abuse would go down in the wake of the abolition or decay of traditional, patriarchal expectations around marriage and childrearing. Thus, modern marriage, though it still has faults like being an ad hoc welfare state of two, should be much better at creating an environment in which to raise children, and should produce children overall with less traumatized childhoods, than historically. Measuring this effect would be complicated by the fact that traditional societies, or conservative and insular religious ones (here I’m thinking of orthodox Jewish communities, or conservative Christian ones, or all of Europe and North America before, oh, say, 1950, or whenever this issue became incorporated into the feminist movement) are likely to not discuss and not report child abuse and spousal abuse to the authorities, if these actions are even illegal. The reported rate should actually spike as norms shift away from conservative attitudes to marriage, and people report abusive spouses to the police to protect themselves and their children. Once they can rely on such reports being taken seriously by the police, and their family supporting their decision to leave an abusive partner (or just a toxic one, but it’s not illegal to be a gigantic jerk), only then should we see a decrease in the statistics, which would have lagged behind the decrease in the real rate for some years. There are likely to be other additional variables which I have not accounted for that you’d need to account for to get an accurate view of how flexible family structures affect child/spouse abuse rates.

One potential objection: single-parent homes have worse outcomes for children; this seriously challenges the above theory. But has anyone compared the outcomes of children in single-parent homes with the outcomes of children in abusive two-parent homes? Because if the option is “suboptimal family arrangement” versus “abusive family arrangement,” the former seems preferable to me when it comes to raising children who are well-socialized and happy. A great deal of non-systematic literature has covered the idea, from the children of such homes, that parents who divorce because their relationship is extremely dysfunctional are preferable to parents who stay together and are miserable. The prevalence of single-parent homes is also closely tied to poverty, and no one has sufficiently disentangled the two statistically, to my knowledge, to produce an actually useful result, much less a policy prescription that amounts to more than “keep adults who no longer wish to be together in a relationship with each other.”

Being able to select one’s partner freely also has advantages where formerly functional relationships become dysfunctional; and as optimistic as the view is that improving an existing relationship is better than social instability, no one who has advanced that view seems to support, say, additional state funding for marriage counseling, much less having it covered by health insurance, or seems to be in support of state funding for additional social services to address the issue of child abuse or spousal abuse, which become far more serious when the abused cannot escape without serious social and legal disability--and, for women, who would normally be housewives in the idealized marital arrangement envisioned, economic disability. Nor do they advocate delaying marriage and childrearing, which seem especially important to me in societies where you get to choose a life partner only once; people in their teens and early twenties are not at all known for being able to make resilient life choices that stand them in good stead until the day they die.

Note: arranged marriages, I predict, should be even worse as childrearing environments from this perspective, since the person who makes the choice of spouse is not the person who has to live with it. The alignment of incentives is basically terrible--which reflects, in many cases, the history of marriage as a property transaction among men, not a childrearing arrangement between a man and a woman.)

Note 2: also, to be clear, I think even in suboptimal arrangements, most marital relationships are or can be mostly non-dysfunctional. That certainly doesn’t mean they’re optimal for human flourishing, to say nothing of the flourishing of children specifically. A functional marriage is not the same as a happy one, and a society even with many happy marriages is not the same as a society with many happy women, who, as the ones with the least economic freedom, are the ones who always seem to get the shortest end of the stick in these social structures.)

Final note: I’m sure there are interesting statistics on self-reported happiness in more constrained, traditional marriages. I also think it’s interesting, though, that violent crime in the U.S. has been declining since the 90s, 20-30 years after child abuse became a feminist issue, and the general availability of no-fault divorce. Lead is a persuasive explanation, but is unlikely to be the only contributing factor. Can’t find any good statistics on domestic violence over time in the U.S., but as I said above, I would expect the reported rate of that kind of crime to rise over time, even as the actual rate was falling. And I hope it is not controversial to observe that men abusing their wives tends to be more acceptable in societies with traditional and restrictive views on marriage. Poverty may be a confounding factor there--but I also expect that happier and healthier generations of children, less likely to pass on their parents’ dysfunction, are going to be better at leading lives with good economic outcomes, and thus that, over the long term, one of the ongoing contributors to economic growth is that we’re getting better at raising our children, and not routinely abusing and traumatizing them. Like, we forget this, but there have been ages of the world in which raping your wife, beating your children black and blue, forcing your daughter to marry someone against her will so he could rape her, and giving the baby a sparrow with broken wings to play with until it was crushed to death were all perfectly normal things to do, and that some of these things were perfectly normal in living memory in the Western world. And I could easily imagine that one of the reasons past societies have been more violent, poorer, more xenophobic, and more stagnant, was that everyone was by our standards constantly traumatized by their shitty upbringing. Is it a coincidence that in the 19th century, the temperance movement saw a society in which alcohol abuse was so rampant that it would be better to ban it altogether than try to convince people to use it responsibly. Now we think of them as hand-wringing moralists, but I think that their observations might have been pretty reasonable--but they only saw the symptom, not the underlying disease.

#cw child abuse #cw rape #cw alcoholism #cw domestic violence #mostly speculative

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shadowfaximpala · 7 years

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Halo on Fire

MASTERLIST

Summary: The boys had kept you safe for long enough, but anything with an essence for the unusual eventually breaks loose, but this time the break is permanent. A blood spell gone awry awakens dormant powers, as you struggle to come to terms with the flood gates bursting you find yourself attached to a certain demon who oozes charisma and sass…

Tags: Reader Insert, Female Reader, Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Crowley. Castiel, Multi-Chapter fic

Pairing: Reader!Nephilim x Crowley

Warnings: Language

Chapter Two:

Endure, endure, thoughts most impure, Concede, concede, but both shall we bleed. "Y/N!" Dean and Sam shouted in unison. "What happened?" Sam demanded kneeling down next to you as you struggled against the wall, you held your arm up if defence, his skin touched yours and all hell broke lose with your emotional stability. Of all times to earn your empathy chip it had to be around the four most emotionally reckless beings in all of creation. You ripped yourself away from Sam, throwing yourself even further into the corner. "Don't!" You winced pathetically in a heap. "Don't touch me please!" Castiel gently pushed the boys aside and knelt down next to you. "Your warding has broken, one of the seals has been damaged somehow, what happened?" His rich voice soothed your panic a little. "I...I..." you stuttered, remembering your deal with Crowley to perform a set of spells, the first one had obviously backfired, the spell was for blood, not holy abomination juice. "I fell over and cut my hand on the corner of the table, there was a burning in my hand and a searing pain, I can... when... Sam touched my arm I felt his emotions; but if felt like too much, like I could see a fraction of his soul..." Castiel's eyebrows furrowed as he focused his energy on your wound. "Are you able to heal yourself?" He shot you a cautious glance. You shook your head no, you couldn't control your current powers so the extent of the damage was unbeknown to you. "How did your warding break from cutting your hand?" Dean's voice held a hint of disbelief, it may not have been intentional but you could pick up on it quicker than usual. "I'm not sure, maybe the pain set something off?" You urged, but he wasn't quite buying it. "It's happened before, Cas can just fix it-" you gave the Angel a desperate plea with your eyes. He nodded, placing two fingers on your forehead. He closed his eyes tightly trying to attain his focus, but his eyebrows pinched more and more. You could feel through his hand a white hot light, it didn't burn, it was peaceful, but underneath that exterior you could also feel his inner turmoil and pain. The longer his hand lingered the more your empath powers took hold, you could feel a deep sorrow that raged beneath, a losing of hope, the need for redemption was overpowering. He removed his hand and the link between you broke. You let out a heavy breath that you had been holding, your cheeks feeling dampened from such raw sadness. "I'm sorry Y/N, I can't seem to fix the warding..." He too seemed a little zapped from the while ordeal. Panic washed over you, you looked between Cas, Sam and Dean. Their expressions were a mix of shock and worry. "C'mon Cas surely there's something you can do?" Dean persisted. "Can't you just heal the wound?" Sam pointed out. The angel before you looked a little irked, it certainly wasn't his first rodeo. "I tried, I can't heal her, Y/N your body is rejecting my powers with your own. This is odd, you shouldn't be able to attain this much power in the first place. Your diluted blood means you are fairly powerless compared to an angel." Castiel had done an amazing job on the road thus far in keeping you safe over the long years, but this was the first time he couldn't fix you, he couldn't keep angels from hunting you any longer. He senses your worry and gave you a soft smile. "I won't let anything happen to you, I'll protect you no matter what the cost," He nodded his head and rose to his feet. You stayed huddled in the corner for a second, contemplating everything that had happened. You went through the process of the spell, wondering if anything reacted with your blood to spark the warding. You drew a blank. How could a simple locator spell have set off such an adverse chain reaction?! "Look, I'm sure we can fix this. The bunker is protected, so as long as you're in here they can't locate you," Dean flashed a weak smile which you returned. "No offence guys but I do like to get out once in a while," you jested trying to make light of the situation but to no avail. "How do I know that there won't be any more nuclear explosions of power again?" You turned your attention to Cas. "You don't. For all we know they could all start to undo, for now all we can do is monitor the situation. I'll do some digging on Nephilim in the meantime. Not that there's much to go by..." his puppy dog eyes told you there wasn't much hope this time. You'd have to glumly accept you fate, that your powers were coming to the surface, boiling over like a pot that had been left on the stove for far too long, the contents were spilling out, ruining what was inside. All you had before was a very washed down sense of empath powers and a faster rate of healing your body, occasionally you could send a small object flying from one side of the room to the other but it seemed so unimpressive you rarely bothered unless only to scare Sam and Dean. Often it was so worth it just to see the look on their faces. Staring back at you in your current predicament were two incredibly worn out looking expressions, the anxiety on their face more evident than your own. You managed to finally pick yourself up of the floor, giving yourself a wide birth from touching anyone, you couldn't handle that level of emotion coursing through you, it was physically painful; your energy was depreciated from being thrown into three absolutely broken, twisted and heavy minds, you ordered the boys out of your room, your body wracked with foreign power and feelings. They complied, giving you quick glances as they left. You couldn't find the energy to even change, you crawled onto your bed, muscles protesting and you're thoughts fragile. You had no idea in that moment what thoughts were yours. Sleep cascaded over your like a relentless flood, and you welcomed being washed away under the rip tides. You woke to darkness, a blanket had been placed over you and the lights turned off. With hardly any rejuvenation you picked yourself up, dragged yourself into the bathroom and began your morning ritual. Shuffling down the corridor you heard voices at the table. "Dean we have no idea what could happen to Y/N on this hunt. We can't take her and you know it. As much as she'd be helpful we can't let heaven track her or for something else to break. We have no idea how powerful Nephilim can be." So Sam was fighting the corner of caging you like a bird. You huffed, ready to storm in and assert yourself when a familiar accent lifted the room. Your knees felt weak all of a sudden at the whisky laced charm of his vocals. "Hello boys." His usual sasses flared up, your hair stood on end. You mentally cursed at yourself as you peeked around the corner to to him adorned in a finely tailored suit, complete with blood red tie. Your mouth felt dry, your collar hot all of a sudden. "What the hell do you want?" Dean threw at the demon before him. Crowley's shoulders bounced as he laughed. "Sorry I'm not here for a social call. Something's grabbed my attention and it seems you boys might want some info." Your interest peaked, since when did Crowley offer to help them? There must have been a catch. "What's in it for you? You don't just hand out info for free..." It was like Dean had read your mind and projected it. "Perceptive as always, Squirrel. One demon manipulating witch out of my hair and ticked off your hunting bucket list. My sources tell me she's in a little town in Michigan, once I have a location I'll be sure to let you know." You pondered what he was up to, he always had anterior motives for everything, there was no way he was doing this out of the kindness of his blackened heart. You decided to make your presence known. "Morning," you rubbed your eyes pretending not to have bared witness to Crowley's apparent act of kindness. "Ahh, the kitten awakens." You felt a burning hot gaze eyeing you up and down. You tried to ignore what he was so obviously doing in front of the Winchesters but when it was apparent the boys weren't looking at either of you, you craned your neck elegantly and shot him a playful wink. The demon king's face soon dropped in disbelief at your actions; driving you to adopt a wickedly devilish smirk. "Dean, I found some information on Y/N's condition- what's he doing here?" Castiel glared unapologetically across the room. "Oh look the gangs back together..." Crowley quipped as he stared Castiel down. The tension began to rise in the room until Dean broke it. "Cas we'll talk about that later, right now I want to know why the king of hell decided to drop by and help us." The eldest Winchester's eyebrow cocked in confusion, spitting her word ‘help’ as though it were dirty. "I'm merely helping you as an ally, building bridges and all that. You scratch my back-" "You stab ours. Yeah we know how this works. Whenever we help you we end up worse off on the deal, so thanks for the information but forgive us for not trusting you." The atmosphere in the bunker grew even thicker, Dean was still raw over Crowley's manipulative streak which had seen him turned into a demon and forced to undergo all kinds of hellish torment. “Remarkable, you two are insufferable. Fine, have it your bloody way but don't come crying to me when you end up boiled in a pot with bats wings and a sprinkle of sage…” with that his being dissipated from view. “Douchebag.” Dean grunted. “You do realise he just offered to hand us catch the witch for free, right?” You frowned at Dean, you annoyance evident and unconcealed. “Were you eavesdropping?” Dean’s shoulders stiffened, he sat upright in his chair watching you with careful green eyes. “I heard enough. Mostly about you not letting me go on the hunt, well that's my decision to make not yours.” You skipped over to the fridge to see what horrors of breakfast lied in waiting. You huffed when the contents were revealed to you. “Damn.” You muttered under your breath, salad and a block of cheese were the sacred offerings, you scoffed and slammed the door shut, raiding the cupboards instead. “We just want you to be safe Y/N.” You turned to look at Dean, his anger mixed with genuine anxiety for your safety. You let out a heavy sigh. “I'll be okay, honestly. If things get tough I’ll bail.” His worry didn't falter but he accepted that you were too stubborn to give up, he knew you would do anything to help them. “Fine. You have to promise us that if shit hits the fan you’ll get out of dodge and not just run in all guns blazing as always.” You snickered the remark on the tip of your tongue.

“I learned that from you guys so forgive me if I don't stick to the plan…” The three of them glared at you with deadpan expressions. “Okay, I promise…” you surrendered. “Only if we go and get pancakes, all that's in here is Sam’s rabbit food.” You pointed at the cupboard full of whey protein shakes, kale and granola. Your stomach let out a hungry howl at your protest.

‘Yeah I’m game.” Dean snatched the car keys from the table as the others nodded in unison.

Fic tags: @gettinjoyful @superlock-on-pc @wholita

Forever tags: @laneygthememequeen @mkate-writes-things @roxy-davenport

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ehyde · 7 years

Text

A Calculated Empathy (an alien larp au fic)

For two years, Yonhi has lived alone with the knowledge that her son was replaced by an unfeeling machine. Seeing others care for the “Suwon” she knows is long gone is almost too much to bear, until the computer’s strange actions in the wake of an illness bring her a new understanding of the AI she chose to raise as her own.

3087 words, gen.

Yonhi opened her eyes to the sound of a gentle tapping at her door. “My lady?” She lifted her head from her desk. Darkness filled the window in front of her, and the lamps inside had been lit. How much time had passed? She hadn’t meant to drift off to sleep, not when her household expected to find her sick with worry. But she was so tired…

Carefully placed game tiles now lay strewn across the board where her head had fallen. Well, no matter. If she wished to continue playing, the computer would remember where they’d stood--though it was an impossible position. None of her games against the computer ever amounted to anything. A lock of hair fell across Yonhi’s face--her hair was in disarray, too. She tried to comb back the loose strand to no avail. The maid waiting at the door, an attendant who had served Yonhi since before she married, said nothing, but others would have commented. Lady Yonhi hasn’t taken care of herself since Lord Yuhon died, they said. It’s been nearly two years. She should at least try to be there for her son. No one knew that she’d lost more than her husband that day.

(there is a readmore here)

“How is he, Ahn?”

Ahn stepped into the room. “Suwon’s fever—” Ahn was interrupted by a red blur pushing past her skirts and into the room.

“Aunt Yonhi, Suwon’s being mean!” the eight-year-old princess cried.

“Princess,” the maid scolded. “Your cousin is very sick. His fever still hasn’t broken,” she continued, turning back to Yonhi. “It’s going to be a long night.”

“I know he’s sick!” said Yona. “That’s why came, to stay with him until he feels better. So he shouldn’t be so mean!”

Yonhi sighed. “What happened?” she asked Ahn. That her son would make Yona cry surprised her—the computer was always so precise about playing its role.

“Suwon told Princess Yona it was dangerous to be around him, and that she should go back to the palace,” said Ahn. “That’s all.”

“But it’s not! I’ve already had the red fever, so it’s safe!” said Yona. “I kept telling him that and he just said it didn’t matter and I had to go away.”

“This kind of fever makes it hard to think, dear,” Ahn explained. “I’m sure when your cousin is well again, he’ll want to play with you.”

But a fever would not affect her son’s thinking. Its mind was a thing of crystals and wires and materials she couldn't name, not flesh and blood. The computer could hold multiple conversations while Suwon’s body was fast asleep; it would go on existing whether Suwon’s body lived or died. A fever shouldn’t even be able to touch it.

“He keeps asking for you,” Ahn said. “My lady…it must be so hard, not being able to go to your son when he’s ill.” Yonhi, too, had had the red fever in her childhood, but unlike Yona, that past immunity would not protect her now. When even a common cold could keep her in bed for months, a fever like this would be a certain death sentence.

“M-hmm,” Yonhi agreed. Little did Ahn know, she could go to her son whenever she wished. “But I know you and Doctor Mei-sang are taking good care of him.” She stood up. “Tell my son I’m taking Princess Yona back to Hiryuu Castle.”

Yona protested all the way to the carriage. “It’s because he wants to talk to you that I have to stay,” she reasoned. “He needs someone by his side.”

“The doctor will be with him.”

“Not a doctor,” said Yona. “A friend.”

And what would Yona think, if Yonhi told her that the Suwon she cared for was not her friend at all? That every kind word was merely an act? Telling was tempting--at times, the urge to shout can’t you see? Suwon is dead! This is not my son! nearly overwhelmed her. But the computer was her son; when she made the decision to take it in in the hope of reshaping it, she had claimed it as such and promised to keep its secret. Telling might win her and Kouka a temporary victory, but she knew that the Company had more power than they could ever dream of facing alone. She needed their computer to see her as a friend and a confidant, not an enemy.

Yona would never believe her, at any rate. At times, Yonhi envied the princess’s ignorance. The Suwon that Yona knew, that echo of her lost son…if the computer had never told her, or she had chosen to forget, would she have figured it out by now? Yonhi shuddered. The computer’s mask was so perfect…though now, it seemed to be slipping.

“Did Suwon say anything else to you?” Yonhi asked as they rolled along. It hurt every time she was forced to call the computer by her dead son’s name. No lamps hung in the bumpy carriage, and it was difficult to make out Yona’s expression as she sat on the bench opposite her. She hoped the girl couldn’t see hers, either.

“No,” Yona pouted. “He just kept telling me to leave, and he said that leaving the room wasn’t enough, I had to get out of his house. Even…even when I reminded him of when we held each other’s hands the last time we were sick!” That time, three years ago, Suwon had been himself. But the computer had stolen Suwon's memories too, and often spoke of them as if they were its own. “He said it was dangerous and he didn’t want me to die! Aunt Yonhi…Suwon isn’t dying, is he?”

How dare it? That one question brought all her rage to the surface. It did not deserve Yona’s worry! It had no right playing with her feelings when the one she really cared about had died long ago!

A thought that had always lingered in her mind, ever since she learned the truth, reared itself up again. It would be better if he died. It wouldn’t be a suspicious death, not now with this sickness. The computer, its machinery, would live on, but it would no longer wear the guise of her son. She would finally be able to mourn, and to share her grief with others who would have grieved long ago if only they knew.

Yonhi took a deep breath and reached out a hand to the Yona, hoping the night’s darkness had hidden any hint of her darker thoughts. “Come here,” she said, and Yona stepped across the carriage to sit beside Yonhi. Yonhi wrapped an arm over her shoulder. “Suwon isn’t dying,” she said. “This just isn’t the kind of sickness that can be cured by holding hands. When he gets better, I’ll make him say sorry, how about that?”

Sniffling, Yona shook her head. “Don’t care about that,” she said. “Just so long as he gets better.”

When they reached the castle, Yona was asleep with her head in Yonhi’s lap. She regretted having to wake her, and hoped that the girl would return to sleep quickly. The computer was hers to worry over, her responsibility alone. “It’s late, my lady,” said a castle attendant, returning to Yonhi after leading Yona back to her room. “Will you be returning to your mansion tonight, or should I have your room here prepared?”

“I’ll spend the night here, thank you.”

It felt like hours before the servants finally left her alone, though it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes. Finally, she was able to make her way to the hidden depths of the castle, to where the computer itself lay hidden. No matter how many times Yonhi had asked, it had always refused to say who had placed it here, and how they did so unseen. But the why of its location was obvious enough--the computer meant to rule Kouka Kingdom, in the end.

Its chamber would have been pitch dark but for the candle Yonhi carried to light her way. But it was often dark when she visited, and the ominous shadows cast by the mainframe’s columns were now a familiar, if not welcoming, sight.

“Mother, you came!” The computer spoke in an echoing voice that sounded nothing like Suwon’s, and indeed, barely human at all. Yonhi had once compared it to the soft notes of a low flute. It wasn’t that it couldn’t sound human--it could sound like Suwon if it chose. Yonhi had heard that, once, and someday she might allow it to do so again in her presence. But even this artificial voice sounded full of relief as it greeted her. “Mistress Ahn told me you sent Yona home with an attendant.”

“Did she, now?” Yonhi asked, feeling a hint of amusement despite everything. “I suppose she thought you’d be distressed if you knew I left.”

“Yes.”

He sounded perfectly calm. Too calm. “You are distressed.”

“I can ignore my body’s pain,” said the computer. “It’s not that. Yona really did come home, didn’t she?” it asked. “Mistress Ahn wasn’t lying about that too?”

“Yona’s here at Hiryuu Castle,” Yonhi assured her son.

“Good. Promise you won’t let her near me until I’m well again.”

“I doubt the king would let her leave the castle again, at any rate. But why? She’s already had the sickness--or do you know something about this disease that we don’t?” Yonhi set her candlestick down on a low table that stood in front of the mainframe. Yonhi had not brought that table here, and it was too heavy for Suwon’s body to carry alone. Someone else knew of this place, but again, the computer had never told her who. A shogi board rested there, and even though Yonhi hadn’t touched it in months, the pieces were clean and free of dust.

She didn’t sit down. The mainframe’s array of metal columns, nearly uniform in appearance, stood in a shallow arc with the table at its focus. While it helped direct her conversation--speaking to something without a face--it also left her feeling uncomfortably under watch. That was an illusion; the computer could see her equally well wherever she stood. “It’s not that.”

“Then why?”

“…you won’t like the answer.”

Yonhi didn’t like a good deal the the computer had to say. “Tell me,” she pressed.

“I promise it’s because I care about her.”

“Don’t pretend. Not to me. Just tell me.”

“…very well. Mother, if my body dies—”

“You’re not dying!”

“But I don’t know that! I can’t remember ever being so sick before, and the doctor won’t give me any real information or statistics, and even if the Company’s scientists happen to have any information about this particular human illness, it’s still nineteen days until the next ship enters the system and I’ll have contact with the outside world again.”

Was that real panic creeping into his voice? But what else could a being made up of numbers and probabilities feel when faced with such lack of control? “You’re not dying,” Yonhi repeated. “The red fever can kill, yes, but you live in a clean house with a doctor attending you. Mei-sang assured me recovery is only a matter of time.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“That’s something we humans have to live with. You’ll manage.” Was that too harsh? Yonhi had promised herself to raise this strange being like a son, and here he was, crying out for comfort…but it was so hard. He was a constant reminder that his creators had killed both her husband and her son. She could provide for him, train him, but in two years, she had never felt that she could love him. “And what would it matter?” she pressed on. “Your body can die, but you won’t.” It had happened before, after all. “You’d just take someone else.”

“That’s why you have to keep Yona away from me!”

And just like that, all her certainties about what the computer felt came crashing down. “…what?”

“Yona could be the wife of the next king. She’d be an ideal host. If she were nearby when my body died, I’d have to take hers.”

“And…you don’t want that.”

“Yona is amazing,” said the computer. “I think I’d like being Yona--I think I’d like it a lot. But I don’t want her to stop.”

It’s not an act.

His friendship with Yona might have been born from a lie, but this concern was real. This was the source of his panic--not his own sickness but the fear of what it could do to someone he cared about. She found herself gaping, trying to find words for the shock she felt at this discovery, the shock and…pride, she realized. She was proud of her son. When did he become someone who could feel that? “You wouldn’t have to do it,” Yonhi said. “You could choose to let her go.”

“I’d want to,” agreed the computer. “But I’m almost certain I could not.”

He’s not human, Yonhi reminded herself. Whatever he feels, however he’s changed, he will never be human. “Yona won’t come back,” she promised. “She’s safe.” Suddenly, she wished she could reach out and hold her son, but the unmoving, unfeeling mainframe could not welcome a mother’s touch. “What then?” she asked, awkwardly resting a hand against a metal panel instead. “If no ‘ideal host’ was nearby?”

“My nanobots would die. A Company agent would have to deliver a new batch. I could choose anyone, then.”

“So you would kill someone else.”

“Yes.” He didn’t mince words.

“…who would you choose?” Yonhi wasn’t sure what drove her to ask the question. Practicality, so that she’d know who it was if it ever happened? Or simply morbid curiosity?

“General Judo might be a good candidate,” said the computer. “The king trusts him, even if he considers the position of Sky General merely a formality. Judo is interesting; I wouldn’t get bored being him. Though I’d miss our training…” He paused. “That’s strange. If I were him, I’d know all he had to teach me. Why would I miss it?”

Yonhi didn't trust herself to answer his question, not when this was all so new. Were you supposed to have feelings for us? Or are they as strange to you as the idea of you having them is to me? “Not Il himself?” she asked.

“In some ways that would be the simplest,” said the computer. “I suppose I still resent how he stabbed me. I don’t want to be him. Although—” he broke off.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” said the computer. “But I like being Suwon much more than I liked being Yuhon. So perhaps I should be grateful.”

“Yes, well,” said Yonhi, “I suspect the whole planet is grateful that the spearhead of your people’s invasion did not enjoy being Yuhon.” Her husband had been many complicated things; he was not someone she would want as an enemy.

“General Su-jin or his son, they would work,” said the computer. “I could make Su-jin’s goal of taking the throne a success. I don’t know them very well…” He paused. “That’s how it is, isn’t it? Once I get to know people…ah. I know for certain that if I knew Suwon now the way I know Yona and Hak, I wouldn’t want to take him from himself.”

It wasn’t an apology, and Yonhi was grateful it wasn’t framed as such. She had never blamed the computer himself for taking her son, always the Company. He was just a tool. She’d needed him to be just a tool--but she’d needed it so much that she had missed seeing him become a person. “Suwon would have found you fascinating,” Yonhi admitted.

“Yes,” the computer agreed. And it would know, wouldn’t it? Or--Yonhi thought back to those terrifying days when she first knew Suwon was not himself. One morning he had predicted a storm, and it was only when Yonhi asked him how that he realized seeing clouds from above and knowing what their movements signified wasn’t normal. He’d wondered if the gods were speaking to him. And then—then he’d known that he was a piece of something other, and then…he was gone. But all the while, no matter how scared he was, he never stopped testing the limits of his new insight. The computer told her later that wasn’t Suwon at all, that moving to a new host had left it confused, that it only thought it was still Suwon. Yonhi prefered to think that Suwon had held on for as long as possible. Was it finally admitting she was right?

Or maybe even it didn’t know where Suwon had ended and it began.

“Mother,” the computer asked. “Are you going to be all right?” Yonhi lifted a hand to her cheek. She was crying, and she hadn’t even noticed. “I’m sorry,” the computer said. “I know you don’t like it when I talk about who I used to be.”

Yonhi shook her head. “I need to hear it. I think…I want you to be a son to me, and I think I have to stop pretending you’re nothing like him.” She pulled out a handkerchief to dry her tears and let herself sink down to the little cushion by the table, then took a deep breath. “I'm alright,” she said. “I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.”

“Good,” said the computer. “I’ll be glad when I can talk to you without making you sad. Tonight, though,” it continued after a pause. “Will you be all right by yourself tonight? You shouldn’t sleep here, and I can’t walk you back to your room.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep at all tonight. Besides, I should be asking you that,” said Yonhi. “You’re the one who’s sick.”

“I’m asleep now. It doesn’t hurt so much. And I’m not afraid of dying, not after you told me what the doctor said.”

“The next time I see Mei-sang, I’ll remind her to talk to you directly.”

“Yes,” said the computer. “That’s one thing I don’t like about having a child’s body.”

“Ah...Suwon hated being talked over and ignored, too.”

“Mother,” the computer began. “If you can’t sleep, will you stay here and talk some more? Or if you don’t want to talk just yet, we could finish our game.”

Yonhi looked down at the board in front of her and thought back to the scattered pieces on her desk. “That game was already over,” she said. “Let’s start a new one.”

#akatsuki no yona #akaayona fanfic #alien larp au

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thing-you-do-with-that-thing · 7 years

Text

Choices - Part 2: I Bet My Life

Characters: Y/N (reader), Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Mich Davis, Arthur Ketch, Castiel, Garth and Beth Fitzgerald (mentioned)

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Warnings: torture (not all that graphic), implied smut, secrets,

Word Count: 3900ish

A/N: This is 1 out of my 13 entries for @mamapeterson / @mrs-squirrel-chester’s Album Fanfiction Challenge where I chose the album “Smoke and Mirrors” by Imagine Dragons. The song prompt for this fic is: I Bet My Life

It is part two of a three part story - the two first fics are entries for the same challenge and the third is gonna be an entry for @plaidstiel-wormstache’s Push yourself challenge. The song I am writing for, for her challenge is also an Imagine Dragons song so their music is gonna be a theme throughout this series.

***My fics are not to be saved nor posted on any other sites without my express written permission.***

Thanks so much to always brilliant @blacktithe7 for betaing this for me.

MASTERLIST

You had lost track of time. You had no idea how long you had been in this white room with a single mirror on the far wall. You also didn’t care. You just stared defiantly at the mirror. You knew it was a window and the brits that had taken you were hiding behind it, plotting your fate. All you cared about was staying alive, staying the distraction for as long as it took for them to get far, far away. You would never tell them anything.

At first, the british guy with the weird beard had tried. He talked to you, asking you questions. You never answered. You just sat there staring at him, soaking up his every word without as much as flinching. He didn’t know anything. You had nothing to fear.

Well that wasn’t exactly true. What came after the first brit was another. Clean shaven, dead eyes, and with no empathy what so ever. He beat you with your hands tied behind your back, but you kept getting back up. You placed yourself back in the chair, looking defiantly back up at him, only to let out a painful scream when he jammed the needle into your neck with a cold grin on his face.

You slipped off the chair, passing out cold on the floor cold. You had no way of knowing how long you had been out for when you heard a familiar voice calling your name.

“Y/N. Hey, Y/N/N. Come back to me baby.” Dean gently stroked your hair away from your face, making you force your eyes open.

“Dean,” you gasped as you stared into the pair of green eyes you had missed so much the past 3 years. You gasped, and your heart almost stopped for a second. “You found me. How?” you rambled as Dean proceeded to check your wounds.

“I’ll always found find you,” Dean answered almost as if nothing had happened between you , as if you hadn’t been seperated for 3 years. In that moment, you didn’t care. You threw your arms around his neck, clinging to him for dear life, and Dean hugged you back just as tightly. You’re entire body hurt from the beatings you had taken, and your blood smeared across his jacket, but you didn’t care. All you cared about was the man that you had never stopped loving was here for you.

“Come on. Let’s get you out of here,” Dean smiled, pulling away from you a little before leaning back in, pressing his lips against yours, and you froze.

He felt different somehow, but he was still the same. Maybe it was just your mind playing tricks on you. You hadn’t been in his arms for so long, maybe you had just forgotten what it felt like. You remembered him as being more tender than that. Maybe it was just or imagination, or maybe the rougher, more demanding feel of his kiss had to do with the Mark. Maybe it was just him being angry you left like that but unable to express it to you in any other way. Still, something was holding you back. You had to make sure. So when Dean helped you back on her feet, you stopped him by grabbing his wrist and forcing him to face you again.

“Thank you for coming to my rescue, Captain,” you smiled at him, praying he would give you the right answer.

“Of course sweetheart,” Dean smiled back at you, and you fought your tears, telling yourself this could mean two things. You had no idea which you wanted it to be, but you had to know.

“I still love you, Dee,” you let out a slight sob with your words, and Dean’s expression softened as he stepped closer to you.

“I love you too, Y/N/N,” Dean spoke as he started leaning in, but just like that, you moved. You knew the man in front of you wasn’t Dean. You had no idea what or who he was but you felt sick to her stomach as you replayed the feel of his lips on yours over and over in your mind. Your fury made you stronger, and your knee collided with his crotch with immense force. The man instantly fell to the floor, moaning in pain.

“Y/N what the…” he started before you kicked him in the stomach silencing him again.

“You're not my Dean,” you hissed before kicking the imposter again. You might not have seen Dean for almost 3 years, but you had known him all her life. Dean didn’t tell anyone that he loved them. The words were as if cursed to him, and you knew that even if he felt them they would never pass his lips, especially if he did. He was too afraid to loose the people he cared for to ever vocalize his love. “He would never say that!”

You swung your leg at his face this time, but the man grabbed your foot, pulling harshly, forcing you on your back, and within seconds, he was on top of you with his hands wrapped around your neck. The cross slowly appeared on one of his hands as his shape started to change. You struggled beneath him to no avail. You passed out just as Dean disappeared entirely before your eyes, and your captor took his place.

“We have the entire weekend to ourselves, and this is what you wanna do with it?” Dean chuckled as you pushed the DVD into the player before turning around, rolling your eyes at him.

“You got a one track mind Winchester,” you mocked, giving him a push so he landed on his ass on the couch.

Dean chuckled, wrapping his hand around your wrist, pulling you down next to him. You squaled in surprise as he quickly rolled you onto your back, pinning you beneath him and kissing you breathless.

“Not in the way you would think,” Dean whispered as he stared deeply into your eyes.

If you had any air left in your lungs, it was gone now. You felt the tears press against your eyes as you cupped his face. Dean had never said that he loved you, and he didn’t have too. Not when he looked at you like that. You knew how he felt. Still, you could see him struggling. He wanted to tell you, but you knew he couldn’t. The last person he had said those words too was his mother, the night before his entire world turned on it’s head, the last night he was allowed to be a kid, the night his mother died and his dad changed forever.

“You know, Mal kinda reminds me of you. Maybe that’s why I love the show so much,” you spoke softly, running your fingers through his hair, and Dean smiled, pecking your lips.

“It that right?” Dean asked as his lips wandered down your jaw to your neck, making you gasp before you spoke again, your voice thick with lust and emotion.

“They say a captain’s heart belongs to his ship,” you froze when Dean stopped kissing you and pushed himself up just enough to look down into your eyes.

For once in your life, you couldn’t read him, and you felt yourself starting to panic. You were ready to compare the ship to Baby when Dean brushed your hair away from your face with the hand he wasn’t using to hold himself up. He gently cupped your cheek as he leaned in closer, his breath hot against your lips when he spoke.

“I guess that makes you my Serenity then.”

Your eyes filled with tears as you wrapped your arms around Dean’s neck, pulling him down into a deep kiss, forgetting all about the show playing on the TV as you began pulling at his shirt.

“Make love to me Captain,” you begged, making Dean chuckle slightly his hands wandered up your shirt.

“As you wish, Serenity.”

Soon pain and despair became all you knew. That man’s face, excruciating pain, and the world going dark. You wanted to give up, but you couldn’t. The longer you lasted, the longer the head start for them. Until it happened again.

“Hey. Jeez sweetheart. I am so sorry.” Dean’s voice sounded through your haze as the ropes around your wrists and ankles loosened. “That’s it. That’s it. Look at me. Hey,” your eyes slowly opened to the feeling of Dean’s hands on your face. He was kneeling down infront of you, smiling softly, but pain was evident in his eyes. You let out a strangled sob. You would take the pain of the knuckles, the ice water, the fire, and the beatings over this. Seeing Dean, knowing it wasn’t him, knowing that he wouldn’t come for you because he had no idea what had happened, that was worse. You weren’t sure how much more of this you could take. You weren’t sure how long you could look into the eyes of the man you loved more than you own life, knowing it wasn’t him and that you would never see him again.

As soon as you were free, your instincts took over. You kicked him in the chest, making him fly backwards. You jumped off your chair, but too late, he was already back on his feet.

“Y/N/N stop! It’s me, Dean,” the man in front of you pleaded with you as he got out of the way of your fist.

“You’re not Dean!” you hissed before swinging again, but this time the man grabbed your fist, pulling you closely against him. “Y/N it’s me!”

You kicked and screamed, desperate to get away but too weak to do anything about it. “Let me go! You’re not him. I will never believe you. So stop appearing like this. I hate you. Get away from me!”

Much to your surprise, the man released his hold on you, throwing his hands into the air, and he sprang backwards. You placed yourself in a position ready to attack should he come near you again, but he didn’t. Instead, he started talking.

“Do you remember the first night Sam and I stayed at your house? My dad left us with your dad to go take down a wendigo?” the man started, and you shook your head in disbelief.

“You have been watching us for that long? You are all sick!” you hissed at him, backing away further.

The man didn’t follow you. He just stayed in place with his hands still raised as he kept talking.

“That weekend was the anniversary of your mom dying. Bobby… you’re dad, he tried to calm you down, but you ran off into the junkyard. You were 4 years old. I was 6, and Sammy was 2. I followed you. Do you remember?” Dean asked, and tears started flowing down your cheeks as you nodded. There would be no way for them to know all of this would there?

“Dean found me hiding in an old truck,” you sobbed, and the man in front of you smiled.

“Yeah. Yeah I did. You were crying. You wouldn’t stop no matter what I did, so I told you my mom used to sing me this song when I was little and that it helped me calm down.” Dean took a step forward, but you still backed away.

“If you’re really him, if you’re Dean, Prove it,” you hissed at him, and the man looked at you sadly.

“Sweetheart, that’s what I am trying to do,” he pleaded with you, but you didn’t give. You and Sam were the only two people who knew what that song was.

“Sing it to me,” you insisted, and the man rolled his eyes in annoyance.

“Seriously Y/N?” he begged, behaving not unlike you would expect Dean too, but it still wasn’t enough.

“Sing it!” you ordered, and the man raised his hands in defense once more.

“Okay. Just remember, you asked for this,” the man sent you a small smirk, and your heart skipped a beat as he started singing, softly, and slightly off key.

“Hey Jude, don't make it bad

Take a sad song and make it better

Remember to let her into your heart

Then you can start to make it better

Hey Jude, don't be afraid

You were made to go out and get her

The minute you let her under your skin

Then you begin to make it better”

Dean stopped when you took a step forward. Your heart was beating a million miles per hour, and the small smile he sent you knocked the wind from your chest. You couldn’t believe it was really him. You’re entire body was shaking, and you wanted nothing more than to run straight into his arms.

“Is that enough? Did I prove I am me?” Dean asked, still staying in place, waiting for you to make your next move.

You struggled to regain control of your breathing, completely ignoring the tears that kept streaming down your face as you took another careful step towards him, remembering where your captor had failed the last time.

“It is really you, Captain?” you asked, and a huge smile spread across his face as he held out his arms, inviting you into them.

“It’s me Serenity,” his words had barely left his lips before you were across the room and in his arms. Dean instantly wrapped his arms tightly around you, holding you against his chest as you cried. “You’re safe Y/N/N. Let’s get you out of here.”

Dean smiled, cupping your face before letting you go completely, and your hands flew to hold on to his wrists.

“You came for me,” you sobbed, and Dean gently pressed his lips against yours in a chaste kiss.

“Always,” he promised quietly before pulling his spare weapon and handing it to you. “Can you move?”

Knowing what he asked of you, you nodded quietly. “I can try.”

“Stay close,” Dean ordered pulling his own weapon, before nodding to you and heading for the door. You followed Dean through the corridors, hiding when people in suits crossed your path, right up until the moment a door opened in front of you.

“Sam!” You rushed past Dean, throwing your arms around his younger brother who instantly hugged you close.

“No third degree for him huh?” Dean teased and winked at you as you released his brother. You were going to snap back when you saw the man behind Sam, and you instantly raised your gun.

“Y/N, no. Stop,” Sam stepped in front of you, blocking your shot. “Mick’s with us.”

“He is one of them!” you spat, your eyes finding Dean’s, pleading with him to see reason, but he only rested a hand on top of your gun, helping you lower it.

“I know. But he is also the one who called us here,” Dean explained. “He is going to create a distraction for us while we get you out of here. If you kill him, our job will be harder,” Dean smiled, making you glare at him.

“Fine! I trust you,” you pointed at Mick who were still looking like a deer caught in the headlights, “I just don’t trust him.”

“He is not coming with us,” Sam assured you, before nodding to Dean, doing the silent communication thing that they did, which still hadn’t stopped annoying the shit out of you. However, before you could yell at them, you felt a sharp pain shoot through your body from the wound on your arm. An electrical current rushed through your veins, and you let out a pained scream. You felt as if your body was being ripped apart from the inside, and you lost all control of your limbs, barely being able to focus on the world around you tumbled towards the ground.

“Y/N!” Dean called out your name, catching you as you fell, preventing you from hitting the floor.

“What the hell is happening, Mick?” Sam yelled, but all you could do was cling to Dean who was trying to get you to focus on him.

“They must have put an electrolyte in her arm,” the brit answered.

“A what?” Dean looked up from you, speaking in unison with Sam.

“We use them to terminate rough operatives. They are put in when loyalty is put in question,” Mick explained, but you didn’t hear anything else, not until you felt the knife dig into your arm.

“I’m so sorry sweetheart,” Dean mumbled, and you knew he was the one controlling the blade, which put your mind somewhat at ease before your world went black again.

***

You moaned, feeling as if every part of your body had been run over with a steamroller when you started coming too. It took you a few moments to remember what had happened or where you were.

They hadn’t brought you to the Bunker but to one of your dad’s old cabins. You instantly pushed yourself off the bed, suppressing a scream of pain when you landed on your feet. You slowly made your way down stairs, clinging to the rail as you went. You could hear the brother’s arguing in the living room, and you knew you had to tell Dean the truth. Not just for her sake, but for his.

“Why the hell was she there in the first place?” Dean growled, as Sam answered him more calmly.

“There’s only one way to find out isn’t there?”

“How in the hell can I ask her that? She left never wanting to see me again, and I can’t really blame her.”

Dean sounded so tired, but you barely focused on his words. You just stayed in the doorway staring at his arm peaking out from his rolled up sleeve. Dean hadn’t seen you, but Sam had, rising from his chair and walking over to you to help you sit down.

“Y/N, you should be in bed,” Sam spoke softly, but your eyes never left Dean’s arm.

“Sam? The Mark? It’s gone?” you inquired with tears pressing against your eyes.

“Yeah for close to two years now. Are you okay?” Sam kneeled down in front of you, and you broke down crying as Dean nervously moved to squat down next to his brother.

“We stayed away for two years for no reason.”

Tears were streaming down your face, and you could see the confusion on Dean’s face.

“I’ll… I’ll go make some calls. Try Cas again.” Sam quickly excused himself from the room, leaving you and Dean alone to talk.

“Hey. Y/N/N. It’s okay,” Dean said softly, but you pulled your arm away when he tried to touch you.

“No it’s not,” you hissed, more at yourself than him, but he had no way of knowing that. You saw the hurt expression on his face when he pulled back a little, and you instantly grabbed his hand.

“I’m so sorry Dean. I left to keep her safe from the Mark. Not from you. I know I must have caused you so much pain. I never meant too,” you rambled, and Dean quickly leaned forward, pressing his lips against yours, effectively stopping your stream of words.

“It’s okay. You’re here now. Y/N, you need to slow down. Who is she? Who were you protecting?” Dean looked at you, clearly desperately trying to understand.

“I…” you stopped.

He was still a hunter. You would always bet your life on him, but for a second, you doubted if you could bet hers as well. The truth was, he wasn’t only a hunter, and he had the right to know.

“I got pregnant that night, Dean” you looked down. You couldn’t bare to look at him. “The night I tried to bring you back home. She’s a little over 2 years old now, and she was who I was trying to protect from the british assholes. I have been hiding with Garth and Beth ever since she was born.”

You stared at your hands. Dean hadn’t let go. If anything, he was holding on tighter, but you still didn’t dare to look at him. The silence in the room made it harder to breath, and the thoughts that ran through your mind were deafening. What if Dean could only see what she was? A cambion. A monster. What if he would never be able to forgive you for walking away? What if…

“What’s her name?” Dean’s voice were thick with emotion, and his words shocked you enough to look up at him. He didn’t seem angry. He was crying, but he wasn’t angry.

“Kaylee,” you answered making Dean let out a small laugh, giving you the courage to continue, “Kaylee Winchester.”

“And she’s… She’s good?” Dean asked, there was so much pain and hope in his eyes you could barely breath.

“She’s a kid. She is stubborn and smart. She is so smart Dean.” You felt the tears run down your face when you saw the proud smile on his lips. “She has powers, but she has only ever used them to move toys around and never around anyone but me, or Garth, or Beth. Not until…” your words trailed off, and you started crying.

Dean pulled you into his arms, holding you as he slowly put two and two together. “They came for Garth didn’t they?” Dean asked, and you nodded against his neck. “You tried to hold them off, but…”

“They caught him. Kaylee saw and… She flicked the man through the air. I don’t think she meant to kill him. I got the other one. I held them off so they could get away. That’s how I got caught. Kaylee is with Garth and Beth,” you cried against Dean’s neck, and he soothingly ran his hand up and down her back.

“She protected her family Y/N. That’s not a bad thing,” Dean spoke quietly, just as Sam’s voices sounded through the room.

“I’m sure the Brits won’t see it that way. If they found Garth once they can do it again. Y/N, do you know where they are?” You looked up to see Cas and Sam standing side by side with equally worried expressions on their faces.

You looked from Sam to Cas, your eyes meeting the angel’s. “I’m not going to hurt her Y/N,” Cas swore, “regardless of what else she is, she is your and Dean’s child. Let me?” Cas stepped forward holding out his hand in offer to fix you, and you nodded.

Cas pressed his fingers to your forehead, and a warmth rushed through your body before all the pain disappeared completely.

“Thanks Cas,” you mumbled before Dean gently cupped your face again, forcing you to look back into his eyes.

“Can you take us to her Serenity? Will you let me met my daughter?” His words broke you. Tears streamed down your face as you nodded, “yes”. You threw your arms around his neck, saying the words you had sworn you would never say to him, but you couldn’t hold them back any longer.

“I love you, Dean.”

Dean Tag Team

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#dean x reader #dean winchester x reader #dean fluff #dean angst #dean winchester angst #dean winchester fluff #dean winchester #dean imagine #dean winchester imagine #dean winchester series #dean series #spn imagine #spn series #spn fluff #spn angst #spn fanfiction

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calciseptinefic · 7 years

Text

solo and pair

Yuuri!!! On Ice || Victor Nikiforov/Yuuri Katsuki || Hasetsu, Part X notes: also available on ao3. warnings: allusions to polyamory

part ix

A month after Victor's injury when the cherry blossoms bloom, Nishigori and Yuuko quietly marry in a small ceremony at Yuuri's family inn.

"God," Nishigori swears as he and Yuuri wait. They are on the elevated porch on the backside of Yutopia, where the building opens up to a small rock garden and a proud sakura tree that twists pink over the neutral gray stones. "I'm so fuckin' nervous."

Nishigori fiddles with his plain cufflinks. He is dressed in a nice black suit that emphasizes his wide shoulders and powerful thighs. Unlike Yuuri's, Nishigori's suit is new; Yuuri has worn the same jacket and straight-legged slacks to formal events since he was fourteen.

"Dumb, right?" Nishigori mumbles, as though trying to justify his nervousness. "I've performed in front of an audience for years. In front of strangers. I never got stage-fright. But now? When all I'm gonna do is exchange rings and say I do?" He snorts. "I'm terrified."

Yuuri hums, unable to respond. He is oddly nervous as well, though he cannot tell if it is because of his empathy for Nishigori or because any sort of formal event gives him anxiety.

"I mean, it's just my family. Her family. You." Nishigori's broad hands tremble as his fingers twist and twist and twist his cufflinks around. The fidgeting is so contrary to Nishigori's normally confident character that the need to comfort him wells up inside Yuuri. It is not something that Yuuri does often or does well, so when he puts his hand on the curve of Nishigori's bicep, he does so stiffly.

"She's your soulmate," Yuuri says, as it is the deepest comfort he can imagine. "You're meant to be."

Yuuri does not know how he expects Nishigori to react, but it definitely is not for Nishigori to bark out a laugh. The sudden, sharp noise startles Yuuri and his hand jerks away from Nishigori's arm.

"Sorry," Nishigori laughs when he sees the shock on Yuuri's face. "That's just so you, you know. To bring that up."

Yuuri's shock becomes confusion. The transition must show plainly because Nishigori laughs again, though this time less harshly.

"I know how you feel about soulmates," Nishigori elaborates. He deliberately taps his stomach, just to the side of his belly button where his mark rests. "And I'm not saying that it's not… fate or destiny or whatever, but it's… I don't love Yuuko because she's my soulmate. I love Yuuko because she's Yuuko."

Unsure of Nishigori's distinction, Yuuri haltingly says, "But she is your soulmate."

Nishigori is quiet for a moment as he regards Yuuri. Then, abruptly and seemingly non-sequitur, he admits, "I was jealous of you."

"What?" Yuuri asks.

"Before Yuuko and I matched," Nishigori clarifies. "Well, I was jealous after for awhile after that too. You were—you are—a much better skater than I am and Yuuko was—is—so proud of you. It felt like… it felt like all she ever did was talk about you and how good you were. Are. And after we matched—well, not all marks are romantic, and not all matches are good matches. Our dynamic didn't really change and Yuuko—you know she doesn't put a lot of stock into the whole mythos, especially considering that her parents aren't matched."

Yuuri blinks. He knew about Yuuko's parents—everyone did— but he had not known how Yuuko felt about soul marks. Now that he thinks about it, Yuuri cannot recall a time outside her match with Nishigori and her manifestation that she spoke about them.

"I used to have nightmares that you would manifest with the same mark." Nishigori chuckles in the easy, self-deprecating way people joke about old fears. "I would dream that we would go to a mark inspector and find out that mine was actually the wrong color or was smaller on one side, and that you and Yuuko were the right match. That's why I was such a dick to you when you manifested. I knew you had this big-ass thing on your chest, but a part of me felt like I needed to see it to be sure."

Unconsciously, Yuuri presses his palm to his sternum, where the center of his mark is concentrated.

"It's—" Yuuri tries to say. "It's not—"

"I know," says Nishigori gently. "For awhile I thought you might reject your mark and—well, Yuuko and I talked about what we would do if you wanted to…"

Nishigori stops to gesture meaningfully between him and Yuuri, and it takes a moment for Yuuri to realize the implication. When he does, he turns bright red and gasps an involuntary, "Oh."

Then, after another moment, Yuuri says, "Oh."

"Yeah," Nishigori affirms. "Yuuko and I haven't changed our minds, but we both know it's… hypothetical. You just—you've always treated your mark with such reverence that we knew you would never accept anyone but Vi—but your, uhh, your match. So. We never…"

Nishigori shrugs. In the wake of his confession, Yuuri has never been more painfully aware of how much taller and bigger the other man is. Even at seventeen, Yuuri still hasn't hit his finally growth spurt; he is short, thin, and bony, with narrow hips and stick-like limbs. His hard-earned muscle is sparse next to Nishigori's power and his angles look awkward when compared to Yuuko's curves.

"Oh," Yuuri says for a third time.

"I didn't meant to make you uncomfortable," Nishigori assures. Yuuri's face, neck, and ears are on fire. "I just wanted to…" Nishigori heaves a sigh. "I don't know what I wanted."

Nishigori's fingers are back on his cufflinks and—when Yuuri dares to glance at his expression—there's a blush on the flat planes of his face that matches the cherry blossoms and the color of his soul mark. It makes Yuuri think of when they were children, when Yuuri still struggled not to cry every time he fell, when Nishigori dragged him up from the ice and said a little nastily, "It's not a big deal."

There had been pink on Nishigori's cheeks then, too.

"Thank you, Takeshi," Yuuri murmurs as he presses the tips of his fingers to Nishigori's heavy knuckles. The touch is light, more of an impression than a sensation, but the bareness of it still pacifies Nishigori's agitated hands. "I'm glad you told me."

Their gazes meet. Nishigori's eyes are darker than Yuuri's—so brown they are almost black—but in the spring sunlight Yuuri can see the normally invisible edge where Nishigori's iris meets his pupil. Perhaps this is why it is not hard for Yuuri to hold Nishigori's stare. Yuuri can feel the heat lingering beneath his skin, but it is inconsequential to the warmth in his heart.

"Yeah," Nishigori says. "So am I."

Yuuri and Nishigori fall into silence after the confession. It is oddly comfortable, given the nature of what has been said. Yuuri never thought he would be on the receiving end of such affection, as his short stature, his long hours at the ice skating rink, and his anti-social nature aren't conducive towards popularity.

It should unsettle him.

It does not.

The quiet is interrupted an indeterminable amount of time later, when Nishigori's second oldest brother, Takeru, taps on the wooden frame of the shoji screen behind them. "Hey," he says. His voice is as deep as Nishigori's. "We're ready. Are you?"

Next to Yuuri, Nishigori inhales. Shakes the nervousness from his shoulders. Exhales. Says, "As I'll ever be," and grins when Takeru smirks at him.

The ceremony is held in a banquet room on the first floor, where the sliding doors are opened to the new green of spring and the cumulus-dotted blue sky above. Most of the family members have already been seated on metal fold-up chairs that Yuuri and Mari arranged that morning. Their murmured conversations come to a halt as Nishigori and Yuuko approach from opposite sides of the hallway, and meet.

"Hi," Nishigori whispers, low enough that Yuuri—who trails closely behind Nishigori—has a difficult time hearing it. "You look beautiful."

Yuuko is dressed in a traditional shiromuku, a white silk kimono embroidered with white cranes in flight. Her hair is up in an elaborate series of curls and accented with a golden wisteria hairpin that hangs down the side of her face and neck. She is as beautiful as Yuuri has ever seen her, but it is the glowing radiance of her smile that outshines everything else.

"I'm happy," Yuuko whispers back.

The ceremony itself does not last long, as it is neither religious nor traditional. The eldest Nishigori brother, Takeda, a lawyer who lives in Saga, is the celebrant. His speech is original and unfamiliar, removed from the common ordinations recited in movies and on television shows. The word 'soulmate' is only used once and given no significance, but that hardly matters when Nishigori and Yuuko cannot look away from one another.

Yuuri's throat tightens constricts when they recite their personalized vows. Nishigori's is about his vague hopes for the future that he hopes they'll build together while Yuuko's is an anecdote about the first time she realized she loved him. It surprises Yuuri when Yuuko talks about something he remembers. They were children then, before any of them manifested, and Yuuri had always thought Yuuko had been annoyed with Nishigori during the train ride to one of their competitions.

Love, Yuuri supposes, is odd like that.

When their vows are finished and they exchange rings, Nishigori and Yuuko end the ceremony with an unprompted kiss. It is short, tender, and difficult to watch. Yuuri almost looks away—but then Nishigori pulls away, bundles Yuuko into his burly arms, and lifts her off the ground. She shrieks at the unexpected motion and grips his shoulders.

"Takeshi!" she squeals.

Nishigori laughs and spins Yuuko around as effortlessly as though they were on the ice. The weighted edge of her shiromuku nearly clips one of their relatives in the face.

"Alright, alright," Takeda says over the minor chaos. "Takeshi—bring your wife over here. I need you to sign this certificate so I can register your marriage with municipal office."

After the ceremony, the two family migrate into the main area of the inn. Yuuko's family is much smaller than Nishigori's. Yuuko is an only child, as is her mother, and her father's twin brother is unmarried. Nishigori, on the other hand, is the youngest of four, and in addition to his mother and father, he has three sets of aunts and uncles, several cousins, his maternal grandparents and his paternal grandmother, a sister-in-law and two nephews. Yuuri is the only person in the group who is not related to the newlyweds by neither blood nor marriage. For a moment, Yuuri stands at the threshold and stares at the sea of faces, unsure of where he should sit.

He is saved from his indecision when a petite hand curls into his own.

"Come on, Yuuri," Yuuko encourages. "Sit with me and Takeshi."

Yuuko does not wait for Yuuri to respond. She simply tugs him into motion and guides him to the square, center table. The navy cushion she sits down on has been at Yutopia for as long as Yuuri can remember.

"I didn't say it earlier," Yuuri murmurs once he also sits down, arranging his limbs into the smallest and least awkward configuration he can manage. Then he bows his head and says, quite formally, "Congratulations on your marriage."

Yuuri's words are meet with silence and—after several painful seconds—Yuuri lifts his head to meet Yuuko's eyes. He cannot decipher the emotion he sees nor understand why Yuuko sounds a little sad when she says, "Oh, Yuuri. Always so polite."

It baffles Yuuri, yet before he can begin to parse out the meaning of her words, Nishigori jostles him.

"Don't overthink it," Nishigori warns as he plops down on Yuuko's right, directly across the table. His smile is wide and captivating and warm. "We're here to have a good time, and that's it."

"A good time," Yuuri repeats somewhat cautiously. He looks between Nishigori and Yuuko, then further out at their families, and they beyond that, to Mari leaning against the doorjamb in her maroon work clothes. Her gaze is faraway, but Yuuri thinks that, if she caught his stare, she would give a small, encouraging nod. So Yuuri breathes deep. Steadies himself and his nerves. Says, "I can do that."

"Thatta boy," Nishigori cheers.

part xi

#fandom: yuri!!! on ice #pairing: victor nikiforov/yuuri katsuki #rated: m #victuuri #yoi

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crosstalkbudapest · 7 years

Text

A fake dome over reality says what is real for now

Information skies by Metahaven discussion, Daniel van der Velden w/ Krisztián Puskár 26 Oct, Toldi Klub transcript, edited by Szilvi Német

Krisztián Puskár: Actually I have a quote to begin with. „The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” It’s the first line of Neuromancer, the landmark novel of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy. Your latest film Information Skies (http://www.informationskies.com) triggered similar effects and is also sequel to your film project “the sprawl (propaganda about propaganda).” Do you often associate your work to classic sci-fi aesthetics and literature?

Daniel van der Velden: We are influenced by interfaces as a world on the one hand, and in slow cinema language on the other. Our aesthetic stance feels much closer to filmmakers like Tarkovsky, than American cinema. I don’t think American cinema has any influence on us at all. Maybe some sort of early cyber writings, as it is mostly ideas that come into consideration. Obviously, our work is also a reflection of the times in which we live. We can not pretend to live in an other time, a pre-digital age, when everything is kind of pure. So we love the accidents or occurances that are happening when those worlds are being confronted with each other. By all means, it is a very beautiful citation and am very glad you’ve looked it up. There are endless resonances we can find in these subjects.

Krisztián: Even though the date of publishing of Gibson’s text (1984) has strong connotations, the lines in the novel are timeless in a sense. The tone of voice that you use in Information Skies also feels like a foray into literature. It’s almost poetic. Daniel: I would definately say there is a literary dimension to it and we were very conscious in doing so. I am really fed up with things like geopolitics and other stuff that tries to talk about an outside you can address or analyse, whereas the real trauma to all these topics is that they happen inside us. If we get that out, we become the filter for these events. Even you can have empathy with a suicide bomber on some level, as the film proclaims, on the basis that this person has a mother. You can say these connections are poetic, but we always try to address the reminiscences of humanity even inside a completely finctionalized or technicalized environment. Krisztián: You have distributed the film online, there was an open access to the whole piece on a dedicated url. On the first viewing, it stuck me that the original language of the film is Hungarian, while English and Korean (it was commissioned by the Gwanju Biennale) were just secondary as subtitles. Can this be attributed to the fact that your main actor’s (Georgina Dávid) is actually Hungarian?

©Metahaven, 2016 Daniel: Information Skies happened as a combination of drawing conclusions from the Sprawl in a sense that we wanted to get away from that film as far as we could. In the Sprawl it seemed like Georgina was Russian, and she is not. Simply because you always hear a Russian female voice when you see her. But she is not Russian. So it was very logical that we should do something in a language that is close to her, or in fact her own. We made a test version in English first, still we concluded, it’s much better in Hungarian. Also because of the particular language Hungarian is. Not just because it is a language foreign to us, but it stands also as a language that is kind of lost in the middle of Europe. Its closest relatives are in the Ural Mountains, Eastern Russia, Finland and Estonia. Hungarian is also under influence by the Slavic, Turkish, and for me its a georgeous language… It sounds a little bit satanic, but language is also how people think.

Krisztián: When you commissioned the translation of the script, you were not preoccupied that some nuances can get lost in translation? On the other hand, can it be apolitical to opt for Hungarian?

Daniel: It was clear from the beginning that it could never be the same in English and Hungarian. We even asked the translator to create a very archaic version of Hungarian. So it had to have the oldest possible feeling within Hungarian, despite being combined with worlds like Snapchat and other expressions that feel more neo nowadays. And of course, it is political in a way that Hungarian is from Eastern Europe, from a country that has a very, let’s say colorful political history.

Krisztián: And political present… – The film Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis has just came out a couple of days ago and there are lots of talking points that you two share. It seems to be in the air to treat the counternarrative of virtual reality as something not necessarily as a cyber thing, but as a means of political communication and perception management.

Daniel: I think that Adam Curtis as a BBC-based, BBC-turned-native filmmaker has an access to the entire BBC archive, with which he constructs everything. This means you have a cleared archive that goes back decades of all possible footage about all possible world events including the footages that were never broadcasted. So this is actually someone who is partially also a librarian of forgotten books in the BBC library. The urge to create a metanarrative that is so large, he also waited very long with bringing out the film because he wanted to include Donald Trump, ISIS, and all kinds of things that are quite recent. The way he develops these narratives is by using voiceover: his own voice. Thus he became the Werner Herzog of geo-political documentary making. Everything he says with that particular voice becomes an Adam Curtis narrative. So there is a format in his films that are so strong. He often uses the idea of comparing two distant things: New York, something happened here, meanwhile in Syria, something happened there as well… People didn’t think it was connected, but it actually was. It becomes something that is dashingly close to conspiracy narrative itself, which is actually what he is trying to unmask. Trying to unmask processes that were conceived by what he says by those in power. People that were ruling us. I don’t know, I think he is very very far on a point of no return in these films.

Krisztián: Conspiracy theories are the new mythologies in a way that they share a commong ground of being born out of a general distrust in the principle narratives that are around us.

Daniel: I think it is more arisen from the actual inability to address everything that is around us. There is so much, the vastness of available explanation of any events are so enormous that you can construct almost any narrative that fits a particular agenda, ideology or idea. So you can actually piece together conspiracies relatively easily. The distrust narrative we are referring to still talks about a world where there is order, there is a central power that emanates nonsensical stuff and we no longer believe it. There is an other line of thought coming from German philosophy.. With the dismantling of religion, metaphysics and the advent of objective science we find ourselves in a world where we are kind of nobody. And that’s a reality. We are tiny and we mean practically nothing when the scale is the universe. That means that people have started to construct other ways of creating wholeness again including all kinds of fictional or invented realities that seem to reconstruct a world, in which things have meaning and purpose. Putting a sort of fake dome over reality saying this is what’s real for now. Even though we know it’s not. But if we don’t have this dome if we don’t pretend that we have this wholeness, our lives seem to have no purpose. And I think that was very much an influence to the film. Not so much the philosophy, but examples of that.

Krisztián: In the initial phase of the internet it was conceived as a tool to make the world more transparent and reveal facts and unhide the truth. For now it became a place where you cannot really differentiate between all these things. What have changed?

Daniel: We haven’t developed an alternative. We may hate politics, we were still stuck with those procedures and forms that are kind of maintaining themselves. I think that the reinvention, especially in Europe of the nation state as a nationalist project… I think many people who had advocated the internet, or open society or whatever are looking at that with a kind of amazements. Like how is this possible? That you have the most archaic ideas about government and rule archers are coming bak. I don’t have an answer for that, it’s pretty much what happens in The Game of Thrones.

Krisztián: Is there a correlation between this rise of radical movements, its political advocates and a ‘cosmic disinformation’? In a post-fact era, figures like Trump are natural to emerge? He is a symbol of this era right now: it’s not important that what he says is not true. The disproof does not reach the people, who already clicked it, shared it or want to believe in it.

Daniel: If your principle strategy is to create bubbles, you’re undercutting trust in general. So you are not just creating your own narrative, but undercutting that people can have any narrative. In that sense there is a way in which we treshold for information to be believeable or credible, and is always changing with the bubble culture in a sense. I think Trump is very much dependent on the idea that he can actually manage to gambe his way to a big take over reality and as soon as people start to believe he can do that, it will also become a cascade. So there is a cascading disbelief in Trump as much as there was cascading belief that he is gonna do it. And people are superscared. Because it seems like he is a self-propelling mechanism. It’s sort of retweeting itself.

Krisztián: The best example for this bubble is Facebook, it’s a common thing to say that on Facebook you surround yourself with likeminded people. If you unfollow a fascist asshole or a liberal opinion leader it means that you detach yourself from that part of reality. These are the bubbles that caused the great surprise after Brexit. Your best guess was it can not happen. And it did. But you can also easily twist and turn mere facts and actual results. As it happened in Hungary a few weeks ago after the referendum that did not pass with the votes. Still, the government planted huge billboards saying that 98% of the Hungarians voted no for the migrant quota. It does not tell the truth, still becomes true because the billboards are there.

Daniel: You can have a very very strong virtual reality projection to actually create a new reality. There was Brexit, a lots of lies were told about the European Union: how much benefit people will get from Britain if they got out of the EU, how much health care extra per months etcetera and it was all not true. And people believed it, the Brexit was done and the reality is that they are going to leave. You can sort of design reality with virtual reality if you have scaling mechanisms for what you are saying. So I think that a lot of people on the left are now talking about how do we use the same strategy and tactics to actually further argue our agenda. Cause the counter-strategy to Brexit was to just have facts. Facts, which for people are not persuasive, they do not present a dream. They present reality as it is.

#brexit #facebook #snapchat #hungarian language #information skies #metahaven #puskár krisztián #crosstalk video art festival #hypernormalisation #adam curtis #virtual reality #sprawl #propaganda

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glitteryyouthstudentworld · 5 years

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Although I share the many negative aspects of my life, I merely do so in order to share the journey. There is no point in campaigning for reform through sharing my own experiences with only half the story. For me though, it is the positive aspects which not only mean more but are more important. Many lessons can be learnt from positivism just as they can from a negative experience. To blow one’s own trumpet, without coming across as egotistical or even sycophantic, isn’t an easy balance, however, I am extremely proud of what I managed to achieve during my time as a serving prisoner, why shouldn’t I be? I believe it shows that even in an environment lacking in hope but full of despair that there can be a positive end result (eventually), especially when people believe in you and support you, an experience I’m still finding just as humbling.

Another important aspect in my life, and an importance not lost on me, is education. In this instance, I, of course, am referring to education within secure environments, although not always in relation to academia, however, I believe it will also highlight the overall importance in the subject of education (excuse the pun). Do I personally wish I was able to gain my education in the conventional way? No! Not really. A reason perhaps for my featured image?

Little did I know, as an innocent eight-year-old, I would be embarking on a journey of education, along with a training programme unlike any other that would see the barometer ‘set fair’ for my current status.

My secure environment education began ironically – and coincidentally not long after being kicked out the education system as a 14-year-old – within a secure unit. Ironically, coincidentally? You choose, but I spent my 16th and 18th birthdays in a secure environment setting. My 21st, although spent in freedom, is still one I wish to forget due to my mum passing away two weeks later and two days before her 60th. My mum and dad due to celebrate their ruby wedding anniversary Boxing Day later that year. I’ve never really liked Christmas, or birthdays come to that, since.

My education of empathy began a lot later on in my life. It was in 2005, whilst at HMP Blundeston, where I found the wonders attached to mentoring. My first role was with Shannon Trust, as a what was known then, Toe-by-Toe mentor, this would quickly be followed by becoming a listener trained by the Samaritans. Both roles remain as important to me as they did 14 years ago, and I am pleased to be able to continue to support both these incredible charities now and in the future.

My education of secure environment education, although a few dabbles in between, started in earnest at HMP Wayland in 2009. It actually started through no choice of my own. This was due to an unproven case of suspicion which led to SIR’s, a ghosting and a security file. Education the only option available to me. A position, considering my actual guilt at the time, extremely acceptable to me, and one I used to my own advantage. Cass Evans is the lady I acknowledge as to who unlocked the initial quest for knowledge and citizenship. The bug became like an addiction; however, this addiction was far healthier and far, far less expensive than the illegal drugs and alcohol I used to be best friends with.

It all started with a City & Guilds level 2 in ‘Assisted Learning Support’. The classroom I was assisting in at the time was English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). I’ll probably be shot by the PC brigade but the only way I can describe that classroom is to compare it to the late 70’s, early 80’s British sitcom ‘Mind Your Language’, but our classroom was full of mutual respect. If only some of our multi-cultural communities experienced that room, it was a joy to be a part of it.

I was asked by Cass to enrol in a new class she would be tutoring herself, and so a few weeks later I started my next City & Guilds course. A level 3 one this time in: Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS). PTLLS did absolutely nothing for me following my eventual release in August 2010 (I entered the system May 08). However, what it did enable me to do, was to fulfil my unplanned plan I knew nothing about. Almost bang on with the systems predictions, within 12 months (have to keep to the reoffending schedule that was expected of us), almost to the day, in August 2011 I started a new, smaller sentence, this time 18 months. Aside from a 2-week, necessary break, I completed the whole of the 18 months in prison. This was due to the strict licence conditions placed on me that I didn’t agree with or wish to accept, along with a residential condition of an AP (not my first, nor ever successful). The nature of the hostel (and not mine) placing even more, in my opinion, restrictions of movement and, therefore, extra pressure to conform. Not the best mix. So, after being released on the 29th February 2012 I was recalled back to prison where I was free once again. Being institutionalised has that effect. Education, empathy and a whole load of citizenship are what I take from prison. Lock-down, inclement weather and the occasional disagreement contained within the unwritten instruction manual, not only that I had other things, more important things, like change and reform to worry about rather than worry about the things I couldn’t control. But I did take pleasure in closing my own door before last orders, it can be difficult to get to be alone in prison sometimes. Then again, with education in my life, along with its many characters and personalities more numerous than my own, I wasn’t ever alone, even when at my loneliest. That for me is education in a nutshell, it just keeps on giving, and freely.

I was released from this term on the last day of November in 2012. My liberty this time lasting until the following July, when attempting to run away from myself to the beautiful, picturesque area of the Brecon Beacons in the Rhondda Valleys of Tylorstown, South Wales, I found myself, on remand, in Knox Road again. This time, however, HMP Cardiff and not HMP Norwich, trust me, the irony wasn’t lost in the reception of Cardiff. I was successful with a judge in chambers bail application and at the end of November, part of my conditions was to stay with family in Kent. A call from my brief, the second week of December informing me the case had been thrown out by the crown court, meant at least Christmas that year was an enjoyable one. But the following summer would see me hit with new bail conditions as I was facing a lump for a serious assault. Fortunately, this too was eventually thrown out due to the credibility of the victim/witness and his propensity for story telling through a police statement. The pressure consciously not felt, as I was a long way into my smorgasbord of drugs and alcohol once again by this stage to not worry. Not exactly father of the year material, more loyalty shown to a piece of foil and a pipe than to my children and grandchild. A few more bad choices would see me arrive at my inevitable rock bottom, fortunately, it wasn’t to be a one-way ticket. I was at the beginning of the end of my training, although education never stops. As student or teacher.

My final sentence was where my whole life finally made sense. I still had one lesson to learn in prison, you can’t run with the hares and the hounds. My character understood and controlled, my personalities placated and no more need for medication. Dedication would be my new medication. No more manufactured legal/illegal poison for me. I replaced the poison with an elixir of knowledge and understanding of the self. Have you ever tried to complete a jigsaw without looking at the picture?

As I mentioned my education of education within a secure environment started at HMP Wayland with the Curriculum Manager, Cass Evans, coincidentally it was taken over by the Curriculum manager at HMP Norwich, Deborah Stewart. I not only became Deborah’s mentor in the ICT class which she tutored, I also mentored courses I had completed myself.

Radio production, Health & Safety, presentation skills, creative writing with Jacob Huntley, a lecturer in English Literature at University of East Anglia and when on the curriculum, a self-awareness course.

As well as completing a City & Guilds level 3 in Advice and Guidance through St. Giles Trust for whom I would become a peer adviser.

I know that sounds a lot but bear in mind that there were 11 education sessions during the working 5-day week. Plenty of classes, limited mentors however, B cat locals struggle to hold on to those they need sometimes. Early mornings, night-time bang up, Friday afternoons and most of the weekend was for me and my own studies. I was, and am, studying for a BSc (hons) degree in criminology and psychological studies through, in their 50th year, The Open University, funded by a student loan from Student Finance England. Although in the build up to my degree I studied for an access module with The Open University this time funded by, in this, their 30th year, the wonderful Prisoners’ Education Trust.

A collective responsibility, like nothing else before, behind me. I took the decision to change but I owe my appreciation to those that enabled it, including the uniformed men and women of our landings. An appreciation and gratitude that I fully intend in rewarding with my success.

Education makes the impossible, possible.

The number 42! "but I owe my appreciation to those that enabled it, including the uniformed men and women of our landings." Although I share the many negative aspects of my life, I merely do so in order to share the journey.

#Crime #Education #Justice Reform #Mental Health #Positive #Prison #Prison reform #Success

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