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nat-20s · 3 years

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Part 5 of Wonderful! Au. *boyband voice* banter’s back alright!

Also on AO3

~*~

Jon: Hello everyone, and welcome back to our regular format. If my husband being horribly soppy-

Martin:-hey!-

Jon: -turned you off the how, this should be a refreshing return to formula, though I can’t guarantee there won’t be further horrible soppiness-

Martin, performatively under his breath: -most people thought it was charming-

Jon: -as that tends to happen when one is recording with the love of their life. If last week’s episode is the only one that you like, too bad, I’m back in full form, and should be at least through the rest of the season.

Martin: This show doesn’t have seasons? Due to the whole lack of a narrative thing?

Jon: I was referring to spring.

Martin: Oh, right.

[A beat passes.]

Martin, flatly: Oh. Great goof hon.

Jon, smug: Thank you.

Jon, sincere: Also, before we get properly started, I did want to actually thank everyone who sent well wishes.

M artin: Yes! We got positively inundated with lovely messages, it definitely brightened both of our days. I would even say it was wonderful.

[Jon groans.]

Jon: I am..not proud of the energy we’ve created for this episode so far, and we haven’t even hit the small wonders. Speaking of, do you have a small wonder this week?

Martin: Mine’s bad action movies.

Jon: Really? I had no idea you even liked them, let alone consider them wonderful.

Martin: Okay, so, saying I like them is a bit of a misnomer? It’s more that I like what they can do more than the movies themselves?

Jon: Elaborate?

Martin: It probably comes as a surprise to no one that I’ve tried my hand at a fair amount of mindfulness and mediation techniques. I’ve found poetry and journaling have been helpful for actually processing life events and whatnot, but when it comes to giving your brain a hard wipe and reset, nothing is half as quick and effective as a shitty shoot-em-up. Somethings about 2 hours of cartoonish, pg-13 violence held together with the absolute loosest of plots brings me to a state of mental blankness that would make a monk jealous.

Jon: How have I never witnessed you doing this? When are you sneaking off to go see Micheal Tarantino or who ever films?

M artin: That’s definitely not the right name.

Jon: Martin, dear, I don’t care. And you’re dodging the question.

Martin, fond: I’m not dodging anything. Since apparently we’re getting into it, you haven’t caught me cavorting with a movie involving more explosions than character development lately because I haven’t been. Haven’t needed it, in recent years. Turns out when you’re not crushingly lonely and working a literal nightmare of job, there’s less of a drive to try and escape your own thoughts. Shocker, I know. Still, to anyone out there that feels like their brain is on fire, go try watching a fast and furious. Any of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Or even better, Chronicles of Riddick. I can’t remember a single goddamn detail of that movie, which makes it perfect for what I’m talking about.

Jon: I have the strong feeling that th is is a “mileage may vary” scenario.

Martin: Well, yeah, that’s this whole podcast. Plus, I imagine that movies like this would cause more stress to someone who cares about, say, world-building or rules consistency.

Jon: I wonder who you could possibly be referring to.

Martin: It’s a purely hypothetical person, love, don’t worry about it. Any small wonders?

Jon: Yes! Particularly relevant to the last week, my small wonder is stripping the sheets from your bed when it’s been too long between washes.

Martin: How very specific. M ost people would just say ‘clean sheets’.

Jon: Well, for one, I’m fairly certain that we’ve already covered clean sheets-

Martin: Shit, have we? Thank god other people keep track of this, otherwise this show would be unbearably repetitive.

Jon: Christ, yes. I typically check the website a good three times while prepping, and every about one out of those three times I find I’m trying to do an topic we did 30 episodes again. Anyway, um, it’s just nice, I think. When you’ve been too busy or sick or away for awhile, tossing the sheets in the wash makes a room instantly seem nicer. Of all the chores out there, this one, at least for me, has the highest reward to effort ratio.

Martin: Hard agree. Especially when the y have that slight funk of having been around to long, getting rid of that is such a relief. Speaking of, we need to change our sheets soon.

Jon: We can do it after the episode. Who goes first this week?

Martin: Considering last week was only me talking, I’m gonna say it’s you.

Jon: Alright, then. My first thing this week is Martin K. Blackwood.

Martin: Absolutely not!

Jon: Oh, you can do a whole episode on me, but I can’t do one little segment on my husband, whom I love very dearly?

Martin: Not while I’m sat here, no!

Jon: So you’re saying you don’t want me to tell the internet that your resolve to be kind even in the face of indescribable cruelty is one of the mot breathtaking things I’ve ever witnessed, or how I find it incredibly endearing when you get so emotional that your voice comes out as a squeak, or even that, on a more base level, you’re very physically attractive, and I could lose entire days thinking about your arms alone?

Martin, audibly blushing, voice the aforementioned squeak: Oh my god, Jon!

Jon, laughing: Then it’s probably for the best that my actual first thing is best friends.

Martin, peaking the audio levels: Oh you absolute bastard! Do you enjoy this? Do you get some sort of perverse sense of entertainment from riling me up?

Jon: Oh, don’t you start. As if you’re not as bad as I am. Maybe even worse.

Martin: That’s not…

Jon: Yes?

Martin: Okay. Maybe it’s slightly true. Really, what is romance for if not flustering your partner with compliments?

Jon, teasing: I certainly can’t think of anything.

Martin: Hush, you.

Jon: No, I don’t think I will.

Martin: Fine. I suppose you can tell our delightful audience about the power of friendship or whatever.

Jon: I would’ve assumed more enthusiasm, considering this segment is still, indirectly, about you.

Martin: In what way?

Jon: In the way that, to the shock of all, you’re my best friend.

Martin, pleased: Oh, is that what I am?

Jon, exasperated: Yes, dearest husband, I wouldn’t have married you otherwise. Though, upon reflection, I knew you were my best friend before I knew I held romantic feelings for you.

Martin: When was that?

Jon, letting out a breath that vibrates his lips: God it was...2016? I think it might’ve literally been the day after you told me about your CV.

Martin: That early? Huh. I wonder if that’s what people were picking up when they said they we were close.

Jon: What people?

Martin: I don’t know specifically, that’s just what Daisy told me.

Jon: Daisy? When the hell-?

Martin: It...was when she was interrogating me? And, because sometimes I have to be a parody of myself, pretty much my only take away from that interrogation was “people think me and Jon are close”.

Jon: Well then. It’s not like they were wrong.

Martin, smug: No, no they weren’t.

Martin, sincere: And you’re my best friend, too.

Jon: I was certainly hoping that you’re in this relationship for more than my good looks and incredible fortune, both in the monetary and luck sense.

Martin: You say that as if you aren’t good looking, which we all know is patently untrue.

Jon: You’re biased. You’d say I was good looking if I were nothing more than some primordial ooze with thoughts about its station.

Martin: I’m being completely objective. If you were primordial ooze with thoughts above its station, you’d be the cutest ooze of them all. That’s just scientific fact.

Jon: I’m starting to think we might be insufferable.

Martin: Starting to? Might be?

Jon:…

[Jon clears his throat]

Jon: What I find wonderful about the concept of best friends is, to me, they’re the closest thing real life has to soulmates. I don’t personally believe that there’s some..grand mystic force that drives people to be tied together in the manner that narrative typical soulmates are, and if there was I don’t think it would necessarily be the kind of emotional, heartfelt bond one would hope for, but I do believe that there’s individuals that get to know one another, and because of that knowledge, they chose to stick with one another. It doesn’t have to be a romantic, which is why I say best friend rather than specifically ‘spouse’, but I would argue that the basis of a strong romance like you and I have, is very much rooted in that connection. A true best friendship is an equal partnership, and there’s a sense of..matched sensibilities and understanding that can be utterly incandescent when it happens.

I also think that having one or more best friends makes living life on a day to day basis both better and just flat easier. The dark times aren’t as dark, and the bright times shine even more. I know from my own personal experience there are events that I..that I don’t know how I would’ve made it through without you. Hell, last week my..recovery period would’ve taken much longer if you hadn’t been there.

It’s an amazing thing to have someone to share things with, both triumphs and burdens. Um, also, according to Dictionary.com, the term best friends in English has been around since the 1200s. Something about that delights me, like, yes, we’ve had this casual way of referring to a Favorite Person for roughly 800 years. That makes it a hold-out from early Middle English. I dunno, it’s one of those things that make me feel overall very charmed by humanity.

Martin, audibly smiling: No, yeah, hard agree.

Jon: What’s that look for?

Martin: Nothing. Just. I love you a whole lot, you know that?

Jon, voice soft: I may have heard you say that once or twice. Per hour.

Martin: Only that often? I really need to be more diligent about that.

[There’s a bet of silence, presumably where they’re making doe eyes at each other.]

Jon: What’s your first thing?

Martin: Oh, um, right. Rats!

Jon: The expression or the animal?

Martin: Jon, have you ever once heard me say “rats” as an expression? Obviously I’m referring to the animal.

Jon: Ah. Should’ve known, considering that what, a third?, of all your segments have been on animals.

Martin: Yeah? And? You got a problem with critters? With creatures? With lil guys?

Jon, laughing: No, no, it’s very sweet. I’m just surprised you never became a vet.

Martin: Oh believe me, I wanted to. But then I learned that it was not, in fact, a job composed entirely of getting paid to play with other people’s pets.

Jon: You had that job, though, didn’t you? I thought I remembered you mentioning a month long stint at a doggie day care.

Martin, sighing dreamily: Best job I ever had. Too bad that place was shut down after it was revealed to be a money laundering front.

Jon: Good lord.

Jon: Martin did you...did you know it was a money laundering front at the time?

Martin:

Martin: Would it make you feel better if I said no?

Jon: Martin!

Martin: I figured it out like a week in, but, like, who cares? The pay was decent and the floor was super easy to clean, which is very much a plus for even a front of a doggie day care.

Jon: That’s...rather a lot. How about instead of getting into that any further, you tell me about rodents.

Martin: I would love to. But first, we have a shoutout!

Jon: Ooo, a shoutout. Does it specify who should read?

Martin: Let me check. It...does...not…..

...

Jon: Martin?

[A beat.]

Martin: Right! Sorry, um. This week’s shoutout is from Tim, to Danny. It says, “Danny! My favorite person who shares genetic material with me! I wanted to say thank you for your podcast obsession from 4 months ago, and specifically for telling me about these marrieds. They’ve gotten me through many a dull hour at the publishing house. Also, with this shoutout, I’ve officially gotten ahead on the Superior [Last Name Redacted] Brother scoreboard, so suck it. Love you lots, and looking forward to your visit next month, Tim.”

Jon: Oh.

Jon: Um. That’s very..sweet? I think? Mostly?

Martin: Yeah, I’d say so. Uh. We have to take a quick break because, uh, someone is..at our front door! Be back with you all in, from your side of things, just a moment.

#wonderful! au #jonmartin #jon sims #martin blackwood #>:3 #shoutouts are their versions of jumbotrons btw

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haifengg · 3 years

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Pairing: NanamixGN!Reader

Note: I think I got this ask quite a while ago but due to my hiatus it got postponed a million times. Now that I am slowly coming back and am publishing the bits and pieces I wrote during being away this A-Z is finally leaving my drafts as well.

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?) Given his S/O is a sorcerer as well I think he would limit PDA at work to a minimum. Even if they are officially together or even married. He just likes to separate work and home. Tho it doesn’t mean that he is not making small intimate gestures at work like randomly dropping in with coffee or - when they are on a mission - sending a text asking how they are doing.

At home he is pretty affectionate. Randomly pulling them in for a hug, giving small back rubs when they are doing the dishes after he cooked. This kind of thing.

B = Before (What were they like when they had a crush?) Distant. Nanami would probably be a person who maybe actually mistakes the feeling for some other emotion at first. Leaving him confused about why he thinks about them so much. The poor man would likely be irritated every time they are nice to him. Why the heck doesn’t his heart stop pounding? And why is he suddenly excited to go to work? Disappointed when he is not assigned the same mission as them? Or - if they aren’t a sorcerer - sad when a mission takes him away from wherever he met them for too long?

C = Confession (What was their confession like?) Well-planned and straight forward. Nanami was already observing them for a while before making a move. Although he doesn’t actually confess it is pretty obvious when he likes someone because it happens so rarely. Just imagine him asking someone out for dinner. That gives away so much - don’t you agree?

D = Date (What was the first official date they went on?) If we don’t count the dinner mentioned above … I guess it would be something like a gallery. Nanami would definitely want to test his s/o’s taste in art because it tells a lot about a person’s character. What kind of art they prefer (paintings, photography, sculptures, … ) and how they look at it as well.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?) Professionally. He would state the fact on why they aren’t compatible anymore and what made him draw this conclusion. I don’t think either one of them would cheat on the other mainly because Nanami wouldn’t get into a relationship with someone capable of doing that in the first place (I hope). He would sit down with his (not) s/o and talk it through. There might be tears on the other side but not on his. He thought about it a lot and made peace with his feelings before starting this conversation.

F = Fights (What would fights look like? What are things that upset them?) Kento barely looses his temper. And if he does I wouldn’t say that it is necessarily a bad thing. Getting him so worked up about something does only mean he cares. Fights would mostly be on the calmer/diplomatic side. He might be upset about something but there is no need for him to yell or anything. If the problem can be resolved just by talking about it - great! Why waste his precious energy on negative things, when he can use them elsewhere?

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?) We all know - and all those rough sm*t fan fictions can’t proof me wrong - that he probably is the most gentle character in entire JJK. He despises the violence of his job therefore he doesn’t want to inflict pain or anything on anyone on his good side. Especially his S/O. Nanami has the most gentle touch, fleeing kisses, he will hold them tight but never smother them.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?) As mentioned above: Tight and secure. Or soft. His S/O almost automatically buries their face in the crook of his neck because - who wouldn’t. Is there anything else I have to say about hugs by Nanami Kento? Yes. Am I able to put it into words? No. It’s just a very overwhelming feeling - that’s all.

I = Intimacy (What is their favorite form of intimacy? Do they have problems with it?) For him I think it would be things where they take care of him. While he shows his love through cooking and providing (which he takes a lot of pride from), he loves being taken care of as well. Maybe in departments he doesn’t know so much about. Like skincare. If his S/O teases him about his wrinkles and stern look he would gladly accept any advice in skincare from them, let them do their magic with face massages and serums. He doesn’t even care if it has any effect on his skin - he just loves the attention he gets and thrives on the feeling how much his S/O cares about him (and his skin apparently).

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?) This one I am really indecisive about. I can see him get more jealous that we would expect him too - which would be a nice surprise tbh. But also not jealous at all because he is confident. Kento knows what his S/O likes about him and he also knows what separates him from other men. What makes him special. I think the times he gets jealous are the days he doesn’t get to spent with his S/O because of work or a mission. Which rather results in being mad at Jujutsu Tech than jealous of someone else.

K = Kisses (Are they a good kisser? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?) Forehead. Kisses. It doesn’t matter what height there S/O is. It is one of the most protective gestures and he enjoys giving those as much as his S/O enjoys receiving them.

The back of the hand cheesy kisses. Because they are his everything, he wants to treat them like it. Nanami knows it’s cheesy but neither one of them thinks too much about it. When they sit across the table, fingers sloppily interlocked on the table top, he occasionally picks up their hand and places a soft kiss on the back of it. Almost absent-minded.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?) He is not very fond of them. Not saying that he won’t love and do everything for his own kids but other people’s kids are usually a nuisance for him. If they are loud or misbehaving he is really not having it. Though he would never lash out or raise his voice against them/their parents. ‘Children’ as in ‘his students’ … he always makes sure to treat them as children in a way he wants them safe/won’t put them in unnecessary danger.

M = Messages (How often do they text his S/O?) Kento strikes me as a kind of guy who doesn’t text often. Mostly because in his line of work sharing attention could easily be his downfall or worse. He will let his s/o know if he’s running late or occasionally ask if there is anything they need from the store or things like that but aside from practical messages he doesn’t text much.

Though if he is on a long mission and away from his s/o for quite a time span he usually rather calls them than text.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?) Nights as in ‘Nights Out’? Date nights? Well, he is a foodie so dinner is always a popular option. He takes the time to carefully research about the restaurant and the menu. If the rotate dishes, he will make sure they’re going at the exactly right season to get the best culinary experience possible.

Nanami is old fashioned. So he will hold the door for them, pull back the chair … helps them into their coat.

He also likes going to the movies. The intimacy of the dark theatre gives him the confidence to reach out for their hand or have his arm around their shoulder. Since he usually limits PDA in public this is exciting for him.

O = Opinion (Would they ask for their S/O’s opinion a lot? How important is it in terms of decisions?) Probably more than I would expect him too. Maybe not about the smaller things but decisions that involve the both of them he would definitely ask.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?) Due to the time he spends exposed to Gojo this man has the patience of a saint. Literally. He rarely snaps at his S/O.

Q = Quizzes (How does a bar trivia night teamed up with them look like?) Stressed. Yes, this man in very educated and cultured but imagine him sitting in a loud-ass bar, having to answer questions about the transformers or Megan Thee Stallion. Absolutely absurd. How old he must feel …

R = Remember (How much do they remember about their S/O or their relationship in general?) Not everything but a lot. He will remember little things they mentioned early on in the relationship and bring it up again later. He also uses this ability for presents and such. As well as in fights. If they think they can outtalk him with something you accusedly said or didn’t say some time ago - I suggest they surrender, because he will remember much better.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?) Very Protective. I mean yes, he knows that they can stand up for themselves but why should they have to do that if he is around? One of the big perks dating him is that he is who he is and that his presence confuses most people. So he might as well use it. Not so much in a physical way but rather in addressing the people bothering his S/O directly in the typical manner of his.

I think his understanding of being protected equals being taken care of which plays into the skincare thing I mentioned earlier. It is not so much physical procreation from danger but preserving a future together where one cares about the other deeply and only wants their best.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?) Medium effort. He prepares and researches but he rarely comes up with a new idea. He knows what he likes and his S/O probably does too. His work is so stressful and has close to no repetition so that he enjoys doing the same things on dates over and over. That does not mean it will get boring. Because Nanami sometimes thrives on going the extra mile. There is a restaurant across the country that he really wants to dine at? Buckle up - he is going on a vacation. Short trips or spa weekends are also things he appreciates.

Since he remembers dates and anniversaries well he is usually well prepared for those occasions. He puts a lot of thought into presents and barely ever gifts useless things. He does not like to have a lot of stuff laying around so what he gives to people usually serves a purpose.

U = Unique (What makes them unique as a S/O?) Literally everything I mentioned above. Namai Kento is a unique mix of all his traits. A very balanced person.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?) Well … he wears the same freaking suit everyday so … but yes I think cares about his looks and hygiene in general. As far as clothing goes he probably has one brand he is loyal too, which automatically sets his fashion style in stone as well. He has the same haircut for quite a while and sees no point in changing it.

Overall just the classic hetero dude who ones figured out what works for him and stuck with it. lol.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without their S/O? Yes. His S/O is the other side of him. Is what balances his inner peace. Without them he worries too much, stresses too much. He needs them to tell him it’s going to be okay.

X = X-Ray (How transparent are they?) Nanami doesn’t actually tells them everything but will disclose if they ask. He just doesn’t think they are interested in small details about him.

Y = Yuck (Everyone has flaws. What is theirs?) He. Doesn’t. Do. The. Dishes.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habits of theirs?) Kento never lets go of his S/O. Which can be annoying. And suffocating. Especially in summer. He is not clingy and they don’t fall asleep like this but in the morning he always spoons them or weirdly holds their hand. Sometimes toes interlocked lmao. Which makes them even more lonely when they are apart, because they got used to it way too quickly.

@kpopsnowball @soleilsuhh @jeonghanmoon @himitsu-luna

@sagedevans @shampoocifer @your-consulting-fangirl @gwynsapphire

MASTERLIST

#jjk #jujutsu kaisen imagine #jujutsu kaisen fluff #jujutsu kaisen scenario #jujutsu kaisen scenarios #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu sorcerer #jujutsu nanami #Nanami kento #jjk nanami #jjk Nanami kento

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 01

(Masterpost) (Next Episode)

Warning: This is **FULL **of spoilers, not just for this episode but for the entire series. If you haven’t finished all 50 episodes, please don’t read it!

Intro: 2020 continues to be much much too much while also being incredibly boring, and Im done with Shen Wei’s Lewks, so now I’m doing a deep meta dive into the Untamed. Let’s roll!

Prologue: The Battle of Mordor

The Demise of our Protagonist

Unlike some other shows I won’t name, The Untamed kills its suicidal queer protagonist immediately, rather than waiting four seasons, so we know what we're in for.

This is Wei Wuxian, who is about to yeet himself off of a cliff. He is having a bad day.

Note: if mouth blood bothers you...C-Drama might not be your thing.

Reasons for mouth blood: a sampler

Anyway...cliff time

Note: if (fictional) suicide bothers you...C-Drama might not be your thing.

To be fair there are hardly any suicides in The Untamed. No more than ...five? As long as you don’t count the entire population of the Wen Corporate Headquarters in Yiling or those wall bandits in Qinghe or Madame Yu or all those Wens who supposedly threw themselves into the mud puddle or that Mo guy who broke his own neck. Plus watching Wei Wuxian’s cliff drop several more times from multiple angles. So, you know. Hardly Any Suicides.

This is Lan Wangji, who is about to have his first losing encounter with physics. He is having a bad day.

In fact, if it is possible to have a worse day than the guy who is currently falling to his death, Lan Wangji is having that.

This is Jiang Cheng, who is feeling extra stabby from this camera angle. He is having a bad day.

Camera operator: why you gotta take it out on me?

(Much, much more after the cut!)

The Amulet Situation

This is the Stygian Tiger Amulet. Yes, by all means, (Netflix) subtitles, let's use a 12-dollar word, “Stygian,” that every English speaker who is not a Shelley/Byron shipper will have to look up. Let’s not use a normal word like "deathly" or "corrupt" or you know... "Yin" which is clearly what they are saying on screen.

Why does this tiger amulet look like a chameleon crossed with a remora? Wei Wuxian can paint photorealistic bunnies on a flimsy lantern while sitting in a field having distracting teenage lust, but two months of meditating with super magic gets him a tiger that looks like a chameleon. And don’t try telling me this is a traditional-Chinese-art vibe because this jade tiger from frickin 1000 BCE is way more tigerish than Wei Wuxian’s attempt.

Try harder next time, Wei Wuxian.

This is thousands of cultivators having a battle. What do you mean, it looks like about 40-60 dudes?

Any time someone in The Untamed refers to a number of people, it is like when you do your high school play and look off into the wings at nothing and say “Hark, A Ship Approaches!” and everyone’s parents nod indulgently.

Jin Clan Mountain Hunt:

*viewership nods indulgently*

This is Captain Blowhard, over on the right, courtesy name Clan Leader Yao. His job is to talk smack about Wei Wuxian and stick up for whoever is the biggest asshole in any given scene.

He represents mainstream cultivation-world values so here he is shanking one of his allies to take the deadly amulet of evilness.

The Present Day

Spilling All That Yiling Laozu Tea

Down at the Exposition Tea Shop, the Lan juniors are chilling and listening to Tea Dude tell the story of Yiling Laozu.

How did they get permission to take this field trip? “Principal Qiran, we want to go downtown to hang out with the local rabble and learn about your favorite person, Wei Wuxian.”

Waiting in the wings is the man with a fan and a plan, Nie Huaisan(g), who is paying tall loot to get these stories told.

...Why? Is Mo Xuanyu having tea here and listening? Or is Wei Wuxian being summoned back by hearing all this smack being talked about him? *Shrug.*

Gank Your Soul

Drunk flag guy out here talking about spirits. Wikipedia tells me that In one school of Daoist thought, a human being has a collection of physical souls (魄 pò) and ethereal souls (魂 hún). Drunk flag guy is saying “hún ” at the moment.

The many types of souls don’t translate well into English, where spiritual vocabulary has always been shackled connected to Christian beliefs, and is too limited for this context. So when the subtitles have conversations like “Is it a soul eater? No, no, it’s a spirit taker!” just roll with it. (Speaking of hún, if you have any interest in linguistics, do yourself a favor and go read all the wonderful meta @hunxi-guilai)

The spirit-carrying flag looks a lot like Raava and Vaatu from Korra which...probably doesn’t mean anything.

The Demise of our Trill Host

Suicide #2 happens about 8 minutes in.

Mo Xuanyu is that hippie roommate with the annoying wind chimes and bead curtains and blood spatter.

He is super mad at his terrible family and also at Jin Guangyao, who sent him home to his terrible family. I wonder if Fan Man Nie Huaisang influenced Jiggy’s decision-making there. Mo Xuanyu’s choice to die for revenge might be excessive, given how easy it actually is to murder the Mo family.

Being Alive Is Fine I Guess As Long As I Get To Fuck WIth People

Wei Wuxian starts his new life by splashing a little water on his face, which instantly makes his hair go from this

to this.

He looks at his reflection and wishes he was dead, which--mood--but he gets over it as soon as he finds someone whose day he can fuck up.

And he is ALL in on being crazy.

OP wishes she had the Wei Wuxian kind of crazy instead of the kind she actually has.

Meanwhile, this is the sane Mo cousin:

This asshole is wearing one of the best fabrics in the whole show, incidentally. Asshole.

My favorite bit of Wei-Mo craziness is when Wei Wuxian does a meaningless 360 all the way around this dude before ducking in the opposite direction, which is like when I make 4 right turns around a whole block to avoid making a single left across traffic.

Perhaps I Do Miss One Thing In This Life

Wei Wuxian has pining thoughts about Lan Wangji, so he plays WangXian on a fucking blade of grass well enough for Sizhui to recognize it from his dad's guqin jams.

Wei Wuxian is a better flautist than even Inspector Gadget BeatBoxing Flute Guy (Google it).

Our Many Many Spirit Lure Flags have Lured A Spirit, Oh Shit

Lan Clan has a Plan and Wei Wuxian is a Fan

Having one single lure flag stuck in Wen Ning’s torso caused spirits to basically eat him alive, so to catch one evil spirit, 6 disciples holding flags on the roof plus 8 more flags on the ground seems like a good amount. Wei Wuxian is like “yep, a single one of these will lure every spirit for five miles, carry on, younglings.”

Baxia Does the Heavy Lifting

Wei Wuxian is supposed to kill four people because of this curse situation, and in the course of the series they all die, and he kills exactly zero of them. The curse on Wei Wuxian’s arm should be called the scorekeeper curse.

Baxia’s spirit pinballs around the Mo clan, rapidly killing three people on Mo Xuanyu’s list plus a couple extras for good measure. Who's a good blade? Baxia is! Yess you are! Yes you are!

This here is the exact point in the show where your friend, who has listened to you squee about The Untamed for three months and finally agreed to watch it with you, will say “what the fuck am I watching?” and try to get up off the couch. Tackle them!

This also the point where we all realize that the prosthetic and practical effects in this show were probably not made by the people who made the clothing, because the quality is...variable. The white eyeballs are pretty good, but the glove of death is ridiculous.

Camera operator: why you gotta take it out on me?

While Baxia goes to town on the Mo clan, the Lan Clan babies...watch? And tie up the various victims after they are already goners.

Narrator: Her son is dead.

Meanwhile,

Wei Wuxian, you motherfucker. You’ve been alive for like 7 hours and you’re already building a new zombie army. No wonder you don’t want them to call Lan Wangji.

Hanguang-Jun Cut It Up One Time

Lan Wangji shows up and very slowly kicks zombie ass with his guqin. If you are used to Hong Kong action speeds, you will find The Untamed very peaceful.

All of the baby Lans fan squee up at Lan Wangji like he's the cultivation world's David Bowie and...they're not wrong. Jesus Fuck, he’s charismatic.

Lan Wangji is soft boi when he discovers this murderous sword full of dead-bastard energy, because it reminds him of his true love.

Like the talk about souls, the conversations about the nature of the murderous entity really don’t survive translation into English.

Servant: it’s a ghost!

WWX: it’s not a ghost, it’s a spirit

Babies: It’s a spirit

LWJ: it’s not a spirit, it’s a [...] ghost

Our Protagonist gets the FOH

Wei Wuxian is soft boi when he sees Lan Wangji, but not so soft that he considers actually, like, sticking around.

Wei Wuxian is also clueless boi, noting Lan Wangji’s white clothing and thinking, as in the past, that he looks like he’s dressed in mourning. The term he uses is 戴孝, which google tells me means the type of outfit worn by Jiang Yanli after Wen Ning rips her husband’s heart out someone who is in mourning.

Actually, Wei Wuxian, you dumbass, he is in actual mourning, actually, for you. Dumbass. He probably packed away all of his blue outer robes 16 years ago and only takes them out occasionally to reminisce about that nice date you had on your mountain of corpses.

On his way out the door Wei Wuxian manages to find a red ribbon for his beautiful hair, so things are looking up.

Where to go next...hey I know, how about that one haunted mountain with the killer statue, you know, the one that all my executed friends and child came from? That’ll be fun and a great way to put the past behind me!

Episode 02 Restless Rewatch is here!

#fytheuntamed #the untamed spoilers #the untamed gifs #the untamed #restless rewatch the untamed #tw: blood #tw: suicide #chen qing ling #cql #c-drama #bl drama #canary3d-original #the untamed memes #my gifs

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furiousgoldfish · 3 years

Text

I haven't been writing a lot lately because my recovery has been taking a wild turn and in lack of anyone to talk to or therapy, I'll be writing about it here! I'll put it under a cut. There are some descriptions of recovery going very wrong, and also explanations of things I was wrong about.

So since the pandemic started I've been deteriorating badly, first I've been processing trauma extensively, having intense breakdowns and gradually it turned into depression from lack of stimulation, I've been completely alone for months without speaking to, or seeing anyone. I thought it was the isolation getting to me, and decided I just need to endure that, indulge in whatever coping I could and wait for it to end. And then things got worse.

Even as normally I was seeing some very slow progress in recovery; now it was going backwards; I was having less and less ability to get anything done, I wasn't able to force myself to do my job for months, I kept getting stuck in bed for weeks, chronic pain got so bad I couldn't move on most days. And, it only kept going worse.

My breakdowns stared to be about the present instead of the past; I couldn't handle being in pain all the time. As in before I would recover from a breakdown within a day or two, now it took 4 days to a week, and the trauma episodes would last for hours, so intense I'd find myself hoping I would die during it.

And then, I started losing all mobility and this seriously freaked me out. Everything above I've already experienced before, without long term consequences, but now my body was losing function in a way that felt permanent; I could no longer move for more than few minutes, and without extensive pain. Sometimes I would try to get up and end up collapsing and screaming from how much it hurt, I would move my arm and my whole body would experience a shock of intense pain. I was scared, I no longer knew what was going on, I was suspecting something more than ptsd was wrong. I've forced myself into physical activity, trying to fight this, I tried stretching, exercising, running, punching, and every single one of these activities made it incredibly worse. I thought I had broken my body by laying down too much. I no longer felt anything but terror and dread, and kept spiralling into scenarios of my own death; it felt inevitable, I wasn't going to survive without ability to move, nobody would take care of me.

I tried out medicine that helps relaxing, it had minimal effect. Then, in desperation to check if this was all ptsd, I attempted self harm, to see if it erases the pain. It did. It lowered the pain significantly It was a big relief, even though I wasn't happy with resorting to that, at least I could move around for a while, and I was grateful for that. Times couldn't be more desperate, and the measure felt fitting. I was still in a very bad shape, and the pain was only somewhat lessened.

It was about that time someone sent me the Complex PTSD book; I had wanted it for a while and immediately went to read it. I felt some relief reading it, and I was struck with the realization that I have not felt any relief in more than a year. It also surprised me with some of the exact descriptions of my behaviour, that I didn't realize was a symptom. I thought it was necessary and smart of me to live in hiding, to avoid interaction and never connect to anyone; it kept me safe. It turns out it's a regular freeze response to trauma; I got very called out for it. It also explains that a freeze response is what people use when anything else doesn't work, and it's true! I had been fighting, fawning and perfecting myself desperately prior to realizing that absolutely nothing helps, and froze to survive. It also described that freeze types are capable of surviving prolonged isolation because their brains produce hormones that relax the body as if they're going thru a moment before death; also true for me, I've been aware my brain does that, only I get that way too often, and it only helps me marginally because I'm too used to it.

Another thing I was very wrong about was my concept of my inner critic; I thought I had already won that battle, because I did not allow any voice in my head to criticize me (my alters can drag me affectionately), and I generally didn't experience a lot of shame or guilt for what I was going thru. The book describes inner catastrophizer, which is an extention of the critic, and it causes you to spral into extremely negative scenarios of your own demise. Now that.. was happening to me every single day, I saw myself dead around every corner. But I always thought my fears about that were perfectly reasonable. I had been tortured into suicidal state as a kid and nobody cared, I barely escaped with my life from there, I was living illegally, in hiding, without a normal job or regular income, without close friends or any family, with ptsd i couldn't get diagnosed for, without ability to work due to ptsd, in a capitalistic society where being able to work is only thing between you and dying. I had, by that point, gained many skills of survival, but it still felt very reasonable to fear that I would die if I don't get better soon.

The book described people who had families, jobs, social circles, friends and community, who spiraled into deep fear of becoming homeless and dying on the street; somehow their spiraling was exactly the same as mine, and it made me realize that it was, in fact, a symptom, and not reflection of reality. Because I was spiraling even when laying in my bed or eating or sleeping, knowing I could still afford rent for months because I arranged my life to allow myself to lay down a lot. I kept fearing my parents were coming to end my life, even when I arranged my entire existence specifically to prevent this from happening. And even if I was sick and without a real job, I had in fact, survived for 5 years after running away, I wasn't getting worse at it. My spiraling into death scenarios was a symptom of being trapped within a flashback.

The book guided me to try to challenge these fears, I immediately went for it, had a breakdown, screamed "I can't" for like an hour, had additional few breakdowns afterwards, and miraculously, recovered from them in only few hours. And then, I woke up from my flashback.

I won't describe what the flashback was, because it's too gruesome and horiffic, but it was in fact, bad enough to warrant every single bit of that pain I was experiencing, and a very convoluted, complex trauma. I was waiting to be killed in that flashback. Whats concerning is, I've been trapped in that same flashbacks for more than a year. After I broke my way out of it, it felt like I woke up to being alive for the first time in years. I got out being frozen in bed.

For 5 amazing days, I was able to do whatever I wanted. Chronic pain? I didn't know her. It was absoluely exhilirating to get to move again, I was not getting tired either, I was out there making up for months of doing nothing and I was not collapsing at any point. I felt actual joy again, and hope, and being free from pain was so extremely good, that alone made me ecstatic. I was able to create, to be organized, to take care of myself, to follow a checklist, to focus, I was a Normal Person for those 5 days.

And then, predictably, I was getting back stuck in that flashbacks and my levels of terror and dread spiked again. I went to re-read the book, and it took me a few days to really figure it out again, I don't know exactly how the book works on me, I feel like it says just the right keywords to trigger me into realizations and causes breakdowns that set me free. I found myself able to stop some spiraling, but sometimes I can't, that flashback holds immense power over me and is actually mixed with 10 other near-death scenarios that are too extreme for me to process, so this will keep happening. I did break free again, and got to experience additional few days of movement and happiness; I also started working extensively with my child alter, who was until recently extremely suicidal and dangerous to work with.

I am still kinda lost in all of this, and unsure whats going on, but I do believe I wont get trapped in a flashback again for a whole year. I became so anxious and helpless due to isolation, I forgot how to fight trauma, I forgot I actually had to do it. I used to do it constantly in the beginning, but it had made me suicidal back then to face all this, so I tried to just let it heal naturally, which I believed would eventually happen; but it didn't, I got trapped and suffered without knowing how to get out. I also believed my own spiraling was a reflection of reality and not trauma, and that fueled it a lot.

It explains very eloqently in the book how inner catastrophizing comes from being massively neglected; children who are not looked after start to realize just how unprotected they are, so their own sense of danger becomes hypersensitive and starts to lock on possible dangers everywhere. This is then further aided by media that points out every possible bad thing that could happen to a person, and the child who isn't guided by adult who could actually make a reasonable distinction between real and unlikely danger, will clock it all as absolute possibilities and be on alert. It's also fueled by the line of disasters and dangers that happen to them in the context of their own home, and for me, the strongest factor was my parents constantly convincing me that I would die without them. Even though I proved this wrong, and understand they did it precisely because they knew there was a lot of survival ability in me and that's why they worked so hard to destroy it, the fact that it was brainwashed into me under circumstances of torture still makes it impossible for me to fight it.

Maybe one day I will be able to.

I'm writing this because writing things down helps to make sense of it all, and I need to find my way thru this. I also hope someone else will see themselves in what I'm describing and it will help them find a way forward. Complex ptsd is the only book I found that speaks from the point of view of a person who survived cptsd, healed from it, and had so much experience with other traumatized people they're able to draw parallels and create patterns and statistics out if it, it was that more than anything that convinced me of their words, and gave me hope. The book also warns many times of how essential it is to reduce inner critic and catastrophizer before getting other recovery work done, other therapy might only do further harm before this work is done. It was true for me.

If you wanna read this book, here's a post with the links!

#cptsd #complex ptsd #ptsd recovery #tw self harm #story of recovery #trauma #abuse recovery #trauma symptoms #chronic pain #chronic exhaustion #freeze response

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pi-cat000 · 3 years

Text

BNHA: Kakashi dimension hops crossover (6)

Summary: Kakashi gets dumbed into the My Hero Academia universe through random plot devise.

Characters: Kakashi Hatake

Fandoms: My Hero Academia and Naruto

WARNINGS: Mentions of violence/injury

START / PREV / NEXT

As predicted, the day following the seal’s application is miserable. His chest is tight with almost anxiety, pins and needles run up and down his arms making his skin itch, and he is increasingly lethargic. All symptoms of a chakra imbalance and to be expected when one’s normal chakra replacement rate was thrown out. The sensations would pass once his body adjusted as they had with his sharingan.

He is eating three square meals a day, doing the bare minimum when it came to exercise routines and avoiding excess chakra use. It had been literal years since he had had this much bed rest. If he were ever going to slap a chakra collecting seal on himself, this was a perfect time. Okay, so maybe he should have steadily increased the chakra drain over the course of a few weeks for a smoother adjustment period. Hindsight and all that.

What mattered was that he would be fine, and he just had to wait it out. Bright side? No one had commented on the seal yet. Oh, he has definitely noticed serval people throwing the odd confused frown at his shoulder, but that was as far as anyone had gone in acknowledging it. His oh so clever strategy of acting like nothing was wrong worked so much better when he wasn’t surrounded by other shinobi and medic-nin.

“Your blood pressure is still too high. Are you sure you haven’t been experiencing any additional fatigue or other symptoms? Is something about the hospital causing additional stress? If there is something wrong, we should work on strategies to fix the problem.”

Well… it worked on everyone who wasn’t Wada. The man was irritatingly persistent in his doctoring. Apparently, the pressure of adjusting to an increased chakra drain wasn’t doing his body any favours.

“Maybe it’s a part of my quirk. High regeneration. High blood pressure.” Kakashi shrugs loosely not bothering to look up from HEROES and HEROINES May Issue. Unlike his previous reading material, people gave him odd looks when they saw him reading these magazines which immediately upped their entertainment value 100-fold.

Wada undoes the compression sleeve he had been using to measure Kakashi’s blood pressure, lecturing as he goes, “From what I can tell your cells produce more energy-rich molecules, ATP, NADH, then is typical, increasing cellular functions. Where your cells are getting the energy to produce these molecules, I have no idea seeing as you eat about the same amount as any baseline human. What I can safely say is that it should not influence your blood pressure. If anything, your blood pressure should be a bit lower than average. Now don’t dodge the question.”

He pauses, waiting for Kakashi to cave and suddenly confess. Kakashi, an old hat at dodging medical questions, continues reading unperturbed.

“I’ve been at this for over 30 years. An attack like the one you suffered is understandably traumatic, not to mention the stress of severe amnesia. I’m sure, whatever is bothering you, I’ve heard it before.”

Kakashi very much doubts that. “I feel fine.”

Wada huffs, unconvinced, “Young men. You all think that admitting you have a problem is a sign of weakness. High blood pressure can damage your heart and lead to problems later in life so finding the cause is important.” Good thing a shinobi life spans tended to max out around 30. The odds of him making it to an age where he’d have to worry about the long-term effects of anything were pretty low. He doesn’t voice this opinion, continuing to read.

Wada continues talking with greater gusto, “No matter, I’ll prescribe you something for stress hopefully that’ll help with your blood pressure. However, this is no replacement for healthy habits both physical and mental. You should consider professional therapy.”

Kakashi snorts. Yeah, that sounds about right.

“Oh, you think that’s funny do you,” Wada makes to grab HEROES and HEROIENS and he lets the doctor pull the magazine free from his hand. It gives him a good view of the man’s irate expression.

“No, of course not.” Kakashi attempts to placate and gets a light smack over the head with said magazine for his troubles.

“There is no shame in pursuing a healthy mind!”

“Weren’t we going to test my quirk today?” He complains to derail the current line of questioning.

“I have half a mind to put it off and have you rest another week,” is threatened before Wada’s stern expression relaxes, “Lucky for you, I’ve booked you into serval tests that can’t be rescheduled.”

Kakashi breaths out dramatically. He thinks Wada might have made a good medic-nin if he had lived in Konoha. Sure, he is a little too trusting, but he was also not above pestering his patients into taking better care of themselves. Sakura would approve.

The doctor, with the assistance of an attending nurse he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of, helps Kakashi out of his bed and into a wheelchair, ignoring his protests about his leg being all but healed.

“You’re to avoid putting weight on it until you start physical therapy,” Wada snaps at his continued complaints, “You’ll need to be careful, extended bed rest and surgery can leave your muscles weakened. Also, leave that magazine behind. You’re doing eye tests when do you think you’ll have time to read!”

Kakashi doesn’t push the matter further, resigning himself to being wheeled down the hospital halls like the invalid he was pretending to be. It is not like Wada knew about his frequent excursions to the roof or the fact that he has been running through strengthening exercises on his own time for several weeks now. Best he keeps that information to himself.

Partway down the hall, he pulls out HEROES and HEROIENS from where he had slipped it into his shirt, enjoying Wada’s exasperated expression. Of course, he stops reading when the doctor threatens to start lecturing again. The man could definitely talk when given the chance.

Wada and the nurse take wheel him to a set of double-door elevators which take them down several floors below the ground level. The hallway they exit of a mirror of every other hospital hallway. Grey and white walls, pale blue lino floor and bright fluorescent overhead lights. The only difference is that this hallway is lined with heavy-looking metal doors. From snooping through patient files, he knows that all quirk tests are carried out in specially designated underground ‘safety rooms.’ That doesn't make him any more thrilled about being several stories underground. It cut down on his escape roots.

“These are some of the more secure recovery wards in the hospital,” Wada explains as their little group stops at a small reception desk where the doctor taps away at a computer screen, “they’re mostly for treating patients with unstable quirks.” Kakashi maintains a neutral expression, accepting the explanation.

Wada wheels him up to a steel door, swiping his ID card which also doubled as a key to many areas of the hospital. The heavy door is automated and slides open. A lot of the doors in the hospital operate this way and always made sneaking around slightly more troublesome.

Inside walls and floor are plain white and there is an odd number of tables and chairs pushed to one side out of the way. Everything stinks of disinfectant. On the far wall is a single solitary painting of a tree in a field, the only splash of colour in an otherwise depressingly sparse room. A poor attempt at living up the space. The opposite wall sports a rectangular, reflective surface which was probably some sort of observation booth. Well, if being underground hadn’t put him on edge, this obvious confinement room definitely did the job. Kakashi eyes the space. Worse comes to worst, he could use the kamui and remove the adjoining hallway wall then climb his way out through the elevator shaft. There are only two other people in the room with him and one woman at the reception desk, all were most likely unenhanced with quirks unsuited to combat, easily removed. He doesn’t let his body language reflect his unease. He is just a little on edge because the new seal is messing with his body’s natural homeostasis. If this is a trap there would have been other signs of deception before now.

“Yes, I know it might seem like a whole lot of fuss just to run through a few flashcards,” Wada comments, oblivious to Kakashi’s poor mood. He waves to his assisting nurse who wheels over and lowers one of the metallic tables so Kakashi doesn’t have to move from his wheelchair. “But it’s a standard safety procedure when an unknown quirk is involved. Trust me, this is a lot easier than travelling to an external testing range.”

Wada stops to give Kakashi a once over, frowning, “How much do you know about your quirk sub-type?”

Kakashi shrugs, “Nothing much.”

“Ah,” The doctor’s frown grows, and he grimaces, “Of course you don’t.” A sigh.

“Typically, ocular quirks will act to enhanced sight in some way or improve base level memorisation and recall ability. It is also common to have a replicating function, allowing the user to produce some sort of copy of things they see. In rarer cases, ocular quirks result in precognitive abilities.” Wada explanation falters, “They can also have a line-of-sight emitter effect, such as laser vision, optical blasts, a few instances of mind control and other mental effects. These can also be incredibly dangerous if the user isn’t in control. There have even been instances where whole buildings have been levelled.”

“I see.” He supposes Wada's irritation at this private 'quirk' testing made a bit more sense. A doctor faced with an unknown and possibly dangerous ability would be annoyed if said patient went about experimenting without taking safety precautions.

“I should have checked whether you knew the dangers instead of just assuming. Apologies. That is my own error.”

He peers at Kakashi, almost guilty now, “and you don’t have a phone either so there would have been no way for you to research quirks yourself.”

“Ah,” Kakashi rubs the back of his head not likening how torn up the other man seems to be seeing as Kakashi had ever been in any real danger. “Don’t worry about it,” he reassures.

His reassurances land flat, the doctor still frowning, “I’ll see if I can get you access to the internet somehow.”

Privately, Kakashi adds 'research' to the list of functions ‘phones’ apparently provided and 'internet' to his growing list of terms to investigate.

Wada sighs again. “Regardless, let’s get these tests done first.” He places a thick folder labelled National Standard for Registration: Kit Type 3 alongside one of those portable keyboard-less computers the doctors tended to carry around. “Hold on, been a while since I’ve done one of these. Need to find the rights files. Ah, here we go. First, these rooms are monitored, and all tests are recorded. The data collected is confidential, accessible only to the patient and physician unless doing so causes the patent harm. Information regarding quirk function and use is shared with the Registry Office. You have a right to stop testing at any point. You got that?”

Kakashi grunts, his already poor mood souring further. He is not sure he wants the hospital - or anyone - keeping records of anything sharingan related.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Wada continues unperturbed, a testament to his serval weeks of trying to doctor Kakashi, “remember to let me know if you’re experiencing any discomfort. Don’t want you busting anymore blood vessels.

Kakashi lets out a tired breath, “Sure.” The sooner they left this room the better.

“We’ll test memory and vision first to compare to your baseline, then we’ll run through the replication and precognitive tests just in case.”

The nurse, who had been on the opposite side of the room waves, “All ready over here.” There is now a large poster with letters of varying sizes hung on the wall. He recognises the chart from his previous eye tests.

“Okay, let’s start with just uncovering it. Make sure you’re looking away from me as a precaution.”

Kakashi resists rolling his non- sharingan eye at the obvious instruction, shifting his attention to the poster on the wall. He flips his padded eyepatch up with his index finger so it partially rests on his forehead. All the letters, no matter the size, immediately snap into sharp focus. Nothing spontaneously combusts under his gaze. When he glances at the painting of the tree, he can now see a lack of brush texture, suggesting that it wasn’t a painting but a print of some sort. With that useless information now forever etched into his memory, he turns back to examine at Wada.

The sharingan picks out all the wrinkles and pores lining the older face. It focuses in on minuscule muscle movements as the man’s expression shifts from professional and accommodating to curious. The doctor’s fingers twitch ever so slightly over his computer. Most likely an unconscious habit. The man’s breath is slightly uneven like his chest can’t smoothly expand, suggesting some sort of lung problem. A past smoking habit perhaps? Nothing threatening is revealed.

“Doctor.” Kakashi prompts when Wada spends a little too long staring back at him. The sharingun did have a weak hypnotic effect, encouraging extended eye contact to help catch targets in genjutsu. Kakashi rarely uncovered his eye in the presence of civilians so he doesn’t know if the effect is more pronounced or if Wada is just curious.

Wada blinks, “Well…I certainly see where the ‘wheel’ description comes from.” He spends a second more staring then turns to start writing notes and tapping away at his computer screen. “I wonder if those spinning tomoe are purely cosmetic or if they have some other function because they are certainly fascinating to look at. There is also faint bioluminescence to the eye which is a common feature of ocular quirks…”

Honestly, the blatant eye contact is weird. Even his closest allies tended to avoid looking at his sharingan out of habit - expect for Naruto who was an outlier in almost everything - for understandable reasons. He thinks the people here would also exercise caution if an ocular abilities included mind control or exploding a person through eye contact. But no, Wada just goes right ahead and stares. A few seconds later and the unnamed nurse is also looking curiously at his eye. … …

Aside from redoing a standard eye exam, Kakashi runs through a marathon of flashcards to test both his memory and then precognitive abilities. The tests are done with lights on then in the dark and Kakashi is given a perfect 20/20 and an enhancement score of ‘15 grades above average’ for both. There are also several pages worth of words and numbers in progressively complex arrangements to test his information retention. Of course, everything is easily remembered with the sharingun active.

“Well, it seems to give general across the board vision enhancement alongside perfect recall and retention,” Wada finally concludes as he records all Kakashi’s results, “Of course, we’ll have to re-test retention in a few days so see if the information degrades over an extended period and we don’t know whether your quirk effects your long distance eyesight, but, for now, this appears to be all. The link between your quirked eye and the regenerative side-effect is still unknown. Odd that we couldn’t trigger any ‘copy’ function considering the quirks name though ‘copy’ could also be a reference to memorisation. If any other features do reveal themselves make sure you alert a medical professional.”

… …

Kakashi despises the process of getting an MRI with a heated passion. He hates having to lie prone in a loud confined space. It is the height of discomfort, making him tense up and clench his jaw. It is only the fact that Kakashi had researched and mentally prepared himself for the experience that stops him from accidentally snapping someone’s neck.

“We’ll have the results back in a few days,” Wada informs once the trying ordeal is over with, “From there we’ll update the Registry so you’re properly in the system. Speaking of which, have you made any progress on remembering a surname? I need something for the forms.”

“Hatake,” he grunts, too irritated to bother evading - he just wants to return to his room and wait out the side effects of his seal in peace- the question like he had every other time the man asked, “I think I prefer Kakashi though.”

It wasn’t like the name meant anything here and, who knows, maybe someone would come looking for him. This way they would have a trail to follow.

#bnha #bnha fanfic #naruto #boku no academia #CrossOver #kakshi hatake #dimension travel AU #fanfiction #my hero academia #more hospital stuff #probably a bunch of medical inaccuracies #quirk biology #quirk stuff #world building

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puddygeeks · 3 years

Text

𝑾𝒂𝒓 𝑶𝒇 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔 - 𝑪𝒓𝒊𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑴𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒔, 𝑺𝒑𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒓 𝑹𝒆𝒊𝒅 𝒙 𝑶𝑪 - 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒓 8: 𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒏 𝑶𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒚

Masterlist

Rating: Mature

Summary: 𝐴𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑒𝑓𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠. 𝑊𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝐴𝑈 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦, 𝑚𝑎𝑦𝑏𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑔𝑖𝑛 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡.

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Pairing: Spencer Reid x OC

Status: Ongoing

LONG TERM ONGOING PROJECT :)

My writing is entirely fuelled by coffee! If you enjoy my work, feel free to donate toward my caffeine dependency: will work for coffee

𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔: 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑑𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡, 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑤. 𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑏𝑒 𝑎𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑢𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟, 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑏𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 & 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝐴𝑈'𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘. 𝐼𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑦 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑑, 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤.

Eᴘɪsᴏᴅᴇ: Pʀᴇ Sᴇᴀsᴏɴ 1

Chapter Eight

“You know, it’s remarkably similar to Brighton Pier here.” I commented, fanning myself in desperation under the scolding sun and Ricky pushed his large sunglasses down to allow me to feel the full force of his judgement. “Well, except that it’s unmistakably hotter, obviously.”

“How dare you compare this beautiful sandy bliss to your pebble filled nightmare?” He remarked with a sweeping hand gesture at the beach, before sipping out of his straw with offence and I rolled my eyes at him.

Ricky has always been a force to be reckoned with, but as he got older, he only grew more confident and I was constantly inspired by how comfortable he was in himself. His thick brunette hair reached his collarbones now, but he currently had it pushed back out of his face with a colourful bandana so that he could tan. In order for him to worship the sun to his full capacity, he was wearing a worryingly small pair of shorts and had stretched himself across a lounger like the diva that he absolutely was.

“Hmm. Your actual beach is better, I’ll give you that one. But you’re seriously lacking on drag queens, quirky cafes and fancy boutiques to shop in.” I pointed out, fondly recalling the whirlwind weekend that we’d spent in the British city the last time that he’d visited me and he shrugged in defeat.

“Touché. You win this round.” He admitted, laying back to bask himself again, whilst I shuffled my sensitive skin further under the sun umbrella that he’d reluctantly agreed to allow me to bring over on the condition that it didn’t cause a single shred of shade over him.

It was a beautiful day, only improved by the quality of my company and I had to admit that I was endlessly pleased to have decided to extend my stay for another few days. Despite the years that had passed since we had last been in each other's physical company, Ricky was still able to put me at ease in a way that no one else had ever been able to emulate and I cherished the opportunity to simply relax with him at the Virginia Boardwalk.

“So, what’s it like being an FBI agent?” Ricky asked, turning his attention back to me with a smug expression. “Is it wonderful knowing that you have the power to stop anyone in their tracks? I would absolutely abuse my power for evil, but I know you’re too pure for that.” He muttered with delight and I chuckled at him knowingly. The things that he would use an FBI badge to accomplish didn’t even bear thinking about.

“Darling. I already told you. I’m not an FBI agent. I’m still a technical analyst for Interpol. I’m just on loan.” I repeated, already losing count of how many times I had made this distinction, but he still seemed as unconvinced by this as he was the first time that I told him.

“Oh, semantics! Sounds to me like you’re working for them and considering that you saved a girl from a burning building like a freaking hero, I’m just going to treat you like one.” He argued, seeming amused as if I were simply downplaying things, when realistically, it was a case of him dramatising the arrangement, as he did with most things. “We have an FBI agent in the family. That’s pretty cool.”

“There is absolutely no reasoning with you.” I groaned, shaking my head in embarrassment and he shrugged dismissively, as if this were an obvious fact that I should have accepted already. “How’s university going? Have you sorted your accommodation for your second year yet?”

“College is going fine. I’ve done a fantastic job being the life of the party, so I have plenty of offers for people to live with. My only struggle is choosing people who aren’t completely filthy as housemates. I can’t live in a grubbly little student hovel.” He explained, seeming repulsed by the very idea and I raised a brow at his diva attitude. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not being dramatic. My first year in dorms, I shared a bathroom with straight men. You don’t understand the trauma that I’ve lived through.”

“Does your mother know that you haven’t arranged housing yet?” I interrogated, already sensing a hint of dishonesty in him and his features quickly contorted into a guilty look. “Rituparan! I understand being picky, but you’ll end up with no choice other than to live with the grimy jocks if you don’t hurry up. You need to get organised.” I scolded, earning an eye roll so severe that I worried his face might never recover from the strain.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Alley Cat. I’ll get it sorted. Now, drink your mocktail before it gets too diluted.” He ordered, sipping down the last of his drink and placing the little umbrella from the top in his hair with a flourish. The moment that he faced me, I knew that he had mischief in mind.

“Okay. Are you ready? Who am I?” He pouted so dramatically that his cheeks all but disappeared and I almost choked on my drink.

“Oh, too easy! That is the unforgettable Lola, the only woman on the planet who considers a cocktail umbrella the perfect hair accessory for any occasion.” I answered, earning a cheer and wicked laugh of satisfaction from him. “You know, I love having someone else to mock dad’s exes with. You’d think the fact that he only dates women my age would mean we’d have something in common, but alas, apparently a sense of humour isn’t shared by age group.”

“Of course they’re not funny! The only thing those girls come with is a price tag.” He sassed, flipping his hair back out of his face in a ridiculously bitchy gesture and I was immediately reminded of just how much I loved him. “At least you don’t have to pretend to like Tanya anymore. Honestly, if she had a second brain cell, she’d be dangerous.”

“Oh, no! They broke up?” I gasped, almost sounding convincing with my upset and he whipped his head around with drastic confusion. “I guess she had to bleed my dad dry of pocket money eventually.” I drawled, prompting a small yelp of surprise and a quick high five from Ricky.

Tanya had been dating my dad for just over six months now, so I knew that she was likely to be approaching her expiration date soon. His routine was well known amongst the entire family now and in an effort to counter the embarrassment that it caused for my mother and I, it had become a running joke for us all to share.

“Didn’t you hear the details?” Ricky crooned, turning to face me fully on his lounger with a devious expression and I shrugged nonchalantly. “According to Maji, she tried to charge her lip fillers to his business credit card. Caused all sorts of uproar at the office. I guess she’ll be making that duck face at someone else’s wallet now.” He divulged, pouting into an exaggerated model face for effect and I struggled not to splutter my drink everywhere in response.

Ricky’s mother always seemed to know everything that was happening in our family and I’d long believed that this was where he’d learned to dig information out of people. She was abnormally gifted in guilt tripping the truth out of even the most hardened family members and yet, she doted on Ricky as if he was the very thing that made her world turn. If I ever wanted to know what was going on in my dad’s life, I knew that I could rely on her to be up to date with events.

Before I could manage to recover enough to speak, my mobile rang with it’s sharp tone and I had to clamber around in my bag to find it. As soon as I saw the private number, my eyes grew wide in dread.

“Oh, no! The bat phone?” Ricky asked, seeming genuinely horrified that I might be called into work and I quickly nodded, before holding a finger to my lips to shush him.

“Agent Hawthorne.” I answered, feeling utterly ridiculous referring to myself this way in my current company. This insecurity was only made worse by Ricky sliding his shades back on in a judgemental manner and I gestured to him to stop distracting me.

“Alice. This is Hotch. Are you still in Virginia?”

The voice on the other end of the phone was as serious as ever and though I was enormously relieved to find that it wasn’t anyone from Interpol trying to order me home, I felt nerves building in my chest already.

“Yes, Sir. I am.” I reported, noticing Ricky raising his brows at me in interest and I knew that he was dying to know what was being said.

“I realise that you’re spending time with family, but would you be able to come into the office for a meeting? I have a matter that I would like to discuss with you in person, if possible.” Hotch requested, allowing me absolutely no hint of the cause for this meeting and I felt my face change into one of alarm.

My mind had already begun racing with all of the possible complications that I could be facing for my actions at the base now that all of the documentation for the case had been submitted and I was terrified that if any further charges were brought against me, they could contradict the deal that I made with Interpol to avoid imprisonment.

“Yes, Sir. I’ll come in right away.” I stuttered, attempting to fight down my terror. My hands shook with nerves as I hung up on the call and Ricky looked positively thrilled to have been given the opportunity to witness this conversation, as if he’d just been personally included in a matter of national security.

“It’s a good thing that you went for virgin cocktails, my dear. I have to get back to Quantico.” I confessed, quickly burying my nerves so that he wouldn’t sense trouble.

“Oh my god! This is so exciting!” He announced, hopping straight to his feet and flustering to grab his belongings that were spread across every surface around him. “One cab for Agent Hawthorne, coming right up!”

--⥈--

Outfit: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/460070918191621506/

Standing in the lift of the Quantico building, I was overwhelmed with anxiety. I had been in such a rush to get here that it hadn’t even crossed my mind to change clothes, or to do anything to prepare my appearance at all. Though I knew that I didn’t have any more office clothes with me anyway, I acknowledged that I could at least have found something that provided a little more coverage and didn’t leave me feeling so exposed.

The idea of walking through an office where everyone was dressed smartly, wearing a white floral mini dress was an absolute nightmare and I realised that I only had a few minutes to make any changes. All I could think to do was to untie my waist length hair, shaking it out to at least cover some of my arms and attempting to make it look styled.

The doors opened to reveal a full office, with most of the team present at their desks and I gulped nervously. My dress felt as if it had actually shrunk in size since the beach now that I would be seen in it by people that I had worked with and I had to remind myself that I had bigger things to worry about with being called to come here than my attire.

JJ’s heels clicked on the polished floor as she entered the reception, her professional appearance clashing horribly with the casual style of my low top converses and I tried not to feel intimidated.

“Alice! I know that I said we wanted to see you again soon, but this is a little crazy.” She breezed as she approached me with a warm smile and I tried to force myself to relax. “Hotch is just finishing a call and he’ll be out to meet you.” She explained, before her gaze fell onto my outfit and I felt myself physically become stiff under her scrutiny. “You look pretty!”

“Oh, thanks. I was just on the beach. I’ve already worn all of my work clothes so, um, this is all I have?” I offered, shifting awkwardly and she smiled sympathetically at me.

“We’ve all been called in at unexpected times. I was literally collected from home in my pajamas once. You’ve got nothing to worry about.” She soothed, leaning closer to me as she spoke so that no one would overhear my concern and I let out a long breath in relief.

“Besides, I know that Hotch is just going to appreciate you being able to come in at such short notice. I hope you got to enjoy at least a little bit of your time off before we intruded?” She asked with an honest concern in her eyes and just as I opened my mouth to see if she could give me even the slightest hint of what to expect, Hotch stepped into the room.

“Alice. Thank you for coming so quickly.” He stated in his usual serious manner, reaching straight to shake my hand and I complied immediately, forcing a smile through my nerves. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time. Let’s talk in my office.” He offered, opening the glass doors to the main office for me and I stepped through hesitantly.

Within approximately two steps of entering the space, I could already feel eyes on me and tried not to allow myself to be unnerved by the attention. The anxious voice in the back of my mind screamed that I was the most inappropriate looking member of staff to ever enter this office, but I forced myself to keep my head held high as Ricky had always preached.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Spencer was watching me from his desk as if he’d been stopped in his tracks and I waved subtly at him, prompting him to hurriedly do the same back in a fluster. Morgan passed Hotch distractedly, before he noticed that I was following him with obvious surprise.

“Looking good, Poppins. Welcome back.” He muttered as he squeezed beside me, sneaking a charming smile and thanks to the combined warmth of the two men, once again I felt my nerves beginning to settle slightly.

Hotch encouraged me to take a seat in his office, before closing the door behind us and I felt as if I couldn’t think straight in the silence that followed. He settled into the seat opposite me, knitting his hands together on the desk between us and despite feeling before that I had reached the point where I could understand his expressions, his face at this moment was completely unreadable.

“For a start, I want to discuss what happened at the Twenty Nine Palms base.” He opened, his stern eyes studying my face for every minute reaction and though my heart sank at the suggested topic, I nodded back calmly.

“Whilst it can’t be denied that your actions resulted in saving a young girl's life, they were also unacceptably reckless. You demonstrated absolutely no regard for your own safety and jeopardised the reputation of the whole team. You are aware that we appreciate your support, but I’m not convinced that you realise we are legally and morally responsible for your wellbeing whilst you are under our service and that I would be personally held accountable for your death as a result of your irresponsible actions.” He lectured, his voice sounding even more severe than it had when I was in the ambulance and I felt my confidence crumbling with every word that he spoke.

It became clear that he had paused his speech to allow me the chance to explain myself and I cleared my throat to speak with a feeling of terror.

“I’m truly sorry for my actions, Sir. You are entirely right. I was reckless and selfish, and I didn’t consider how my behaviour would reflect on your team, and especially on you. I’m not going to make excuses. I just want you to know that I accept any and all consequences that you feel are appropriate.” I answered calmly, ensuring that I kept my tone calm and respectful, and he sighed as he studied me.

“I didn’t call you in here to punish you, Alice. This is a conversation, not a lecture. What I aim to understand is why an agent with no field experience, or any personal stake in the case, felt that they had no choice other than to risk their own life to save a child who they’d never met?” He clarified, his entire demeanour remaining unchanged even as he moved to a gentler tactic of questioning and I chewed on my lip.

It took a few moments for me to consider how best to answer this, but eventually I decided that I respected this team as a whole too much to lie. I prepared myself for a conversation that I knew would likely change his opinion of me permanently, but assured myself that honesty was a necessity at this point.

“When I was fifteen years old, my mother was abducted.” I began, glancing down at my hands as I spoke to avoid the intensity of his gaze. “It took four months for her to be found and when she came home, she was a different person. I never saw the mother that went missing again.” I paused, clearing my throat to keep the emotion from my voice before continuing.

“Three years later, a girl at my university went missing. She wasn’t the first, but the stakes were high as all of the others had been found murdered. I obsessed over everything that my mother had survived to come home and I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to endure that at just eighteen years old. So, I began looking into the case and after a while of digging, I compiled enough information to anonymously assist law enforcement in safely recovering the missing girl. I realised then that I had the skills to make a difference to the world and I kept going, one missing person at a time, until Interpol found me.”

“You were given a choice between conviction, or working for them?” Hotch asked knowingly, as if he’d seen this very situation many times before and I recalled the recent conversation that I’d had with Penelope about hackers frequently being recruited through their questionable activities. I nodded slowly in response, deciding that this wasn’t the time to divulge any further information about the circumstances of my hiring.

“I didn’t join this field by choice. It was never the plan for my life. Don’t get me wrong, I always wanted to help people. I actually trained to become a psychiatrist, like my dad, but a job like this had never even been on my radar. Yet, here I am.” I explained, shrugging awkwardly as I realised that this sounded like I was ungrateful for the mercy that I was shown and I tried to be more careful with my wording when I spoke again.

“When I was standing in front of that building, watching the smoke pour out of it, all I could think about was how my mother told me that she spent every minute of every day that she was in captivity praying to come home. I could just imagine Amanda doing the same thing, hoping with everything she had that someone would save her and I was right there.” I stopped as frustration seeped into my voice, allowing myself to regain control so that I could resume my explanation.

“I knew that there was a chance that she was still alive and I felt like everything that had happened, all of the crazy unplanned situations that had led me to being there at that exact time were so that I could save her. It sounds insane, but it was like my legs moved before I had even decided what I was going to do. For the first time in my career, I trusted my team, this team to have my back and with all due respect, Sir, it was the right thing to do.” I finally finished my rant, forcing myself to meet his eyes to allow him to see my sincerity and I was shocked to find that his face was filled with understanding, causing me to realise that he was already filling in the blanks between my words.

“You said that this was the first time that you felt this way about your team. You shouldn’t be working with people that you can’t rely on. In our line of work, we are forced to face horrors that most people can’t even begin to imagine. The people around you should be your anchor in the storm.” Hotch advised, causing my eyes to become watery and I sniffed back my emotions, desperate not to cry in front of him. “You have options, Alice.”

“What options? Prison?” I scoffed, recalling my conversation with Shepard with a flinch.

Though I had thought in detail about leaving Interpol many times since my recruitment, I knew in a serious light that it was merely a fantasy and nothing more. Without my employment to them, I was considered as nothing more than a threat to security and returning to normal civilian life was no longer something that I could consider.

“Join our team.” Hotch offered, causing my mouth to drop open in shock and I noticed the corners of his lips twitch slightly upward at my reaction.

“It’s clear that you are neither happy, nor valued at Interpol. You have already proven the difference that you could make across multiple cases and the entire team have agreed that you make an excellent addition.” He elaborated, listing reasons that I struggled to even associate with myself and I couldn’t seem to form a response, as I stuttered in the silence.

“But, I-Sir, we just discussed how I jeopardised this team. I don’t mean to seem rude, or ungrateful because I absolutely am not, but I fail to see how I’ve given you the impression that I would make a suitable field agent. You already have Penelope for technical support, so I’m not sure what else you could need me for here.” I pointed out, hardly able to wrap my head around the sudden detour that this conversation had taken and found myself baffled at the very concept of him offering to employ me.

“When your team brought you for the Valeno case, you showed potential that they were purposefully dismissive of. After you left, Gideon suggested that I speak to you about a position within the BAU. Unfortunately, at the time we didn’t have the available resources to do this. Due to the recent successes of this team, we’ve been granted the budget to expand and I would be foolish to ignore a candidate who has already contributed to that success. You are a good fit and the first choice of every member in this unit.” He presented, completely disregarding my concerns and when I looked at him with confusion, he sighed.

“I have discussed the recent incident with Gideon and we share the opinion that with the correct mentoring and the support of a team that believes in your worth, you could be an exceptional field agent.” He divulged, causing me to raise my brows impossibly higher in surprise.

It was bizarre enough that Hotch wanted me to join the team, but finding out that Gideon had been the instigator for this offer blew what remained of my psyche to pieces and Hotch cleared his throat to regain my attention from my inner turmoil.

“The offer would, of course, be conditional. It would be based on your own commitment to overcoming your experiences. None of us are immune to personal biases and each of us have elements of our pasts that make certain cases more challenging for us than the others. However, we rely on each other to hold us accountable, and have all learned to be objective and to know our limits. If you think this is something that you can also undertake, then there is a place here for you. As long as you want it.” Hotch clarified, causing me to stare back at him in blatant disbelief.

“I-I honestly don’t know what to say.” I stuttered, fiddling with my hair anxiously and Hotch cracked a rare smile at me. “It isn’t as simple for me as just changing state. My life is in France now. I’ve already left my mum behind once in England. I’d also have to renounce my dual nationality and become an American citizen.” I thought aloud, considering the enormity of the decision before me and Hotch nodded in understanding.

“Can I have some time to think about it?” I asked nervously, unsure of what else to say and Hotch seemed completely unsurprised by my reaction, as if he’d actually been expecting it.

“Of course. It’s a serious decision that you aren’t expected to make right away. Take all of the time that you need.”

--⥈--

“Girl. Your life is crazy!” Ricky gasped, studying me with a fascinated expression and I had to laugh at his dramatic reaction, despite mostly agreeing with the sentiment. “You’re gonna say yes, right?”

I sighed deeply as I considered this question and the way that he considered me now revealed exactly how insane he thought I was for even needing to think about it. In order to avoid his prying eyes, I stood to start clearing away the takeaway boxes that littered my hotel room bed, but Ricky refused to be silenced.

“Alice. Honey. What are you doing?! Life at Interpol has been miserable for you since day one. You said it yourself. I can’t imagine anything there that could be worth turning this offer down for!” He scolded, staring at me in complete disbelief and I shook my head at his youthful attitude to things.

“It’s more complicated than that. I never planned to work in this sector at all, much less as an FBI agent!” I explained, still struggling to process the fact that this was even an option that was open to me. It felt as if it had come from nowhere and I was already overwhelmed with the mere concept of making such a serious life decision.

“This isn’t just a job that we’re talking about here. It’s a completely different life. I need to be sure that I can handle it, before I move away from everything that I know. I’d hardly ever get to see mum and Roger.” I clarified, struggling to make him understand the severity of the situation.

“You never visit your mama anyway! I should know. I overhear Maji talking to her about it enough.” He groaned, only causing me to feel even worse about the idea of moving even further away from her.

“Besides, if you took it then you’d be living right near me and there isn’t any better benefit than that!” He added, posing across the bed as if he were the most important factor in the proposal and I chuckled at him with fondness. He sighed at my lack of enthusiasm, before dropping to a more serious tone.

“The most important thing for all of us is your happiness. You’d be crazy to stay somewhere that is making your whole existence taste like bad Aloo Gobi. And you deserve better than that! You deserve for your life to always be like Maji’s cooking, full of love and happiness.” He described, seeming as if he’d distracted himself along the way and he glanced back down at his plastic container of curry with disdain.

“You realise that you have a gift for being able to relate literally anything to food, right?” I remarked playfully, observing him with amazement and he shrugged carelessly.

“Food is one of the most enjoyable things that sustains us. It’s important.” He argued passionately and I couldn’t think of a single point to dispute his statement with, having to allow him the pleasure of being correct. “Fortunately, Mumbai Gardens is able to provide an almost authentic experience, right here in the heart of Virginia. A good meal can heal many things, you know. Even the stress of your biggest ever life decision.”

“That’s high praise coming from you. Could it pass the home test though, do you think?” I queried with curiosity as I disposed of the remaining trash with the Mumbai Gardens logo on it and he scoffed as if I’d asked something utterly ridiculous.

“Not a chance! Even Mama would be able to tell you that it wasn’t completely correct. You know, she’s actually been with Maji long enough now to have better cooking taste than some of my other actual Indian friends.” He revealed, showing his love for his step mom, who happened to be my paternal aunt Heather, clear in his voice.

I couldn’t withhold a wide grin as I thought of my aunts, both filled with a warmth that radiated even in my memories. Heather and Ricky’s mum, Nabhitha, had been married for almost ten years now and were the main reason that I still had any faith in true love. They had done an admirable job of raising Ricky together, with Heather always treating him as if he was her biological son and I was endlessly proud of them. Thanks to them, Ricky had grown into the confident, funny teenager that I loved. Their blissful blended family gave me hope for my own future.

“I just had an idea.” Ricky breezed, sitting up particularly straight as if he could barely contain his enthusiasm and I turned back to face him with interest. “If you take this job, we could totally rent a place together! I could be your stylist extraordinaire, in-house councillor and professional Indian chef.” He suggested, his eyes gleaming with excitement and I scoffed loudly at the idea.

“Absolutely not. I’ve already got enough on my plate, without considering parenting you, Ricky.” I laughed, wincing at even the thought of dealing with his dramatics on a daily basis and he gasped at my refusal, seeming as if he could never have expected me to refuse his generous offer. “You can be as offended as you like, but I still don’t have the energy to deal with a college kid in my space. I’m not gonna be your easy way out of student housing. Pick some other teenagers to live with already.”

“Fine. I was offering you a lifestyle of sheer luxury, but I guess I’ll just have to take my fabulous self somewhere that I’ll be better appreciated.” He announced, acting as if he were hurt by my denial, before quickly softening back into a smile barely a few seconds later. “You should definitely think some more about taking the job though, queen. You deserve a fresh start.”

“We’ll see.” I conceded with a chuckle, desperate to simply end the conversation. “Now, which film do you want to rent?”

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thegreatobsesso · 3 years

Text

A longer bit feat.: Callie and Simon angst. :)

Talking with @drippingmoon got me thinking of some cornerstone scenes in the enemies-to-friends slow-burn I do with these two idiots and this one, I think, stands out as the dead-center point, so I’m gonna not second-guess myself and just post it. 🥴

Tagging @thelaughingstag too! (I remembered!)

Context: Callie broke into Delaney to steal an ancient magical artifact and, believing she meant nothing but harm, Simon stopped her. But while waiting for the cops to come and drag her back to prison, Simon asks her to just tell him the truth, once and for all. Callie agrees to let him read her mind all the way back to the beginning, thinking she’s got nothing left to live for. Simon gets hit with a truckload of tragic backstory he wasn’t prepared for and is asked to follow them back to Downing Bay, the prison she’s being held in.

They’re still mentally connected, even after Simon has let go. He can hear her, and she can hear him too, which definitely isn’t normal.

Word count: 3,200

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failure. failure. failure

She wasn’t even doing this on purpose and it wasn’t just the word reverberating through his skull.

More like a full-bodied feeling flooding his consciousness as he left Delaney, a steady stream of self-hatred punctuated only by expletives.

Stop, he begged her.

i can’t, you stop listening

I can’t.

She laughed, out loud in her cell. He heard it and felt it, over the miles that separated them, the ocean and metal and glass.

He’d overextended; that’s what caused this. It took him awhile to put it together because he’d been so upset - maybe even been in a mild state of shock, in retrospect - and he spent a lifetime being so careful with his powers that he’d never done it before to know what it was like.

And so that was bad, yes, but come on. How much longer could it last?

He was stepping onto the boat to Downing Bay when the pain started - hers, and not the torrent of existential agony he was struggling to adjust to but pain, physical and substantial.

What’s happening? he tried to ask, but it got lost - she could barely think, suddenly, let alone focus on sending him mental telegrams.

The cluster of metal buildings hovered threateningly on the horizon, and as they got closer, minds inside got louder, almost drowning Callie out. He wanted to tell them to turn around and take him away; the claustrophobia was overwhelming, the collective sense of being trapped.

The boat brought them underneath the smallest building; a scorched sign read Diagnostics in block letters with an arrow pointing up. What might’ve once been a loading dock was sectioned off with caution tape and hanging sadly down into the water, barely still attached to the rest of the infrastructure. They laid a make-shift bridge between the boat and platform to walk across.

Once inside, they asked him to empty his pockets and leave all his belongings in a small box.

“This stays with me,” he said, holding his Headmaster’s key, bronze and solid, in the palm of his hand.

“No, sir,” said the tired corrections officer, unaware of who he was. “All belongings.” She shook the plastic container for emphasis, rattling the rest of his stuff around.

“I’m the headmaster of Delaney of School for Magicians,” he said. “This is a master key and it doesn’t leave my neck. If you need to call your superiors about it, please do it, but I won’t leave it here.”

A few minutes later, he put the chain back around his neck, dropped the key down inside his shirt, and was escorted inside.

“No one’s suppressed me yet,” he said to one of prison officers. He waited until the last second; surely they knew their own duties better than he did. He didn’t wanna insult anyone, but they hadn’t done it and they were bringing him though thick, reinforced doors to the warden’s office and if not now, when?

“We’ve not been asked to, sir. This way.”

The warden smiled when Simon entered his office, waved everyone else away. He introduced himself as Warden Prescott and extended his hand - it was thin and cold when Simon shook it, despite the muggy warmth.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” he said. “How fares your school?”

“It’s seen worse. It looks like she hit this place harder, to be honest.”

The warden smiled, and Simon caught an image of a collection, varying people with differing characteristics on display in tiny boxes, one of them out of place. “Yes, she put on quite a show on her way out. Destroyed all our boats and did a significant amount of superficial damage, but nothing structural, thankfully.”

Of course not - living her memories alongside her showed him she made sure she didn’t hurt anyone, only crippled their ability to pursue her.

It was too warm in here and he wondered how the warden could be so buttoned up in thick polyester when he had to unbutton his own light jacket.

“A hearing will take place tomorrow morning and your presence will be required,” he began. “I suspect I know at least part of the reason why. News reached my ears that you behaved quite badly.” He made a tsk-tsk sound and shook his head at Simon like he was a naughty child.

“I did what I did,” he said flatly. “I shouldn’t have read her mind, and I accept the consequences for it, whatever they’ll be.”

“Oh, I meant absolutely no disrespect,” the warden said. “The opposite, in fact. I daresay if I had your powers, I’d like nothing more than to take a stroll through that mind of hers. She’s an interesting one. The fact that you did so might work to our advantage, in fact. You see, we’re in a bit of a bind with all this. May I speak plainly?”

“I wish you would,” he said. The warden was carrying his collection of dolls in his mind, all unique and valuable and distinctly dehumanized, and Callie’s thoughts were still flowing like a steady IV drip, making him feel irritable and short.

“Well, Mister Bennett, the facts are as such: we’ve got a limited testimony from you that the authorities will need expanded upon, that says you’ve seen the original crime in the first person, and your account differs wildly from the one she’s given. There are additional crimes stacked up past that - her escape from prison and attempted theft of an undisclosed item from your school. And the world wants to know how an infamous killer managed to become the first person in history to escape Downing Bay.”

“It’s a valid question for them to ask.”

“With an undesirable answer. But I think you’re in pain, Mister Bennett. Do you need a doctor?”

He was, but it wasn’t his own injuries that made wince.

“It’s her,” he groaned. “You’re hurting her, what are you doing?”

The warden sighed. “Come,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

He took Simon down the hall, into a sterile room filled with recording equipment and a solid wall of glass. On the other side of the it, Callie. She sat a bare table in prison scrubs, hands cuffed to its surface. IVs were inserted in both her arms, the needles taped down, liquid flowing from bags hanging behind her. The metal collar around her neck flashed blips of red, yellow and green, reminding him absurdly of a Christmas tree.

She bit her lip and shuffled restlessly, an involuntary response to the pain she was trying to ignore.

“You’ve got to stop this,” he said.

“To be fair, this isn’t what diagnostics usually looks like,” the warden said while he swallowed down a wave of sickness. “Typically, we focus on finding a long-term suppressive solution that both nullifies abilities and has minimal side effects for the prisoner. We are, unfortunately, in disaster minimization mode rather than long-term maintenance with your friend here.”

This was the strain being put on her body - the combination of every drug known to medicine that could hold back the expression of magic for any amount of time at all. “She’s not my friend,” he muttered. “Isn’t this unethical?”

“Should we allow all her power to rush back in so she can kill my people and escape again?”

“She’s not killing anyone,” Simon said with certainty.

“That’s not what she said a few hours ago,” the warden recalled. “We had no less than five guards trying to process her and she threatened their lives.”

Dammit. “What we you doing to her?”

“Attempting to place her segregation.”

He resisted the urge to groan in frustration, to punch the glass in front of him. “She didn’t mean it,” he muttered, not relishing the job of being her translator. “She’s terrified of solitary confinement, she just didn’t wanna go.”

“That’s unfortunate, given that we can’t very well place her back into general population. This is all that’s left, a quarantine unit, meant for contagious disease.”

On the other side of the glass, Callie squeezed her eyes shut and dropped her head. A fresh wave of pain ran over him too.

how much longer, how much more?

“How long can you keep this up, these stop-gap measures? Surely they won’t work forever.”

Warden Prescott raised his eyebrows. “These measures aren’t even working very well, Mister Bennett. I daresay if she wanted to, she could be gone before nightfall. I’m afraid she’s only here at her pleasure.”

Pleasure? He looked back at her in the next room, her face contorted. “You’re kidding me.”

“I wish I was,” Warden Prescott said, with a small smile. “We’re in the dark here, fumbling through uncharted territory without a map. She’s got my best techs feeling like children when they try to interpret the results of all this treatment. She’s a thing that isn’t supposed to exist: a hybrid. Focused magic and Eclectic, all at once.”

The implications of the warden’s words began to stack up in his already overtaxed mind and part of him thought, ridiculously, of a vacation. Of sitting on a beach with a book getting a suntan, drinking something with a slice of pineapple on the rim, smoking a cigarette or two or fifty - of not having a care in the world, for just a little while.

A hybrid, then. Focused and Eclectic.

He’d walked through her life with her and even she didn’t understand that, not really, not in such terms. She, and everyone else who knew what she’d done to Peter, had thought of it like an acquisition of new powers; not a fundamental genetic change.

Did Riley know this? Riley, who gathered Callie’s DNA and did extensive testing on it, who still had it?

“Has anybody been in touch with the family?” he asked, unwilling to explain why he was asking.

“I know someone’s reached out,” the warden said. “I don’t believe there was any reply.”

No, he supposed not. Riley would want nothing to do with any of this. Still, she had to be sweating, didn’t she? How could she know Callie still held up her end of their deal?

“I wonder,” Warden Prescott drawled, “if your trip through her mind was quite so extensive that if she were back inside your school, right now, you’d trust her not to hurt anyone.”

“It was,” he said. “And I would.”

He couldn’t imagine this would be easy for anyone else to swallow. He certainly wouldn’t believe it himself without first-hand insight. “I want to talk to her.”

The warden nodded his assent at the guards lining the wall.

“As I said, everyone wants to know how she managed to escape,” he said, walking Simon around to the entrance of the adjacent room that held Callie. “The thing I’m most curious about it why she even waited so long to do it. Is that something you know, from your jaunt through her mind?”

“Yes.”

“Are you inclined to share?”

He decided earlier, definitively, that he didn’t like the warden: the way he looked at his inmates like specimens, pinned inside a case. “No,” he said.

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “Although you might be asked tomorrow, by someone more powerful than me, in a much more formal capacity. We’ll be leaning on your expertise considerably to entangle that mind of hers.” He shook his head in admiration. “The unsuppressable Callie Ray.”

“I wouldn’t toss that around,” he muttered.

“Why not?”

The guard undid a stack of locks on the quarantine room door. “I don’t want her hearing it,” he said as they pushed the door open. “She’ll like it too much.”

—

Little black cameras dotted the corners of the room; he knew the warden would be listening on the other side of the glass where’d they’d just come from, and he was certain they were being recorded too.

She lifted her head, smirked at the sight of him. “I’d say hello,” she said, her voice scratchy. “But it’s like I never left you, isn’t it?”

She looked awful. Her red-rimmed eyes matched her hair; one was still swollen, decorated in bruises. “I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean for this.” He gestured between his head and hers.

he just says it, just like that

“Did you get a good spanking for it? I’m sure nobody expected that from their golden boy.”

Her words were hollow to him now; they washed over him uselessly and left him thoroughly unimpressed. He pulled up a chair and sat opposite her at the steel table, mirroring her position with his hands folded in front of him, except for the absence of cuffs, obviously.

We could talk like this, he said, if you don’t want them to listen.

A jumbled negative reply came across their connection. He nodded.

“There’s a whole team of people on the other side of the door, trying to figure out the best ways to keep your magic suppressed on a minute-to-minute basis,” he said.

“Can you believe it?” She tried for a smile, but it was poorly constructed. “All this for little old me.”

“Well, you’ve convinced the world you’re a dangerous monster and now you’re being treated like one. You did this to yourself.”

“Did you hear me complaining?”

Another wave of gnawing pain; she was sweating, her jumpsuit damp in the armpits. It hit him too, surely just a fraction of what it felt like for her, and he’d already had enough.

“Just tell them,” he said. “Tell them what I know, that it was an accident from the start and you don’t wanna hurt anyone else, and they might let up.”

“I don’t want them to,” she said, voice strained, hanging onto composure by a thread. “I like the pain.”

if I’m in pain I’m getting what I deserve I don’t have to feel guilty

He’d never felt a mind twisted up into knots like this, how did it get this way?

“Is that why you’re still here?” he asked. He looked toward the glass where he knew Warden Prescott was still standing, watching and listening. “They know you’re letting this happen. That if you wanted to, you could stop it.”

She blinked; a powerful emptiness surged up inside her. “Where else am I supposed to go?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question - she was interested in an answer if he had one, but he didn’t. He lived her life alongside her in a compressed whirlwind of tightly-packed failures and she had no family to take her in, Delaney certainly wouldn’t have her, there were no relationships, no friends…

He pulled back; it hurt to be near.

“Just because you say you’re not gonna try to escape again…” He fumbled, trying to lay out the mess. “They still can’t hold you on your word, Callie. You’ve got the public frightened that Downing Bay can’t hold you and the authorities are scared you’re gonna prove it.”

She nodded and winced; something crossed her mind too quickly for him to get a good look. “What are they gonna do to me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think they do either.”

“Why don’t they just kill me?”

The way she said these things - it was infuriating. “They can’t just execute someone because they don’t know what else to do with them.” He narrowed his eyes like it might help him see her clearer. “Is that what you want? To die?”

She rolled it around in her head. “Not really,” she shrugged. “But I don’t really wanna live either.”

Hopelessness emanated from her; he felt her future the way she saw it, a vast, meaningless chasm of nothing. It made him want to scream.

“Don’t,” she snarled, her awareness of their connection snapping to life. “Don’t you feel sorry for me, you jackass. I don’t want your pity, I’d rather you spit in my eye.”

“I can’t help it,” he groaned. “You sit there acting like this while… it’s, it’s like two different radio stations blasting into each of my ears, I can’t think.”

She swallowed thickly, like she was nauseous. “Do you wanna know exactly how much sympathy I have for you right now?”

“No.”

“Zero,” she said anyway. “Nobody made you drill yourself your own personal pipeline into my brain.”

“That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“Oh, so sad,” she pouted, turning her bottom lip out. “You made your first mistake. Feels like shit, doesn’t it?”

he’ll tell everybody, then everyone will know how stupid, how useless, how embarrassing, and he’s listening to you RIGHT NOW, he knows it all, i wish i WAS dead so i didn’t have to, would be easier than this-

“You let me think you did it on purpose,” he bit out, too overwhelmed to hold it back. “You let me think the absolute worst of you.”

“The worst of me is the truth, the shit you know now.”

“No, it’s not. What you are is not worse than a cold-blooded killer, a, a liar, somebody I could spend the rest of my life feeling like a fool for letting in, how do you justify doing that to me?”

She shrugged, blinked slowly, helplessly, like she couldn’t believe she had to put words to something so simple. “I… the damage was done.”

He scoffed - he couldn’t help it. “It wasn’t. There was a lot more damage left to do, and you did it. You did it all.”

Anger, fresh and bitter, burned through their connection.

i was trying to fix it if you would’ve just walked away none of this would be happening i could have made it go away-

“At what cost?” he asked. It would sound like a non sequitur to everyone listening but he didn’t care. “Even if the orblex could do what you were planning, you can’t possibly predict how it would’ve worked. Did you think it would just drop you off on Christmas twelve years ago and let you start again? No one knows how Time magic works and you wanted to just unleash it. For all you know you could have ripped the world apart.”

Disbelief. how could he say something like that?

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked. A crack in her voice - a tear springing from her eye that hadn’t been there a moment before, rolling down her cheek. “You wouldn’t take that risk, Bennett? To bring him back?”

He wanted to say no, but it got stuck in his throat. She still grieved for him, as hard as he ever did, and it annihilated the space between them, blurred the final lines.

He pushed his chair back and got up - he needed a second. Not to be looking at her, not to be sharing feelings.

“Where are you going?”

are you leaving? don’t leave

He clasped his hands behind his head, breathed in and out, shut his eyes.

say something say something say something say something-

“There’s gonna be a hearing tomorrow,” he said, cutting off the flood of her thoughts she couldn’t control. “Or, not a hearing. A discussion, I guess.”

He turned to face her again; she was listening with rapt attention. She hadn’t been told yet.

“They’re gonna talk about whether there’s any kind of precedent they can fall back on for this, anything at all. I don’t know if they want me there as a witness or a human lie detector, but they asked me to stay for it and I’m staying. After that, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see you again, maybe I won’t. I have to think this-”

He gestured to the space between their heads again, at a loss for what to call it. “This’ll fade with time and distance. It’ll have to. It can’t stay forever.”

It couldn’t, could it?

#tw: suicidal ideation #tw: swears #tw: prison #writing #writing snippet #writing excerpt #original novel #my wip #oc: callie #oc: simon

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eevee-haze · 3 years

Text

Aight so It's... not news to literally anyone that I like Ink sans a lot as a concept, and his birthday is today, so I figured what better way to celebrate his birthday than to make a brand new AU (or at least post the info for it)! Or I guess three since I'm working on Swap and Fell variants for it as well.

One of my main questions about the Underground was "how do they handle seismic activity" which was how this AU started forming. It's probably not at all scientifically accurate in the least, but oh well. I call it Rifttale. Cause the earthquakes cause literal rifts in the mountain lmao. I'll put the rest under a read more since this'll get long.

The idea of Rifttale is that Mt Ebott is located on a fault line, and all the hollowing out the monsters had to do made the mountain extremely unstable, and that problem only increased the more the underground's population grew. It's pretty dangerous underground in Rifttale what with the constant threat of cave in due to poor structural integrity and the fact that they don't really have much to work with to make their homes and businesses quake resistant. A fair portion of houses get rubble rained down on them and something always needs fixing.

All four sections of the underground remain, but the layout and placement are different. (And probably larger scale) For example, Snowdin is located near the top of the mountain since snow from the peak falls in through the cracks left in the roof of the cavern, and Hotland is at the very bottom of the mountain, where lava has surged up from the seismic activity. Both Waterfall and New Home are around the mid section, but are separated by a thick wall of rubble that followed a quake that happened maybe days before Frisk fell.

Sans

The man of many jobs adds two more responsibilities to the list rather begrudgingly in this AU. As one of the only Monsters capable of gravity manipulation and teleportation in Snowdin, he and his brother are tasked with being emergency responders in case of an earthquake as well as assisting with any initial construction steps in order to make bridges across newly formed gaps. Sans often gets called to other regions for his services too, but he really doesn't appreciate it.

Frankly he's convinced the mountain's going to crush them before they get the final soul they need, which is part of why he agrees to keep Frisk safe so easily. He doubts anything will change about their predicament with or without them. A No-Mercy route in Rifttale would see him saying things like "Couldn't have waited for the mountain to get us?" Or "I think I would have preferred a cave-in."

Something Rift!Sans doesn't really tell people is that he's blind in his right eye. When he and Papyrus were little, he shielded Papyrus from falling rocks during a quake, and one of them got him good just above his right eye. Most of the injury healed but it left a nasty crack in his socket which prevented him from actually being able to see. He can light the socket, and does so strangers don't needlessly worry about him, but it can't light up all the way like his left does.

Papyrus

Ah yes the sunshine boy. Personality wise he's not that different in this AU. He still wants to be in the guard and he's still confident and friendly, but sometimes he gets a little subdued and worried about Sans since Rift!Sans is much more obvious about his emotional/mental struggles. Another notable part is that he's being kept out of the guard mostly because he's more useful in the emergency unit. He's strong and capable enough to be a guard, but he's too soft, so they gave him a job that was helpful while playing to his strengths.... though like a silly he doesn't see the admirers he has and still hopes to become a guardsman one day.

Frisk & Chara

These two are interesting in this AU. Chara was around 13-14 when they died and spent years underground with the Dreemurrs before their death. They have a strong distaste for their own kind for several reasons, among which being the way they were treated (that led them to run away in the first place) and the fact that they forced such nice creatures into what is essentially a death trap.

They're a bit of a gremlin, but they're certainly not all bad like they consider themself to be.

Frisk on the other hand is a quiet child of roughly nine years. Adventurous and curious, but also blind. They hadn't seen the hole when they were exploring and ended up falling down. They rely on Chara to lead them around the more treacherous parts of the underground since they can't see it. (Chara is able to touch Frisk and tends to tug them by the wrist when guiding them.) Chara starts off really unhappy about guiding them, and depending on the route will even refuse to do so, not that it matters in a No-Mercy route. That's because in the No-Mercy route the Player is more of an active component. Frisk physically can't fight back on their own, and Chara would never help them do so. Essentially the Player is just an entity used by us creators to manipulate Frisk into a No-Mercy route since it wouldn't happen otherwise.

Asriel & Flowey

Personality wise the two really aren't all that different. Asriel is the slightest bit more skittish thanks to his timid nature and the uncertainty that comes with the constant tremors, and Flowey is the slightest bit more bearable. He still doesn't have much in the way of emotions, but it's pretty obvious their situation is bleak without him making it worse (As such, while he has tried No-Mercy in the past, most of his runs were seeing what effects smaller changes had. The volatile environment made it interesting regardless).

Though he's notably far more annoyed about losing his save and reload powers in Rifttale because he'd been in the middle of trying something when Frisk fell.

On the more technical side, Flowey doesn't tend to get around much when there aren't bridges over the chasms. While he can cross them himself, its a pain if they're too awfully wide. This means that the severe quakes tended to impede him a lot.

Toriel & Asgore

As a result of the meddling Flowey was doing, Toriel reclaimed her place as Queen and has been talking things over with her husband about everything that happened. Stuck in the ruins she hadn't gotten the news that Asgore amended his statement later on to say that they would only take the souls of humans that fell if they were hostile or after they died of natural causes. None of the children who fell were killed by monsters. (Many died in partial cave-ins or from falling into lava or the like, though so a quick death from a monster likely would have been preferable.)

Toriel still thinks that going out and just collecting the remaining souls they need would be faster, but Asgore argued a few points on that such as doing so likely angering the humans and giving them a further negative bias as well as the fact that whoever went to get the souls may well die like their children did.

They're still working things out but it's better than how it was before.

Toriel still spends a lot of her time in the ruins, but now its more out of a sense of duty since most of the children fell into the ruins first. She actually guides Frisk up until they meet Sans where she passes escorting them to him since he is more capable of ensuring their safety, and she needs to hurry ahead to make preparations for their stay and inform Asgore.

Alphys

Predictably not much different personality wise. She's actually one of the safer monsters since she never leaves her lab and it's reinforced to withstand rockfalls to some degree, not to mention the basement level with the true lab in it (though its hot as heck down there cause of the magma nearby.) Her primary goal is more geared toward keeping the underground as stable as possible so that they can hopefully last until they get the last soul. That's not to say the amalgamates don't exist, they do, but she's at least been looking busy as sort of an excuse why she hasn't answered back any of the letters. No time for mail when she's trying to save people, after all.

Undyne

Captain of the Royal guard, still. The guard does still exist, it's just less numerous and has more focus on recruiting strong members. After all they exist in case a hostile human arrives instead. So naturally Undyne is even more of a badass than normal, and she's ready in the event of a No-Mercy run. Even in a pacifist playthrough she's a bit wary of Frisk, notably not wanting to leave Alphys alone with them in case they were hiding their true intentions. This means she's the one who ends up escorting the human through the first little bit of Hotland after Waterfall, whereupon Mettaton would take over.

Mettaton

Considering a Human-killing robot was no longer needed, he was created with maneuverability in mind. The idea was that he could help others when needed, much like the emergency rescue portion of the guard, but Mettaton much preferred to focus on his career of course. He’s part of the reason Sans keeps being called to help out in other regions which gets him a healthy amount of resentment from the older skeleton.

Gaster

No major story involvement, but he does have plot importance. Gaster was the Skelebro’s father, and while he made them artificially, he did care about them a lot. Not much about him still remains and very few remember any details about him since he was quite a reclusive skeleton. He was close friends with the Riverperson however, so that’s who ended up essentially raising the two skeletons after Gaster fell into the Core. They provided for them despite being gone a lot.

Misc. Details

Children that stayed for an extended period were often called the “New Hope” a term coined when Chara first became a part of the Dreemurr family

Not all children opted to stay with the royal family, hence their belongings being stored in different regions

There were hostile humans that fell as well, but most met their fate in the lava and their souls were burnt up before they could be retrieved.

Frisk had fairly negligent parents. They weren’t outright abusive, but they really didn’t pay much attention to them.

Portions of the Waterfall part of the Underground have large nets bridging the gaps to catch the garbage that falls down that way nothing gets wasted falling into the chasms.

The Delta Rune on Sans’s coat is a reflective sticker. They told him he needed to wear something reflective for visibility’s sake and because he wasn’t willing to mess up his jacket, nor go without it, he cheated the system.

Papyrus wears a battle body just like normal, but he hot-glued some of the reflective material from human clothing that ended up falling down onto it so that he could both look cool and follow rules

Despite being a very neat and cleanly skeleton, Papyrus often ends up dirty as a consequence of his job. Because of that he takes care to meticulously clean both himself and the house before they go to bed.

#undertale #undertale au #reference #new au i guess #rifttale #utmv #happy birthday inky ily #abuse implied #with chara's bg that is #neglect mention #it's a lot of minor changes but i love this au okay

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fanficflaneuse · 4 years

Text

One Day - Part 7

A/N: Dear magical tumblr friends, today I have not much to say but an expression of my gratitude for your comments, hearts and reblogs. I really wasn’t expecting many people to like what I write. So, it does come as a surprise, one that’s very pleasing and leaves a fuzzy feeling inside me :)

Details:

Draco x reader (she/her pronouns) Word count: 2165

Summary: One day AU. Post-war. Since The Battle of Hogwarts, Draco and y/n meet one day a year.

Masterlist

Enjoy!

3 May, 2005

(Y/N) and Draco stood in front of each other, unsure of what to say or do. The muffled sounds of the celebration inside only made their silence heavier. They were in the garden of Ginny and Harry’s new home. Their housewarming party was the first time they met in two years.

Ginny had given birth to their firstborn, James Sirius, in August. With the newest Potter in tow, they decided their little flat in London was not the right place to raise their growing family and moved to a house in Devon. It was closer to the Burrow and had a huge back yard for their mischievous nine-months-old boy. That Tuesday night, (Y/N) had knocked on the door expecting a very adult reunion with her closest friends. She was greeted by a full-blown party. The music was deafening and there was a thick smell of booze in the air.

She greeted her friends, unaware of the grey eyes fixed on her from across the room. Draco was determined not to let another day pass. Two years had gone by since he last saw her and even more since they had truly enjoyed each other’s company. He wanted her back.

“(Y/L/N) is truly like fine wine,” Draco’s gaze shifted to Blaise, his eyebrows knitting in confusion.

“How so?” he asked carefully, guessing he really didn’t want to know the answer to that.

“As years go by, she just gets better and better,” Blaise answered, a sly smile on his face.

Draco gulped. He couldn’t deny that every time he saw (Y/N) she seemed much more beautiful than before. Whenever he had the pleasure of rediscovering her, he’d find something new to…well, love. He hadn’t had that chance in the last two years, so the effect she had on him now, even across the room, was tenfold.

“I can’t believe she’s still single.” That was Draco’s cue to stand up. He didn’t want to listen to anyone talking about his best friend in such terms. Guided by a rush, he walked towards her, interrupting her conversation with Hermione and Neville.

At first, (Y/N) thought she was hallucinating. She looked at him from head to toe, admiring the cool and kind energy that emanated from him. He was a breath of fresh air, one she had been missing for almost five years now. Then, (Y/N) noticed how, standing silently as they were, they attracted people’s attention. Pansy and Hermione looked at them intrigued. Harry was offering them a kind smile. Ron and Ginny were most definitely scoffing. Her friends’ antics made her realize she was not imagining him; Draco was standing right in front of her.

She didn’t doubt for a second when he asked her to talk privately.

That’s how they had gotten there, standing solemnly on the veranda with tears in their eyes. After a few minutes of doubting, (Y/N) inched forward and hugged Draco’s middle, burying her face on his chest. Draco smiled, relieved, and hugged her back. He pressed kisses on the top of her head.

“I missed you so much, Dray,” she said.

“Me too, (Y/N/N). You have no idea how much I’ve missed you,” he answered, bringing her closer to his chest.

A friendship was reborn. They sat side by side on the porch, their backs to the house. They allowed themselves to be pulled towards each other, so their bodies were as pressed together as they could possibly be.

“Don’t you want to let off steam? I’m here, you can roast me, insult me, call me on my behaviour. Really, nothing can possibly be worse than what I’ve said to myself,” even if Draco tried to press a humorous tone in his voice, (Y/N) could feel the regret and shame.

“Dray…for the longest time I thought about barging into Malfoy Manor to give you a piece of my mind. I wanted to insult you. Circe! At times I even thought about hexing you to kingdom come. I am not going to lie, I was hurt,” as she said all of this, she noticed how Draco’s face dropped, “but I’ve forgiven you. I’m not going to pretend like things didn’t happen. But I also prefer not to dwell on them.”

Draco then told her he had been sober for almost two years. He explained that their meeting had been a wakeup call and he decided he didn’t want to be that prick ever again. He told her, excitedly, that he had started healer training and he felt he had finally found his true calling. (Y/N) genuinely rejoiced at this. Draco then described his chance encounter with Harry at a muggle tea shop. They rekindled their friendship almost immediately and met every Wednesday evening for afternoon tea. This fact made her giggle like a lunatic.

He also narrated, just for the pleasure of hearing her laugh again, how Ginny went ballistic when he first set foot on their house.

“Well, it wasn’t undeserved. You were a git,” she teased. Draco nodded, feeling a bit guilty.

“What I’m wondering is,” she added, her dashing smile leaving her face, “why didn’t you reach out to me, Dray.”

Draco squeeze (Y/N)’s hands. “Don’t think I didn’t try, (Y/N/N). I did. Many times, actually. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I know I hurt you for some very stupid reasons. I even asked Harry and Ginny – and Ron and Hermione and everyone else, basically – not to tell you about me because I wanted to contact you myself. And then I just couldn’t…I…”

“It’s okay, Dray,” she consoled him, like many times before, by putting her hands on his cheeks and making him face her. They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, they gave each other that look of longing and lust that begs to be ended by a kiss. But before either of them leaned in, Draco reminded himself of the many, many reasons why it was not okay for them to kiss. I’m not that imbecile any more, he told himself.

“So, tell me about you. What have you been doing lately,” he said, ending abruptly their little moment.

(Y/N) blushed and fixed her gaze on the sky. She shared with him something nobody else knew: she was going to publish her first book. Draco was so happy for her – and for the fact that she had told him first – that he almost cried. She then explained how things were going spectacularly at her job. Once again, he hanged onto her every word as she poured so much passion into what she was saying. For some reason, (Y/N) mentioned her breakup with Ernie.

“I figured as much when he arrived holding hands with Cho,” he murmured. He didn’t say that MacMillan hadn’t even returned his greeting and had even glared at him from across the room.

As they spoke, he waited for the right time to tell her a not so little detail of his life, which was nagging at him. He convinced himself to wait another day to tell her, that they had just found each other, that it was better if they eased into their friendship first, when, all of a sudden, the door behind them opened with a bang.

“There you are, baby,” he heard a woman’s voice say.

Draco winced when he saw (Y/N)’s confused expression. She turned around to face the newcomer, a woman with auburn hair, delicate features and a very soft complexion. She was staring at them expectantly, her hands on her hips and her head a bit tilted. Draco stood up and the woman walked up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck. She kissed him, a soft kiss he responded so reluctantly it reminded (Y/N) of her time with Ernie.

Still, she was startled, baffled even. Draco put his arms around her waist and (Y/N) looked away, feeling like she was intruding.

Draco cleared his throat. “Tori, this is (Y/N),” he said awkwardly signaling between both women, “(Y/N/N), this is Astoria.”

The auburn-haired woman squealed and turned to (Y/N), enveloping her in a hug. “Drakey has told me so so so so much about you! I have a lot to thank you for. You’ve made my job easier,” she joked, hugging (Y/N) tighter, “I’m glad you’ve reconnected and I really hope we can also be friends. You sound like a beautiful person.”

The situation as a whole was asphyxiating, to say the least. But even as Astoria kept talking and violating her physical boundaries (and also despite the fact that she was clearly Draco’s something), (Y/N) couldn’t dislike her. She was...sweet. Draco gave her an apologetic smile. She smiled back, hoping it concealed the sadness and disappointment she felt. Draco noticed that there was something behind her gesture, but out of respect for his girlfriend he didn’t want to name it. Nor admit he was feeling something similar.

“Astoria,” (Y/N) said, trying to be as friendly and good-tempered as possible.

“Tori,” she corrected.

“Tori,” (Y/N) tried again, the nickname still foreign in her tongue, “It was a pleasure to meet you. I really need to get going now, though. I don’t know if Dray–co told you this, but I am a teacher at Hogwarts. Tomorrow is a school day and I need to apparate to the castle first thing in the morning.”

“How interesting! You didn’t mention that, love,” she reproached her boyfriend playfully, “It was a pleasure to meet you too, (Y/N).”

“(Y/N/N),” she corrected her as well. As cringe-y as she found strangers calling her by the nickname only her friends used, she felt like she needed to return the gesture.

“(Y/N/N),” Astoria agreed with a smile.

“It was great to see you again, Draco,” she said before heading back to the party.

(Y/N) said goodbye to all of her friends and picked her coat. She was trying to let go of any feeling of rejection or discouragement. She had her friend back and that alone was enough to make her happy, right? Of course, things were meant to change. That’s what she tried telling herself to avoid the heartache.

If she was completely honest with herself, (Y/N) had to admit she had been waiting for a day in which Draco came back and they could be together. As the years came and went, her hope diminished, but it was never completely gone. It was always there, in the back of her mind, even when she dated other people. Finding him here today, as good as it was, had been a reality check. As much as she felt her heart chattering a bit, she knew it was for the best. (Y/N) needed to move on.

She closed the door behind her, getting ready to apparate back to her apartment. All of a sudden, someone hugged her from behind. She tensed for a second until she recognized Draco. He felt her relax in his arms and then tense up again, which made him a bit sad.

“It’s always like this with us, isn’t it?” he said, trying to humour her.

“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“You’re always leaving and I’m always chasing you,” he answered.

(Y/N) thought that it was the other way around, but laughed anyways, knowing very well that Draco was trying to lighten the mood. He felt satisfied and kissed the top of her head again. Feeling her relax in his arms once again gave him the courage to face her. He didn’t know how to address this. How can you even begin to explain to the woman you’ve loved for such a long time that you’re in a relationship with another woman – who you’re also in love with – but you haven’t entirely moved on?

“(Y/N)-”

“Don’t (Y/N) me, Dray,” she said sternly.

“(Y/N/N), I’m sorry”

“Why would you be sorry, Dray?”

“I don’t know. Astoria…”

“Is your girlfriend,” she finished.

“Yes,” he answered, not knowing what else to say.

“Listen, Dray. Today I found one of my closest friends again. He was affectionate as ever. And he’s getting his life back on track, which an absolute relief. If I tell you a secret, he had turned into a bit of a git the last time I saw him. Seeing him like this has made me very happy. So, let me enjoy that,” she said, a kind smile on her face.

Feeling like the luckiest man alive, Draco engulfed her in another hug. Once again in his arms, (Y/N) remembered the words of wisdom he had said all those years ago in Mexico, how he preferred to be her soulmate destined to be best friend than a boyfriend of a couple of months. She realized that maybe that’s what their thing was all about. And even if it was going to take time for her to get used to it, (Y/N) felt content.

tags: @fandomscombine @okaydraco @naomi02hook @iliketoast23 @winnsmills @oldfashionedlovergirlsblog @happycomb @xtrashmouthxtozierx @hopplessdreamer

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himbeaux-on-ice · 3 years

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Sorry! Lehner had around a 10 minute rant today about how he feels like the NHL lied to the players about loosening up the restrictions placed on teams and forced teams to get the Covid Vaccine. ESPN and the New York Post released an article about it today.

(this is a follow-up on this ask)

Ah okay, I found a TSN article about it, which covers the fact that he also apologized for some of his remarks (mainly comparing the restrictions to being “like prison” which is a bit cringe when you’re a millionaire in a free hotel, yeah), and also significantly clarified some of the intent behind what he was trying to say at the presser:

I’m gonna put my full thoughts this under a cut because it’s ended up running pretty long and rambly, but tl;dr: after considering his more precisely clarified points here and with the perspective I know he’s coming from, I can honestly see and empathize with what Lehner seems to be expressing here about how the NHL has chosen to handle player vaccinations and informing them about what that means for the restrictions on their lives, and I actually don’t disagree with his criticisms overall. Some of the phrasing could have been better, but he’s acknowledged that too.

All in all, it sounds like the NHL may have done a poor job of honestly managing expectations around what vaccine rollout would mean for the extra restrictions placed on the players and their families with each team, and that they’re also up to some version of their usual NHL schtick of prioritizing some platonic ideal of Competitive Parity (remember “the Vancouver Canucks will play a 56 game season”, anyone?) above all else, even when that is no longer realistic and/or comes at the expense of the short-term and long-term mental and physical wellbeing of the players. Classic NHL.

Right, so, long thoughts are down here. Also gonna copy the majority of his comments directly because I think it’s worthwhile for people to read exactly what he said:

"As I’m frustrated like a lot of people in the world right now everything didn’t come out of today’s press in the right way," Lehner wrote. "Main point is that we need to start take the mental health important as well In this situation. It has a huge impact on everyone in society right now. To put competitive edge before well being of people's lives is wrong. As I said, people are struggling with many different things mentally and we need to consider that, as well. Then, being lied to makes it worse."

I love hockey and the league has done a lot of good things," Lehner continued. "But this missed the mark. My bad to say it’s like prison and I apologize, but with mental health issues that are developing in the world, it develops problems mentally. We will see exactly how this affects everything with time. I don’t mean to offend anyone. I hope we can all work together to help people that suffer through mental help from this going forward. I’ve heard how a lot of people are doing through this as people talk to me about it."

During his briefing, Lehner said that the league has misled the players about how vaccination will lead to the loosening of restrictions.

"They told me yesterday that they're surveying all of the teams to see who has taken the vaccine and who has not taken the vaccine and they're not going to change the rules for us as players until all of the teams have a fair [amount] of [vaccinated players] at the same time, so there's not a competitive edge," Lehner said. "And that made me go crazy, to be honest."

Lehner said the league is failing to look at its players as people first and lied to them about taking the vaccine.

"These are human lives and people are struggling with this stuff a lot in society and we are humans just as everyone else," Lehner said. "So there's a twofold problem for me here - the first one is we got promised something to take something that not necessarily everyone wanted. So that was lie - a blatant lie. Second, to put competitive edge over human lives in terms of going back - and I'm not saying we're going out to a party or whatever, but we had a meeting when the season started, at the beginning of camp, that pretty much told us we can't go outside of our house, can't do anything, can't go to the grocery store, can do nothing on the road. You can take a meal out of the meal room and go sit up in your room, don't be with your teammates, don't do this, don't do that. Nobody thinks about the mental impact."

The Gothenburg, Sweden native says his peers are struggling through this pandemic season.

"I know people will say, 'Oh, you're millionaires' and this and that or 'What about these guys?' but we care about that, too, man," Lehner said. "No matter what people think, this is a society problem. But when government, corporations, NHL, whoever are taking decisions in terms of irrelevant things like competitive edge over the human being? It's not okay."

It seems pretty clear to me from this article that his main issue isn’t really with getting the vaccine or being required to do so (my understanding is that it is still opt-in for all players, not mandatory. It’s that he doesn’t view the League as having provided players with a realistic expectation ahead of time for how being vaccinated would or would not change their daily reality. That they were led to believe that getting vaccinated would lead to things that didn’t end up happening, and therefore weren’t empowered to make an informed choice about when to get vaccinated.

The way he describes it, the League was not clear enough ahead of time about the fact that individual players being vaccinated would not make them individually exempt from league-wide restrictions, and this created a feeling of false hope about what getting vaccinated would mean in terms of not just having to stay in your house or hotel room literally all the time. If you were looking forward to getting vaccinated because you were led to believe it would mean finally not having to live in that isolated, mentally draining environment all the time, and then only found out at the last minute or after the fact that no, you actually still have to keep following all these rules that are making your life so isolated and difficult, that’s gotta be pretty emotionally jarring. If you were a player who was a little unsure about getting vaccinated quite yet (for whatever reason, including possibly being in a risk group for side-effects or just not wanting to get waylaid for a week with the smile symptoms it induces during a crucial stretch of games), but decided it was worth it for the tradeoff of getting back to a life that was less of a strain on your mental health, and then got told AFTER you made that decision and got the shot that no, that tradeoff isn’t happening the way you were made to expect it to, I think it would understandably piss you off.

It also sounds like part of what he has taken issue with is that, from the sounds of it rather than ease internal restrictions on a team-by-team basis as determined by each team’s vaccination rates (which would mean that if for example the Wild had 95% of their team vaccinated, the Wild only the Wild would get to start living a life with slightly less restrictions), the League is instead opting to say “no, we’re only going to ease the rules for EVERYONE at the same time once all teams have reached similar numbers of vaccinated players and staff to ea other, because we would see having different rules for different teams as giving some of them an unfair competitive edge”.

Lehner takes umbrage with this approach, because he thinks that focusing solely on “competitive edge” by making more-vaccinated teams keep having to live incredibly isolated lives (even isolated from vaccinated teammates) is a case of the League prioritizing parity over the toll that barely being able to interact with other people or leave their houses is taking on players’ mental health. And I can really really understand his point here. We have all seen what quarantine has done to our individual mental health, and even if they are millionaires, those impacts also exist for the players.

I actually just recently re-read the Athletic piece about the intense mental health and addiction struggles Lehner has gone through and done the incredibly difficult work of getting help for in the last five years. This man has fought incredibly hard and done a massive amount of therapy and other work to sort out his head, deal with his demons, and get himself to a place where he can cope and wants to be alive. That kind of recovery journey is a battle which will continue for the rest of your life and requires constant maintenance practices (again, speaking from experience). He also spent most of this season not even getting to be around the team at all, stuck at home recovering from a concussion (which usually involves doing frustratingly little and waiting around impatiently in dimly lit rooms for your brain to heal). And now, upon returning to the team, road games mean more time spent sitting in a room trying not to be bored out of your skull, while possibly also having to have some limits on things like screen time as a post-concussion precaution.

Imagine being somebody like him, who has spent a lot of time working very hard to build up a lifestyle and a system of coping mechanisms in recent years which have allowed him to live a healthier and happier life, to then be thrown back into an isolated and highly restricted new lifestyle where probably at least half of all those habits and norms and support systems are taken out of reach, that has to be incredibly difficult (I’ve experienced something similar myself this year). Especially when you haven’t been able to even go and be with the team in the dressing room, or probably even do anything with your family that classes above “mildly strenuous”, because you’re out for six weeks recovering from a concussion, which is its own mental and physical health battle. And then, you are apparently given the impression from the League that “hey, if you’re willing to get vaccinated, that will lead to you being able to return to some semblance of a life that is less taxing on your psyche”, and you agreed to do so even if you were perhaps cautious about getting the vaccine before, because you’d rather accept whatever risk comes with the shot than gamble on keeping your sanity together for however much longer this isolation drags on, only to then find out that “actually no, even if your team and staff is entirely vaccinated you still have to spend most of your time sitting alone in rooms trying not to sink into a spiral of dangerous depression until other teams in other states with different vaccination programs are also immunized to similar levels, and our only real reasoning for holding that mental relief out of reach is mostly based on ‘competitive parity’”.

Yeah, I absolutely understand why he would feel very frustrated and even betrayed by that course of action! For Lehner, it’s not about competitive edges or the game on the ice, it’s about having made the decision to get vaccinated at this time with the understanding that it would allow access to an at least slightly less mentally taxing lifestyle, only to find out later that the League seemingly never intended to follow through on providing that despite you holding up your end of the deal. And it sounds like he is speaking for a number of other players beyond just himself who are also struggling with their mental health in these conditions. Even if he himself is managing to cope because of what he’s learned in his recovery, he would certainly be well-positioned to recognize signs in the people around him that they are struggling in ways that may be similar to what he went though before, and know how dire that can spiral into being.

Look, I don’t think Robin Lehner ever expected to be allowed to go out and lick people’s eyeballs or wander the supermarket maskless once vaccinated, but you heard the description of how intensely restrictive the NHL’s rules for players off-ice lives during COVID are. They are far more intense than the rules being enforced for non-NHL individuals in many of the same cities and states, because the NHL is trying to bring risk as close to zero as possible. And if you were a player told that being vaccinated was going to reduce contagion risks enough to mean that right away the NHL would finally let you and your teammates from “can’t go anywhere or see anyone, eat your dinner in your hotel room and try not to be depressed about it” to “you can go to the store with a mask on. you can eat meals with your also-vaccinated teammates. you can visit your parents or siblings while social-distancing/masking. you can spend free time around other people and/or in more public spaces without being chaperoned constantly by team staff. you can sit next to your also-vaccinated teammates on the plane/bus. you can hang out with them in their room”, and THEN later were told “sorry, we’re not actually going to let you do that yet. not for COVID reasons but rather because we worry not being totally miserable shut-ins will give you a competitive edge over that team in another state who aren’t getting vaccinated as quickly”. That has to feel like a slap in the face in terms of how much the league actually cares about your well-being or about being honest in its role in your personal medical decisions. Perhaps when he says “forced” he is expressing a feeling of being stuck between choosing “either get vaccinated or let your mental health keep degrading in isolation”, only to find out that making the deal doesn’t get you the relief you were promised.

Idk I feel like I’m repeating myself a lot here trying to circle in on my precise point bc my brain is a little scrambled today, but like. If the players made their decisions to consent to vaccination (at this time, with whatever version of the shot was offered, under whatever circumstances they may have going on personally or medically) based on one understanding of the situation, and then NHL really said “lol NOPE actually that was a false premise” and changed things after the fact, that’s kinda an informed consent issue and I think he’s right to call it fucked up! And everything he says about how mentally taxing such a super-isolated lifestyle is honestly only repeats worries I myself had right from the moment the “stay in your hotel room alone” rule was announced — that the League may be underestimating the toll (especially with some of the long road trips this season) that forcing players to live in total isolation like that was going to have on individual wellbeing and team morale.

Robin’s comments this morning could have been put better, but as somebody who has ADHD and who knows about bipolar disorder, I know emotions for folks with brains like ours can run fast and intense and sometimes lead to not always planning out every word as precisely and you might later have liked to once that moment has passed. The fact that he apologized for the less tactful part of the comment and sought to clarify his words tells me he’s thought a lot about this and wasn’t happy with how he expressed his thoughts initially. Also, while his English is very good, you can sometimes forget it isn’t his first language, Swedish is — some thoughts don’t translate exactly as they sounded in your head. That said, also Robin Lehner one of the more outspoken NHL players about mental health issues in recent years, and he also doesn’t seem like the type of guy to mince his words or tiptoe around a point — I’m not surprised he’s the person expressing these concerns about mental health, and I’m not surprised he was a bit blunt about it either lol.

All in all, it sounds like the NHL did a poor job of managing expectations around what vaccine rollout would mean for the players and their families, and that they’re also up to their usual NHL schtick of prioritizing some platonic ideal of Competitive Parity (remember “the Vancouver Canucks will play a 56 game season”, anyone?) above all else, even when that is no longer realistic and/or comes at the expense of the short-term and long-term mental and physical wellbeing of the players. Classic NHL.

(also: the New York Post is a right-leaning sensationalist rag 90% of the time. take all spin it puts on things with a grain of salt)

#long post #god I hope this makes sense my brain feels like a potato chip #also yeah I don’t judge people too hard for having slight cautions about getting vaccinated right away or with certain ones #when we don’t know their medical details medications risk factors etc #people deserve to be able to make decisions of informed consent when it comes to things like that and if the NHL has not been affording that #well. that is messed up #asks #anon

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nobodywritesthings · 4 years

Text

Some random bits of trivia about With Great Power

Now with a Part 2.

It seems one or two people are interested in this. I’ve mentioned a few of these points on my favorite Discord server, but I might as well put them all together here. Spoilers for the fic below!

Why didn’t All for One squish Aizawa like a bug when he should have been perfectly capable of it, right after taking the poor man’s quirk? It’s because All for One was planning for the future. He knew that Izuku (as Supreme Overlord) would need capable underlings, preferably ones with Izuku’s best interests in mind. Of the people close to Izuku, Aizawa was the closest to meeting All for One’s approval in both respects. In his stalking observation of Izuku over the past few years, he developed just a bit of a grudging respect for the man and his dedication to attempting to keep Izuku from charging headlong into every dangerous situation Izuku was within a 100 km radius of. While Aizawa decided to assume that All for One was too busy fending off other heroes to actually bother squishing him, this was an entirely deliberate choice on All for One’s part.

On the subject of Aizawa, the cat cafe he stayed at is the cat cafe from the Vigilantes manga. It made a truly fantastic retirement home, as well as a safe place to keep track of the criminal underworld on the sly.

We know that Shouto Todoroki had time to talk to Dabi/Touya before the interviews, because they came with a hero reform plan. This definitely happened because Shouto marched up to the National Diet Building, and calmly told a very nervous Kurogiri that he was there to see Dabi. When Dabi appeared, he half-dragged the supervillain brother home for a proper family dinner. It was a bit awkward but Fuyumi was happy to have all the siblings together. Between that and Shouto’s determination to hammer out a plan for hero reform, the ice was broken surprisingly quickly (pun intended).

Why didn’t Izuku notice All for One being Hisashi sooner? Well, denial is definitely a thing. There’s also the dissonance between linking a parental figure with the world’s most feared supervillain, absentee or not - that’s a pretty difficult conclusion to come to, normally. There’s even the fact that Izuku saw All for One in person all of twice - once at Kamino, and then again in the first chapter of this fic - and both times were very emotionally charged, with an impression skewed by the view that he was seeing a Terrible Monster, which makes All for One hard to recognize out of the literal and metaphorical mask. But the biggest reason? Long-term sleep deprivation and stress. It was pretty bad before he was suddenly pushed into being the Supreme Overlord of Japan, and it got much worse after. If Izuku had more sleep, he’d probably have figured out Hisashi’s identity much sooner, denial or not; Hisashi wasn’t being subtle (see below).

Hisashi looked so selfless when he left even the clothes on his back to Izuku. Don’t fall for it; he left all legal assets to Izuku. He has plenty that aren’t legal. All this was part of his preparation for a plan that didn’t happen...

Because Hisashi planned to disappear again, permanently. He expected the jig to be up as soon as Izuku heard Hisashi speak once (a bit egotistic of him). His original plan was to spend as much time with Inko as he could while offering a bit of behind-the-scenes support of Izuku’s rule, and then when Izuku inevitably came home and recognized him, he’d properly disappear to a nice sheep farm somewhere remote (he had a few prospects already picked out). He’d hoped that Izuku wouldn’t be interested enough in the returned Hisashi Midoriya to actively track him down, but it was a risk he had to take to turn things over to Izuku properly. After he heard Izuku ranting to his friends that he was getting ready to stake out his own home (through those convenient bugs left in the National Diet Building), he decided to at least make sure the reveal was on his own terms, somewhere relatively private and secure. Then Izuku didn’t recognize him and even tried to hire him, and Hisashi quickly rearranged his plans to account for the delayed recognition. He knew it was inevitable; Hisashi couldn’t clean up all the clues, so he ended half-assing any attempts at hiding his identity in order to at least keep control of the timeline for the reveal. As long as it happened while Izuku was still in government, he could head for the hills (literally and metaphorically) and Izuku would be too busy to pursue him. He couldn’t bring himself to actually sit down and tell Izuku personally, but he didn’t expect to keep things a secret permanently. And then Izuku smashed all his expectations and offered a chance to not lose his family again. A lot of plans got ditched. Basically, All for One was never as on top of things in this fic as he makes himself out to be.

Speaking of hiding his identity, why did he keep his real name? Hisashi didn’t see the point for the vast majority of his life, barring times he specifically went incognito for this or that venture. The government wanted to cover up his existence anyway; why not let them do the hard work? He didn’t need to make things easier for them, and it’s not like they could really do anything effectively to him; he really was that powerful. He did keep his businesses anonymous for the most part, but it was a private joke to him that they were still all perfectly legal, up to and including no false names being involved. It was only when All Might showed up and proved to be an actual threat that Hisashi realized his mistake and took his own steps to conceal his identity - which were surprisingly effective, as the government had done too good of a job already, and All for One just had to clear out a few old compromising records to avoid All Might accessing them and finding his real name, which would have been a massive pain. He had several close calls, but his panicky attempts at hiding his identity actually paid off. The government fire is part of that - definitely All for One’s work, but done a bit hastily, and as a result, sloppily.

Remember how All for One didn’t talk to Izuku much after the UN speech? Remember how he mentioned that Izuku should get a new phone? He was sulking for that entire trip because he heard Izuku call Yagi “Dad”, thanks to his stalking keeping an ear on Izuku’s conversations.

On a different note, Izuku, throughout this fic, has adapted All for One’s own strategies for his own purposes. Of special note, though, is Izuku’s speech at the end of Chapter 10, beginning with “I don’t think you understand, Hisashi.” It’s deliberately meant to mirror All for One’s speech in Chapter 1, that starts with “I don’t think you understand, Izuku.” Instead of physical threats, Izuku uses emotional threats against All for One to go for the jugular - which is also something All for One presented as a strategy (see Chapter 7, the UN chapter). If Izuku’s threat is more effective, it’s because Izuku is proving All for One’s own point about taking the effective parts of others’ strategies and adapting them for his own use.

Why was Yagi so accepting of All for One prospectively walking free? It’s because he’d already seen it work with Tenko Shimura. He saw Tenko as lost forever, as an irredeemable villain. While I don’t mean to say that any of the villains are redeemed, Yagi has had a front-row seat to witness Tenko taking up legitimate work, making decent friends, and generally leaving behind his destructive impulses, something Yagi thought was completely impossible and had given up on long ago as a futile and unrealistic dream. He’s started to believe in the power of second chances.

The Second Chance foundation was, in part, inspired by @redrobin-detective‘s fic, “rise up and hear the bells”, and Izuku’s All for One foundation. I might’ve come up with the idea on my own, but reading that fic ensured the idea came quicker. I think I can safely say I took the concept in my own direction, but it definitely came from somewhere!

There’s a number of nods in WGP to various fics by AMournfulHowlInTheNight. The biggest is Rick, who several people noted bore a passing resemblance to Zach from the CWAC series (I couldn’t resist; Australia just seemed right for the role I needed there, and a character like Zach seemed like the right Australian). The astute reader might also have noted several mentions to offering a “helping hand”, a phrasing which was an entirely deliberate reference to A Helping Hand in the Dark. Chapter 7 even has the sentence, “I want to offer a helping hand to those lost in the darkness.”

I already gave an answer key for who the All for One sockpuppets are in Chapter 6, but here are the usernames of the other canon characters: pikapika579 : Kaminari. GoGoGadgeteer : Hatsume, of course. Explosion King @lordexplosionmurder : Three guesses, first two don’t count. I hear the sins of humanity @theultimateearbud : Jirou. And finally... that dude with the eyes @eyescream : This guy from Izuku’s middle school (apologies for the poor quality).

If I remember any more tidbits I wanted to share, I might post more later, but hope you enjoy these!

#wgp #bnha fic #my fic

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oxbridge-quality-fanfiction-co · 4 years

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The Spring of Burning Forests: Chapter 10/10 ❤️ (Geraskier)

A happy ending with Jaskier? The idea is inconceivable, really. Impossible.

But it’s at least worth a try.

Read on AO3.

For a full summary, see this post. Go here if you want to start from the first chapter.

Big thanks to @booichiboo, @sdmcburney, @goshdraws, Rita, @valdomarx, @carmillacarmine, @thelastsock, @katesierra @ro-the-bard-writer @geraskierficrecs ❤️ Dedicated to @variousnoises.

No more updates, of course, but I have a Geralt Fluff Week entry coming up on the 4th August.

Here’s the first scene:

The closed border meant customers were scarce, and the inn was nearly empty. The place had an unsettling, ghostly feel. As they walked through the front door, Jaskier had glanced at the name, The World’s End, stopped for a moment, and stared at it.

It was as if a premonition hit him, eyes wide, hope draining from his face.

Geralt wasn’t eager for them to go into their rooms, having bad premonitions of his own. He was convinced things were about to turn bad and hated the uncomfortable wait much more than he ever hated a confrontation. A tongue-tied Jaskier was not something he was prepared for. Not as bad as a self-sacrificing Jaskier, for sure, but bad nevertheless.

No way he could stay quiet that long and yet, they got as far as an awkward climb up the stairs, the steps creaking underneath their feet, without a single world from Jaskier still.

At the top of the stairs there was a long corridor. All doors were open, not a single soul in sight. They stood in front of their respective rooms, almost ready to go in when, finally, Jaskier broke the silence.

‘That was… something.’

Geralt was relieved to hear him talk. Not interested in reliving the experience, he wanted to skip right to the point. Only the point proved difficult to discern, let alone skip to.

‘Listen, I know you…’ Geralt hesitated, and his voice was unusually raspy.

He barely started and was already getting frustrated, unable to articulate any fucking thing.

Jaskier seemed startled by that beginning.

‘No, Geralt. You really don’t need to...’ he paused, flustered.

‘No, I really think I should.’

‘Just forget it,’ he blurted, sounding more insistent than he intended. ‘It’s not like I was hiding this before. It was far from a dark secret.’ He seemed slightly amused by the idea but his smile was sad.

‘No, but-’ Geralt started again, and Jaskier stopped him.

‘It was pretty obvious. And because you didn’t seem to see it that way, I just…’ He didn’t quite know how to describe what he ‘just’ did. ‘But I did try. And even at minimum you were finding it…’ he considered a couple of options before arriving at ‘…intrusive.’

‘Sure.’ Geralt nodded lightly.

He was just about ready to continue but Jaskier wouldn’t let him.

‘So don’t worry about it.’ Jaskier took a deep breath. ‘I mean, regardless of what you might think, I wouldn’t have said anything. It’s just that today…’ He was getting agitated by the memory. ‘Well, in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have been able to imagine a shitshow of such magnificent proportions. To be fair, I had no clue I’d be capable of that… but I just really went with it, didn’t I?’

He seemed to find that half tragic, half funny.

‘And I’m glad I did,’ he concluded, confidently. ‘Even if it was all just a morbid joke to them. Even seeing what I saw. And even if it made this the perfect time for you to state you don’t want me. Like, out loud, directly, using words, not through whatever-the-fuck you did before… looks, stares, grunts, movements, sighs… any physical manifestation available, I suppose.’

Geralt grunted uncomfortably in response, and Jaskier just nodded, resigned.

‘Exactly... although,’ he started again, remembering a distant mountaintop, ‘I can recall some words. Quite a few, actually. I guess that task required extra measures. And it wasn’t to this exact end but it was pretty close. There was a significant proximity to the issue at hand, there, I’d say. So it’s not like I wasn’t aware of what you were trying to convey. You can’t exactly surprise me now. It’s not the most important thing, really.’

He suddenly realised something, and blinked a few times, obviously unsettled by the idea.

‘I definitely didn’t do this to exert any pressure,’ he added, quickly. ‘I’m not hoping for anything. I’m not…’ He stopped himself from saying ‘delusional’, worried he might be making the situation worse. ‘I just didn’t want you to die. That’s all. That’s hardly a horrible crime.’

He was just about ready to finish but then hesitated a bit, knowing his effectiveness was highly questionable.

‘It seemed like the right strategy at the time,’ he said in the attempt to justify himself. ‘It was worth a shot. I did the right thing. I’d do it again, if needed. I guess it makes me a bit more useful.’ He realised he was starting to sound bitter. ‘You’ve always been a great friend, Geralt. You did so much for me. So…’ he did his best to sound perky but failed ‘…does this even matter?’

‘I think it-’ Geralt started but Jaskier didn’t let him finish.

‘I know you don’t feel the same way. You’ve made that abundantly clear… in hundreds of ways… for years. So you don’t have to worry as far as clarity is concerned.’

It didn’t take long for Jaskier to get worked up. He just kept going, and his discussion with himself was becoming increasingly heated.

‘And it’s not like this changes anything now, right? Or does it?’ He wondered for a second. ‘Are you going to leave because of it?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, his thoughts running ahead at a frantic pace. ‘Fuck… I said it out loud and we’re done now, aren’t we?’

He seemed shocked by the realisation.

‘Jaskier-’

‘It doesn’t matter that I… I mean, regardless of what I implied before… and what I did, sure. Why would you want me whining in your ear, now that you know? Feeling guilty… and for something nobody should feel guilty about, by the way,’ he sighed, his frustration slowly transforming back into sadness.

‘Ja-’

‘But can I change anything by saying this?’ he just kept going. ‘No… You might feel like you’re not doing the right thing by staying, regardless. And we can’t have that.’

He was now upset by his imaginary conversation with Geralt, who was just slowly coming to terms with the fact that he was not allowed to participate.

‘Well, it’s not your fault,’ Jaskier continued. ‘It’s quite certainly beyond our control. If I did have a choice in this matter… you know, ehm… there are safer, less deadly, more welcoming options out there. Let’s face it.’

Geralt just blinked a few times and Jaskier nodded as if he was trying to convince himself.

‘Although, none of them is…’ Jaskier threw a glance at Geralt and stopped, weirdly shy all of a sudden, backtracking again. ‘Regardless... my ideal romantic adventures do not involve waiting to hear that your dead-crisp-of-a-body was discovered in the forest, or putting my life on the line, just to find out it was actually some fucked up game. And yet, the consequences are real and now I have to…’

He suddenly realised something.

‘While also knowing that, of course…’ He slowed down, his mind racing again. ‘None of this would have happened if you…’ He stopped.

‘If I what?’ Geralt was glad to finally break through the flood of words.

Jaskier didn’t dare to say it.

‘I meant what I said to her, you know,’ he started again. ‘I really did. But there are those days when… sometimes I believe the bullshit she spews. Because it’s hard… it’s like, fucking… swimming against the current from morning till night. It’s pushing, and prodding, and trying. It’s… Sometimes you’re a bit much, Geralt.’

‘I’m a bit much?’ Geralt’s confusion was turning into anger. ‘I didn’t make any of this happen. I never asked-’

‘But the way you treat me… sometimes. It’s like I’m nothing more than an annoying child.’

‘That’s because sometimes you act like one.’ Geralt raised his voice in anger. ‘I told you to leave. What the fuck were you thinking?’

Jaskier was genuinely hurt this time.

Geralt felt a sudden pang of guilt which almost stopped him.

‘Everything I’ve done was to avoid what just happened,’ Geralt continued. ‘Let alone what could have happened. But no matter what I do… there you are. It’s like you have a fucking death wish. It’s like you want me to give you a hard time.’

‘I have a death wish? And I want...’ Jaskier laughed, sounding borderline hysterical.

He shook his head in pure frustration.

‘Yes, you.’ Geralt was getting carried away, and decided to just give into it, no reservations. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you ask for too fucking much?’

‘I never asked for anything. I offered.’

‘Don’t fucking start…’ Geralt raised his voice again and Jaskier flinched slightly. ‘All you do is want and ask. Every time I look at you… you’re like a fucking human-shaped question mark. A ball of fucking need and hope, demanding more than I can give.’

‘But I just…’ Jaskier stared at Geralt for a moment, looking as if he was slapped in the face.

Geralt hated the sight. The thought that he just finished what Aliya had started crossed his mind. And he did a good fucking job too.

Jaskier looked much more hurt and shocked than he had under the threat of a sword. He blinked a few times, shaking slightly.

‘How did we even get here, hm?’ Jaskier asked, his voice faint. ‘Not that bloody long ago, I was perfectly happy...’ He was determined to get back on track, and desperate to ignore Geralt’s last words ‘...chasing after women who like my singing. This…’ Both his hands motioned towards Geralt. ‘This… was far from my plan, believe me.’

He sighed angrily, but his voice was breaking again. His mind was working against him, frantically replaying Geralt’s words. He forced himself to speak again.

‘I could cope at first, I really could. But then… I honestly don’t know how.’ He stopped, realised what he was doing and got angry with himself. ‘What am I even saying? Why am I even...’ His breath turned shaky.

He stared at Geralt. It was clear he was craving some reassurance. Perhaps he was still hoping Geralt would take back what he said. He was strangely disoriented as if he was genuinely surprised by his own response, and disappointed with the both of them.

Geralt just stood there, confused.

‘I’m sorry…’ Suddenly Jaskier seemed exhausted and resigned like a long-distance runner giving up a few meters before the finish line. ‘It’s not fair. What I’m doing. What we’re both doing, I suppose. It’s not fair. And I just can’t… anymore.’

He rubbed his temples and started again.

‘Back there, I’ve said enough. And I can’t take it back now, can I?’ He looked down, and his voice was growing weaker and quieter by the second. ‘And I did mean every word.’

He punched out the last words with determination and strain as if admitting that again was more difficult than it was before.

‘I guess,’ he whispered to himself before speaking up again. ‘I just wish I could feel this way about someone who...’ He stopped again, feeling like there was a wall slowly growing between them. ‘Or, at least, who could appreciate…’

He shook his head, and closed his eyes for a moment.

‘Listen-’ Geralt started but Jaskier just shook his head in response.

‘Well, emerging from this with a broken heart rather than a broken neck is, in itself, a success of a kind.’ He laughed and it was the saddest laugh Geralt has ever heard. ‘I really don’t know what the fuck I was thinking...’ he said, gasping for air a bit ‘...all this time.’

He was clearly on the verge of tears but managed to stay calm, his breathing restricted.

‘Jaskier…’

‘No, don’t. I’ve had enough already.’ He moved away from him and walked into his room. ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ he stated, his tone of voice suddenly assertive. ‘We’re going into these lovely, separate rooms, having an uneventful, restful night, and tomorrow… we probably should say goodbye and go our separate ways. Goodnight.’

He shut the door in front of Geralt’s surprised face.