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deadsetobsessions · 2 months

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Alley Drunk! Danny AU- Pt. 4

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3]

Danny blinked down at the cart, where a red hoodie and pants with red stripes along the side laid over the lip of the cart. Considering they’re in this universe’s brand of Marget- seriously, who names a store Target? If anything in Amity Park was named that, Skulker would have wrecked it in five seconds flat- it’s hilariously on brand. Though, to be fair, this was Gotham’s version too, which meant a lot of security guards (who definitely doubled as goons for the Rogues, Danny was sure) and the vibes were spooky.

“I’m guessing red’s your favorite color.”

Instead of the humorous way he meant the sentence, Jason looked up anxiously and Danny immediately hated himself a little bit more.

“Sh- I can put it back..?” Jason hunched in on himself.

Danny tracked the movement with clearer eyes than he’s had in a long while and ancients, does it remind him of how Dani was in front of Vlad all those years ago. And Danny has spent his entire half life being not like Vlad, so he’s not going to start now.

“Nah, you should definitely add some more stuff. This is no where near enough clothes.”

It really wasn’t. Danny had taken Jason to the store to pick out clothes- “Ther’s a second hand store down the stree’, ya know,” Jason had mumbled when they went through the doors- but the kid had only tentatively put in a small red hoodie and some pants in the cart. Now he had to put this in a way that’ll wipe the stubbornly hesitant look on Jason’s face off.

“Think about it this way, then. You’re repping me now, and while I might be the alley drunk, I’m not the poorly dressed alley drunk, yeah?”

“Oh. Tha’ makes sense.” Jason nodded to himself determinedly, and the kid strode over to the t-shirt section. For all of his confidence, he still glanced back to see if it was okay with Danny.

Well, Dani was the same way before she found her confidence (when she knew Danny wouldn’t abandon her or hurt her) so Danny just gave him a thumbs up before reaching into the rack and sweeping an armful of clothing straight into the cart. Then, he strode over to the jackets and grabbed the ones in Jason’s size and slightly bigger. Oh, he has to grab shoes. He’ll leave that for later, but Danny was going to get those ratty trainers off of Jason’s feet and into the nearest trash can if it was the last thing he does.

The halfa hummed, pausing at the first decidedly not miserable sound he’s made in a while. Dammit, if that wasn’t a sign of Danny’s attachment to Jason, he doesn’t know what would be. To be fair… Danny already committed murder for the kid, which was pretty much something he thought he’d never do, so in for a penny out for a pound or whatever.

He put a significant amount of the budget aside for the section labeled “JASON” so Danny shopped without a worry. Charlie’s ill-gotten assets were a good monetary compensation for his crime of existing near Jason or existing, period.

He picked up toiletries, toothbrushes and the like, when Jason came back sans t-shirt. Instead of a shirt- Danny had actually hoped that Jason would try to get multiple shirts- Jason was clutching a book.

Before he could even voice anything, Danny plucked the book out of his grip and put it into the cart with a disarming smile.

“Oh, good idea. We should get you books too. Wanna go pick out some more?”

“Uh- y’re just gonna get a book, just like that?”

“More than one book, I should hope. You are going to school, right?”

“…Yeah!” Danny couldn’t fathom ever being excited at the thought of school, but as Jason bounced away to peruse the admittedly poor selection of books, Danny couldn’t help but think that maybe he should give this education thing another try. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be less stressful now that he’s not Phantom.

Danny walked to the aisle next to the books and promptly proceeded to shove every single piece of stationary he thought was nice- pens, gel pens, cooling pens and pencils, a thick stack of notebooks, flash cards, etcetera- into the rapidly getting full cart.

Jason came back with three more books- nice, the classics- and froze at the sight of the cart.

“Oh, hey. Getting all of those?”

“Wha’- wha’s wit’ the stuff?”

“School supplies! Quality education starts with quality supplies, you know!” Danny said, a sliver of the grin that used to come so easily to him making an appearance on his face. "Don't worry, I budgeted. See?"

Danny handed Jason a piece of paper, confident that the kid would know if it was good or not.

"Where'd... ya get all of this?"

"Hmm... here and there."

Jason looked up at him, squinting suspiciously. "I hear' Charlie's gone poofed up."

Danny shrugged and put a calculator in the cart. "Oh, I'm sure he's busy."

Yeah, Danny thought vindictively. Busy being dead.

"Ya sound like a walking con," Jason said as he visibly decided to give up fighting against Danny's spending. "We nee' food."

"Gotcha. Well, if you need anything else, just bring it into the cart."

"I want veggies. Frozen, 's cheaper."

Danny nodded, resisting the urge to ruffle Jason's hair.

----

"Hey, you's the Alley Drunk, right? 'Bout that boy you've been toting ar-"

Danny punched the guy in the face, dropping him like a stone. He looked up slowly and swayed.

"Any of you ask about my kid brother again, and I won't bother with being drunk when I hit you."

Rapid nods. Danny shuffled away, satisfied.

----

Two weeks later, after a school day, Danny finds Jason heading to the bathroom with a box of...

"Hair-dye?"

Jason, who was marginally more relaxed and assured that Danny wasn't going to kick him out, nodded.

"Dye's fadin' n' I dun wanna get nabbed on the streets for having red hair."

Danny blinked. "You have red hair?"

"Sure do. See? Roots are showin' again." Jason pointed at his scalp where Danny could see the hair was getting lighter.

"Right. Well- I'll leave you to it. Let me know if you need help, kiddo." Danny said, desperately hoping he hid how off kilter he was feeling well.

"I don't need help, ah've been doing this for ages." The kid went into the bathroom and closed the door harshly. When the lock clicked and the faucet began running, Danny let himself slide down the wall into a crouch, hands cradling his head.

Red hair. Blue eyes. Tan skin. The facial features. The intelligence and empathy.

Danny chuckled hysterically under his breath.

Was Jason this universe's version of Jazz?

"Fuck."

#danny phantom #batman #dc x dp #dpxdc #danny adopts jason todd #jason todd #bamf danny phantom #alley drunk! danny au #danny: i'm grieving #jason: wanna bet?#that's right jason's this universe's jazz fenton #this universe's danny fenton died and that's why danny can exist here without causing issues #danny: i have adopted a random child #danny: this child is jazz wtf

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shreddedleopard · 11 months

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Okay back on my bullshit and I need to talk about these —

This to me is a direct call back by Sherlock to Liam pre- William James Moriarty. Baby Liam, before he stained his hands with all that killing and stole the identity of another child. Can you see the way Sherlock gets down on his knee like that? Know what it reminds me of?

How you speak to a child on their level.

“You’ve taken your first step …”

Also feels very child-oriented to me. And painting an ideal future …?

Sherlock is appealing here to the boy who never was; the boy who never got the chance to grow up and learn about his true self …

“My own self …”

Liam’s entire life has been spent behind a mask. His whole existence was that of a ghost; the shell of a dead child. He never gave himself permission to consider who he truly was; him him, and not William Moriarty, because the old him had to die in that fire all those years ago. I cannot even begin to think about what that must feel like.

And then along came Sherlock Holmes, and with a simple look during a moment of rare honesty from Liam — his genuine, child-like inquisitiveness at the sight of that spiral staircase provoking a trait that was truly his — his love of mathematics — Sherlock was able to effortlessly reach out and take the hand of the person who existed behind the mask.

A mathematician: one of the most elementary aspects of Liam’s character, indeed. His love of mathematics shone long before he committed his first act of violence. To be judged so quickly and found not to be the devil, but just a man who loves numbers — that was a glimpse of his true self that he’d almost forgotten about, amidst the pressure of his plans on the Noahtic.

Sherlock is also, aside from Louis and Albert, the only person to my knowledge who is aware of Liam’s true name — and because it was Liam’s choice to gift that knowledge to him. Recalling that Liam believed he was about to die, him giving Sherlock the evidence of his birth, as he was truly originally supposed to be, feels like a painfully poignant and intimate gesture.

Even we, the readers, are not privy to that information. It’s granted only to Sherlock; a secret they share.

The theme of rebirth is very present in the climax of the story, and Liam even states in his letter that if only he could be born again, this time he thinks he and Sherlock would be true friends. It’s desperately sad that he can’t see at that point that he doesn’t need to be reborn to get back in touch with his old self, because he’s still there inside of him. Sherlock is the proof of that, because Sherlock hasn’t found a friend and, dare I say it, a soulmate in William Moriarty, or the Lord of Crime. Sherlock has found that connection with the man beneath the mask.

During the moment on the Thames, William James Moriarty did indeed die a second time. But this time it was so that Liam, as his true self, could re-emerge. This is why he suddenly sees all those colours again — that which was buried is now brought forth towards the light.

Another small point to make is the decision to have Sherlock use Liam almost immediately. It’s a name that feels a lot more removed from the identity of William Moriarty than for example, Will. It’s new and something that’s very much separate from the dead boy Liam embodies. It’s a tiny glimpse of the branch in identities beginning once again after years of suffering his sins in silence.

I could go on and on about all this. It’s probably just obvious stuff to most people. But god damn is it the most beautiful story of losing and finding oneself again, even in the darkest depths of despair, because someone cared enough to reach out a hand.

Might just be my favourite.

#william james moriarty #liam moriarty #sherlock holmes #sherliam #yuukoku no moriarty #yuumori #moriarty the patriot #moriarty the patriot meta #Moriarty the patriot analysis

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lucky-bucky-boy · 1 year

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Blooming Showers

Pairing: TASM!Peter Parker x Reader

Summary: A split-second decision leads to a night full of changes

Word Count: 3610

Warnings: Angst with some fluff at the end, little use of Y/N, assigned nickname towards the end, distrust, anger, wound/mention of blood, anxiety, racing thoughts, friends-to-lovers

A/N: This is definitely my longest piece I’ve written in a really long time. I started watching TASM with my cousin and friends and immediately fell in love with Andrew Garfield all over again so I NEEDED to write something. This isn’t smutty but I kind of want to do a part two thats smutty and angsty

I do not own these characters. Do NOT repost my writing and/or fics anywhere without my written permission. Reblogs are welcomed and highly appreciated!

Rain softly padded against the window, causing the lights from outside to cast soft shadows, the lights from passing cars making those shadows dance. It was quiet, almost serene in New York - the sirens were few a far between tonight, and distant as well, the occasional coo of a bird trying to find shelter - there were no kids running down the fire escape trying to sneak out, no couples in petty arguments that shook through the thin walls.

Nights like this were few and far in-between, where for a few minutes you were able to fall in love with your city all over again, and you were able to remember every reason why you wanted to be here.

The only thing that would've made the night better would have been seeing Peter, your lifelong best friend, and partner-in-chaos. Your phone lit up occasionally with messages from him, apologizing over and over for missing another scheduled movie night.

It wasn't the end of the world, Aunt May needed help with something so you understood, but it still stung. This was the 4th one this year he'd miss. You understood when there was a foot of snow on the ground, and when midterms then finals week came, but it had felt like since graduation two weeks ago that Peter had been avoiding you.

Trying not to dwell on the sinking feeling was hard, so many changes were happening and your brain was becoming more and more hyper-aware that more changes were bound to come. Graduation may overall be a good thing, opening up new opportunities and finally not having to worry about classes you'd never use a day in your adult life, but it also meant that you were about to start a new chapter of life.

In an attempt to stop the racing thoughts, you decided Fuck Peter for missing your movie night and decided to watch a movie anyways. Pressing play on an old favorite, you left the comfort of your bed to grab some snacks from the kitchen.

Ten minutes. That's all you were gone, but in those ten minutes, the city's beloved vigilante slid your window open, practically tumbling off of the fire escape and onto the floor. He did his best to avoid your bed, not wanting to soak it in the rain or the blood that was on him.

There was a cut through his suit, not deep but enough to nick the skin and have scarlet drops dripping down. He reached for a towel that had been carelessly discarded by you earlier in the night, haphazardly tying his cut up with his free hand and then pulling his mask off.

Peter's breaths were rugged, head now leaned back against your bed as he tried to calm himself from the adrenaline rush of the near-death experience he just had. Sure, he only had a cut and a few bruises to show for it, but he knew deep down without his enhanced sense he surely would have been dead. He hadn't even processed the split-second decision he made to go to your apartment instead of Aunt May's house.

It wasn't until your shrill scream, the sound of the snacks hitting the floor that Peter's eyes flew open, looking at you as if he had just been caught committing a crime. His eyes were wide, realizing at that very moment the weight of his actions and inactions for the past several years. He didn't dare move, only a breathy sigh of your name leaving his lips.

Your brain moved quickly once you realize that the intruder sitting on your floor was Peter… Your Peter, dressed in a red and blue skin-tight suit, holding a mask, with your towel wrapped around his arm. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

"Peter?" You knew it was him, but your brain was still attempting to come up with some explanation as to why he was dressed as Spider-Man.

You quickly grabbed the stuff you had dropped, putting it on the bed and kneeling next to him. "Peter, what the fuck is going on?"

He stared at you, blinking a few times and not sure what to say. He knew there was a lot he needed to say, a lot that needed to be explained but he didn't know where to start. He's been lying to you about a part of himself for years now.

"I'm sorry," he breathed out, breaths still shaky.

You now realized the towel was covering a cut, the smell of iron mixed with city rain present in your nose. "Shit, what the fuck. Are you okay? What the hell is going on?"

He nodded, "I've been worse," he mumbled. "I'll be fine, don't worry 'bout me." He leaned his head back against your bed again, taking a heavy breath in.

That was the worst thing he could have said to you. Don't worry, at this point, you were worried and confused about everything.

"Peter, you're my best friend, you know I love you, but if I do not get an answer as to what is going on in the next minute I am kicking your ass and calling May."

His eyes opened, looking over at you. The look of regret and hurt was evident, "I'm so sorry," he said, barely moving. His body ached but his heart was aching more as he watched the expressions on your face change the more you noticed and pieced things together, "I should've told you but I was scared you'd get hurt."

"Peter, what should you have told me?" Your voice was betraying you, breaking and quivering as you attempted to be firm.

"I- I'm Spider-Man, I've always been. That's- Something happened tonight and I had to go help-"

"So you've been lying to me for 5 years now?"

He went silent and all he could muster was a small nod.

"You've been hiding this from me for 5 years? Peter - I - we tell each other everything. If you've been lying about this, then what else are you fucking lying about?"

The hurt in your voice was evident. It was more like betrayal, and distrust, and it wrenched his heart and gut. The silence lingered as you started piecing more and more together.

Five years. For five whole years, through your senior year of high school and the entirety of your college career, you spent attached at the hip to Peter Benjamin Parker - and he had been lying to you about a pivotal part of his life.

In hindsight, finding out Peter had been Spider-Man all this time made a lot of things make sense. Five years’ worth of last-minute cancellations, questionable excuses, black eyes, and bruises.

There was your senior prom. Aunt May was so excited that Peter and you were going together, she had always joked and wished the two of you would end up as more than friends. "Just memories for your wedding one day", she would say.

Everything leading up to prom was great. Peter went dress shopping with you, he got a tie to match the color of your dress, Aunt May made sure the two of you had a matching boutonniere and corsage, he even took you to and from your appointments the day of prom.

However, an hour into prom itself he had to leave hurriedly, frantically coming up with an excuse of not feeling good when moments prior you had just finished taking pictures and laughing at the cheesy poses.

That one stung, but you never admitted it, at least not to him. Peter had insisted you stay behind, spend time with other friends and he'd see you the next day. You're not even sure if he knows you left 20 minutes after he did, heartbreaking and feeling stupid for hoping Aunt May could be right.

The summer between your senior year of high school and your freshman year of college was filled with last-minute cancellations.

Since you were kids, specifically since second grade every Friday night was movie night and a sleepover. Even as you grew into teenagers Aunt May and your parents worked out an arrangement they could both be comfortable with to let you two continue your little tradition. But that summer every single one was canceled or Peter would leave early.

For weeks you were convinced Peter no longer wanted to be friends with you, that somehow, some way you upset him and he hated you. Until a week before college started and he called you out of the blue for coffee and school shopping.

Suddenly, things seemed normal again. Aunt May's house was close enough that Peter would go home for the weekend, and you would usually just follow along for Friday and then head back to your dorm Saturday. You'd meet up to study a few times a week or go run errands together, you were even back to gaming together once a week.

So, you figured that Peter's sudden change in behavior could have been from his break up with Gwen. You knew he didn't take it easy when she ended things after finding out she was accepted into Oxford. You couldn't blame her really, but you weren't happy to see Peter's heart breaking. He talked about it some, but his eyes would always tell you more than he actually would.

Of course, Peter would bail occasionally throughout college, but a lot of it made sense. He forgot about a project due or was just plain tired from working part-time and doing school.

The part that never made sense though were the bruises and scratches. Peter always had an excuse; got hurt in the lab, fell skateboarding, hurt himself helping Aunt May. But at the end of the day, that's all they were; Excuses.

Peter reached out to you, the touch of his cold hand bringing you back from your racing thoughts. "I…I know I shouldn't have hid it, (Y/N), I'm sorry I did. There was so much going on, so many threats and I- I just didn't want you to get hurt. I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if you got hurt."

Tears began to prick your eyes, instantly jumping away from his touch, the feeling of dread and distrust sinking deeper into you with the singular move. "And what if you got hurt? How do you expect me to live with myself if you died?" Your voice was still shaky, fear now starting to fill in the gaps between each emotion.

Your eyes wandered to the towel he had tied around himself, blood beginning to seep through. "Peter," you reached for his arm but he grabbed your hand, stopping you and making you look him in the eyes.

"I'm okay, I promise. It'll heal quickly, just needed to stop the blood… I'll buy you a new towel." His voice was soft, his gaze never leaving yours.

"I'm not worried about the stupid towel, Peter." You sighed, "I- How could you have hidden this from me for so long?" You asked again, this time much more upset than angry.

Peter let out a shaky breath, his body finally starting to come down from the adrenaline and the full weight of his actions set in. "(Y/N), I mean it when I say I wanted to tell you," his voice was sincere, still holding onto your hand that had reached for his cut, "But I was more worried about your safety and making sure you wouldn't prioritize worrying about me over the rest of your life. The only person alive that knows is Harry. I never told anyone else, Aunt May doesn't even know."

It still hurt that Peter never told you, but it was starting to make sense, "How does Aunt May not know?"

Peter shrugged, offering you a soft chuckle, "You know she only sees and hears what she wants to. I never told her, but I'm also shocked she hasn't figured it out."

Peter gave you a look that made you know he was truly sorry, lower lip pouted out some, eyes big and wide, almost looking like a kicked puppy. "I know I have a lot to explain to you, and I know I need to rebuild your trust in me, but I need you to understand that I am really sorry for hiding it for this long. I've wanted to tell you since it all started, but I was told that it could put everyone around me in danger if they knew so I didn't want anyone to find out."

As much as you hated it, you did understand it. Giving him a soft nod, you let go of his hand instead of moving to rake your hand through his hair to get it out of his face. "I understand, but I don't like it."

"You don't like anything that doesn't go your way," he teased with a soft laugh, quickly earning a glare from you that made him laugh more. "I'll also explain everything once I'm not still soaked and healing." He said, motioning to his arm.

You nodded, "Did you wanna go take a shower? I can make some food or order takeout."

Peter thought for a moment then nodded. He unwrapped his arm, looking at the little scratch that was left behind from the wound he had not even 20 minutes prior. "Yeah, yeah let me go shower… do yo-"

"I'll put your clothes and a clean towel by the sink for you once you're in the shower. I'll also take your suit and the towel you have and throw it in the wash, okay? You just go get cleaned up while I find us some food."

Peter nodded, giving you a quick hug and kiss on the forehead before disappearing from your room. It took you a moment, immediately sitting down on the bed, attempting to process everything.

Your best friend of 15 years is Spider-Man. Your favorite person is your favorite superhero. Your best friend has lied to you to be able to go save people. Your best friend could have died, and has probably almost died countless times.

To say it was a lot to take in was an understatement.

You could hear the shower start running in the room next to yours, the sound thankfully pulling you from your spiraling thoughts and panic. As you moved through the apartment, throwing a frozen pizza in the oven and collecting some spare clothes Peter had left behind at your place before, the emotions started to make sense.

Yes, it did hurt that Peter had hidden this, but his reasoning made sense. The hurt that you couldn't shake was how many times you could have lost him. He could have been dead on top of a skyscraper, no one able to discover his body with how high up he is, and you would've been none the wiser. Or if he died on the streets and eventually was unmasked you'd be left to mourn with the rest of the world instead of being able to process the loss of your other half in private. You'd be learning and losing so much so quickly. You'd be lost in a pool of emotions so chaotic it would make this moment seem calm.

Peter was back in your room about 20 minutes later, the pizza fresh out of the oven and sitting on the bed with you. You were looking at the TV, not really watching the forgotten movie you put on. As much as you tried to not let your thoughts continue to run wild, your brain didn't want to listen.

He moved the pizza to the closest surface and sat on your bed, immediately pulling you in for a hug when he saw the lost look on your face. Your mind felt like it was a broken record, spinning fast but on repeat.

"What's going through your head?"

There was no reason to reiterate the same thing you had told him earlier. You pulled off of him, sighing deeply before giving him a small smile, "A lot, but I'll be okay."

He nodded, "So… movie night? I definitely owe you one."

You nodded, looking up at the screen momentarily, your gaze being pulled to your phone as a new news alert popped up about Spider-Man. You didn't bother checking it, but you're brain did finally click the two puzzle pieces together fully that Peter is Spiderman.

You looked over at him with narrowed eyes and a slight pout, "You're fucking Spider-Man," your tone was accusatory which caught him off guard, a slow nod all he was able to offer before you continued, "You have let me tell you for years that I'm in love with Spider-Man. That I would marry this person I thought I'd never meet. That's so embarrassing!" You whined at the end.

Peter chuckled, a blush on his features and his hand going to mess with the back of his head. "Yeah… you finally realize that means you've been saying you're in love with me for like… 4ish years now?" He teased.

It was a joke. It was just banter which was typical for Peter. He was always teasing, playful, and borderline flirty with you. But that statement rang a little too true. You froze, movements and breath seemingly paused, and Peter quickly noticed that your heart rate quickened.

It wasn't the first time that happened around him. He's noticed countless times before how your skin would heat up and your heart rate would increase when he complimented you. He even noticed when he would do something, only sometimes accidentally, that would turn you on. Peter, not wanting to ruin your friendship or make you uncomfortable, never acted on it though.

"You okay, daisy?" It was a nickname he didn't use often, but one that he's called you forever. It held a special place for him, a reminder of some of his first memories of you - flower hair pins and daisy doodles all over your school papers. It was also a term that usually had you flustered and stumbling.

"You finally realize I've been in love with you longer than that?"

Now it was Peter's turn to freeze, taking a moment to make sure he heard you right. He watched as you squirmed some, re-situating yourself and pulling at your clothes, heart rate quickening and eyes avoiding his.

It made sense really, but he couldn't believe it. Peter has had a crush on you since your 5th-grade school dance where you wore a dress your parents let you pick out, so you were beaming with pride and excitement. He remembers you spending the night at Aunt May's after, staying up all night eating snacks and playing video games.

Every day since he's made himself believe there was no way you'd like him back. Peter believed you were far out of his league, and even if that wasn't true he was too scared of losing you to take the risk of pursuing something more.

"How long?" Maybe that wasn't the right response but he wanted to know, felt like he needed to know.

"Longer than I can remember," you responded, breath shaky, "I can't lose you, Peter… I - Spider-Man or not, I can't lose you. And you coming in tonight, wounded and dropping a massive secret like that on me - Peter, you really scared me. I love you and losing you would kill me."

"You're not gonna lose me," his voice was soft.

"Don't make any promises you can't keep," you could feel the tears starting to form.

Peter moved to you, his large hands coming to cup your face and make you look at him. "I'm not making a promise I can't keep. You're not gonna lose me. Not now, not because of being Spider-Man, not ever."

He waited for you to blind away your tears, using his hands to squish your cheeks in an attempt to cheer you up a little. Once he got a soft laugh out of you, he broke out into a smile. "I love you," he said firmly, "I'm in love with you. I have been since we were kids." He confessed to you. "So I mean it, I'm not going anywhere."

Peter watched your eyes get wide as you processed what he said, feeling your skin heat up under his hands, "Can I kiss you?" His voice was soft and airy.

A slight nod was all he needed before he pressed his lips to yours. It was intense and soft and sweet, everything and anything all at once. Butterflies erupted from low in your belly and vibrated your chest. His chapped lips moved in sync against your bite-swollen lips, sending waves of electricity and emotions down your spine and through every nerve.

He pulled away, leaning his forehead against yours as the both of you caught your breaths. His hands fell from your face, searching for your own hands. "I know I have a lot to explain, I have a lot of work to do to make you feel secure and know I'll be here, but I'll do whatever it takes, daisy, I promise."

She huffed out a small laugh, pulling away and nodding, "Thank you, Petey," you pressed another quick kiss to his lips before pulling away fully, giggling at the almost shocked look he had on his face, "Looks like we both have a lot to get used to." Your gaze softened some, "No more secrets?"

Peter laughed as well, grabbing your hands and bringing them to his lips, presently multiple kisses to them. "No more secrets

#tasm!peter imagine #tasm!spiderman x reader #tasm peter x reader #tasm!peter x you #tasm peter x you #peter parker #peter parker fluff #peter parker angst #peter x reader #spiderman x reader #tasm!peter parker #tasm!peter one shot #tasm!peter x reader #tasm!peter parker x reader #tasm!peter #tasm!peter angst #my writing

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flowersandbigteeth · 1 year

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Your alien cop takes you on a mission

General Plot: You work at the front desk of a police office and are drawn into an important mission...this was meant to be a oneshot, but I might actually come back to this because I like it :)

Alien cop (Balim) x reader with PCOS

Word Count: 1.5k

💕 SFW MASTERPOST 💕

W: light PCOS infertility discussion, sfw action alien fluff, some name calling

“Another one?” you asked as one of the alien cops that patrolled the city dragged another beat up human in.

Balim grinned at you, flashing his large teeth and shoved the human forward with his massive hands. The police force, now staffed by aliens after the invasion, had been hauling in protesters by the hundreds. When the Kherae came to Earth looking for human women to repopulate with, human men weren’t exactly thrilled and despite the alien's superior technology, wealth, and honestly, appearance, the men weren’t giving up.

Most human women had surrendered immediately. I mean, you were all promised a ten foot tall, handsome purple alien with big teeth, a massive cock, and a tail. What was there to battle?

Only you hadn’t been assigned a husband, with PCOS and a high probability that you were infertile, the aliens weren’t really interested in you. You couldn’t help them repopulate their dying species so you’d been assigned a decent job that paid well and you went on with your life.

While most women your age were pushing little pale violet babies around in strollers, you worked at the police station front desk, directing people and taking statements that didn’t need a real officer to receive. The aliens thought having a female human at the front desk would endear them to the public.

“Need any help?” you asked, looking for something to do.

Your job was pretty boring, since the aliens had taken over there wasn’t much crime. Human men, who committed most of the crime in the past were further and further ostracized from society as women were more and more occupied with the aliens.

The Kherae never forced anyone, lesbians were still allowed to marry whoever they wished and established couples weren’t broken apart, but they didn’t have to. The aliens were polite, good providers, and had charming cultural differences that made relationships with them interesting and fresh.

Their society worshiped women and after theirs were brutally gassed and murdered, they were protective and devoted husbands. You were pretty jealous you’d never gotten to choose a Kherae at one of their centers, where they let you look through screens filled with eligible bachelors for the right one. All your friends from college were blissfully happy with their new enormous, hunky husbands.

There were the odd human females who preferred human males, but nobody made them do anything they didn’t want to do. There were plenty of men to go around after the rest of the women picked from the purple aliens and most of those women preferred…more petite males, often dressed in a maid outfit.

Most of the crime now were men protesting or causing other trouble with home grown terrorism attempts, trying to get some attention.

“You could…help me take his booking photos if you want,” Balim offered.

He’d always been nice to you. The other married officers were polite, but looked at you with indifference. To their credit, married Kherae were pretty devoted to their spouses. They didn’t think of other women. They spoke to you when they needed to and then walked away, never stopping for any pleasantries.

But Balim actually took time to linger by your desk, talk to you, and bring you coffee and the occasional donut. You had no idea why he wasn’t married. He seemed to be a little ostracized by the other cops, but why you could never figure out. He was as polite as the rest of them, just as tall, handsome and hard working. You didn’t understand it, but as seeming outcasts you’d been drawn together.

“Sure!” you said, happy to have something to do.

You followed him to the area where you took the photos and he forced the perpetrator against the wall. You tried to keep your eye on the prisoner and not Balim.

He had dark plum skin, but striking long gold hair and golden eyes. He was massive like the rest of the aliens, skirting ten feet tall. The tips of his curving horns were also dusted in gold, making him look a bit like a magical Tiefling, except that his tail had a spade tip more like a demon.

“You’re gonna get what’s coming to you purp fucker!” the terrorist hissed, narrowing his eyes on you drooling over the alien.

You rolled yours. The men called the aliens purps, short for purple because of their skin color.

“I wish one would fuck me,” you murmured under your breath.

The human didn’t hear you, but Balim’s much more sensitive pointy ears picked it up and he coughed out a laugh, trying to cover it quickly.

A sudden BOOM knocked you off your feet and Balim was immediately hovering over you. His mouth was opening and closing as if he were saying something, but your ears were ringing and dust was clouding your vision. Over his shoulder the human scrambled handcuffed through the hole that had been blown in the wall.

You opened your mouth to tell him, but if something came out all you heard was ringing. He scooped you in his arms and held you against his chest, shuffling you deeper into the building.

“What’s happening?” you finally heard one of your coworkers shout.

“The building is under attack by terrorists!” your chief growled as he ran past, “Balim, take a cruiser over to the base, the bastards took down coms! Bring the other barren for backup.”

Balim nodded and adjusted his course to the garage, carrying you with him. He tossed you in the passenger’s seat, put a blaster in his lap, and peeled out of the driveway, pushing your head down with one hand. Your teeth rattled as the car went over what felt like a series of speed bumps.

Around you, you heard screaming, gunfire, and glass breaking, but the car never stopped and eventually his hand loosened on your head and you felt like it was safe to sit up.

“What’s happening?” you gasped, turning around in your seat to see nothing but smoke on the horizon through the broken window behind you.

“The human males got the better of us, it looks like,” he grumbled, “but it will be a short lived victory. Once we make it to the base they’ll be overwhelmed in a few minutes.”

You sank back into your seat, catching your breath. It was silent for a few minutes before you spoke.

“What did the chief mean when he said “the other barren”?” you asked. The words had sounded odd and it was weird you were even thinking of it considering the circumstances.

Balim cleared his throat.

“Uh…How do I put this?” he coughed, “I’m sterile…and I assume so are you if you don’t have a husband by now since you are…heterosexual it turns out…”

You blushed, thinking back to your earlier words confirming just that.

“Oh…” you said quietly.

He put a hand on your thigh and sighed, which went a long way to comfort you, despite the sudden intimacy.

“Kherae tend to send the barren into battle or on missions first,” he muttered, “because we can’t do our job…that’s why he sent us both in case we died, we’re not that important.”

“That’s kind of shitty,” you growled.

He shrugged.

“Yeah,” he said, “but they are probably all going to die by my estimation of the number of humans I just mowed through, and I get to drive away with the most beautiful woman I know, so…”

You slapped his shoulder.

“That’s horrible!” you tried not to laugh, but since you’d been sent off to be sacrificed yourself, you didn’t feel quite so bad.

He shrugged and smirked, but kept his eyes on the road. The base wasn’t that far away, which made the tragedy of all of the lives lost behind you that much sadder. You informed the commander and he sent reinforcements to clear the destroyed police station and collect the bodies of the slain officers.

He looked at Balim amused, because he was holding you to his chest like his child. He'd scooped you out of the passenger seat of the cruiser and hadn't put you down since.

“You know it’s a pity what they do to us,” he commented, tapping his finger on his desk as he looked at the two of you.

“Sir?” Balim asked, confused. You were also confused.

“Us?” you added.

He smiled a sad smile.

“I’m like you…well not exactly. I have…proclivities that don’t produce babies…” he explained, “I always got the most dangerous missions, the hardest of everything. Fortunately, for me I was always the strongest and the best at it all…so it didn’t really matter did it?”

He crossed the room and looked out the window.

“If you disappeared, Balim…well maybe you never made it here at all…we noticed the smoke on our own and perhaps you died, who’s to say?”

You blinked at the commander confused, what was he saying?

The Kherae holding you seemed to understand.

“Thank you, sir,” he murmured before turning and walking quickly out of the room.

“What did he mean by that? What’s happening?” you asked him.

He looked affectionately down at you.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” he asked suddenly.

“Um…where?”

“I have a ship, wanna go see another planet?” he offered.

You blinked at him.

“You do?…is it okay? I mean…there’s obviously something important going on here,” you pointed out.

He shrugged.

“Not to us and we are about to be declared dead on this planet, so why not?” he asked, "we can do deliveries between planets for money and see whatever you like. There are far more beautiful rocks than Earth out there."

“O-Okay…” you said, “but what about my medicines? I have PCOS, I can’t go without them.”

He nodded.

“You can just pop what you have into the replicator on the ship, it’ll make you new ones,” he assured you.

That’s how you ended up sitting next to Balim on his spaceship looking out of the front screen at a thousand points of stars in front of you on your way to…who knows?

#yandere fluff #alien boyfriend #alien romance #alien fluff #monster fluff #monster x human #alien x human #x reader #yandere x you #yandere x reader #yandere male #size difference #pcos

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the-heart-of-a-monster · 2 months

Note

I’ve been gone for so long but I have so much to say and idk how to say it so please be prepared for an absolute mess of an ask lol

First, I just really wanna give appreciation for Super Emeralds (The comic creator) and their dedication to THOAM. I’ve been on Tumblr for just a little more than a year at this point, and I only joined in the first place because of this comic. I got into it way back in… What was it, 2020?? 2021? And I fell in love immediately with the concept! Sonic feeling insecure about his new Werehog form? Chip being an active member of the team and a great friend?? TEAM DARK??? SONADOW DONE RIGHT?????????? Ohohoho! You can bet I was completely on board! I tried my best to comment on every page, because I just love giving positive feedback for things I enjoy, and took note of how Super Emeralds evolved their style as the years went on. I wasn’t there during the beginning, and I really wish I was, but the time I’ve spent following this fun little comic has made me feel so much appreciation not just for Super Emeralds as a person, but for the entire Sonic art community as a whole! Art is a creative endeavor, a passionate career, and sometimes it’s really hard to just. Draw. Comics are especially hard as I’ve discovered. So just… Good job to Super Emeralds for sticking around all these years and for giving us such an incredibly thought out and beloved series. And thank you.

…

ALRIGHT ENOUGH OF THAT MUSHY GUSHY STUFF AND LET’S TALK ABOUT THE BLUE BOY HIMSELF THAT IS NOW NO LONGER JUST BLUE MUAHAHAHAHASHEHEHEKEFHEOFHFFPWEHFLFHD

I’ve been a bit absent from Tumblr for the last few weeks due to sickness and lack of interest so I am undoubtedly missing a page or two from the equation but OH MY GOSH. POOR SONIC. Bro wakes up from like a 2-day long nap and the first thing he sees is his little brother screaming in his face at 3AM. He’s so confused haha! I noticed he isn’t as insecure or he isn’t really freaking out as much as I assumed he would way back during the exposition pages. This is obviously due to the confusion and whiplash after waking up as his “Normal” self again, but I feel like it’s just him putting on another fascade around his friends. To an extent, at least. He isn’t aware of the new pink markings all over his body and he isn’t aware of just how worried all his friends were. All he knows is that they know about his new form and they for some reason aren’t acting weird about it, so he’s likely just playing along to make sure nobody gets overly concerned. It just seems like something he’d do. Or maybe I’m just grasping at the angst straws, idk.

OMEGA IS FIXED BY THE WAY I DO NOT WISH TO GLOSS OVER THAT FACT. THE BOY IS BACK!! THE ROBO BOYO IS BACK!!! I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE ALL THE CRIMES HE’LL BE ABLE TO COMMIT ONCE TAILS GETS THOSE ROCKET LAUNCHERS WORKING AGAIN HEHEHEEE

Also let’s not gloss over how Omega doesn’t care that Sonic mauled him to death. Let’s not gloss over the fact that Omega clearly cares for the others because of his ignorance to Sonic’s rampage.

Yeah if you couldn’t already tell I’m a sucker for this kinda stuff-

Uhhhhh I don’t really have much else to say, honestly. Maybe I will later, but right now I’m on a time crunch so I gotta keep this all pretty concise. Thank you so so much for reading all the way through, I know this was a really really long one. And again, thanks to Super Emeralds for being able to last this long and not losing motivation for the comic. I know I would’ve given up after just 5 pages! (I actually tried to make a comic of sorts and I literally gave up after 5 pages I am not kidding.)

Aight I gotta go now bye bye!! 👋

ur gonna have a field day in 2-3 weeks depending on when u decide to go on rampage haha

#fan lore #clover-the-awesomest #long post #BTW I APPRECIATE THESE MESSAGES I JUST NEVER KNOW WHAT TO SAY IN FEAR I SPOIL ANYTHING AJHSFAHJS

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msviolacea · 1 year

Text

A not-so-short word vomit on a complaint I saw about 6.3. It was just a couple of people, so this is definitely not a “why is fandom like this” sort of thing, but the conversation I saw just made me think and I don’t have the time or energy to engage in a direct back and forth on Discord right now. So, I word vomit here, as one does.

I saw a thing the other day (here? Twitter? who knows, time is an illusion and brain cells are in short supply) that asked if you’re the kind of person who came to FFXIV from Dragon Age versus ... somewhere else. I am obviously from the Dragon Age side of things. And if there’s one thing DA fandom taught me, it’s that a game suffers when all players are expected to know what happens in ancillary non-video game materials in order to fully appreciate the story. Thus, I come down hard on the side of “what the game itself says is exactly what the characters should be expected to know and reference.”

And the FFXIV spoilers begin below. Assume spoilers for everything through 6.3 here.

So 6.3 - and 6.2 to a lesser extent, thanks to Zero - is full of references to Zenos and, quite frankly, what a terrible person he was. And that’s perfectly understandable, given what everyone knows about him in game. (And even what we know about him out of game, but more on the nuance of that later.) Yes, our WoL knows that he made one big gesture at the end of his life that helped us save the world. That’s great! But after that, he immediately challenged us to a fight and very nearly killed us - would have killed us if not for semi-divine intervention. Because in the end, he didn’t come to the end of the universe because he’d discovered a conscience. He came because he was a deeply selfish man who only cared about getting One Perfect Fight, and Alisaie’s words stuck in his head only to the point of “well if I do a thing for them, they’ll do a thing for me.” He only progressed to the point of understanding equivalent exchange in a similar way to the voidsent of the 13th.

That may have been vaguely fine for a character in another position, but he was supposedly running a country. Whether he wanted that is something else entirely, and we’ll get to a bit of Emet Selch and his crimes in a bit, but regardless of what he wanted, he had an obligation, and he failed it entirely - he refused to even consider it. And an entire nation suffered for his lack of care. That was one of the points of this patch. We met Zero in 6.2, learned that she’d been attached to Zenos against her will. That was mostly background to the rest of the dragon and void stuff in that patch, but in this patch, we bring her to Garlemald, where she sees more of the consequences of Zenos’s selfishness, outside of her own situation. And after observing us, our friends, and the people of Garlemald trying their best to survive together, she shows that she can choose something different - that despite the many, many years of darkness and selfishness she’s had to survive in the 13th, she has the capacity to desire something different.

Maybe Zenos would have displayed that same capacity if he’d had more time. But that wasn’t the story this game was telling. Not every character is going to get the same opportunities.

Not every villain gets to be redeemed.

I understand that we have a relatively robust history of redeemed villains in this game, compared to others of its kind. But that’s been a mixed bag. Emet Selch is one of the best examples of villains in general in the video game genre - the game itself showed exactly why he was the way he was, without excusing the atrocities that he committed along the way. (Fandom is a different story on the excusing - I am deeply uncomfortable with the “but he didn’t see humans as equals” argument being used in earnest - but that’s a different post.) And then they gave us an opportunity to see who he was before the sundering, before the trauma, and that once his full memory was restored and he had the opportunity to understand the full scope of what happened, he would gladly (though with characteristic grumbling) help us put the world to rights before his truly final curtain call.

Zenos did not have the same narrative opportunities. If that disappoints you, I understand. But it’s not a failure of the game, it’s just a narrative decision.

(Briefly - Gaius is a very, VERY different story, and one that I think is actually a failure of the game’s narrative. Gaius Baelsar should have remained dead, and the person we met in the Burn should have been an entirely different Garlean leader who defected and decided to help us. That one change would have saved that entire storyline.)

But, Zenos. We, as players, have the opportunity to read some ancillary materials to understand more about him. Side stories, lore books - we find he was neglected as a child, raised by narcissists and molded to be the person he was, to a certain extent. We can sympathize, we can understand the narrative threads that denied him a real chance at being a good person. But do not confuse what we the players know - or even the space the game writers give us to play with our headcanons - with the knowledge and opinions the characters should reasonably be expected to express in in-game dialogue.

What does the Warrior of Light know about Zenos in game, through actual in-game sources? He’s the great-grandson of Solus/Emet, his father was a xenophobic zealot, he gave zero shits about anything other than fighting and let a lot of really shitty people do his governing for him, he killed a ton of people and threatened many, many more, the Ascians brought him back to life and as soon as he got his body back, he allied with Fandaniel and let a civil war turn Garlemald into a smoking crater just so they could get to Zodiark, and when Fandaniel used Zodiark for his own purposes, he just shrugged and went wandering on his own because nothing in Garlemald was any use to him anymore. That’s pretty much it. Yes, he came to our aid at the moment we needed it most, but he did so for his own ends, and we gave him what he wanted. You can headcanon the reason why your WoL did so, but that doesn’t change the basic facts we know from in-game sources.

Your WoL doesn’t canonically know anything about his childhood. And, quite frankly, even if they did, do you think it would be reasonable to “well actually” Zero and the Garleans in dialogue at this point?

Zenos is a tragedy. Zenos also caused tragedy, and those two concepts can coexist in our minds as players. But in-game characters can’t be expected to view Zenos in a sympathetic light, not even our WoL. External lore sources are not in-game lore. Our headcanons are not in-game lore. The writers cannot avoid every single instance of our dialogue possibly deviating from our headcanons, not without eliminating dialogue entirely.

(There’s an ancillary topic here, about how the current shape of the world makes it very inadvisable for writers who give a shit about society to gloss over atrocities committed by a rich ogliarch in their narrative, no matter what players headcanon about that character, but that’s an aside to the points I’m making. But while I’m all in for villain-fucking and blorbo-appreciation in a fannish space, fandom is a totally different space than canon.)

In the end, Zenos died a villain. A complicated, interesting one who made a fascinating decision at the end of his life, but a villain nonetheless. We can do whatever we want with him in fandom - that’s what fanworks are for. And we can be disappointed that the canon narrative doesn’t share our points of view. But we should also understand that there are very good reasons for those POVs, and that not sharing our POV is not a failure of the narrative.

#jaime plays ffxiv #ffxiv #ffxiv spoilers #6.3 spoilers #that's a lot of words #but they were in my head #and needed to get out #i am a big proponent of divorcing your own feelings about a character #from what is good or expected from the narrative that's being told

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nekoabiwrites · 1 month

Text

Where's Grunty Boi?

I finally write something! It's for a fandom that no one I know cares for! It's got a terrible title! Something's never change <3

AU: None Words: 687 Pairings: None. It's platonic Mikey and Grunty Boi. Warnings: None. Let me know if there is anything!

Summary: Grunty Boi missed the sponsor segment and Mikey goes looking for him.

“Okay… well, that guy’s probably not coming back any time soon…” Mikey muttered under his breath as he shut the door to the studio. The most recent look-a-like had just finished his filming session and it had left him with just a slight headache. If he had to hear that guy say his stupid catchphrase one more time, Mikey may have committed a crime live on camera – hopefully it would have been edited out, but whatever, it didn’t happen.

He took a brief look through all the footage, skimming to ensure everything had been caught when he realised. Mikey glanced around, “Where’s Grunty Boi? I know we definitely have a sponsor for this one…”

Mikey quickly looked all throughout the space, just in case Grunty Boi had simply gotten distracted playing the latest mobile game or whatever, but he was no where to be found. “That’s… mildly concerning.” Mikey said to himself, stepping out the back door.

“Is it?”

Mikey jumped upon hearing a voice down beside him. Sat on the step, hunched over was Grunty Boi, looking dejected.

“There you are. Have you been out here the whole time?” Mikey took a seat beside the grunt on the concrete step.

Grunty Boi let out a hollow laugh, “Only just realised? Nice to know someone cares…” he snarked, his words having no bite to them at all.

“I didn’t mean it like that, I just…” Mikey trailed off, unsure of how to deal with this situation. Sure, Grunty Boi had been upset and mad over the years, but never had he seen him so defeated. After a moment, Mikey tried again, “What’s going on? Why are you out here alone?”

Grunty Boi sighed, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t want to be mocked, shunned and or ignored again? I may be the sponsor guy, but I do have feelings, y’know?” He shot a half-hearted withering glare in Mikey’s direction.

“I know that.”

“At least someone does…” Grunty Boi sighed again, now picking at a small leaf that’d fallen onto his knees as he sat there, “All those other guys… they all hate me. I just,” Grunty Boi paused, searching for the right words, “I’ve tried to ignore it, but it just gets to me. When everyone you work with immediately jumps to yelling at you or making fun of you, it gets to be too much.”

The pair sat in silence for a moment. Mikey was at a loss. Sure, Grunty Boi’d been in a bad mood for the last few guests, but he’d never thought it would be cause for concern. Grunty Boi seemed to shake off anything that came his way, he always seemed to be able to continue with the sponsors and then move on. Even then, it didn’t seem like it was all that common for a guest to be rude to him, but then Mikey cast his mind back over the last year and realised he was quite wrong.

“Sorry, Grunty Boi. I suppose, I just lost track of things over the past couple years…” Mikey eventually broke the silence, only to be answered with a huff from the man next to him, “How about this? I’ll try my best to get whoever comes in to be… better, I guess.”

Grunty Boi simply shrugged, “Whatever. Anything’s better than nothing…”

“Hey, c’mon. Most of these guys don’t have hardly any staying power. Look at you, you’ve been around for long enough to basically be a mascot at this point. People love you.”

Mikey’s attempt to cheer him up did bring a small smile to Grunty Boi’s face, “True, I am the best look-a-like. I even surpass the original in popularity.”

“Okay, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Y’know what? I do feel better.” Grunty Boi stretched out his arms above his head and stood from the step finally. “I am better than all of them!”

Mikey shook his head, brushing the dirt off of his legs from the step as Grunty Boi preened in front of him. His ego was certainly another cause for headache, but Mikey could deal with this one.

It's short and something probably only I think is cute, but I've wanted to write something about Grunty Boi and Michael being friends for a while. No taglist bc I'm p sure anyone who was on it a) wouldn't care for this and b) barely even remember who I am anymore lmao

#mandjtv #grunty boi #fanfiction #fanfic #rpf #sorta??#platonic

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goblins-riddles-or-frocks · 7 months

Note

That was such a good analysis. And do you think a "balancing" is possible?

Re: this ask!

I think that depends entirely on what is meant by balancing!

If you’re specifically referring to the “you were meant to be my balance” line, in the context which it is said shdhdd I do not think he remotely meant it. When he’s like “you might make me a better man :)” etc, I think he’s fully bullshitting her. He isn’t saying it with the intention of becoming a better person, or even with genuine acknowledgment that that is something that might require doing! He’s just trying to get her to hook up with him. If at that very point Alina took him up on his offer, there is zero chance imo that he would at all change his ways. He’s fully decided that he is right, and she is wrong, and she only needs to see things his way. That if she doesn’t, the fault lies with her.

That being said, I think he’s a character that’s remarkably easy to rehabilitate in one way or another. I find online discussions of redemptions often really simplistic and only from the perspective of a single type of story. Fictional/narrative morality is so fluid, all it takes to side a character like the Darkling with protagonists is to simply put him in a position where his goals align with theirs. And I find that pretty easy because he has such clear cut things he cares about, ie the political situation in Ravka. So it’s a pretty easy fix to just introduce an outside threat and force him to work with Alina/any protagonist of choice.

Or like for fanfic reasons, I’ve thought a lot about scenarios where either the stag isn’t found, or he doesn’t go immediately batshit villain mode the moment Alina runs away, and the status quo established in SaB stretches on for longer. Or scenarios that are just set earlier. Like he seems to not have been committing many war crimes, that we know of, in that pre canon time? So that’s one metric, but that doesn’t actually sand down any of his edges lol. And it’s only placing a brief interstice on his more egregious terrible behavior— I fully anticipate the manipulation and interpersonal cruelty would also still be present.

If we’re talking about balancing him out from a legit moral perspective, that becomes harder, chiefly because he is really goddamn old, and him being unadaptable, and set in his ways is literally a plot point (his hatred for technological advancement).

His age is super unclear, but canonically *at least* upwards of five hundred years old, and honestly I can understand why, past a certain point, he’d be like “WHY do I have to care what these children think, when they’re going to die in five minutes anyway?” I don’t think he can really think of people as people anymore, because he’s seen repetitions of similar things play out so many times, for so long. And being so powerful for so long means that he can afford to act pretty carelessly because there aren’t that many permanent consequences. Most typical worst case scenario (beyond the canon ending lol) is that he can literally just fake his death and come back as his own son or grandson with zero consequences. So a key factor in making him change in any way imo is stripping him of power so that he doesn’t have the luxury of not giving a damn about other people. I mean that more institutionally, but losing his magic could also be useful.

Once again, for its flaws and my baseline disagreement with the concept of bringing him back from the dead after TGT, I think RoW had the right idea wrt forcing him to pretend to be a random monk. He was, however, even trying to claw to power then lmao. I think it would just take way longer than the span of stuff we saw in RoW to make any meaningful change in him. He’s just been an evil wizard king in his little evil wizard tower for too long. And on top of that, imo, his insistence to Alina that, when herself faced with immortality, she will turn out exactly the same as him, stems from a sort of sunk cost fallacy. He honestly seems desperately unhappy as a character! He seems so jaded and fully emotionally removed from everyone and everything, where the only thing that matters to him is power, and he needs her to discover that that is the only outcome possible bc if not… well he’s just wasted centuries being fucking miserable for nothing. He doesn’t want there to be another option! So he’s just very, very reticent to having any other perspective or changing in any way, and if he ever does it will inevitably be done while kicking and screaming the entire way. (I might honestly just be averse to the idea personally because redemptions are boring to me! He’s much more fun if he sucks!)

Personally, my favorite method of domesticating the Darkling is just Alina using one of the Morozova amplifiers (possibly any amplifier if it just works like that?) on him and keeping him as her pet war criminal tbh. I think that has the most entertainment value, and the most safeguards against him finding his way to power again and committing more war crimes, or being in a place to do much manipulating. Will it fix him? Ehhhh maybe over time, since it might force him out of his usual habits? Probably not. But at least it functionally tempers most of his worse tendencies lol.

TLDR: Do I think the Darkling can be balanced? I don’t know! Sounds like a tall order! I do think he can be put on a leash though.

#also thank you!#grishaverse #shadow and bone #rule of wolves #the darkling #aleksander morozova #sorry not editing this just stream of conscious typed it out and I’m too busy to look over it again in depth #all the bendy punctuations #a mysterious stranger has appeared #i ramble sometimes #*writer’s cap*#meta

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lordoftherazzles · 2 months

Note

❄️🌈💧

Hello hello, Anon!!! Thank you for the ask!!! I'm going to pick a different WIP for each of these, because I can!

❄️Share a snippet from a WIP of your choosing. (From one of my upcoming fics Led Only By The Stars)

“I don’t have time for this,” the dwarf growled, adjusting his weaponry and leaving Bilbo behind—but rest assured, Bilbo would not be abandoned so easily as he trotted along. “No, I don’t have time for this!” Bilbo grouched loudly, causing the dwarf to pick up his pace. “Slow down!” “Mahal, do you ever stop talking?” “First you crash into our headquarters uninvited, and then your fellow kinsmen are roaming all over the place trying to apprehend you. That doesn’t even count the crimes you’ve committed outside my domain! What do you expect me to do?” The dwarf immediately halted, twisting sharply to face his annoying shadow with a threat in his voice. “I expect you to…” His aggression trailed, something behind the hobbit gaining his attention, and urging him to pull the pointy eared creature close to him. Bilbo scrambled, but had minimal time to react as he was crushed against the dwarf with a tug, and while his mouth opened, ready to demand to be let go, it was the sound of metal against some sort of glass that rang loud in his ears like the detonation of that spacecraft. Turning his head slightly to barely see the energy shield from the dwarf’s arm that was covering the back of his head, his mouth snapped shut. Bullets pelted the shield, ricocheting in various directions. “I expect you to run!” came another snarl before that transparent blue shield faded from the dwarf’s arm where his bracer was no longer glowing, and a firm hand gripped at Bilbo’s wrist to drag him along. A hobbit gripped in one hand, a gun in the other. “Move your feet, Halfling!”

🌈 Share something soft/fluffy from your WIP. (From my next chapter of As The Tide Turns)

Bilbo was busy unlocking Thorin’s cell and pulling the gate open before he was suddenly pulled into what he would have called a careful, yet bone-crushing, hug. It made his heart flutter that much more, and his head to spin. “Whatever doubts in my mind I’ve ever had about you, I am sorry.” “Don’t—don’t compliment me so highly, I would have doubted me too, and to be honest, I still do. Remember that we haven’t actually escaped yet,” Bilbo downplayed, even as his body felt so comfortable and so safe in Thorin’s arms. It was as if he were meant to be within those arms.

💧Share something romantic/hot from your WIP, or just something sweet if it's gen. (From my next chapter of Where The Shadows Lie - just something romantic!)

“The life I’ve lived has never allowed me the opportunity to find a suitable partner.” At least one who was emotionally available, just as much as physically. He’d been bedded, but never found that connection that made his heart flutter and blossom. “Until recently, that is.” Slight discoloration formed at the tips of his ears, and upon his cheeks, especially as one of Bilbo’s fingers traced the point of one of those blushing ears. “All the more reason for me to romance you properly, then,” Bilbo grinned. “There are still some firsts for you that I can claim, and I intend to make the most of it.”

teasing wips/upcoming projects ask game!

#raz answers #anon asks #bagginshield #SO MANY FICS SO LITTLE TIME

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metatextuality · 10 months

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first lines meme

Rules: Share the first line of your last ten published works or as many as you are able to, and see if there are any patterns!

tagged by @whetstonefires!

(Last ten published works, huh? That does rather narrow it down...)

1. The Man Who Would Not Stop for Death – a short, pulpy original noir scene for The Merry Whump of May.

The problem with discovering your payday is committing felonies — apart from the fact that they're committing felonies at all, of course — is that your odds of getting paid take a sharp downturn.

2. The Man and the Moon – a longform noir serial in which the same protagonist finds himself attempting to apply hardboiled rationalism to cosmic horrors from beyond the stars.

Chicago is an improvement over Hoboken, which should paint a sufficiently damning picture of both cities.

3. To Serve Satan: Miss deManners' Guide to the Heavenly Host – a Good Omens short about Crowley's methods that came to me fully-formed in a dream, so I'm not sure I should be counting it, but it did probably come from my brain technically so what the hell.

"Would either of you like something off the dessert trolley, sirs?"

For once, it was Crowley who looked up with such sudden diamond-bright joy that it cut.

4. But Be the Serpent Under ’t – an AU of my own pirate noncon epic in which Captain Crowley possesses one of his captors.

When Crowley finally died, it came almost as an anticlimax.

5. The Seas Incarnadine – the aforementioned epic pirate noncon fic, which I stg I am going to finish one of these days. (This sentiment also applies to every other unfinished fic on this list.)

This whole piracy lark had, in retrospect, gone a bit further than intended.

6. Conversant With Terrible Objects – DC mirrorverse character study of Owlman in the form of filthy, filthy phone sex with Superwoman.

The Crime Syndicate believed that Owlman loved Gotham City, when they credited him with the ability to love at all.

7. Black-Clad Bats and Making Money – the one where John Mulaney becomes the Riddler™

You may recognise me as the man who programmed — because that’s what being a game programmer gets you, instant celebrity, like Shigeru Miyamoto and the guy who invented Tetris — you may recognise me as Edward Nigma, the man who programmed Labyrinth of the Minotaur, a bestselling game whose apparent claim to fame is that it is unwinnable.

8. Crowskin – the one where Owlman catches an Australian magpie like a fuckin' baseball.

“What,” uttered Johnny Quick, “the fuck.”

9. Those Who Fight Monsters – a casefic wherein the mirror-universe Riddler deals with the moral dilemma of rescuing Owlman's favorite child assassin.

You would think, thought Edward Nigma, crouching behind the wall of shipping containers he’d scaled partway up for a better vantage point, that criminals would find somewhere else to conduct their business.

10. King's Gambit – DC mirrorverse fic where Lex Luthor and Sinestro discuss rationalism and then kiss (and then try to reverse-engineer God so they can use him as a nuke)

“Good news,” said Sinestro as he pulled away. “You’ll probably keep the eye.”

So the first thing I notice is that I like to open with an immediate, snappy Establishing Character Moment, usually in a close POV. That's probably related to the fact that my usual catalyst for writing down a scene I've been building up in my head is finding an opening hook that I like too much not to use, and which leads naturally into my mind expanding on it for another few paragraphs whether I want it to or not; also to the fact that most of my fic is character-centric, and almost always written in a POV limited to the inside of the viewpoint character's head even when it's in third person.

Something I wasn't expecting from this selection of opening lines – and possibly this is a pattern that would be broken if I included some of my many, many unpublished WIPs – is how many of these take a tongue-in-cheek jab at a significant aspect of the story itself. I don't think it's a matter of being convinced of my own metafictional cleverness, nor of being unconfident in my premise and seeking to lampshade it before the reader gets a chance to notice the cracks themselves...more that my favorite characters tend to be those that overthink everything, in part because I find it a relatable trait. Hmm.

Let's pull in a few of my closest-to-publishable WIP openings, for the hell of it:

My mother, may G-d bless her because he certainly hasn't given her much to work with so far, named me Sidney Solomon Jacobi.

"Y'know Sandra Nylund?" I ask, winding my way through the bullpen to my desk, where I navigate the organised chaos of notes and reports until I find the file I'm looking for.

The new navigator arrived on the HMS Essex's eighth day in port.

The thing about alcoholism was that it was perfectly socially acceptable to drink yourself to death.

The second time someone called him, she had Owlman tied to the bed.

Okay, yeah, I'm figuring that pattern's probably just a weird coincidence. Interesting that it worked out that way, though.

Tagging off the top of my head: @punishandenslavesuckers @anneapocalypse @weird-mcgee – and anyone else who sees this, consider yourself tagged as well!

#sai does a meme #for $8000 a month i will stop #writeblogging #a good man is hard to find (no not that one)

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meditating-honey-badger · 1 year

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Out of the Cold

by Meditating_Honey_Badger

This fic was written as a spin on Prompt 1 of the @tarlosmonthlyprompts for November & December

TK arrived at the fire station ten minutes before the agreed upon time, only to find Carlos leaning against his police cruiser, sipping what TK assumed was coffee out of a large thermos. He was wearing plain clothes, rather than his uniform, but he still looked impeccable in a button-down shirt and dress pants, his hair carefully gelled so there wasn’t a flyaway to be seen.

Of course he’s early, TK thought. That boy scout has probably never been late for anything in his life. And why is he dressed like we’re going someplace nice? They were headed to Colorado Springs to pick up a prisoner with cardiac issues, including a clotting disorder that made it inadvisable for him to fly. The prisoner was to be returned to Austin to face charges on several crimes he’d allegedly committed there before fleeing to Colorado and going on yet another crime spree.

The police department decided a paramedic should ride along because of the prisoner’s complicated health history. TK had volunteered immediately when asked, knowing that the time and a half pay for 96 hours straight would go a long way toward his goal of getting his own place. Ever since his mother had set up camp with TK and his father, the house felt incredibly cramped.

Unfortunately, the officer who was originally supposed to go was sick, and his replacement was Carlos Reyes. It was no secret that TK and Carlos didn’t get along, and his captain had offered to let him back out of the trip. In the end, given the choice between spending more time under the same roof as his divorced parents — who were definitely sleeping with each other and thought they were doing a good job of hiding it — and spending four days with a man who he couldn’t stand, TK chose the latter.

Besides, he’d suffered worse fates. Like healing from a gunshot wound with no pain medication. Except he’d already done that. Which had driven his mother to join them in Texas, which is how TK ended up desperate enough that he was willing to spend four days in a police cruiser with Carlos.

After TK parked his car, he grabbed his bag from the back seat and pulled his own drink out of the cup holder, a frozen mixture of caffeine and sugary goodness. “Where should I put this?” he asked as he approached the police cruiser. “I still have to go inside and grab my supply bag.”

Without a word, Carlos set his coffee on top of the car and went around to the back. He opened the trunk and gestured for TK to place his duffel bag inside. “Doesn’t look like you brought much with you,” he commented.

“It’s not a long trip,” TK replied, unable to resist rolling his eyes. “Four days on the road, and who do I have to impress? The prisoner? You?”

Carlos snorted and closed the trunk. “Certainly not me. I already know enough about you to know that I’m not impressed.”

“Nice, Reyes. You know, I planned on being civil since we have to be together for the next ninety-six hours, but I guess you prefer to play dirty.”

Carlos frowned slightly, and if TK didn’t know better, he would have sworn there was a passing look of regret on Carlos’s face. TK ignored it and asked, “Can I put this down in the cup holder while I run inside?”

Carlos’s frown deepened as he looked at the disposable plastic cup. “That doesn’t look very spill-proof.”

“Do you really want to deal with me if I haven’t had my coffee?” TK shot back.

“If you can call that crap coffee,” Carlos said as he opened the door. “Just be careful. We just detailed this thing two days ago.”

“Fucking snob,” TK muttered as he leaned in and set the cup down.

“What was that?” Carlos asked.

“I said nice job,” TK replied as his head reemerged. He grinned broadly, and even batted his eyelashes a little. “On the detailing.”

Read on A03

#tarlosmonthlyprompts #tarlos #carlos reyes #tk strand #911 lonestar #tarlos fanfic #enemies to lovers #only one bed #snowbound

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thelazyhermits · 2 years

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I’ve decided on how I want my Yuu’s first meeting with Leona to go since I really want to begin building that relationship before Book 2 events. I’ll put it all underneath the cut.

Yuu meets Leona on her first full day in TW, ergo the day she spends as a janitor along with Grim.

Around lunchtime, Yuu & Grim are allowed to take a break and are given some bentos by Sam whom they had been helping out at the time.

(Even though Crowley said Sam was free to put them to work, Sam was reluctant upon seeing Yuu and figuring out she’s a girl, which no one else has figured out yet because of her large hoodie and the fact that she’s wearing a bra that keeps her chest protected and makes her appear flat-chested.

That’s why he went easy on her and Grim and also gave them some lunch bentos since the two had no idea what to do for lunch, which Sam made a mental note to complain to Crowley about later lol)

While Grim immediately inhales his bento while at Sam’s shop as Yuu is finishing up helping at the store, Yuu decides to eat her bento elsewhere once she’s sure that Sam no longer needs any help.

Eventually, Yuu finds herself at the botanical garden, and she decides to eat her lunch there. Meanwhile, Grim has curled up in her hood and has fallen asleep.

While she’s walking around admiring the view of the botanical garden, Yuu accidentally steps on a sleeping Leona’s tail, waking him up like what happened in canon.

For a moment, Yuu gets distracted by the fact that Leona has cat ears and a tail since she’s a huge cat lover, but then, upon realizing she stepped on his tail, she feels immensely guilty since that’s one of the worst crimes a cat lover can commit lol

Yuu does a full body bow and apologizes profusely for her actions. Leona is caught off guard, by her genuine apology and the fact that her voice sounds a lot more feminine than he was expecting.

Once he actually gets a good look at her face, which looks girlish as well, Leona checks her scent and realizes she’s not only the magicless student who crashed the ceremony but also a female.

Upon learning he’s dealing with a girl, Leona’s earlier anger fades since he’s nicer toward girls than he is guys. Plus, he’s too busy feeling confused by the fact that there’s a girl on campus to bother feeling angry lol

Since he wants answers, Leona has her take a seat with him and explain her situation, and she complies. However, she refrains from mentioning that she came from another world and doesn’t talk about her Quirk, the latter of which she has decided to keep to herself since she doesn’t want to risk meeting someone who would want to try to make a profit out of her ability to see the future like Mumei.

The whole time, Leona is carefully observing her. Because of this, he’s able to notice the fact that Yuu looks like she’s trying to hide that she’s in pain.

Yuu is very surprised when Leona abruptly asks her if she’s injured, especially since he’s wearing quite the displeased frown, because she thought she was doing a good job of maintaining a solid poker face.

Up until this point, no one had noticed that Yuu has been in pain since arriving in TW. The reason for her pain being that she got sucked into the mirror following one of her cage matches, which left her pretty bruised, just not in visible areas.

(Normally, Mumei would only get a healing Quirk involved if Yuu received injuries that could result in visible scars since that would damage her physical appeal or for injuries that couldn’t be taken care of at home. Otherwise, Yuu was left to deal with tending to her own injuries.)

Yuu had gotten sent to TW before she could tend to her bruises, but thankfully, none of them are so serious that she’s in extreme pain. Thanks to her high pain tolerance, she’s just really sore.

She’s usually pretty good at hiding her discomfort, but nothing escapes Leona’s keen observational skills.

When Leona tells her not to bother lying since he’d know right away, Yuu tells him that she’s not really injured, just bruised and sore. Not wanting to tell him the whole story, she just says that she got into a fight before ending up in TW which technically isn’t a lie.

Leona can tell there’s more to it than just that, but it’s obvious she doesn’t want to say anything else on the subject so he leaves the matter be.

Around that time, Ruggie shows up, looking for Leona. Not expecting to see anyone else with Leona, Ruggie is surprised when he sees Yuu and only gets further surprised once he realizes she’s a girl.

After Yuu explains her circumstances to Ruggie, Leona throws his wallet at Ruggie and orders him to go buy a potion at Sam’s store. While this confuses Yuu, Ruggie understands what this is about when he sees the subtle glance that Leona aims in Yuu’s direction.

(Considering Yuu clearly isn’t seeking out any help, I feel like Leona would get involved since he has a healthy fear/respect for women thanks to the environment he grew up in, and he can’t just leave a girl alone when he knows she’s injured. It just wouldn’t sit right with him.)

Yuu is very surprised when a potion gets handed to her after Ruggie makes a quick trip to Sam’s store. Upon learning what it’s for, she tries to convince Leona that he doesn’t need to waste his money on her; she really is fine.

(This sets off some alarm bells in both Leona’s & Ruggie’s minds since girls in TW don’t usually act like this. They’re normally treated very well and are expected to be treated as such, yet Yuu is making it seem like they’re going above and beyond just by giving her a way to get rid of her pain.)

In the end, Ruggie convinces her not to worry about the money since Leona’s rich. Plus, it would weigh on their conscience if they just left her in pain and not tried to do anything.

Since it’s clear that these guys won’t be accepting a refusal, Yuu finally relents and takes the potion which, much to her amazement, takes care of her bruises in an instant.

This moment leads to Yuu developing a very favorable opinion of Leona & Ruggie. Even though she hardly knows them and still believes she can’t let her guard down, they’ve won some respect/admiration from her for treating her so kindly when they had no obligation to do so.

(They were the complete opposite of the guys she grew up surrounded by in the underworld, so she’s completely unused to people showing concern on her behalf and actually wanting to help her without expecting something in return.)

That’s why, from that point on, Yuu often goes to the botanical garden during her free time, usually after school, to see if Leona & Ruggie are there. The first time she seeks them out is when she bakes something for them to express her thanks for helping her, but after that, she just sometimes finds herself wanting to hang out with them since she finds them interesting and she feels safe around them.

Of course, Yuu only sticks around if she thinks her presence isn’t unwelcome. If she thinks she’s being a bother, she’ll leave immediately since she doesn’t want to be rude/selfish.

Leona mentally compares her to a stray puppy/kitten that got attached after receiving free food. It’s a little exasperating, but at the same time, he doesn’t completely hate her presence since it’s not a bad feeling to have someone around who’s unafraid of him and actually looks at him in such a favorable light.

Plus, she knows how to play chess and is pretty good at it too, even though she hasn’t be able to beat him, so she can provide him some entertainment whenever he’s not napping.

Ruggie doesn’t know what to make of her since the sane thing for Yuu to do would be to stay away from predators like them, not constantly approach them.

Of course, he understands why she would develop a favorable opinion of them, but still! She’s being too careless! Girls shouldn’t let their guards down around guys no matter how nice they seem!

Although, on the other hand, Ruggie really likes the food she makes, which has that warm, comforting touch to it like his grandma’s cooking, so if her coming around all the time means more free food from her, he can’t bring himself to complain lol

There is some tension with these three, however, when Book 2′s events start. That’s because, as I mentioned in a previous post, they kidnap Yuu to prevent her from further interfering with their plans.

(After having prevented Trey from getting injured thanks to having a vision about his accident, Yuu earned Ruggie’s attention, and he eventually was able to gather info via spying to put together that Yuu had a power that somehow allowed her to foresee future events.

Obviously, this could throw a huge wrench in their plans, so Leona ordered Ruggie to kidnap her and bring her to their dorm. Ruggie did this via using his UM after approaching her when no one else was around.

Upon seeing Ruggie’s UM in action, she realized he was the one behind all the recent accidents since his UM would explain how the people kept falling the way they did.)

While I mentioned in a previous post that Yuu accepts the kidnapping situation, that’s after she learns that she’s not in any danger, so initially, she’s irritated/on the defense and is wondering if she put her trust in the wrong people like a complete idiot.

Immediately, her mind drifts to all the worst possible scenarios like she’s being kidnapped so they can permanently get rid of her to ensure she doesn’t mess up their plans or they want to interrogate/torture her for information since Ruggie has made it known that they know she has a special power.

Basically, Yuu is just assuming the worst and thinks she needs to do whatever it takes to survive, just like she’s always done in the past. That’s why, when Ruggie finally releases her from his UM after bringing her to Leona, her fist starts flying at Ruggie since if she wants to stand a chance against Leona she needs to take out the guy who can control her movements.

Panicked, Ruggie uses his UM on her again to stop her punch midway, making her click her tongue in frustration. Meanwhile, Ruggie is wondering why the hell she has gotten so violent all of a sudden lol

Yuu says it’s only obvious for her to react like this when she has just been kidnapped and she has no idea what their intentions are. After all, for all she knows, she could have been brought here to be killed.

As her mind races for a new plan, Yuu tells the guys that if they want to interrogate her that they won’t get anything out of her. She has a high pain tolerance and is too stubborn to give in no matter what they do to her.

Much to her surprise, Leona & Ruggie look noticeably uncomfortable/surprised by her words, making her wonder just what their intentions are.

(Once again, the alarm bells are ringing in these guys’ heads since a normal girl’s reaction shouldn’t be that she’s expecting to get killed/interrogated. Sure, it’s normal to be on your guard after getting kidnapped, but the way she’s so sure she’s going to get hurt is very disconcerting, especially since they don’t get the impression that she’s assuming the worst of just them. This seems like something she would expect from anyone in their shoes.

Plus, the look in her eyes now is completely different from the girl who approached them so carelessly up until that day. It’s almost like looking at a completely different person.)

Ruggie is quick to tell Yuu that they have no intention to hurt her since mistreating women is a serious offense in TW, especially where they’re from. The only reason they did the whole kidnapping thing was because she was a huge threat to their plan.

Since she’s still wary, Leona moves to stand in front of her so he can hold her gaze as he swears that no harm will befall her while she’s at his dorm. They brought her here to keep her from interfering with their plans; that’s it.

Thanks to being surrounded by the types of people who lied naturally growing up, Yuu is pretty good at figuring out when people are lying, so she can tell that Leona is being honest.

That’s why she decides to trust in their words since their past treatment of her supports what they’re saying now. Plus, she really wants to be trust these guys and not think the time she spent with them up until this point was all a lie.

While she says that she’ll trust them, Yuu still wants to punch both of them since it’s in her right cause they did kidnap her and targeted Riddle which led to Trey almost getting hurt.

Ruggie is not a fan of this plan since he does not like the steely glint in her eye lol But Leona goes along with it since she just wants to punch their arms and he’s not worried about it actually hurting.

And Leona was right. Since Beastmen are stronger than regular humans, it would take a lot to hurt one of them.

However, Yuu does surprise them with her technique since it’s clear she knows how to throw a punch, and there was more force behind her punch than they were expecting from a human female. It didn’t hurt, but it caught them by surprise since it was unexpected.

Combine that with Yuu’s other strange mannerisms, and Ruggie can’t help but feel unsettled. Meanwhile, Leona is already coming up with some not so pleasant theories about the kind of background Yuu came from.

Once Yuu gets her punches in, she finally gets all the details about Leona’s big plan since her being stuck at Savanaclaw means she can’t do anything with the information, so they don’t mind telling her.

After hearing everything, Yuu can’t say she’s too surprised since Leona & Ruggie are the crafty sort, and she knows this school isn’t known for it’s pure and honest students. This kind of plan definitely seems like something that would be concocted by a NRC student.

Personally, she’s not a huge fan of the way the guys are going about this, but at the same time, she understands their line of reasoning, which is why she has no intention to condemn them, especially when they’re technically not doing anything that’s against the rules.

In order to ensure their plan succeeds, Yuu needs to be kept at Savanaclaw’s dorm to prevent her from using her ability to see into the future to help out those who are trying to stop their plan.

Ergo all they want out of Yuu is to remain at their dorm until the tournament is over. Once that’s all well and done, she’ll be free to leave.

Once she hears that, Yuu is more accepting of this turn of events since they truly have no bad intentions for her. Of course, there’s some complaining when she hears that she can’t go to class, but once Ruggie promises to get her assignments for her so she won’t fall behind, Yuu is fine with this situation.

After all, the Savanaclaw dorm is much nicer than Ramshackle, so it’s basically like getting to stay in a luxurious hotel. The only downside is not having Grim with her, but she’s sure Ace and Deuce will take care of him in the meantime so she’s not too worried.

She does contemplate the possibility of escaping, but considering who she’s dealing with, she thinks the chances of that being likely are very low. No doubt there will be guards around the place to prevent that, so it’s better for her to err on the side of caution.

While Yuu would like to put a stop to Leona’s plan, she knows she has to be smart about this, so she decides to play it all by ear and just wait to see what kinds of opportunities present themselves to her rather than make a fuss without having a concrete plan.

After she hears the whole story of what’s going on, Yuu decides to ask the guys why they are treating her so well just because she’s a girl. Is there a law in this area that protects girls from being mistreated?

Her innocent question just makes the guys all the more convinced that she is not from around here since in TW as a whole girls are all supposed to be treated well. It’s not necessarily a law but just a way of life, especially where they come from.

This leads to Leona asking where Yuu came from. After being reminded that they’d know if she’s lying, Yuu finally admits that she came from another world.

Naturally, there’s a lot of shock and disbelief on Ruggie’s part, but Leona accepts the answer without too much difficulty since she’s clearly not from around here and she has that special power to see the future which isn’t normal either. Plus, she’s clearly not lying.

While she refrains from talking about her Quirk, Yuu explains how in her world having superpowers is normal, and that it’s increasingly rare to find people who don’t have Quirks. She basically treats Quirks like UM in her explanation since that’s kind of what they are in a sense.

During this conversation, Ruggie asks how women are treated in her world since it’s clearly different from how it’s done in TW, so she explains how it really depends on the individual since some guys are gentlemen while there are others who treat women with great disrespect.

When she gets on the topic of guys that are like the perverts from the underworld, who treat women like pieces of meat, Yuu gets visibly irritated. It’s easy to tell just from looking at her tense figure and clenched fists that dealing with those types of guys wasn’t out of the ordinary for her.

Because she’s so caught up in her anger, she doesn’t notice the obvious signs of tension that Leona and Ruggie are exhibiting and their displeasure.

Ruggie is quick to ask Yuu if she has dealt with guys like that while at NRC since, while it seems unlikely, he needs to make sure she’s not dealing with that treatment here.

Yuu is surprised by his show of concern, but it also makes her happy that he’s worried on her behalf. She quickly assures him that she hasn’t been treated poorly at NRC; rather, this is probably the nicest group of guys she has dealt with.

(And once again, the alarm bells are ringing, because what kind of hell did this girl come from if she thinks NRC guys are nice?)

At this point, Ruggie is desperate for answers but Leona prevents him from probing further since he can tell this isn’t a subject that Yuu would just freely talk about. So Ruggie reluctantly holds off on digging for more info.

From that point on, the two keep a closer eye on Yuu, trying to figure her out in their own ways without outright demanding answers.

(And they only get more suspicious when she later admits that she doesn’t know how to smile naturally. Because seriously? What the hell?)

During the time leading up to the tournament, Yuu spends a lot of time with Leona & Ruggie when they’re free, allowing her to get to know them better, so she finds out about their backgrounds.

When hearing about Ruggies, she realizes her instincts were right about him being a survivor like her, even though they dealt with different circumstances.

It takes longer before she gets to learn more about Leona, but eventually, she learns about his status as the second prince who’s doomed to never reach the throne because of his older brother and nephew.

(During this conversation, Yuu becomes convinced that Leona is no Scar since, despite his frustrations, this is not a man who would kill his own flesh and blood just to achieve his goals. She can tell he cares about his family despite how frustrated he is with them.

She wishes she could do something for him, but in a situation like this, there really is nothing she can say or do to make his situation better; she’s powerless.

She always has been, just like Mumei always used to tell her.)

Yuu also eventually meets Jack who’s working with Ace and the others at this point. He wanted to check on her and offer to bust her out of the dorm, but she assures him that she’s alright and that it would be better for him not to try anything like that since she doesn’t want him to get into trouble.

Plus, by this point, she has had a vision of Leona’s Overblot, so she wants to remain at the Savanclaw dorm to keep an eye on him in hopes that she can somehow prevent the events of her vision.

Regrettably, as I mentioned in that first post I made, Yuu is unsuccessful is stopping the Overblot, but she’s able to help stop Leona before his Overblot makes him use up all his magic and kills him.

After the battle, during their time in the infirmary, Yuu takes turns between expressing how happy she is that Leona is alright and scolding him for being an idiot and making her worry about him lol

Leona is surprised by her lack of fear, considering all the damage he did during his Overblot, which led to her getting injured, but he doesn’t let it show in his expression or act any differently than how he usually does around her.

So, he just complains about her being annoying and swats her in the face with his tail haha

However, Leona does bring up how she was able to smile at the end of the battle since she smiles again at one point while they’re in the infirmary.

This leads to Yuu explaining that she wanted to do something for him in that moment. She knew she couldn’t do anything about his circumstances at home; she couldn’t magically take his pain away or give him a proper chance at the throne like he deserves.

But she still wanted to do something. She wanted him to see that she felt he was worth the effort - that everything he does isn’t completely useless - that there are people who respect/admire him and who would care if something happened to him.

Since actions speak louder than words and she was afraid her words wouldn’t be able to reach him, Yuu wanted to give him her first natural smile in hopes that that would get her feelings across, so he would see she’s serious about him.

Such “sappy” talk earns her another face full of his tail, but there’s something more noticeably relaxed about Leona now, which gives Yuu hope that her feelings did get through to him, even if it was just by a little bit.

In her mind, the only way to ensure they completely sink in is by continuing her efforts to be friends with Leona, so he’ll see through her actions that she’s completely genuine.

So, in the end, things return to normal between Yuu, Leona, & Ruggie after Book 2 since she just goes back to hanging out with them when she can.

However, there is a difference in how the guys treat her after the events of Book 2.

While it was already somewhat in the making, Leona develops a soft spot for Yuu but would never admit it. The only one who really notices is Ruggie who wisely keeps his mouth shut around Leona but is willing to tease him when Yuu’s not around.

Leona really doesn’t think Ruggie has room to talk since Ruggie basically becomes a motherhen when Yuu is concerned because he and Yuu have become close friends due to spending so much time together at the Savanaclaw dorm and cause she saved Ruggie during the Overblot battle after having a vision of Leona using his UM on Ruggie.

(That vision really had an emotional impact on Yuu. As soon as her Quirk deactivated, she immediately sprinted toward a surprised Ruggie and tackled him out of the way just before Leona went crazy.

It was the first time Ruggie had seen Yuu on the verge of tears. Even though she had tackled him out of the way before Leona could get ahold of him, Yuu still asked Ruggie if he’s okay, and much to his great shock/disbelief, she was actually relieved when her drawback kicked into gear because she prevented him from getting injured since that meant she was successful in protecting him.

Ruggie really scolded her for being an idiot for that.)

That combined with all the hints about Yuu’s worrisome background and the fact that she seems to have penchant for attracting trouble has put Ruggie on high alert since someone has gotta take care of this girl and it might as well be him lol

(After being exposed to the concept, I am a huge fan of motherhen Ruggie, so there was no way I could not include that here haha)

In regards to Yuu’s friendship with Jack, it started during her stay at his dorm and grows when Yuu started approaching him, asking if they could do homework together since she had questions and Leona/Ruggie weren’t around to help her like they had been doing.

Since he felt he should take responsibility for his upperclassmen’s actions which could lead to Yuu’s grades suffering, Jack agreed, so they got to know each other during that time.

That’s how Yuu found out about Jack’s usual exercise routine which gives her the idea of forming one of her own since being in top shape physically will help keep herself safe.

After Book 2 events, Yuu starts going on morning runs with Jack after he makes an offer, so that’s a normal daily occurence with them. That combined with the time they spent together studying for their final exams led to them becoming closer.

It also helped that Yuu ends up staying at Savanaclaw for a week during the exam study period because she and Leona make a deal that, in exchange for helping out Ruggie with Leona’s errands and helping out around the dorm, he would help Yuu with her studying.

(What Yuu didn’t know was that Leona came up with this idea to get her and Grim out of Ramshackle long enough that he could have the dorm renovated with her being none the wiser.

Yuu was really touched when she found out the truth. That was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her.

She gave Leona and Ruggie big hugs to express her thanks since Leona footed the bill and Ruggie took care of getting everything arranged. She was so happy that she was willing to deal with the annoyed reaction she expected to come from Leona over the hug since he didn’t seem like the hugging type, which is why she was surprised when all he did was complain about her being too sappy while he messily ruffled her hair.)

While Yuu and Jack become closer friends after Book 2, it’s during Book 3 that Jack’s protectiveness starts to kick into gear. At first, he helps Yuu out cause he feels bad for her and cause Leona/Ruggie asked him to keep an eye on her.

Eventually, however, Jack’s just looking out for her cause he wants to cause he comes to respect her due to how well she handles the Azul deal situation.

He likes that Yuu is motivated out of what he thinks is pride because she declares to Azul that nobody messes with what’s hers and gets away with it. It’s not just about her wanting to defend/protect her friends. She’s doing this because someone thought they could mess with her turf and get away with it; at least, that’s how Jack perceives it, and he’s technically not wrong lol

From Book 3 on, Yuu often calls Jack her favorite son, which always riles up the Ace/Deuce/Grim trio. Jack initially complains about this, saying he’s not her kid, but eventually, they just get to the point in their friendship where he just goes along with it cause he knows she’s gonna just keeping doing whatever she wants anyway.

Plus, judging from how his tail wags, it doesn’t look like he hates being the favorite son as much as he wants everyone to believe XD

#TABF AU #fortune in twisted wonderland

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anti-dazai-blog · 2 years

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6- How much does he enjoy revealing people’s secrets? (And other complaints)

As mentioned in part 5, Dazai’s not in the previous chapter. How convenient, he disappears right when the agency gets attacked. This isn’t a major offense on his part— he ditches work all the time. Although I wouldn’t put it past him to discover that the agency’s in danger, and rather than warning people, he’d conveniently choose to stay home that day.

In this particular case of Dazai Ditching Work At The Worst Possible Time, we at least know where he’s choosing to be instead. The events of chapter 6 take place immediately after the events of chapter 5; at the start of this chapter, the agency’s cleaning up their office from the Black Lizard’s attack, and Ranpo ditches the clean-up to go solve a local murder. We see later on in this chapter that Dazai was already at the murder scene, waiting for the right time to get caught in the investigator’s nets. The crime scene was a train ride away from the agency, so for Dazai to guarantee that he would get there before Ranpo and Atsushi, and to make sure he could magically appear at Exactly The Right Moment, he’d have to make sure he got there about an hour before them, meaning it would have been impossible for him to have been at the agency office that morning. It would also take away his dramatic entrance via fishing net if he had just joined Ranpo and Atsushi and taken the train with them, and of course his dramatic entrances are a non-negotiable part of his act.

It’s still unclear why he’d have to be here in the first place. Ranpo doesn’t need him to help solve the case. Atsushi doesn’t need him for any purpose either. So why did he show up here today? Just to be a nuisance to everyone around him? I wouldn’t put it past him. That checks out.

His entrance in this chapter is, as I previously mentioned, dramatic. He gets caught in the fishing nets that were meant to catch evidence. He claims it’s just another one of his suicide attempts. This is the third “suicide attempt” Atsushi’s been forced to witness. It’s bad enough that he’s obstructing the investigators from the police department from searching for evidence (even though Ranpo will solve the case on his own, Dazai has no right to interfere with other people’s jobs). But not only is this interference, but watching someone try to commit suicide will be an added source of trauma and stress for everyone here. Sure, they were just looking at a corpse five seconds ago, but there’s no reason for them to witness a failed suicide attempt along with it (even though this isn’t a real suicide attempt, but rather a front for Dazai to get near the crime scene).

And not only does everyone here have to witness that, but the first thing Dazai does upon hearing about the crime is loudly make a show of talking about how much he would have loved to commit a double suicide with the deceased woman in front of him. I doubt I have to explain how disrespectful this is. But Dazai never did have much respect for the dead, especially when he doesn’t know the corps in question personally. And either way, being respectful or disrespectful clearly isn’t his main goal here. He’s just messing around, trying to get a reaction out of Sugimoto.

At this point, Dazai has already noticed all the things he’ll point out later that lead him and Ranpo to make their deductions. He knows that the murderer and boyfriend of the deceased is standing right here next to him. He probably thinks it’s hilarious— to go on and on about how much he would have loved to coerce her into a double suicide, while he watches Sugimoto from the corner of his eye struggle to keep it together. While Ranpo wants nothing more than to solve the crime and call out the murderer, Dazai wants to provoke the murderer into revealing himself. And he goes about doing that in perhaps the cruelest way possible.

Meanwhile, Ranpo is still trying to convince Minoura that he’s a genius detective. To do this, he calls upon Sugimoto to try and solve the case in under 60 seconds. While struggling to do this— or rather, while struggling to come up with a realistic-sounding solution to the case— he chooses to blame it on the mafia. He says the body was shot three times in the chest, which resembles the mafia’s standard revenge on traitors. Dazai takes this opportunity to inform everyone here that Sugimoto’s description of Mafia-style revenge is a bit off.

Explaining this is a risk to him. Sure, both Ranpo and Atsushi are aware that he’s a former mafioso, but the officers here are not. And this clearly isn’t to help Ranpo solve the case— Ranpo would reach the same solution with or without Dazai’s interference. So for what purpose would he give away that he knows slightly more about the mafia than the average person? As far as I can tell, it’s yet another one of his ways of appearing all-knowing to Atsushi. He needs to show how well-versed he is in the ways of the mafia— a casual reminder to those listening that he’s not just your average super-powered detective. He’s more than that. He’s greater than that.

Ranpo finally gets Minoura’s approval to show off his ‘ability’. Right before he does, Dazai tells Atsushi to watch closely, and pay attention to what he’s about to witness. At first glance, it may seem like Dazai’s trying to show off his coworker’s skill, but by the end of the chapter it’s revealed that that’s not the case. While Ranpo is showcasing his deductive skills, Dazai is nullifying his non-existent ability. At the end of the chapter Atsushi praises Ranpo’s ‘ability’ and Dazai says, seemingly surprised, “Oh, you still don’t know?”

When he told Atsushi to “watch closely”, he was referring to watching him nullify the ‘ability’, thus proving that Ranpo doesn’t have one in the first place. Because revealing your friends’ and coworkers’ secrets to newcomers is more important than keeping them, especially when by revealing them, you get to come off as ‘all-knowing’.

We’ll get back to this later. Let’s take a little detour from this now— when Sugimoto realizes he’s been caught, he pulls out his gun in an attempt to shoot or threaten our protagonists. Instead of handling this himself (something he’s more than capable of doing, considering his mafia background), Dazai shoves Atsushi at him and has him restrain Sugimoto instead. Atsushi isn’t trained in combat (as far as I’m aware of), and should not be thrown at the guy with the gun, regardless of his regenerative abilities. And even with his regenerative abilities in mind, he’s a human, not a human shield. He shouldn’t be thrown in front of a gun against his will for anyone’s sake.

Now back to Ranpo. After leaving the crime scene, Dazai reveals the truth of Ranpo’s ability (or lack thereof) to Atsushi. This is not only unnecessary, but as we see in later chapters, the truth of Ranpo’s ‘ability’ isn’t something that Ranpo himself is fully comfortable with facing. All the more reason to never reveal it until Ranpo himself decides to bring it up. Yet Dazai decides that every piece of information he has is another way he can show Atsushi that he already knows everything about everything and everyone.

{ And now we have a quick but necessary side note:

Dazai explaining all of this was undeniably more for the audience’s sake than for Atsushi’s. Same goes for everything else he explains for seemingly no reason. It’s not out of character for him to show off how well-informed he is, which makes him a great way to throw some exposition at the audience. However, in this specific case [Dazai explaining Ranpo’s lack of ability to Atsushi], it feels less like Dazai being Dazai and more like Dazai being the audience’s direct source of exposition. I’ll continue this analysis as if he’s doing this because he wants to and not because the story needs him to, but it’s difficult to be all-out critical of something that’s so clearly being done for the sole purpose of giving us semi-necessary exposition. }

Dazai revealing Ranpo’s lack of ability does more damage than simply revealing the private information of a friend. Although it’s clear to the audience that the reason Dazai must explain most of Ranpo’s deductions in this chapter is to prove [to the audience] that it’s possible for him to reach his conclusions without an ability, Dazai is unaware that he’s a fictional character acting for an audience, and therefore cannot be judged with the expositional purposes of his explanation in mind.

By explaining Ranpo’s deductions, Dazai cheapens the worth of Ranpo’s talents and intellect. By proving that he can reach the same conclusions as Ranpo, Dazai shows Atsushi that he’s as capable as Ranpo himself when it comes to doing Ranpo’s job as a detective. It cheapens Ranpo’s importance to the agency by proving that there’s another agency member who can do exactly what he does. If Dazai can do what Ranpo does (and more!), then what’s the point of everyone in the agency having the immense respect for Ranpo that they all showed at the beginning of this chapter?

In Dazai’s attempts to prove to Atsushi that he’s the smartest guy ever, he throws Ranpo and his entire role in the agency under the bus. It’s one thing for Dazai to simply reveal against Ranpo’s will that Ranpo doesn’t have an ability, but it’s a whole different issue for him to explain each deduction, thus making it seem like anyone who’s perceptive enough can do the job of the agency’s most valued member.

And that’s it for chapter 6. Join me next week when I scream into the void about how Dazai’s the absolute worst and is such an awful person, to the extent that when I was writing the part about Sugimoto I actually paused for a minute or two and was like “woah. this guy is really a horrible person. Wow.”

#Everything Dazai said knowing full well that Sugimoto was her boyfriend and killed her. Makes me viscerally uncomfortable.#but then again a lot of the stuff dazai does makes me viscerally uncomfortable. So.#Nothing new there.#Anti dazai series #dazai #atsushi bsd #bsd ranpo #Bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

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So, I think I’m going to go back and finish The Bugle. It’s a bit weird that I haven’t finished it already, given that it’s one of my favourite things in the world. I left it off after episode 4200, which means 200 episodes into the post-John Oliver era, because for reasons that Andy Zaltzman thinks are funny, he labelled the first post-Oliver one as episode 4001.

The John Oliver era had 295 official episodes, 383 if you count all the filler episodes during off weeks, from October 2007 to June 2016 (395 if you count the entertainingly opinionated daily special reports that Andy Zaltzman did during the 2012 Olympics). Then John Oliver left to go be famous or whatever, and Andy Zaltzman re-invented it as a thing he’d host with a rotating cast of guests from various countries (mainly still England and America, but Australians Alice Fraser and Tom Ballard are among the most common guests, and there are a few regular ones from NZ and India as well).

The first of these, episode 4001, aired in October 2016, but there was a longer gap than there seems based on those dates. By early 2015, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight commitments got significant enough so episodes became sporadic at best, they put out a lot of filler episodes at first, but eventually the gaps were so long that they gave up on that and just had breaks. Breaks that were interrupted by more filler episodes in which Andy Zaltzman would tell us that they’re going to be back soon because John Oliver swears he’ll have time next week, and then there’s another gap of like three months. The final proper Bugle episode from that era was in March 2016; they then came back with a filler episode in April to tell us they’d be back soon, and finally, one June to say they were giving up on it. I listened to all of those 2015-2016 episodes within a couple of days, and fucking hell, it was painful. By the end, I was shouting Monty Python quotes at them: “This is an ex-podcast! Stop nailing it to its perch and trying to sell it back to us! For the love of God, put it out of its misery with some dignity! Let Andy Zaltzman go roam free in the fjords, or whatever the message of that sketch was!”

Anyway. I listened to all those John Oliver-era episodes in one go, almost literally. It took me just under three months, and that might have been a level of fixation that went too far even by my standards. I had The Bugle playing during every second of my life that I wasn’t asleep, or doing something I absolutely had to do for work. It was probably too concentrated a dose, which would be why I felt genuinely depressed when I got to the end of it. Well, that and the inherent tragedy in the way someone can spend so many years building up something amazing and then outgrow the project and their collaborator, everything beautiful ends, nothing gold can stay, and in the words of Andy Zaltzman, if the sun is going to run out of fire at some stage in the future, what’s the fucking point of doing anything now? I might have been projecting my own issues a little.

I didn’t go back to it for a while, because I knew that if I went straight into the post-Oliver Bugle, I would immediately hate it for not being the old thing, and I wanted to give it a better chance than that. I eventually did start from episode 4001, which aired a few weeks before America’s 2016 election, and was a stilted conversation between Andy Zaltzman and a fairly confused Hari Kondabolu, who clearly did not quite know what he’d signed up for. I spent the whole episode trying not to hate Hari Kondabolu for the crime of not being John Oliver, and it only sort of worked. Since then, The Bugle has found its stride, Hari Kondabolu has figured out what it is, and he’s now one of my favourite guests for them to have on, I’ve even gotten into his own stand-up off the back of his Bugle appearances.

Andy Zaltzman himself has admitted it was a rocky transition. He’s said it wasn’t easy to go from the rapport he’d built up for years with John Oliver, to trying to create something similar with people he didn’t know nearly as well. It got better when he stopped trying to make it another version of what it was before, and let it be something else.

It helped when they started occasionally, and then regularly, having two guests at a time, so they could bounce off each other as well, and the chemistry between Andy Zaltzman and one guest didn’t have to carry the episode by itself. Which is good, because Andy Zaltzman had pitch-perfect chemistry with John Oliver, but does not appear to have that with anyone else in the world. It really is amazing, how the John Oliver/Andy Zaltzman thing is the best chemistry I’ve ever heard (not just between two double act partners, but between any two people who’ve tried to do comedy together in any way), but Andy Zaltzman seems incapable of having a natural-seeming interaction with any other human.

Andy Zaltzman has this combination of a fairly niche sense of humour (vaguely surreal in a way he never explains), a penchant for relatively obscure topics and references in his humour, and just a socially awkward personality, that means that isn’t going to work with almost anyone. In several interviews, I’ve heard him stop just barely short of actually saying he knows he got lucky in 2002 to work with the one person in the world who fit perfectly into his style, and that’s why he created a way to stick with that partnership for as long as he possibly could, even when his partner moved across an ocean and pursued different career directions.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what made the Zaltzman and Oliver thing work so well, but I’m going to try. I think it’s the way they could play off each other during pre-written material as easily as most people do when improvising. Normally on a podcast or TV show or anything like that, you get one or the other. Either it’s pre-written, so it’s dense and high-quality really funny stand-up, or you get the spontaneous back-and-forth of two people just talking to each other. Zaltzman and Oliver managed to do both at the same time, which I’m pretty sure is only possible if two people know each other’s comedy styles incredibly well, and have those styles fit together.

They’ve said that the way they did The Bugle was a phone call a few days before recording to agree on what topics they’d discuss, and then they’d separately write material on those topics, and then take turns reciting that material and mutually riffing on it in the actual recording. I don’t think I know of anything else that does things that way. Gets in solid chunks of properly written material, and then does improvised back-and-forth on top of it. I’m going to guess that the reason most people don’t do that is it’s really really difficult.

It's impressive just to write that much material. Yeah, they sporadically take weeks off in which they release filler episodes. And there have been a few extended gaps – they were gone for much of 2015/2016, and they took the summer of 2014 off. But aside from that, Andy Zaltzman has been regularly writing enough new material to fill his half of a 30-45-ish-minute episode on a weekly basis since late 2007. Obviously not every single second of it is solid gold, but still. A hell of a lot of what he comes up with is very good, and that’s a lot more than most comedians write in a year.

This is why when Daniel Kitson starts talking shit about podcasts, and I immediately find myself getting defensive and saying “Okay, okay, I’m all for complaining about the newfangled internet media that those young people are doing these days, but let’s not start disparaging Andy Zaltzman’s life’s work here,” I then remind myself that this isn’t what he means. Most podcasts are just people talking, mostly unscripted, and it probably is fair to suggest that it’s kind of bullshit for that to be considered on par with actually writing strong material (though also I do think unscripted podcasts can be great fun, and some cover important topics and can say important things, and some are just funny because completely unscripted back-and-forth can be very funny even if that isn’t fair to the people who work hard on crafting material, improv is a skill too, and also Daniel Kitson has done much of his complaining about podcasts on his own unscripted radio shows, though to be fair to him, he also talks about how he doesn’t get paid for those radio shows because he knows they don’t count as actual art or work or whatever, anyway this is another subject). But The Bugle does use carefully written material, and add the other stuff that makes podcasts good, and it’s brilliant. It’s fucking brilliant.

But that goes back to what makes the Zaltzman and Oliver thing special, because you just couldn’t do that with most pairs of comedians. They’d worked together a lot before starting The Bugle – on a few joint Edinburgh shows, hosting the Political Animal gig together in Edinburgh and London for a few years, writing and performing the radio show The Department together, getting joint writing credits on a few TV things like that Rory Bremner sketch. And that pretty much was their careers, from 2003-2006. They had a few other things – I assume they did separate stand-up gigs sometimes; John Oliver did Mock the Week a few times, did guest spots on a few other TV things like Armando Iannucci’s Gash, and had “additional material” writing credits on a few TV shows; Andy Zaltzman had a few Radio 4 guest spots – but just about their entire careers were built on stuff they wrote together. Anything either of them wrote at that time would be heavily influenced by the other.

That did change a bit after that, but only on one side. John Oliver had really really significant other things going on, like writing and performing in the premiere political satire show in America, and Andy Zaltzman was doing the same stuff they’d been doing before, stuff that John Oliver has since described as shit (I do understand why the compulsively self-deprecating John Oliver likes to say his career in England was terrible, but hearing him do too much of that does, once again, trigger my “Okay, let’s not disparage Andy Zaltzman’s life’s work here” defensiveness). Which would be why John Oliver described his experience on The Bugle as great fun and because he got to listen to his friend and brilliant comedian Andy Zaltzman be funny for an hour every week, and Andy Zaltzman has described The Bugle with the words “It saved my career.”

This would also be why, when they talked a lot of shit about Rupert Murdoch in 2011 and then got their funded pulled by TimesOnline (not saying there’s causation there, but definitely correlation) and it looked like The Bugle might not be able to keep running, John Oliver said he’d hate to lose thing he loved doing, and Andy Zaltzman used the words “I’ve got Jack K. shit else going on” to explain why he sounded palpably more desperate to find an alternative funding source.

Honestly though, it is cool that even if the desperation wasn’t nearly as significant, John Oliver did still sound invested in finding a way to keep The Bugle going into 2012, and once they did find a way, he stayed with it for a few more years. He barely needed The Bugle when they started it in 2007, and definitely did not need it by 2012. By then was one of the most successful Daily Show writers/correspondents and regularly traveled all over the United States to perform stand-up – no way did he need the money or any extra fame he’d get out of The Bugle. He was just doing it for the love of the game by then, the world got way more years of John Oliver doing a trans-Atlantic topical podcast than they had any right to, which I try to remind myself when I’m annoyed that it didn’t last forever. I’ve just said it’s impressive that Andy Zaltzman writes as much material as he has to for The Bugle – John Oliver was doing that as his side gig next to the Daily Show.

Having said that, that is why, while they were definitely equal co-hosts and no one was anyone’s sidekick (fuck you, Dominic Maxwell), Andy Zaltzman tended to have more minutes of prepared material in most episodes, and why he was the one doing things like the Bugle blog, finding a lot of the stories, coming up with the more complicated concepts and conceits to try out. Which means that while John Oliver was writing with lots of different people and for lots of different audiences and in lots of different mediums, almost everything Andy Zaltzman wrote was for The Bugle, and therefore for getting picked apart with John Oliver. They established their comedy styles together, and then they kept developing together, with everything Andy wrote and at least some things John wrote getting tested out on each other each week. They didn’t just learn each other’s humour, they created it. Obviously there had to be some compatibility to start with – they both had a few years of trying comedy before 2003, and they both just brought different skills to the table, and at some point figured out that what they already had fit together well. But after that, they had years of taking something that worked, and developing it in the direction of working more and more.

I am convinced that all of this was required to create the magic in those first seven-ish years of Bugle episodes. That’s how they could come to the table with material they had not already tested on the other person, and be confident that it would work. They’ve said they never heard each other’s material before the actual recording, which was a cool way to make the reactions natural, but they didn’t plan it that way specifically to manufacture that effect – it was just done because Johnny Showbiz (as Andy affectionately nicknamed him for seven years, and then repeated with at least a little genuine bitterness in his voice during some of the low points of 2015) could only carve out so much time.

That’s how they were able to create lightning in a bottle with the quality and precision of something pre-planned, and the fun of spontaneity. They were each so good at knowing when to pause in their material to let the other come in on something, and knowing when to keep going because what they had next was going to be better than the interjection. And they knew when to interrupt and when to let the other stay on their roll. They knew how to elicit certain reactions out of each other, and how to react in ways that set up the next bit, even when they didn’t know exactly what the next bit would be. They knew when to go off script and how to go back. They knew how to add bits of their material into the middle of the other’s monologue. They knew how to write their bits so they not only wouldn’t clash with what the other one would write, but would build on it.

Every once in a while there would be some little awkward misstep, like if one of them read out their material on a topic and the other admitted… “Well that’s basically what I had, so no point in me doing mine.” But that sort of thing almost never happened, and when you think about it, that’s fucking impressive. The existence of a few missteps just highlights how impressive it is that they were rare.

They also had other sources of natural double act chemistry. It helps that they clearly find each other genuinely funny. Every Andy Zaltzman monologue is made more delightful by the sound of John Oliver stifling giggles in the background, and every John Oliver rant is made better by hearing Andy Zaltzman choke on his words a little as he tries to respond. You know that thing where people on panel shows will laugh too loudly at someone’s joke, and sometimes I’ve heard that joke said on a different show and those people were both there at that time so they’re clearly just pretending that this is their first time hearing it? I don’t even really mind that, I know that’s how panel shows are going to work. But The Bugle was the absolute opposite of that, and it’s great. No one was pretending anything. They had so much shared history, and if one of them said something the other had heard before, the other would point that out, probably accompanied by some story of who scored the last goal in the football game at which they first told that joke or something like that.

I’ve compared it to a sport before, and I maintain that that comparison. Sometimes, when they get into a really good rhythm, listening to it is exactly as impressive as watching two people who are really really good at a sport do that sport at each other for an extended period of time, with no interruptions, just the purest form of what they do.

In my own sport, you sometimes get that kind of magic when you have two training partners who’ve known each other and worked together for a long time. Person A learns exactly how to respond to everything Person B does, so Person B has to learn how to counter those responses, and then Person A learns how to counter that, and so on and so on. We talk in the sport about first-line/second-line/third-line defence, but if two people work together for long enough, they get into seventh-, eighth-, ninth-line defense. What do you do if you do this and then they do this and then you do this but they do this and you do this and they do this? No matter how good two athletes are, they don’t get that far against opponents they don’t know. The highest level of the sport I’ve ever seen in person has not been in the finals of national championships or at the international tournaments I’ve attended, it’s been in a practice room between two high-level athletes who are longtime training partners.

That’s the best analogy I have for why Zaltzman and Oliver worked. They kept trying to find ways to impress each other and surprise each other, kept finding different ways to respond to the other’s material, kept finding new ways to fit their ideas together. Learned exactly which way to go when one person tries one thing, and then how to respond to that, and they sound like they could go forever.

I’ve found it really sad, in my time in sport, when longtime training partners get split up because one moves away or moves on or something else. It’s a loss to the sport. You can’t just create that again. They were doing something that most people can’t do, and I hate seeing a dynamic that pushed the sport’s boundaries get dissolved.

I did think that when the initial era of The Bugle ended. Though I have to admit… okay, I hate ever admitting that any kind of change might have any upsides, because as a rule, I am no fan of change. But I have to admit that Andy Zaltzman’s comedy did start getting noticeably stronger in the few years that followed that. It had been getting better at a steady rate before that, you can hear it develop as the early Bugle years progressed, but there was a steep incline around 2017, as he began the new era of The Bugle. He jumped a couple of levels all at once.

I’m sure there are multiple reasons for that. He’s a topical and political comedian doing a trans-Atlantic podcast, and this did coincide with some major political shake-ups, trans-Atlantically. So he had new stuff to work with, and maybe some genuine emotional responses that created a more visceral feel to the comedy.

But also, as beautiful as a longtime training partnership can be, I have also, as a coach, sometimes moved around an athlete who’d been working with one person for too long. Told them that I know what they do with their main training partner is great, but there are massive holes in their game in the shape of all the things that one partner doesn’t do, and they need to work with other people to be more well-rounded. I’ve sometimes made the mistake of not doing that in time, and then taken an athlete who did amazing things in the training room with their one partner, sent them into a tournament they should have been good enough to win, and watched them get caught in something easy and obvious because they’d never learned how to respond to it.

I realize I’m stretching the metaphor here, possibly beyond the point where it makes sense, but that might have come into play with Andy Zaltzman. Like I said, John Oliver had other shit going on, but Andy Zaltzman, for years, wrote everything with the intention of fitting it into John Oliver’s contributions. I’ve heard his stand-up from those years – clips of it were often released as Bugle filler episodes, and a few other recordings of it are floating around – and it sounds like pretty much all his stand-up shows consisted of stuff he’d originally written for The Bugle. Which makes sense – he wrote so much for that podcast, he’s not going to write a whole extra hour for Edinburgh every year. He’s going to take the best of what he has.

Andy Zaltzman started trying new things when he wasn’t working with John Oliver anymore. He started combining the surreal stuff with the grounded political points in ways he never had before. Started injecting a little more real emotion into it, possibly because he was no longer playing the dispassionate foil to John Oliver’s grandstanding. I think he might be a better individual comedian now than he would have been if that hadn’t changed.

So he had the new and improved material, and he had new partnerships. Lots of new Bugle co-hosts, all of whom brought different things to the table, and gave him different things to play off. It was awkward at first, but he figured it out. Not really by getting less awkward, but by learning to work around it. Having multiple co-hosts who could play off each other. Starting live shows so they could play off the audience. Making the show about the variety of personalities and comedy styles, about the new features and the advances in Andy Zaltzman’s comedy, rather than the rapport between just two people.

And it’s not like he never had anything going with anyone else. I’d say the real turning point for The Bugle, back into something great, even if different, was when Alice Fraser got on board. She became a regular, and now appears in most episodes, alongside whoever else is there that week. Having that consistency again is good, and of course it’s good that it comes with someone who’s so individually funny, and who fits into The Bugle. Because she is, and she does. She has a similar sense of humour to Andy Zaltzman. She knows Andy’s sense of humour, she’s talked about having listened to The Bugle in the Zaltzman and Oliver days, she knew what she was getting into.

But still… Zaltzman and Fraser are very funny together, I would not call it the same level of “chemistry” as Zaltzman and Oliver. Same with Zaltzman and Kumar, even though Nish is on there a lot as well, and with his longtime friendship with Andy and longtime fandom of the original Bugle, he definitely knew what he was getting into and was the right fit for the show. Alice Fraser and Nish Kumar play effortlessly well off each other when they’re on together. And they clearly both have massive respect for Andy Zaltzman – I get the impression that they would both die for him and/or throw hands to defend his honour, if necessary. And they clearly both find Andy very funny. But still, there is a bit of a beat missing in their back-and-forth with him.

That still works, though. Andy Zaltzman’s relentless lack of chemistry with anyone in the world who isn’t John Oliver (and maybe Mark Steel) can be very, very funny. Awkwardness is funny. The awkwardness that stubbornly sticks around in Andy’s interactions, even with fellow comedians he likes and gets along with and shares a sense of humour with, can definitely be funny. There’s a difference between the awkwardness in early 4000-series Bugle episodes, when Andy clearly had no idea what to do with this Hari Kondabolu person, and the awkwardness of Andy Zaltzman just trying to talk to someone he knows and likes but isn’t quite in step with. The latter is quite entertaining.

Anyway. That’s what The Bugle is. I listened to episodes 4001-4200, from October 2016 to July 2021, last year. I listened to it stumble as it tried to rebuild, and then slowly find its feet, and then turn into something new and fantastic in its own way. I listened to that relatively recent interview in which Tiff Stevenson sounded like she was kind of trying to lead Andy Zaltzman toward admitting that the reborn version of The Bugle is actually better than the original version, and he politely (and awkwardly, as always) declined to do so, saying they’re both excellent and too different to compare.

And then I stopped. It was October 2022, and it was getting too close to the present. I’d started listening to The Bugle for the escapism, and the topical stuff was getting close enough to no longer be escapist. I decided I needed a break, so I put The Bugle on hold while I got into other things. I knew I’d go back and finish it, and I expected to do so sooner than this. I got rather distracted. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting my search for, among other things, Daniel Kitson recordings, to be quite so successful (honestly I lucked into it being unbelievably successful, it got rather out of hand). I was a bit busy discovering the collected works of the greatest comedian of his generation, and telling him to stop being a dick about Andy Zaltzman’s life’s work (and occasionally coming across a recording of Kitson performing with Zaltzman, which is always hilarious due to the absolute dearth of chemistry between them, Kitson has one story about a time when hanging out with Andy Zaltzman for a night was so fucking awkward that he had to cut off a dead pig’s head just to salvage the evening – there were other factors at play to make that evening difficult, but I think Andy Zaltzman also just has that effect on people, they find out they don't have as many human buffers as they were expecting between themselves and Andy, and they start cutting up farm animals).

So I’m going back to The Bugle. I’ve listened to every episode they’ve put out between October 2007 and July 2021, and I really may as well listen to the last couple of years worth of episodes, and bring it up to date. Episode 4261 aired last week, so that’s 61 episodes to catch up on. As I wrote that, and realized there are only 61 more episodes out of the hundreds I’ve already heard, I remember that I also put it on hold because I enjoy it so much that I don’t want to get to the end of it. But it’s all right, because they’re still putting out new ones regularly. Andy Zaltzman has dragged this podcast through so many changes and so many threats to its existence, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be around as long as he still has breath in his lungs and that shed in his backyard where he does his writing and personally keeps political comedy in the UK alive.

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savage-rhi · 2 years

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Immortal Shield Chapter 13: Battle of Formouth II

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Tagging: @seradyn

Caelan and Kurt were surrounded by almost fiffty men and women that guarded the Formouth with an iron fist. Both of them were fearful of their current predicament. Kurt immediately retreated behind Caelan's back. His own pressing to hers as she held her ground.

Caelan could feel her legs wanting to bolt and flee. It was a natural instinct most people would latch onto the moment they were in danger. Years of training in the crownsguard had her standing firmly like a stone. The philosophy of remaining like a rock as its beaten by the ocean waves played over and over in her mind. Yet, there would come a time where the rock would be smoothed to the point of breaking if it kept in one place for too long. Caelan understood her and Kurt had a finite amount of time before it would be raining bullets. She needed to make every second count as she stared down the chief and her cohorts.

“Jericho, where are you taking this captive? Or should I address you by another title given there was no one named that in the Haraakis unit.” The chief taunted. The laughter from her fellow colleagues made the situation more daunting.

Caelan swallowed, taking in a deep breath as she smirked.

“I decided to see the condition of this man’s cell. It’s important that crimes against humanity be thoroughly documented before prosecution. Wouldn’t you agree?” Caelan’s haughty attitude seemed to rattle up the chief. She could observe the woman going for her sword at her side, prepared to unleash hell, but relented. There was a scrutinizing look in Caelan's eyes at the action, wondering what the catch of it was.

“Funny you say such a thing, considering who you are.” The chief proclaimed with a laugh. The reaction had Kurt visibly confused while he listened to the conversation, all the while doing his best to hide behind his helper.

“Caelan Zamfir,” The chiefs voice echoed mockingly within the building. “The Homicida in the flesh. Your reputation precedes you. I’d thought someone such as yourself would appreciate what we are doing here at this facility, given all the Nif’s you’ve killed.”

Caelan flinched upon hearing her infamous title. A pet name gifted to her by the Lucian officials once arrested Einherjar members started to spin false narratives about her exploits. For a brief moment, Caelan recalled Ardyn looking uncomfortable being called Adagium. How his face contorted into disgust and he looked like he had been punched. She understood then how he felt, more so than before. She felt stupid that it had to click now of all times.

“That was all Julian’s doing, I can’t take credit for his work. He’d turn in his grave.” Caelan huffed, trying her best to not let any of them see she was afraid.

“Is it true you committed patricide?” The chief asked, curiosity oozing from her lips as Caelan glared in disgust. She didn’t need to say a word as the chief smiled big, letting out a laugh. “You really are a despicable rat.”

“You know, given my reputation, it’s incredibly stupid to bait me. I could make you fall where you stand.” Caelan forewarned with a sigh, feeling her adrenaline beginning to rush throughout her body. Bracing itself for the inevitable.

“Like you have a chance,” The chief scoffed. There was no sign of backing down when it came to verbal onslaught. “You’re outnumbered, outgunned, and apparently you don’t even live up to your own legend. Why should I be afraid?”

“This is why!” Caelan hissed, gesturing her arm out as she summoned Raksasha. The red blade seemed to take several guards aback, gasps lingering in the grand hallway of the second level as they barely registered what transpired next.

In a swift motion, Caelan sprinted forward with the Raksasha head on. Her legs powerfully working to their full extent before bullets could disengage. Rage fueled her eyes, her breathing becoming rugged as she could feel an energy radiating off the blade itself. As if it was encouraging her to take this risky shot. The Raksasha gleamed under the flickering lights of the facility as Caelan propelled herself, and with a powerful thrust, pierced right through the armor of the chief and plunged the blade straight into her abdomen.

The chiefs body wriggled and squirmed, her hands instinctively grabbing the blade in a vain attempt to pull it away from herself. Caelan quickly pulled back, the Raksasha leaving the warm body as blood pooled from the open wound. Caelan rose the sword up and struck down hard upon the chief’s head. The clean cut, severing spine from skull momentarily had Caelan in shock at the ferocity the blade had. Not even her spear could perform such a feat in such a fluid motion. She imagined the carnage that Ardyn could perform with Rakshasa when he was fully enraged. She herself bore witness to a small sample of it in the past. A tremor went down both her arms at the thoughts, distracting her from the present.

Time began to pulse for Caelan, registering a painful sting to her lower right leg. She had been shot. A sense of foreboding came upon Caelan sweat began to trickle down her face, her hands instinctively guiding the blade to the closest guard by her, followed by the next. The pattern simple yet the motions her body went through to perform the actions visibly caused ache to where she had been impacted. Cut after cut, Caelan was killing the Lucian troops like they were flies who unfortunately met the end of a swatter. Her speed further enhanced by Rakshasa made it all go by fast.

“Kurt, go! Look for a flight of stairs!” Caelan shouted, hoping the old man would take cover while she handled the onslaught of men and women attempting to bring her down.

Kurt didn’t say a word, he immediately with shock and utter fear in his eyes bolted out of the area. Guards chasing him all the while he grabbed and tossed whatever was in his way in order to create obstacles. There were a million questions the elderly man had, but one fixation outweighed them all: he needed to get away. He needed to get out. He needed to see his Florens again.

Left and right the Rakshasa went, carving through armor and broken bone as Caelan did everything she could to get within close range of her attackers. With one hand using the Rakshasa, she used her other arm to punch, choke, or shove. She felt unstoppable even with the injured leg. The power of the sword greatly enacted a boost of confidence. Caelan received dose of reality in the form of a bullet go through her right arm. She yelped as her left side flung from the impact, dropping the Rakshasa by accident with a loud bang, and soon met the foot of a guard that managed to drop kick her to the ground.

Grunting, Caelan struggled against the weight of the man’s foot attempting to lock her in place for a clean shot. Her head and neck rapidly moved from side to side as he tried to blow her brains out with his gun, but missed. Caelan could feel her ears ring from the rounds being in such close proximity. Her blood felt like it was attempting to jump from her flesh given how piercing the noise was. Her right arm gestured out to the Rakshasa while the left desperately tried to fend the guard off. Caelan managed to throw the guard off his balance, giving her time to roll over and grab the blade. The man either miscalculated or didn’t know better, but he jumped towards Caelan with the back end of his gun to hit her face in. The Rakshasa cut right into his plender gap, sticking through the back of his throat as he gagged before Caelan threw him off.

Panting heavily, Caelan winced while forcing herself onto her feet. Her eyes rapidly looked around, seeing she had bested everyone thus far. The sound of reinforcements marching had her sprint the way she last seen Kurt, her body dulled the pain from her wounds as she concentrated on finding a way out. A sharp sting here or there had her face contorting into pained expressions, yet she persisted.

Caelan hoped Kurt had left, because at this point despite the power behind the blade and how confident she was in her years of training as a former crownsguard, she needed to jump ship and save her own hide. Caelan knew the chief was right earlier. She was easily outnumbered and took two hits thus far going up against a good forty or so people. If another forty or even hundred guards came with guns, Caelan knew she’d be a sitting duck. Her endurance wouldn't be able to cope with such a high number of bodies.

Conflict began to resonate at the thought of running and leaving Kurt behind. Self preservation and honor collided. Memories of all the times she had ran off instead of staying to fight replayed in her head. There were heavy regrets Caelan carried. Leaving fellow Hunters to die from daemons, or abandoning them to Lucian officials to save her own skin because she was afraid ran amok within herself. The utter grimaces of shock and betrayal from those she had sacrificed for her own survival stayed with her as she sprinted. Even the haunting face of the girl she unintentionally got killed by Tempus lingered. Popping in when she least expected it.

“This way!” Kurt hollered from afar. His voice was loud enough to pull Caelan out of her thoughts. She came to a screeching halt against the slick flooring of the facility, following the direction of where his voice was coming from.

“Go, go, go!” Caelan hollered to Kurt when she caught up with the old man, the two heading for the emergency stairs and they bolted. Alarms all over the base began to erupt in a frenzy. The lights illuminating the stairs flickered on and off with deep shades of red. The atmosphere felt like something out of a horror fiction, then came the screams of the prisoners from earlier on as Caelan and Kurt made it to the bottom. She could only imagine the confusion the poor souls felt at the commotion.

“It’s locked!” Kurt exclaimed, trying hard to push at the door.

“I got this, move!” Caelan commanded. She summoned the Rakshasa, the blade of the weapon blended almost supernaturally with the alarm lights as Caelan hacked at the door. Almost a minute in, and there was nothing left of it. She carefully helped Kurt move his legs over the rubble, only exiting when he wasn’t at risk for getting caught up in the debris. The cool night air of the Leide region was a blessing as either of them sighed while the wind picked up. The two then sprinted as far as their legs could carry them until there were familiar shapes in the distance.

“Oh no,” Caelan whispered under her breath, her eyes widened as she could see not more than a hundred feet away there was a large fence keeping them from going anywhere. She stopped and looked around, realizing they were boxed in. The stairs that she had taken for the emergency exit, was just another path to hell in the form of a courtyard. The barbed wire at the top added further intimidation while Caelan winced. The pain in her leg starting to become more recognized as Kurt grabbed a hold of her arm with the Rakshasa and flailed it around.

“What are we to do? Where do we go?!” Kurt’s eyes were watering. He sounded like a child, terrified for his life as Caelan swallowed.

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”

“They’re going to kill us! No one gets out of here alive, I should’ve known. I shouldn’t have trusted you!”

“Kurt, please shut up, I need to think!” Caelan snapped. Her grip on the blade tightened as the silhouettes of troops began to pour in. One by one, guards began to swarm until it looked as if shadows were encroaching. The sounds of their heavy feet and weapons on hand was enough to make Caelan feel the primal fear of being trapped. No way out but through death. Her eyes could count at least a hundred men and women thus far flooding into the courtyard. Yells and orders for her to give up the chase now began to permeate the atmosphere, blocking out the whispering hollow screeches of the wind.

Caelan glanced down at the Rakshasa. There was a familiar low hum she recognized emitting from the weapon. Her brows furrowed, trying to recall where she had heard the sound before. The humming grew until the noise reverberated through the arm that was holding onto the handle. Caelan winced from the growing strength.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Caelan muttered to the weapon. She felt crazy. As if a weapon could talk back. Then again, knowing who the swords master was, Caelan knew anything was possible.

“We need to disappear! We need to make ourselves small,” Kurt was rambling horrified nothings, his legs trembled and almost gave out on themselves as he held onto Caelan.

That’s when Caelan connected the dots. Her eyes widened as the memory of Ardyn teleporting her to the Scepter the day they were ambushed by the Einherjar processed through her head along with Ardyn’s words of how he was able to pull it off. Her body remembered what it was like, feeling fuzzy everywhere. As if every part of her being fell asleep at once then suddenly jolted with a powerful thump.

“Kurt, make sure you’re holding onto me. Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just do it!” Caelan ordered. She grimaced feeling Kurt’s grip become tight on her arm. Caelan visualized the Scepter, where she parked it and in particular the energy coming from the Ashenhorn herd that were close by. How they were relaxing by a rock formation, preparing to turn in for the night. The image was serene by all accounts compared to the hell she had encountered this night.

A powerful rocking hit Caelan’s chest, letting out a pained gasp while her body become heavy. The humming pulsed in her ears, and all the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. Caelan couldn’t register a sound. Nothing but all her blood and every nerve shooting off like stars falling across the cosmos. It was only when she had an epiphany that Kurt was no longer holding onto her arm that Caelan opened up her eyes.

Everywhere was dark, save for the stars that lit the way for night travelers of Eos. Blinking rapidly, she looked around. There were no search lights on her form, nor was there a screaming echo of alarms. Up ahead in the distance, Caelan squinted her eyes and noticed the Ashenhorn herd from afar. The enormous rhinoceros like beasts yawned and stretched. Their heavy breaths reverberating through their large lungs as they enjoyed slumber.

“Oh my gods, oh my gods you did it!” Kurt exclaimed, snapping Caelan out of her focus while feeling the old man grasping her shoulders. Kurt was jubilant as he cried, pulling Caelan into a tight embrace. She ignored the pain of his palm pressing nearby the gunshot wound, smiling big as she let out a sigh of relief.

“Guess I did,” Caelan murmured with pride. She watched Kurt sprint over to her car, assuming the Scepter was hers and fell upon his knees. The old man shouted a plethora of prayers and praises to the Astrals. Caelan knew based on her time with Ardyn, Kurt’s generous words wouldn’t mean a damn thing to the celestials. If they were still out there somewhere. Nevertheless, she dare not take this away from Kurt. He deserved his celebrations. His joyful hoots and hollers reminiscent of when Caelan finally escaped her old life. She could visualize herself on her knees much like Kurt. Screaming her heart out that she was no longer part of the Einherjar. Screaming to whatever was listening that she was done.

Caelan felt compelled to look down at the Raksasha. The crimson color of its body briefly illuminated a lighter shade of red before returning to normal. Shaking her head out of disbelief, Caelan smiled down at the blade.

“Ardyn,” She murmured, wondering if he truly was behind saving them. His words about knowing if she used the blade or not echoed through her mind. Seeing him again soon brought a great comfort.

Hours later, the first rays of the sun began to shine through the Scepter as Caelan drove. Kurt was wide awake, not able to sleep as he was too enamored to see everything outside of the prison walls he had been accustomed to for a year. The old man radiated an innocent warmth Caelan could relate to once upon a time, when she was a child before her crownsguard training commenced. She couldn’t help but observe him every once in a while, and wondered if she would feel the absolute joy he was experiencing one day.

“You holding up okay?” Kurt asked and gestured to the wound points on her body, breaking Caelan out of her thoughts as she nodded.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Caelan said with a faint smile. “My friend that’s waiting with your wife can help me.”

“He’s a doctor?” Kurt asked curiously.

“More or less. Doesn’t have a medical license, but he’s great.” Caelan shrugged with a laugh, letting out a wince. The bullet wound wasn’t too deep in her arm but enough to strain nearby muscle tissue. “What are you going to do when you see Florens again?”

Kurt let out a puff of air. Uncertainty twisted his features as the wrinkles on his forehead became more pronounced.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. There’s not many ways to say ‘I love you and I won’t leave you again’. There also aren't enough ways to say I’m sorry I left you waiting.” Kurt answered, rubbing the back of his scalp. He made a face, catching a whiff of his scent. He could feel a years worth of grime and debris caked on the back of his neck and grimaced. Self consciousness pulled at him with a painful grasp.

“I apologize for stinking up your car.”

“I’m not offended,” Caelan reassured. The smell coming off of him was atrocious, and she couldn't bring herself to say anything about it. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to me or anyone. Not after what you’ve been through.”

“What’s going to happen now?” Kurt asked.

“What do you mean? I’m going to take you home, back to your wife.”

“I mean are you going to notify Lucian officials about what’s really going on at Formouth?”

Caelan went silent as she contemplated. Taking in a deep breath, she glanced over at Kurt with uncertainty.

“I have photographs I took initially before retrieving you. I’m not sure what I can do after, or who I can trust with this information.”

“Because you are wanted?” Kurt watched as Caelan visibly swallowed. He could see her fingertips grip the steering wheel more tightly as he made a face. A content sigh left him as he slouched back against the car seat.

“I won’t tell a soul about you,” Kurt said sincerely, his dark eyes and honest smile met Caelan’s worried look as she nodded.

“You could get a lot of gil turning me in,” Caelan forewarned. “Florens and you could live a good life to make up for the year you spent in hell. I’m up there in reputation like the chief said.”

“That may be true,” Kurt nodded in agreement. “But if you were a terrible person, there’s no way you would’ve risked it all to save a crippled old man. A life for a life: you gave me mine back, let me allow you to keep yours.”

Caelan couldn’t help but smile wide from the compliment. She hadn’t heard such a thing in years. She fought the urge to correct him, that he was giving her life back, but alas decided against it. Her eyes began to water as she sighed, catching Kurt's attention as he smiled her way. The unruly hairs of his beard smoothed down as he took a hand and carded through.

“You know how Florens and I met?” Kurt asked as Caelan shook her head, wiping away at her eyes as the old man sighed contently.

“We met outside of Pallinor. She lost her first husband to imperials during the war. I traveled from Niflheim to sell wares and attempt to bridge community between fellow imperials and Lucians at the colonies near. It didn’t pave well, you can imagine.” Kurt chuckled as Caelan grinned, keeping her eyes on the road.

Kurt cleared his throat. “We met at a survivors group, for people who have lost loved ones during the war. Either side was welcome to join. That night, she shared what happened to her husband and my heart went out to her. I shared that I had lost my brother and several cousins. We hit it off after the session, and had been joined at the hip since then.”

Caelan felt a calm wash over her, hearing a heartwarming tale. It had been a long time since she had a conversation this sincere with another person, and she treasured it. There were questions that came to mind that had her worried about what Kurt and Florens went through.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Caelan started. “Did you guys face much prejudice being together?”

“Oh honey,” Kurt let out a tired laugh, his throat sore from being parched. “You don’t know the half of it! Florens family, they were shocked considering what she had lost to Niflheim, but once they met me, I was more than welcomed. It’s a shame they perished during Insomnia’s fall. I miss them terribly at times. My family on the other hand despised our relationship. Hated Lucians. They gave me an ultimatum: return home and be with them, or remain in Lucis and never come back. The choice was rather simple for me. I chose her.”

“No regrets?” Caelan teased as Kurt grinned, shaking his head.

“None whatsoever,” He admitted then breathed deeply. To say he felt overwhelmed was an understatement. Tears were threatening to leave his eyes, but alas he decided against it. He had already done enough crying for one night since Caelan broke him out of the Formouth.

“So, your friend from Niflheim,” Kurt began as Caelan looked at him from the corner of her eye.

“What about him?” Caelan asked, taking note of the slight smirk on Kurt’s exhausted features.

“How did you two meet?” Kurt asked

Caelan made a face, letting out a yawn while attempting to keep her eyes focused on the road. As the dawn began to break through, she started to realize how utterly exhausted her body was becoming. They would need to stop at some point so she could sleep.

“We met at Galdin Quay. He wants to go to Insomnia to see the king. It’s kind of a big deal for him. Huge fan as you can imagine. I offered him a ride.” Caelan debated with herself, deciding to withhold some details about her and Ardyn’s first meeting, especially anything that could give away he was the former chancellor. Caelan wondered if Kurt saw Ardyn, would he recognize him. Alas she continued, putting the thought away for the time being.

“Anyway, we got side tracked from the main journey. We've been traveling all over Lucis. Sight seeing mostly.”

“Ah, does he know about your past?” Kurt questioned as Caelan gave a nod.

“He knows enough,” Caelan murmured. “Why?”

“You should share more with him,” Kurt said as a matter of fact. “Not that it’s any of my business, but we imperials are good at that sort of thing. Listening.”

“Well, you’ve never met Adrian. He's not someone I'd trust with a license in therapeutic practices.” Caelan let out a snort. It still felt weird using Ardyn’s alias. She reminded herself to ask Ardyn where he came up with it. Same thing with Izunia. The name seemed out of left field coming from him.

“Tell me more about him.” Kurt mused, watching Caelan closely.

“He’s a bit eccentric. Vain. He drives me crazy. Nine times out of ten it’s at my expense. He can be a jerk, doesn’t know when to shut up, interrogates and pry's, I highly dislike him,” Caelan was smiling from ear to ear, unaware of it as Kurt observed her.

“Adrian’s not bad, no. He’s helped me more than anyone has in years. Saved my neck too.”

“You sound like you enjoy that.” Kurt chuckled teasingly.

“I don’t think I like what you’re implying, gramps.” Caelan said bluntly.

“There’s no implication on my end when your reactions have been plenty.”

Caelan could feel her cheeks burn from the remark. Her pulse rose a little, thinking about Ardyn in the sort of light Kurt was hinting at. She let out a disgruntled sigh, hands gripping the steering wheel a little more tighter than she usually would.

“There’s a pit stop ten miles ahead. We can refuel, get you some new clothes, and rest.” Caelan said, trying to change the subject.

“Take it from an old man, you should tell Adrian how much he means to you.”

“I’m not going to enlighten this any further,” Caelan said bitterly. Talking about Ardyn in this context had some unknown seeds begin to plant in Caelan’s mind. She briefly recalled when they were hunting the Behemoth, how she saw him undress at the spring. Her eyes looking a little too much at his body. Blinking several times, she felt her face growing hotter by the second. It was wrong to linger like that, especially regarding someone who would be considered her captive. If there was anyway Caelan could have pulled the car over and slapped herself, she would’ve done so.

Kurt merely shook his head, looking out the window as he closed his eyes. Enjoying the warm rays of the sun hit his skin. Everyday he had been allowed in the courtyard to bask in the warmth, he always imagined Florens embracing him. He couldn’t believe how close he was to the dream becoming reality.

#ardyn #ardyn izunia #fanfic #fanfiction #original characters #caelan centric yet again but thats okay #next chapter back to the two fucking idiots #ffxv #final fantasy 15

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