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animebw · 3 years

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Binge-Watching: Brand New Animal, Episodes 1-3

And so we begin! In which Trigger slathers style over everything, I muse over the complex metaphor at the show’s core, and the animal kingdom is about to be overthrown.

Pull the Trigger

Little Witch Academia is my favorite Trigger anime. It’s one of the best magic school stories of all time, using magic as a metaphor to explore the confluence of tradition and progress while delivering some of the best animation and most instantly iconic characters in the business. I’ve enjoyed basically all this studio’s work on some level, but none of them hold a candle to LWA. So I was already coming into Brand New Animal with my expectations as high as they could go. True, Yoh Yoshinari was only gonna be directing this show, while the original creator and writer is Kazuki Nakashima, who’s far better known for his many collaborations with Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill, Promare). Those works have been a fair deal more uneven in my eyes, so there was no telling how BNA would stack up among Trigger’s best. But still, Yoshinari’s eye for aesthetics was a big part of what made LWA such a delight. So if nothing else, I could at least look forward to some drop-dead gorgeous animation. And I was absolutely right on that front, because holy cripes on a sausage, BNA is fucking beautiful. It’s packed to the brim with spectacular animation, from dynamic movement through hand-drawn backgrounds to punchy, explosive fistfights. It’s also got some stunning lighting work; the use of deep blues and reds to set the tone in episode 1 sucked me in before a single line of dialogue left protagonist Michiru’s lips. This show oozes atmosphere, fusing Trigger’s insane, sharp-edged energy with moments of quiet, awe, and even dread the likes of which you don’t usually see from this studio’s more bombastic work.

But that’s what makes Yoshinari such a fantastic director. Even back in Little Witch Academia, he was able to take the studio’s chaotic visual style and imbue it with a genuine sense of lived-in wonder. And that magic is still going strong in BNA. Its vision of a city populated by beastmen perfectly straddles the line between hardboiled cyberpunk and cartoony lunacy. You could drop either Blade Runner or the Looney Tunes into this wild world and they would both feel right at home. Meanwhile, Michiru’s exaggerated expressions remind me so much of Akko, especially when she’s panicked or frustrated, that I could feel nostalgia pulling at me. I love Yoshinori’s expression work so goddamn much. And even though BNA is a decidedly more edgy show than LWA, his sense of motion and kinetic energy proves just as effective portraying the brutal, anarchic streets of Anima City. The fight scenes are fucking awesome; every punch lands like a cherry bomb and every beastman superpower and transformation hits all the right notes of cool. I also love how despite a lack of blood and gore, this show isn’t afraid to get gnarly as fuck. Shirou ripping a deer-man’s antlers off at the climax of the first episode sets the tone for how intense things are gonna get. And Yoshinari’s incredible knack for dynamic motion makes every single fight, from a simple street brawl to a rooftop showdown, burst with energy and excitement. I think it’s safe to say he’s my favorite director at Trigger, even more so than Imaishi. His mastery of the craft of animation is second to none.

The Beast Inside Me

But hey, it’s Trigger, looking amazing was pretty much a guarantee. At the moment, I’m far more interested in all the balls the story is juggling. There’s a lot going on in BNA, from Michiru and Shirou’s developing friendship to the greater mystery of the beastman physiology to the many terrorists and factions jockeying for power within Anima City. And what’s particularly interesting to me is the central metaphor of the beastmen themselves. Most of the time, stories with demi-humans of this nature use them as pretty blatant, and often pretty lazy, racism metaphors, with the animal people standing in for some oppressed group or another. But the nature of BNA’s beastmen is too complex for that metaphor to map perfectly. There's definitely elements of racism commentary, what with the state-sanctioned police brutality and Anima City being a closed-off community where beastmen are foced to live apart from the rest of the world. But Michiru being a human who somehow transformed into a beastman breaks that metaphor, both for the audience and the characters in universe. As far as everyone knows, being human or beastman is just genetics; you can’t change it any more than you can change your race. Michiru’s just as baffled by her transformation as everyone else; she insists she’s still human because she can’t fathom this part of her changing. But she has changed, and it’s revealed in flashback that one of her friends transformed into a beastman even before she did. So humans turning into beastmen has clearly happened before, though whether this is a recent occurrence or if it’s been happening for ages and has just been covered up is anyone’s guess at this point. From what Shirou says in episode 1, it seems like beastmen have been a part of this world for at least a millennium, so their existence certainly isn’t new. But we still don’t have enough information to fully grasp what it means to be a beastman in this world- and thus, we don’t have enough information to fully grasp what the beastmen are meant to represent in our world.

Of course, it’s possible that the beastmen won’t end up being a perfect metaphor for any real-world topic. They may just be an amalgam of several different social issues and/or identity groups, taking ideas from various real struggles and using them as fodder for a fully fictional species. But there’s something fascinating to me about how Michiru talks about her transformation. She calls it a “disease,” something that isn’t the real her and needs to be “cured.” I may be stretching like silly putty here, but to me, that almost reads like a gay kid struggling with internalized homophobia, thinking being a “beastman” (re: gay) is an unnatural affliction thrust upon them and must be cured so they can go back to being “human” (re: straight). Of course, that’s not a perfect metaphor either, as your sexual orientation has nothing to do with your body’s appearance and physiology. Perhaps it fits better as a trans metaphor, in that case? It does kind of line up with the fact that beastmen normally “pass” as human to appear normal, only letting their true animal forms out on rare occasions like festivals celebrating their collective community (happy upcoming Pride month, everyone!). Michiru, meanwhile, has only just awoken to the fact that she’s “different,” so she’s always presenting as her true self no matter how hard she tries to change back. I dunno, there’s a lot of interesting commentary going on in how the beastmen are portrayed, and I’m really interested to see where it ends up going. This could either be a really unique take on a really tired storytelling device or just kind of an unfocused mess.

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Still, putting those interesting metaphors aside, there’s a lot that strikes me about the show’s treatment of beastmen at face value. Namely, that they’re very, well, beastly. Anima City is a rough, almost lawless place where people are constantly getting into fights and allying with larger herds to survive the savage concrete wilderness. Despite being a city, it still runs on nature’s rules: only the strong survive, and you do whatever it takes to make sure you end up on top. Even seemingly well-meaning people like Grand Grandma will sell orphans into the slave trade if it means protecting herself and her own. And there’s something particularly horrifying about seeing what’s essentially a domestic violence shelter turned into a criminal enterprise. Rabbit Town is explicitly a place where women who’ve been mistreated by men can come together and find common strength, protecting each other from the horrors of toxic masculinity. They’re women who stand together to survive a world that wants to grind them into the dust. But to ensure their own safety, they’ll happily sacrifice those even more unfortunate than them. That’s a really dark idea in context, but it plays into the animalistic nature of this society. The Rabbits can’t fight against the alpha animals at the top of the food chain, so they surrender their morals to ensure ttheir safety and become as amoral as, well, animals. In Grand Grandma’s words, ”If you want to live, the weak trample the weaker.” That’s just how it works in the animal kingdom; the only goal is to stay alive whatever it takes.

And that’s where Michiru comes in. As a beastman who lived as a human until now, she can’t just cast off the ideals of civilization and morality that made her human in the first place. And she’s not gonna sit back and watch while her fellow intelligent life-forms rip each other apart. She’s a one-girl wrecking ball coming in to smash up the established order of Anima City, drain its corrupt ideals right down the sewer and make human and beastman alike realize that beastmen are no less human than otherwise normal humans. Even if she’s not aware of what she’s doing herself, her mere presence in this city is going to challenge everything it’s come to stand for. And can I just say, how fantastic is it that this is a classic “spunky girl makes a broody, sulky father figure grow as a person” dynamic that explicitly calls out sexism on the dude’s part? Most stories of this nature don’t bother exploring that kind of dynamic, but Michiru gets to call out Shirou’s condescending “I protect women and children” rhetoric to his face and take him to task for not jumping into help right away. He prioritized going about things by the book over actually helping kids in danger, and his hubris in thinking things were sure to work out anyway is instantly ripped to shreds when Michiru’s human past makes him realize he can make mistakes. He isn’t inherently stronger or more worthy than Michiru just because he’s a man and she’s not. He’s not “father always knows best” wish fulfillment, he’s a dude who mistakenly believed himself infallible and gets taken to task for it by his younger female companion. And it’s pretty damn cool that in an episode about women forced to do awful, inhuman things to make do in a world that seeks to destroy them, the narrative’s rage is ultimately directed at the men who alternatively drove them to this point and refused to help them before things got this bad in the first place. Shirou’s character growth is a direct result of realizing that Michiru’s right and resolving to not be like the scum he’s fighting, bending to her moral compass rather than forcing the narrative to bend around his. That’s some really damn good storytelling. And if Brand New Animal can keep that level of confidence and clarity up all the way through, this is gonna be an easy entry in Trigger’s A-list. Here’s hoping it’s got what it takes.

Odds and Ends

-Oh, this OP fucks.

-“Being a cynic’s what’s gotten me this far.” That line tells me a lot about Michiru in very little time. I like it.

-Really digging this soundtrack. I’ve somehow missed all the composers’ other work in anime; I’ll have to remedy that at some point...

-You, uh... you okay there, dude? Why are you crying?

-ksjdfhsdkfh why was Inferno Cop on the TV

-That’s such a cool way to show scent tracking, holy crap.

-”You’re not worth using my claws on. My fists are enough for you!” this is so fucking cool Jesus Wept

-So, Michiru’s superpowers include expanding light tail, stretchy arms, and ears that hear real good. How many tricks does she have up her sleeve, I wonder?

-yooooo this ED vibes so hard

-”There’s not much of a rabbit feel to this place.” pfft

-”You’re shitting me.” “I shit you not!” Lol, the subtitlers are having fun.

-Silver Wolf, huh? Wonder what his deal is...

-”I think I’ve got the lever!” This show is really fucking funny sometimes.

-”I surrender. Be kind to the elderly.” skfhskdfjshdf

-Using Shirou’s scent is such a smart way to get us into the backstory, god damn.

-”Trying to sound cool doesn’t make me trust you!” Yeah, Shirou, c’mon, we just went over this.

-”That’s Kuro. He learned to mimic.” he’s such a bad liar askdjaksdhsa

-Oh crap, they know her. That’s not good.

-”You protect all beastmen, right? Then protect me.” ahahaha gottem

-”Your feral instincts?” “Are you making fun of me?” I love them.

And with that, we’re on our way! I can tell this is gonna be a fun one. See you next time!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #brand new animal #bna

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western-writer · 3 years

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New Beginnings

Fandom: Far Cry 5

Warnings: mentions of killing one's self, slight language, slight descriptions of death, and mentions of death itself

Summary: When the Resistance accidentally almost gets the Deputy killed, members take a step back to evaluate their actions. When Dep finally wakes, she's troubled about her health and is unsure how to move on with life.

A/n: this isn't edited but I've been working on this one for a really long time and I honestly love how it turned out so enjoy!

The stillness and lack of gun power in the air made some residents of Hope County question if yesterday's events actually happened.

Mary May stands behind the bar, leaned on the counter and being supported by a single arm. The other arm is occupied with the task of bringing her drink to her lips so she can nurse the strong beverage. Her eyes are glossy. Her mind is off in a distant place. She wishes nothing more than to leave.

The rising sun's light leaks into the bar as the door opens and disappears as the door shuts. Pastor Jerome Jefferies enters, sharing a forlorn look with Mary May. He strides toward her and takes a seat on a barstool.

"Penny for your thoughts," Jerome murmurs, pouring himself a glass of the dark liquid.

Mary May inhales sharply before breaking her gaze on a barstool scratch on the wooden floor.

"Was yesterday actually real or did I just have an incredibly vivid, terrible dream?" She pushes herself up on the counter, now leaning on the heel of her hand.

"Unfortunately, all too real," Jerome responds regretfully.

Mary May sighs. Blood on her hand catches her eye and she jumps, pained by the sight. Pastor Jerome catches this and follows her eyes.

"You should wash that off," he advises.

Nodding slowly, Mary May takes a wet wash rag from the counter and wipes her hands off and then tosses the rag into the trash. For that one, she thinks, it's best to just throw away.

She runs both hands over her face, muttering a question to Pastor Jerome. "Why'd we do it? Why the HELL did we do it?"

"People do some stupid things when they're scared," he answers. "That doesn't make it right, but it makes us human."

"I wish humans weren't so stupid," Mary May says angrily.

Laying in a bed in a coma is Rook. Beside her is a very, very angry Kim Rye. She told the Resistance it was a bad idea. She told them to trust the Deputy. They didn't listen and it almost cost Rook her life. It still might.

Her husband, Nick, enters the room and stands in the doorway meekly. He knows he's part of the reason Rook is where she is, and he doesn't know if Kim will ever forgive him for his part.

"How's she doin'?" he questions.

Kim responds without looking at him. "Still pretty fucking lifeless, Nick. She's being kept alive by machines."

He stares at Rook, at where he knows the bullets pierced her body. He wants to say something else. He should say something else, but he can't bring himself to. His chest aches, ridden with guilt.

"If she doesn't wake up..." Kim starts to say before taking a breath to calm herself. "If she doesn't wake up, Nick... I will NEVER forgive you. Do you understand that?"

Nick sighs. "I understand. I won't forgive myself either."

Sharky hadn't slept all night. The image of Rook's unmoving body in a pool of her own blood is burned into his brain. Everytime he shut his eyes he saw it, almost like it was tattooed on the inside of his eye lids. He was stupid and he knew it. Rook always made the right call when it came down to it. What made him think this time would be any different? He couldn't bring himself to trust the cult to keep their word, and in turn, that meant he didn't trust Rook.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he mutters to himself, pacing his trailer. The words rolled out of his mouth over and over until he couldn't bare to talk anymore.

"Goddammit, Shark," he cusses himself. "You really fucked it this time."

He couldn't pull himself out of his dread long enough to go see her. He isn't sure if he even wants to see her in the first place. Seeing her like that... he's not sure he'll be able to bounce back from it, especially if Rook doesn't make it.

An ear piercing scream rips through the air, giving the echoing sound of the gun shot that just fired a run for it's money. A collective gasp and stunned scream comes from bystanders as the unarmed follower drops to her knees, blood spurting from the bullet hole in her neck. Nick's plane flies over them, dropping bombs uncomfortably close to them, which sends everyone into a panic.

Rook dives into cover as the cult begins to return fire. She's weaponless which makes her helpless. Frantically, Rook looks around, hoping to find a discarded weapon. Her eyes land on one not far from her, dropped on the ground presumably by the now dead body next to it. She waits until an opening and makes a break for the weapon, but she falls short when a large boot comes into contact with her face. The force of the kick knocks her onto her back and she peers up at the culprit.

"Was this a set up!?" the Chosen member in front of Rook screams at her. This particular Chosen happened to have a gun, and was now pointing it right at Rook.

"No! No! Of course not!" Rook shouts back, trying desperately to be heard over the gunfire. She looks around, hoping to see Joseph somewhere, but, of course, Joseph is no where to be found. She cusses to herself, knowing he would believe her when she said this was not her idea.

"Awfully convenient," he remarks, rounding on her like a predator stalks it's prey. Her heart is pounding in her chest as she watches the barrel of the gun circle her.

Gunfire around them seemed to cease as the only thing Rook could hear was the sound of his boots hitting the ground. Then, three gun shots fire off and the world goes silent. Two bullet land themselves in Rook's chest and the third in the head of the cultist that just shot Rook.

The fight lasted no more than a few minutes before the cultist got his hands on Rook, yet claimed many lives, starting with the unarmed cultist and potentially ending with Rook.

Rook had laid in her own blood for almost thirty seconds before someone came to her aid. Mary May was quick to put press on the wounds. Eventually, under Joseph's order, his doctor's rushed her away for emergency surgery. The rest of them were left at the battle site, wondering if Rook would pull through.

"I knew it was a bad idea," Eli mumbled, unsure if anyone was listening. "You all were so angry when I said not to participate and look what happened!"

The Whitetails in front of Eli cringe at his loud voice. They're now thankful they didn't participate in the bloodbath that might take the Deputy away.

"You were right, Eli," Wheaty responds. "I'm sorry for ever doubting you."

"Eli, come on. You have to admit that we had absolutely no reason to believe that the cult would really back down if we did."

"You're right, Tammy. We had no reason to trust the cult, but we had every reason to trust Dep. Look at all she's done for us, at everything she's been through because of the cult. She just wanted peace and the rest of them couldn't let her have that."

Silence falls over the small crowd and Eli sighs, setting his bow down on the table.

"I'm going to see her. I advise that you all just stay here."

Standing outside the room, Eli hears multiple voices and comes to the conclusion that one of them belongs to Kim Rye. She hasn't left Rook's side since she came here.

"Thank you... for, you know, taking care of her."

"Of course," another female voice responds. It sounds familiar to Eli but he can't quite place it. After a pause and a heavy sigh, Eli enters the room. He finds Kim sitting in a chair beside the bed, Faith Seed administering medicine. Kim turns and sees Eli. She stands up and walks over to hug him quickly.

"Thank you for coming," Kim says to him. Eli nods to her and then Faith.

"Faith," he says, nodding his head as if he's tipping a hat. "How's she doin'?"

"She's making progress," Faith responds. "She was lucky that both bullets didn't kill her on impact. These bullets could've easily hit her heart. It would've been over before it started."

Eli sighs and pulls up a chair, sitting beside Kim.

"All we can do is keep her comfortable and keep infection from setting in. The machines will do the rest until her body can take over."

"When do you think that will be?"

"We can't be sure, if I'm being honest. Maybe she'll just wake up."

Kim smiles sadly. "I'll never forget her rolling up to the airstrip in Nick's plane like she owned the place. That's how I knew she was different than the rest. That's the moment I was sure she was our hope." Kim glances at Eli, then back at Rook. "Have you talked to any of the Resistance?"

"Not besides my Whitetails. Have you?"

"Just Nick."

"I wonder how the others are coping..."

"I imagine not well," Faith pipes up. "Everyone I talk to talks so highly of her, even some followers. She's a force to be reckoned with, I know that first hand." Faith smiles a bit before it falls. "Can I ask you both something?"

"Sure," Eli and Kim respond.

"Would both have been satisfied with a peace treaty? Like, actually satisfied or would you have rathered to eradicate us but settled for peace?"

It takes the two of them a minute to respond. Eventually Kim speaks up.

"If I'm being honest, I wasn't pleased with it at first. It was only after talking to Dep about a lot did I come around to being at peace with the idea."

"Same here. It definitely took a lot of contemplating, but at the end of the day, I came around thanks to Dep."

"Why? You both spoke so openly about wishing death on my family. What changed?"

Kim and Eli share a look before Kim answers for the both of them. "I think both Eli and I can agree that it was seeing what this fight was doing to Dep. She was constantly anxious and paranoid. She didn't sleep and when she did the nightmares made it pointless. The weight of the county was on her shoulders and it wasn't fair. If living peacefully with you all meant Dep would finally have peace, it was worth it."

A small smile makes it way onto Faith's lips. "I think in a different life her and I could've been friends..."

Footsteps behind them pull the three of them out of their conversation to look behind them. Walking up the hallway is Deputy Pratt followed closely by Jacob Seed. Pratt's eyes go wide when he sees her.

"W-w-what happened to her?" he questions, moving to stand beside her bed.

"Shot," Jacob answers gruffly.

"How?" Pratt responds.

"While trying to discuss a peace treaty with Eden's Gate," Faith answers before Jacob can, effectively silencing whatever insensitive answer Jacob had.

Jacob rolls his eyes at her, leaning against the doorframe.

"What happened to the person that did this?" Staci asks, looking around at everyone.

"I dealt with him personally," Jacob answers coldly.

Staci looks away from Jacob and back to Rook. He hoped she'd never have to be in this position.

Days went by and the worry through out the county intensified. Rook wasn't showing any signs of waking up anytime soon. Finally, after ten days and being in a coma she opened her eyes at 2:37 AM. Beside her still in a restless sleep was Kim Rye. Kim's eyes shot open the moment she sensed Rook being awake.

"Oh, my God, Deputy!" Kim exclaimed, jumping up and running to her. "I'm gonna take this tube out of your mouth, okay?" Rook nods back slightly and very carefully Kim pulls the tube out of her throat.

Rook groans, looking at her bandaged body and fighting the rasp in her throat to say something. She can't find the words but Kim knows exactly what she's trying to say.

"You-you were shot, Deputy. Point blank in the chest twice. While you were trying to negotiate peace." Kim chokes up a little bit, overwhelmed by happiness.

Rook's eyes dart around the ceiling as so many questions bounce in her head.

"I'll explain more later, but right now we need to get you checked out. We have to make sure you haven't sustained any serious damage besides the obvious." Kim puts her hand on Rook's shoulder before turning to walk out of the room. She stops before exiting and turns back to Rook. "It's good to see you awake, Deputy. We were -I was - starting to wonder if you'd ever wake up."

Two weeks after waking up Rook was ready to sit up. After two months she was standing, something they feared she may never do again, and only a month after that she was walking again with help.

Many people around the county came to her aid, offering to help her with whatever she needed. They did a great job at keeping her occupied and entertained. When she was well enough, many would take her for short car rides around the county, and Nick even took her up in his plane once.

Dep had almost no memory of that day. She remembers laying on the ground with a gun in her face and then waking up in the hospital bed. Kim, though, took the liberty of filling her in, explaining what the Resistance did. At first Rook was angry. She was so angry that they doubted her so much that they took such drastic measures. But she saw the guilt the carried when they'd visit her. She could hear it in their words and see it in their actions. They were trying so hard to make it up to her.

Eventually, Rook was able to let go of her anger towards them and be able to understand why they did it. While it doesn't excuse their actions, it certainly helped Rook understand. Her understanding was what led her to forgiving.

Talk of a peace agreement began to circle the county when Rook made an off hand comment about intending to follow through with that once she was fully recovered. Though true, Rook was worried about her health. While the bullets missed her heart, she sustained damage to her lungs and spinal cord. Rook doesn't vocalize these fears until a night where Jacob was tasked with watching her overnight.

She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the floor when Jacob entered with dinner for them both. He sets the bag down next to her and takes a seat beside the bed. She reaches for it, opening it.

"Chicken tenders, fuck yeah," she says, pulling the food out of the bag.

Jacob props his feet up on the chair beside him and takes a bit of his burger. Rook slowly eats her food.

"So, you still wanna go through with a peace agreement, huh?"

Rook looks up at him cautiously, surprised that he's making conversation.

"I would like to, yes," Rook answers.

Jacob grunts a reply. He was never a fan of the idea of surrender. But Joseph said it's what God wants, and what Joseph says, goes.

"I wouldn't expect you to like the idea, Jacob. But the amount of relief I felt when Joseph agreed was astronomical. Like a huge weight off my shoulders."

Jacob looks up at her. She's staring at the floor again.

"I guess my relief wasn't long lived." She takes a long, ragged breath and takes another bite.

"You know," he starts. "When I first saw you in that church, my expectations for you were so low, but you proved me wrong."

"I don't think that counts of a compliment, Jake."

Jacob rolls his eyes. "It's not supposed to be one. I was just sayin'."

Rook sighs and carefully slides back, moving to lay on the bed. She tries to move her leg without using her hands. Jacob watches her for a second before she gives up and uses her hands to lift each leg onto the bed. She leans back, staring right at the ceiling. She glances at him and he can tell that something is on her mind. He recognizes the look.

"Spill it," he demands. "Something's bothering you. Spill it."

"Like you care," Rook responds.

"I don't," Jacob snaps back. "But if I have to deal with that fuckin' look on your face all night, I'll kill myself."

Rook sighs, looking down at her legs. "I'm worried about my health, Jacob. The bullets damaged a lung and my spinal cord."

Jacob stares at her.

"The fact that I have any feeling in my legs is a miracle... but I may never be able to walk without assistance ever again. And even if I can, my bad lung will make it nearly impossible to do anything ever again. I probably won't be able to work at all, let alone go back to being a cop."

"Why'd you wanna go back to your job after everything?"

Rook smiles a bit. "I've never felt like I belong more than when I'm in that uniform. And now I'm not even 30 and my career is over. I felt so... content being able to help people and now that chance is gone. Early retirement here I come."

"You're afraid that you'll never have a purpose again, right?"

Rook stops before slowly nodding.

Jacob sits there calmly and Rook continues to ramble on and he actually listens. He surprised at all the information she reveals to him. He never would've guessed that all that had been going on inside her head. Finally, she pauses and Jacob decides to interject.

"You've got something goin' for you, Deputy. More than I ever did when I was discharged from the army."

Rook stops, looking at him and wondering where this is going. "And what would that be, Jacob?"

Jacob sighs, leaning back in his chair. "You've got a whole county dedicated to you, Dep. That's more than I can say for myself. I was a mess before Joseph found me. But these people... they won't let that happen to you. I know they won't. They feel too guilty and care about you too much. You'll find your purpose, Dep. It'll just take a little time."

Rook is stunned by Jacob's words, and so is Jacob himself. But the words are burned into her brain whether she wants them to be or not.

Rook heals more and begins to become more mobile. As she promised, she follows through with the peace agreement and the whole county shows up to witness history. Only when she's standing there in front of all the people she had fought for and fought against does she finally understand the meaning of Jacob's words. She doesn't need to be a cop to help people. She's helping them right now. She's bringing peace to their home.

It takes some time after peace settled in the county for things to go back to normal. Rook, being tired of staying at home doing nothing began to search for jobs she could do with her limited mobility and damaged lung. It was difficult and after a while she began to lose hope. Then, out of no where she received a letter from Jacob explaining to her to per the peace agreement, he was converting the Vet's Center back to an actual sanctuary for lost and broken veterans that need help getting back on their feet. In the letter, Jacob offers her a management position, claiming her to be the best person for the job that he knows. He understands that the job might a little bit demanding for her given her health, but he's willing to work with her on it if she agrees.

Rook is floored by this surprisingly kind gesture and she takes the job on the spot.

Working along side Jacob like this, she learns so much more about him and his family that she never would've learned otherwise.

One day, while they're working, Jacob admits to her that he was the one that killed the person that shot her.

"I didn't even think about it. We arrived to the chaos and when I saw him shoot you I just... acted."

"You saved my life that day, Jacob. Who knows how many more times he would've shot me."

Jacob nods, almost dismissively, but now she just knows that's how he is. Somehow, in a round a bought sort of way, they became friends. They all did. Resistance members were now actively helping members of Eden's Gate with random projects and visa versa. None of the ever thought that this would come from a truce, but they all agree that it feels good to have a new beginning. It feels good to feel safe again. And that's all thanks to Rook.

#jacob seed #far cry 5 writing #far cry 5 #deputy rook #Eden's Gate #the resistance

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jeremy-ken-anderson · 3 years

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A Too-Dang-Late Guide to Blue Mage

Blue Mage has been a thing for kind of a while now. Here’s an ideal route to success.

After 50 on some other class, you can become a Blue Mage. The quest giver is a Zealous Yellowjacket in the lower decks of Limsa. She thinks some deadbeat’s out to bilk people out of cash for fake job stones. She’s wrong. Sort of? Maybe?

This gets you the class and your first spell, Water Cannon.

Go out to the river in Lower La Noscea and kill things at random until a FATE called You Call That a Toad? pops. Take part in it. This will get you a few levels and also the spell Sticky Tongue.

Go up to Middle La Noscea and find the goblin camp. Pull one of the goblins from as far as possible using Sticky Tongue. Shoot him once or twice with Water Cannon but don’t kill him. Wait until he uses Bomb Toss, then kill him.

This is the general rule. If you see them use a spell you can learn, they’re fair game and you’ll probably get the spell. It’s high odds but not guaranteed, so if it fails pick another enemy of the same kind and try again.

Okay, that was all just sitting near where you started, but that’s enough of this regular stuff. It’s time for the Blue Cheese. Go to a high-level zone with level Xty-nine enemies (Northern Thanalan has 49s, Azys Lla has level 59s, and The Lochs has level 69s) along with a buddy who’s at least 10 levels higher than the zone (80 is ideal). You and your buddy shouldn’t be partied up. Discord might help you keep track of where each other are. RDM or SUM is especially useful for this because they can rez you if you die but have good damage.

Use Sticky Tongue on a target. Then the buddy kills it.

FFXIV has a “dibs” system where attacking a target someone else has damaged or hit with an effect first may give you rewards if your portion of the damage was high enough, but always gives them the rewards. Sticky Tongue pulls an enemy to you and stuns them for 5 seconds. So if you use it to pull an enemy over, your buddy has some time to get aggro off of you so you won’t die. AND you get full xp for the kill (because you’re not partied up it’s not split proportional with your relative levels but treated like you killed it). So you get 5+ levels per kill for a bit. The whole process of getting to 50 with Blue Mage takes less than half an hour with a good buddy and this system.

While you can use this trick to get to level 70 (the cap for Blue Mage), the truth is you won’t need to. 50 is the absolute highest you might need to cheese your level up to. For one thing, every spell you learn gives you a hefty chunk of xp. For another, most of those spells are found inside dungeons, and you’ll get a LOT of xp doing synced runs for spells. DO perform the runs level-synced. When you run a dungeon synced to the proper level, your learning % for everything in the dungeon with learnable spells jumps to 100%. You also get xp for the Carnevale, once you unlock it (If you’ve jumped to 50 you have a LOT of plot to read/play through all at once. The story’s pretty fun, so take time to watch the cutscenes!)

And if you succeeded at all this, all you need for these dungeon runs is...3-7 more people interested in doing Blue Magic stuff. The trouble with Blue Mage is that it can’t use the Duty Finder to join dungeons or trials, and when you run it with non-blue-mage characters they often don’t know what to do to help you (they’ll frequently kill enemies before the enemy uses the spell you want to learn from them). So you’re likely to spend a lot of time looking for people willing to run this or that dungeon. But if you can get 7 fellow blue mages who are on your friends list and/or in your Free Company? You can form an 8-person full party for big trials, and two 4-person light parties for dungeon content, and you can clear everything at whatever pace everyone’s willing to show up.

If you can’t get that group together, look forward to a lot of time with Party Finder trying to get a crew together while you do something else. Make sure you have a keyboard attached to whatever system you’re using, even if it’s a PS4. You’ll want to be able to type quickly to be friendly to people so you can keep them around long enough to go into the dungeons.

This social slog is, in general, The Problem with Blue Mage. It often feels like you spend more time begging for players than playing, which seems apropos given the kind of pathetic lot of the first Blue Mage you meet but also isn’t as much fun as the rest of the game, including Blue Mage gameplay.

As for exactly what the spells are and where to find them, I recommend the Blue Mage Spells Learning Guide on consolegameswiki. Type in those words and it should come up. It’s comprehensive on what the spells are, the different enemies who drop them, and (where applicable) what dungeons those enemies can be found in. Clicking “World Mob Level” at the top of the list on that page will order the spells lowest to highest by how low-level a monster there is that can teach you the spell. This can be used as a rough guide for what order to get spells in. You can get a whole lot of them just by bouncing around the overworld and harassing regular monsters, which gives you a pretty solid skill set before you have to start asking fellow players for help with dungeons.

#ffxiv #blue mage #guide

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sheliesshattered · 4 years

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First Row On The Moon

Clara/Twelve Kill The Moon AU. Part 2 of For As Long As We Get, following after The Impossible Soldier. 5500 words, developing relationship, happy ending. Available on AO3 under the same title and username.

First Row On The Moon

“I think that it's unique,” the Doctor said, his tone awed. “I think that's the only one of its kind in the universe. I think that it is... utterly beautiful.”

Clara stared at the hologram the Doctor had produced, at what appeared to be a kind of dragon, curled into a tight ball inside the moon. Beautiful was right, though she shuddered to think of how big it would be once it hatched. Or what would happen to the moon when it did.

“How do we kill it?” Lundvik demanded.

Startled, Clara looked from the astronaut to the Doctor and back again, a chill working its way down her spine. She’d seen the nuclear bombs they’d brought, rows and rows of them. How wasn’t the question they should be asking, the how was obvious. But rather, should they? Should they snuff out this life for the sake of everyone on the planet below? Or was there a way to save both the hatchling and humanity?

The Doctor had gone ominously silent, his expression stony.

She crossed her arms and turned back to Lundvik. “Why do you want to kill it?”

“It’s a little baby!” Courtney objected over the video link from the TARDIS. Her ‘disruptive influence’ reputation aside, when you got right down to it, she really was something special, Clara thought. A fifteen year old with that kind of empathy, who had fearlessly walked onto an alien spaceship and accepted the offer of a trip to the moon like it was any other Wednesday.

But Lundvik was clearly unmoved. “Doctor, how do we kill it?” she said again.

“Kill the moon?” he asked, his voice a dangerous sort of quiet.

Lundvik nodded, and the Doctor used the sonic to turn off the hologram. Clara could practically feel the muffled anger radiating off of him. Anyone who could look at the image of an unborn creature, something he had declared beautiful and unique, and immediately think of nothing but murdering it, didn’t deserve to see that image anymore.

“Kill the moon,” he repeated, louder. “Well, you have about a hundred of the best man-made nuclear weapons, if they still work. If that's what you want to do.”

No, no, they were not going to validate Lundvik’s murderous instincts without even looking for another solution. “Doctor, wait—” Clara started, but the astronaut cut her off.

“Will that do it?”

“A hundred nuclear bombs?” the Doctor demanded. “Set off right where we are? Right on top of a living, vulnerable creature?” His anger was starting to boil to the surface now, voice sharp and words harsh. “It'll never feel the sun on its back!”

“And then what?” Lundvik pressed. “Will the moon still break up? You said, you said we had an hour and a half?”

“Well, there'll be nothing to make it break up,” he shot back. “There will be nothing trying to force its way out. The gravity of the little dead baby will pull all the pieces back together again. Of course, it won't be very pretty. You'd have an enormous corpse floating in the sky. You might have some very difficult conversations to have with your kids.”

“I don't have any kids,” Lundvik muttered, as though that absolved her of this choice.

“Stop,” Clara said before she could get any further down the path of destroying the alien lifeform beneath their feet. “Right, listen. This is a— this is a life. I mean, this must be the biggest life in the universe.”

“It's not even been born!” Courtney put in.

“It is killing people,” Lundvik snapped. “It is destroying the Earth.”

“You cannot blame a baby for kicking!” Clara countered, growing more frustrated the more insistent the other woman became. They weren’t even taking the time to consider other options, to try to find a plan that could save everyone.

“Let me tell you something,” Lundvik said seriously. “You want to know what I took back from being in space? Look at the edge of the Earth. The atmosphere, that is paper-thin. That is the only thing that saves us all from death. Everything else, the stars, the blackness — that's all dead. Sadly, that is the only life any of us will ever know.”

She stared at her in disbelief, stunned by her shortsightedness. Clara had been out there, with the stars and the blackness, seen the wide variety of forms that life had created throughout the universe. She’d met sentient stars and visited civilisations orbiting suns whose light had not yet reached Earth. It was all so dazzling, and wondrous, and alive. She couldn’t fault Lundvik for not sharing that point of view, but the creature about to be born out of the moon was proof that Earth wasn’t the only spot of life in the cosmos, proof that there was so much yet for humanity to discover. And all Lundvik could think of was killing it.

Courtney echoed her thoughts, bless her, but still Lundvik refused to consider any alternatives. As the Doctor talked Courtney through bringing the TARDIS to them, Clara grasped for a solution to the problem. There had to be some way to both protect the Earth and save the life of the hatchling, something they could do.

She looked to the Doctor, who seemed to have folded in on himself, resigned to the inevitability of Lundvik’s bombs. She’d seen this from him before, this passivity, usually right before he came up with a clever plan to save the day.

Across the room, Lundvik was beginning to set the detonators for the nuclear bombs.

“No, stop, we need to discuss this!” Clara said, taking a step towards her.

“We haven’t got time!” Lundvik insisted, continuing her task.

“We are not just going to kill it without even talking about it! If we let it live, if it hatches, what happens? Doctor?”

He glanced up at her and away again, refusing to engage.

Well, fine. Clara forged ahead on her own, unwilling to give up. “The moon, the moon would be gone, but the Earth could survive that, right? No more tides, they’d have to relaunch satellites, but Earth would recover.”

“It's not going to just stop being there,” Lundvik replied angrily, “because inside the moon, Miss, is a gigantic creature forcing its way out. And when it does, which is going to be pretty damn soon, there are going to be huge chunks of the moon heading right for Earth, like whatever killed the dinosaurs, only ten thousand times bigger!”

“But the moon isn't made of rock and stone, is it?” Clara said. “It's made of eggshell.”

“Oh, God,” Lundvik groaned. “Okay, okay, fine. If, by some miracle, the shell isn't too thick, or if it disperses, or if it goes into orbit, whatever, there's still going to be a massive thing there, isn't there, that just popped out. And what the hell do you imagine that is? What the hell do you imagine it wants? You can’t blame a baby for kicking? I suppose you can’t blame a newborn for demanding a meal, either!”

“You don’t know that it will harm the Earth!”

“And you don’t know that it won’t! Are you really willing to risk the lives of everyone on the planet just to save some alien creature?”

Clara shook her head. “I’m going to need something a little more certain if I’m going to stand by and let you kill a baby!”

“Oh, you want to talk about babies?” Lundvik shot back. “You've probably got babies down there now, your children, maybe grandchildren. Think of them.”

She stared at her, banishing the image of Orson Pink from her mind. She didn’t have children on Earth right now, she would never have— That was the path she had turned away from, the life she had given up to be with the Doctor.

She turned to him, standing so quietly at the edge of the room, staring at his hands. “How do we solve this, Doctor? What do we do?”

He looked up at her, his face a mask of calm. “Nothing.”

“What?”

“We don't do anything. I'm sorry, Clara. I can't help you.”

“Of course you can help!”

“The Earth isn't my home. The moon's not my moon,” he shrugged. “Sorry.”

“No, come on. You’ve seen Earth’s future, you can tell us what happens.”

“That’s not how this works, and you know it!” he replied. “History is in flux, Clara, it always is. You always get the choice about your future, but I can’t make it for you!”

“Yeah, well, I can’t make it, either,” she said.

“Luckily there’s three of you. A teenager, an astronaut, and a schoolteacher, who better to make this decision? It's time to take the stabilisers off your bike. You don't need a Time Lord. Kill it. Or let it live. It's your moon, womankind. It's your choice. I can't do this for you.”

“So you’re just going to stand there?” she demanded.

“Absolutely not,” the Doctor said, over the sound of the TARDIS arriving. The door squeaked, and Courtney emerged.

“I am asking for your help!” Clara said to him, her anger rising.

“Hang on a minute,” Lundvik said. “We can get in there, can't we? You can sort it out with that thing.”

“No,” the Doctor said, with a horrible sort of finality. “Some decisions are too important not to make on your own.”

Clara watched in disbelief as he turned towards the TARDIS. “Doctor?” she called. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she nearly shouted after him, but stopped herself. To hell with that, she wasn’t going to be the sort of woman to stand there and yell at the retreating form of her— her boyfriend? That she didn’t even know the right word to apply to the Doctor now only made her angrier, and she followed him with long, quick strides, pushing through the TARDIS doors before he could do something absolutely idiotic like dematerialise and leave her there with the moon going to pieces beneath her feet.

“No, you do not do that,” she snapped as she slammed the doors shut behind her. “You do not walk away and leave me alone in that kind of situation! That is not how this works.”

He looked up at her from the far side of the console as though surprised that she had followed him. “I told you, can’t make this decision, Clara.”

“But you expect me to make it?”

“I have faith that you’ll make the right choice,” he said, voice open and sincere.

Clara stared at him in disbelief. “Honestly, do you have music playing in your head when you say rubbish like that? And what was it you said a minute ago — time to take the stabilisers off my bike? I’ve had just about enough of the patronising today!”

“I’m not patronising you, Clara. It’s not my Earth, it’s not my moon, I can’t make this decision for you. This is me respecting you, letting you make your own choice about your future, without putting my thumb on the scale.”

“My future?” she demanded.

The Doctor shot her a confused look. “It’s only 2049. Somewhere down there—”

“There is no older version of me on Earth right now,” she interrupted him. “No children, no grandchildren. My future is not down there, Doctor, it’s here, with you. That’s what we decided, all of six days ago! So this is just as much your moon as it is mine, and you can damn well help when it’s asked of you,” she snapped, anger forcing tears into her voice. “I cannot believe you left me out there!”

He blinked at her, taken aback. “Right. Okay.”

“‘We don’t walk away,’ that was the first thing you taught me,” she spat out. “Well, new rule: we don’t walk away from each other, either. We do not leave the other to make the impossible choice. We do it the same way we do everything: together. We’re partners in this, and when people need our help, we help them. We. Don’t. Walk. Away. What would we do, if this was any other moon, any other civilisation? Leave them to figure it out on their own? Or try to offer the best guidance we can, help them come to the kindest solution that will save the most people? There has to be something we can do, some way we can help—”

“Ah ha, gotcha!” the Doctor exclaimed, and Clara’s tirade stuttered to a halt. She looked over to where he was still stood on the other side of the console, his gaze fixed on one of the monitors, eyes moving rapidly as he read.

“Are you— are you even listening to me?” she asked, her anger surging again.

“Hm?” he said, gaze darting to her and immediately back to the monitor. “Yes, of course,” he said absently. “And you might have noticed, I agreed with you a few minutes back. But you were on a roll, so I thought it best to let you speak your mind while I got on with the research.”

“You were—” she bit down on more language she really shouldn’t use, especially with one of her students so close by, “—‘researching,’ while I was talking to you?”

“Yes. I was researching and listening, Clara. I can multitask, I am quite clever,” he added with another quick glance at her. “And we’re a bit short on time.”

She sighed and folded her arms. If not for the urgency and the life-or-death nature of the situation just outside the TARDIS doors she might have pressed the whole listening when she talked issue, but she couldn’t deny that he had a point. “What, exactly, are you researching?”

“The solution to the problem, of course.”

“And? Five minutes ago you were convinced you couldn’t help. What have you got now?”

“Well, I figured anything that hatches from an egg is likely the offspring of something else that hatched from an egg. Even if it has a hundred million year gestation time, even if it’s exceptionally rare, it can’t be the only one to ever exist...” He trailed off, still reading. “Ah, there we go, that explains the gravity.” He looked back up at her, expectant and excited. “Come and see,” he said, waving her over.

Her anger was ebbing away to a heavy annoyance, and she managed to cross towards him without stomping her feet.

“Meet the Nebula Eater,” the Doctor said, shifting the monitor so she could see it.

An article from the galactic hub greeted her, depicting a huge dragon-type creature, the sheer scale of its wingspan difficult for Clara to wrap her mind around. “That’s what’s inside the moon?” she gasped. “Is it a danger to Earth?” The damage a creature of that size could do, even accidentally, was terrifying to think of.

“No, no,” he assured her quickly. “It feeds exclusively on space gas, hence the name. It’s been using the Earth’s gravity, the warmth of the sun, and the protection of the nearby gas-giants as a nesting ground. But once it hatches, it’ll be outside Earth’s heliosphere within a week, I imagine. Probably head out towards Helix or Orion, at a guess.”

“But the... eggshells, whatever’s left of the moon— will that pose a risk to the Earth? Crash through the atmosphere, or screw up the tides even more?”

“That’s where this gets interesting,” the Doctor said, nearly grinning with the excitement of a new discovery. “Look,” he said, scrolling the article down to a subsection titled Reproductive Cycle.

Clara read quickly, absorbing as much as she could in fragmented segments: ...asexual reproduction in the final stage before hatching... significant but temporary increases in local gravity... nesting elements reform around the offspring once the hatchling breaks free... local gravity quickly renormalises...

“Oh my god,” she breathed, taking in the information in front of her. “And if Lundvik kills it?”

“She’ll be murdering two babies, not one, and the gravity of Earth’s moon will never recover.”

“We have to tell her,” she said, looking up at the Doctor.

“Yep, before she does something incredibly stupid. Come on.”

He started for the door, and Clara swiftly caught up with him, halting him with a hand on his arm. “We will finish the rest of this conversation later,” she told him, pinning him with her gaze.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed seriously, and held the door open for her.

—

It was one thing to read about the hatching of a giant nebula-eating space dragon and quite another to watch it happen from two hundred and fifty thousand miles away. Even at that distance, the Nebula Eater was clearly visible, its newborn wings unfurling to dwarf the remnants of the shattered moon, and the new egg sheltered inside.

Clara stood next to the Doctor, gazing in awe at the life they had helped save, and silently slipped her hand into his, grateful that she hadn’t had to face that decision alone.

—

Later, they sat curled together on Clara’s sofa, gazing up at the full moon through the windows of her sitting room. It would be years yet before the hatching cycle began, before the Nebula Eater’s gravity began to shift and affect Earth. But she knew it was there, now, growing and readying itself for the day it would break through its fragile shell and set off into the universe. They’d almost gotten it wrong today, almost killed a beautiful, innocent creature, out of fear of what the future might bring.

“Are you still angry with me?” the Doctor asked into the silence, his voice a low rumble beneath her ear.

“No,” she said softly, not taking her eyes off the moon or shifting out of his embrace.

They were quiet for several long minutes, then the Doctor muttered, “See, this is why I dislike hugs. They’re just a way to hide your face.”

Clara sighed and sat up, turning to look at him more fully, her bent knees resting against his thigh. “I’m not angry,” she said. “I’m...”

“Don’t say ‘disappointed’, that’s just a fancy way of saying ‘I’m angry but I don’t want to admit to it.’”

She smiled a little at that and shook her head. “Really, I’m not angry, not anymore. But I do think we ought to talk about it.”

“Talking seems to be a big thing with you lately,” the Doctor said in a low voice, glancing at her and away again.

“Yeah, well, get used to it,” she replied, nudging him. “Best way to get past a row, my mum always said. You have to talk it through, make sure there’s nothing left unsaid that can fester.”

“We did the right thing today, Clara,” the Doctor pointed out. “We saved the Nebula Eater, saved the Earth, got Courtney home safe and on-time. So it took us a little shouting to get there, what’s that matter?”

“We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said reasonably.

“Well, if we run into another Nebula Eater, now we know the signs, and we can make sure the locals don’t try to blow it up.”

“Not that bit, Doctor,” she said, shaking her head and unable to keep from smiling a little. “The shouting at each other bit.”

He watched her for a moment. “Which is, I take it, a serious problem?”

“It was just a row, it happens. Our first row. And it was on the moon, because of course it was.”

He frowned in confusion. “We’ve had plenty of rows before.”

“Well, sure, but it’s different now.”

He only looked more confused. “How?”

“This was our first row since— I don’t even really know what the right term is. This, us,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the two of them. “This new phase we’ve been in since last week, whatever we want to call it.”

“And that’s fundamentally different than before?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“I don’t want to reignite the ‘not your boyfriend’ argument, but yes, I’d say so.”

“Why?”

He sounded so genuinely uncertain that Clara took pity on him and answered honestly rather than tease him about it. “Well, there’s the kissing, for one thing.”

“Right. That is new.”

“And finally talking about how we feel,” she added. “Me breaking up with Danny, making that leap. Deciding that it’s going to be you and me, for however long we get. This, whatever it is. There’s lots of terms for this kind of relationship, but none of them feel quite right for us.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, sounding thoughtful.

“Well, whatever we want to call it, people in this sort of relationship argue sometimes, it’s completely normal. So long as we talk it out, don’t let hurt feelings linger, it’s fine. You know this, Doctor, you’ve done this before.”

“Not like this,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Not with you.”

Clara smiled at him. “We’ll figure it out. A few bumps in the road are nothing to worry about.” She leaned in and kissed him, steadying herself with a hand against his chest. He returned it hesitantly at first, but quickly found his bearings, reaching up to cup her face with one hand.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you today,” she said when they parted, pressing her forehead to his. “It scared me, when I thought you were going to leave me alone there to make that decision. I made you promise once that you’d never send me away again, and I think I’m still afraid that someday you will.”

He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, planting a kiss on the top of her head. “I promise I won’t send you away,” he said in a low tone. “And I won’t leave you alone in that kind of situation again.”

“Thank you,” she breathed, fighting back tears. She hugged him closer, listening to the steady beat of his hearts.

“I really did think I was doing the right thing, leaving the choice to you,” he said after a moment. “Especially after last week. When it comes to your future, it doesn’t feel right for me to be the one making the decisions. It ought to be up to you.”

“But that’s the thing, it’s not just my future anymore. It’s ours. Which means we make decisions together.”

“Another new rule?”

She smiled against him. “If you like. No dying. We don’t walk away from each other. We make decisions together. We talk things out after a row.” She ticked them off on her fingers.

“Yes, ma’am,” the Doctor replied.

“No, none of that— rule three. What do you think of the proposed rules?”

He shrugged. “I think they’re a good idea. And that perhaps we ought to have one about kissing after a row, too.”

Clara laughed and craned her neck up to accept a quick kiss. “Agreed. And we seem to have silently come to the same conclusion on another rule about kissing: not in front of my students.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, there aren’t any students here now,” he pointed out in a low tone.

“How very observant of you,” Clara said lightly, and for a long while they didn’t talk.

The moon had passed out of the view of her windows, continuing the climb to its zenith, when Clara got up to turn on another lamp in her sitting room. She should go to sleep soon, she knew — she would have work tomorrow, assuming they didn’t sneak in another trip in the TARDIS before then — but she couldn’t bring herself to break the spell of a quiet evening at home with the Doctor.

“You’re not the first with the kissing, you know,” he said when she joined him again on the sofa.

She gave him a bemused smile. “You’ve been married four times before, had children and grandchildren. I didn’t think I was the first.”

“No, I mean— your echoes.”

“Ah.”

“Handsy lot in general, those women with your face. A few of them decided to take it a step further.”

“Well, you can hardly blame us,” Clara said airily. “A dashing mad man falls out of the sky with a snogbox, what are we meant to think?”

“It’s not a snogbox!” the Doctor said, scowling, and she had to laugh, remembering how his last face had insisted on the same.

“Kinda is, now,” she grinned at him.

He flapped his hands at her, struggling to find the words. “The rules are different, for you, for this,” he finally said. “That doesn’t excuse your echoes taking liberties.”

She kissed him again, still laughing, for no other reason than because she could. “I suppose I was already in love with you when I went into your timestream,” she said when she pulled back and settled beside him again. “I suspect that’s part of why I did it in the first place. Which means they all sprang into life with that as part of their fundamental makeup, like being short or having brown hair.”

“Or eyes the size of saucers.”

“Or the ability to put up with you,” she countered lightly.

“Ha ha ha,” he returned dryly, but she could tell that his thoughts had moved on to something else, his gaze distant.

She let him brood for a few minutes then said, “Alright, something’s on your mind, so: out with it. Don’t let anything fester.”

He hesitated before asking, voice low and serious, “What is this for you?”

“What do you mean?” she frowned at him in confusion.

“I made some assumptions today and that got me into trouble,” the Doctor said slowly, gaze darting up to find hers. “And I’d like to avoid doing that again. I’m trying to understand what this ‘new phase’ is, or whatever you called it.”

“Don’t you know?” she asked, looking at him curiously.

“I really don’t. You gave up Danny for this, gave up that whole future. When you said there was no version of you down there on Earth, no children or grandchildren, you sounded so sure. You said you were in love with that old soldier version of me, but you talk about the future like you’re utterly certain of it, of this choice you’ve made. I’m just— I’m trying to understand.”

Clara smiled at him fondly and shook her head. “Daft old man. I’m in love with you. With this version of you, the one sitting right beside me. And every version of you that came before. Every face, every good day, every bad day. Every bit of you, for always. What is this for me? This is the defining relationship of my life, Doctor. Me and you, for as long as we get. I can’t promise you forever, but I can promise you all of my tomorrows. So yes, I am utterly certain about my future, about the only thing I need to know about it: that you will be in it.”

He was silent for a long while, mulling that over, then without warning blurted out, “I think we should get married.”

She blinked up at him, shocked into silence for a moment. “I— um. Wow. Where did that come from?”

“You said you didn’t know what to call it, what we are to each other. It would simplify things.” He shrugged awkwardly. “I think we should get married.” He seemed completely sincere about it, which only made the whole thing stranger.

“Doctor, I don’t need a piece of paper or some legality to make this official,” she said, shifting around to see him better. “I told you, I’m in this for the long-haul. And I know you’ve been married before, I wouldn’t ask you to—”

“You’re not asking. I’m asking,” he said, flicking his gaze to hers and away again.

“But... why? Doesn’t seem like you’d be much interested in the legalities, either.”

He sighed and scrubbed one hand through his hair. “It’s not about the legal paperwork. It’s more... cultural, I suppose you could say.”

She turned that over in her mind. “Time Lord thing, then, yeah?”

He nodded slowly. “On... on Gallifrey, everyone’s a touch-telepath,” he explained, meeting her eyes again and smiling slightly, though it was pained, and Clara realised how incredibly difficult this must be for him to talk about. “Most people live in giant, densely populated cities, have done for thousands of generations. In that kind of situation, there must be rules about who you let into your mind, and how deeply. That’s what marriage is to Time Lords. There are parts of myself that I can’t share with you, unless we’re married. Parts of me that will always stay locked away. This is the defining relationship of your life? Well, it is for me, too. And I don’t want to go about it with half-measures.”

That explanation wasn’t at all what she had expected. “That... makes sense,” she finally managed.

“So,” he said when she didn’t say anything else. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” she repeated, still trying to wrap her mind around everything he’d just said, and the sudden realisation of where they were headed. “I think...” She took a deep breath and looked up at him. “I think you should ask me properly.”

He darted his gaze around in confusion. “Did I not just—”

“Doctor, this is the only time I am ever going to do this,” she said. “You are it for me, for life. So if I’m only ever going to get the one marriage proposal, I want it to be a proper one, is all.”

He shot her a narrowed-eye look. “Now would probably be a bad time to bring up the whole ‘egomaniacal control freak’ thing, wouldn’t it?”

Clara wrinkled up her nose at him, mostly to keep from laughing. “Very bad time, yes.”

“Do I have to get down on my knees?” he whinged. “Only, that crevasse I jumped into today was actually quite deep, and I didn’t want to mention it but I am rather sore, and your sofa is surprisingly comfortable.”

From the twinkle in his eyes she knew he was teasing her, and she pursed her lips around the laugh that was still trying to escape. “No, you don’t have to get down on your knees, daft old man. Just, ask me properly!”

“Oh, alright, fine. Properly, properly,” he muttered, shaking out his hands as though he needed to be warmed up and limber for this, and she smothered a giggle.

He drew in a deep breath and took both her hands in his, catching and holding her gaze with an intensity that made her breathing go shallow.

Time and space seemed to crystalise around her, and Clara was starkly conscious of being in her body, in this instant, in this place, sitting beside this man. Beyond the current moment, the past and the future seemed to be tangible things. There was everything that had come before, the years of her own life and all the lives of her echoes, every time she had met the Doctor, stretching out behind her. And there was everything yet to come, the universe expanding, planets forming, stars blinking into existence and out again, all the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds she would spend with this man, on this path they had chosen.

She was abruptly aware of a door in her mind, the line of demarcation between the inner world and the outer world, between the things that were Clara Oswald and the things that were not. There was a sense of equilibrium between them, the inner and the outer, her personal universe compressed to fit into her five-foot-one frame, but not smaller, not lesser. Everything she was, in balance with everything that was.

And on that door, there came a tapping.

“Clara Oswald,” the Doctor said seriously, and the knocking at the edge of her mind intensified. “Will you marry me?”

She could feel her body, her current place in time and space, the heat of the room, the softness of her sofa, the light of the moon outside. She could feel the Doctor, his hands just slightly cool on her own, the physicality of him in that outer world, as stable as always. But she could feel him just on the other side of that mental door as well, asking for entry, closer than he had ever been.

Her answer would change everything, solidify the trajectory of her future. It would open that door, pair it with the matching one in the Doctor’s mind. The equilibrium would hold, she knew. The borders of her internal universe would remain in place, but they would gain another dimension, transcend and unfurl in ways she could hardly conceptualise with the door still closed.

Is this what you want? she had asked the Doctor, and the question echoed back to her in the confines of her mind. To build a life with me? Just you and me, for however long we get?

“Yes,” she breathed, utterly certain.

The Doctor grinned at her, and the door at the borders of her mind flew open, near to bursting with joy.

#Twelve/Clara #Whouffaldi #Whoffaldi #Clara and the Doctor #First Row On The Moon #For As Long As We Get #please comment and reblog!#available on AO3 under the same title and username #Clara Oswald #Twelfth Doctor #Kill The Moon AU #Doctor Who fanfic #Doctor Who #my writing #there will be more to come in this series!#I've got a whole collection of shippy s8 AU stories planned out #let me know what you think!

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fortunatelyhauntedblackcherry · 4 years

Text

Moonshine - A Beetlejuice Fanfiction 14

Warning: cussing, slight mention of the death of an asshole ex

The sisters all went to get some rest after the long night, but Beetlejuice had other plans. He had so much built up energy that he terrorized the neighborhood 'till the late morning, then teleported back to the house, still wiping his happy-teary eyes.

He appeared in a green puff of smoke right behind Rei, who was clearly cooking something in the kitchen. Even though she dressed up properly in highwaisted denim shorts and a kawaii pastelpink tank top, and did her makeup, her baggy eyes showed that she haven't slept a minute. He peaked over her shoulder.

- HI THERE! - he shouted, which made Rei drop the ladle she was holding, spilling batter all over the counter.

- JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST!!! - she widened her eyes, held her chest and breathed out. - Crap dude, you scared the living shit outta me. - Beej flashed a wide smile at Rei while doing a little fist pump and hopped on the counter's clean part.

- What can I say, I'm a demon, get used to being jumpscared, doll. - he said with a theatrical shrug. Rei rolled her eyes, grabbed a dish towel and wiped off the counter. Beetlejuice watched excitedly as she opened up the waffle maker, slided the cooked waffles out onto a plate, then after yawning, loaded it back up. Beej tilted his head sideways. - I wouldn't mind if you'd throw one of those yummylooking thingies in my way, sugar.

Rei fixed her glasses and raised an eyebrow at BJ.

- Aren't ya... You know... Kind of undead? - the demon pulled one side of his upper lip up.

- Yeah, so?

- So you wouldn't have to eat? - Beej threw his head back and groaned.

- I don't HAVE to, but I LOVE to. - he looked back at Rei and shrugged with his hands held up. - I dunno, it makes me feel... - he sighed with a smile. - ...alive.

For a couple of minutes, Beetlejuice just watched as Rei made breakfast. He was pulled out of daydreaming by the sound of hissing. Sofía came into the kitchen, holding Minerva in her arms. The cat hissed and groaned at Beej, who, as a response, just put his stripey snakelike tongue out. He looked at Sofía who still seemed to be furious. He started to dangle his feet and flashed the cutest smile he could.

- Sofía, sugarpuffs, may I say you look absolutely stunning on this fine morning of...

- Cut it, demon. - she said with dead eyes. The smile on BJ's face froze off. - You'll achieve nothing with flattery. - she set the cat down on the floor, then got back up and pointed at the demon. - Plus. I don't like you. - Beej put his hands on his hips.

- Well then go and fuck yourself!

Sofía rolled her eyes and went to the refrigerator. Minerva sat down before Beetlejuice on the floor, watching him with hauntingly thin pupils and perked up ears. But at least she didn't hiss anymore. Rei looked at her sister's way.

- Hey I'm pretty thirsty, would ya, Miss Grumpy, check if we have any orange juice left? - Sof reached into the fridge, got the bottle out, shaked it, removed the cap, and drank every last drop of orange juice. After this, she put the bottle down and flashed a meaningful look at Rei.

- No, we’re all out.

- I have a lot of questions, first of all, how dare you? - Sofía didn't answer, just grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge and exited the kitchen. Beej looked after her with puckered up lips, then looked at Rei questionably.

- Is she always this abominable? - Rei shrugged.

- She's just pissed at the three of us now so no, not always... But a lot of times. You're gonna get used to it though.

Beetlejuice laid back, put his hands under his head and floated next to Rei.

- I'm getting bored, so be a doll and tell me, where's my favourite little baby rook? I wanna tell her how my daily hauntings went, she's gonna LOVE it. - Rei pointed to the back door without looking up from the waffles.

- Outside, in the conservatory. Since we couldn't sleep, we fixed the glass panel Matthias broke. Now she's talking with her mom on the phone. - Beetlejuice started to float towards the door but Rei grabbed his jacket. - Stopstopstop, bring her this. And make sure she eats it. - and handed him a plate full of waffles, and a bottle of Nutella.

- What, why? - Rei sighed, put down the Nutella on the middle counter and pulled her hair back.

- Look, Beetlejuice, that's your name, right? - the demon nodded with enthusiasm. It was SO NICE hearing his name from a breather's mouth, not his own. - Okay so, Beetlejuice, just so you know, Ari has a very bad habit. When she's feeling down, she just won't eat. And that makes her hangry. And that makes her insufferable. And you don't want that. - she shook her head. - You NEVER want that. But comfort food always makes her want to eat, so... - she raised her arms and shrugged. - Here I am! Being a best sister/bestie, making her fuckin comfort food for breakfast. - Beetlejuice put his legs on the ground and grabbed the plate out of Rei's hand.

- Okay, I'll bring it to her... - he snickered and reached for the Nutella. - ...you slavemaster you. - he headed out but in the archway, he turned back and looked at Rei with a light smile. His green hair turned glowy a bit and his tips got a shy white shade. - Hey Rei? - the girl stepped back from the waffle maker and looked at him. Beej pulled his shoulders up and bit his lower lip. - Thanks for letting me stay.

Rei smiled widely and looked at the ground, blushing.

- Well, am I a hero? Really can't say, but... yes. - BJ laughed then blew raspberries. Rei gestured with her hand in the winter garden's direction. - Besides, Ari doesn't make friends easily, and it was nice to see that there's someone who gets her and genuinely laughs with her... Even though they're not a human. - BJ was still smiling, biting down on his lower lips. And were those slight pinkish streaks? - So I didn't have a choice, really. But yeah, you're welcome. - she went back to making waffles but quickly stepped back to face the demon. - By the way, she will totally act like she's alright but, let's face it, she's a mess. - A hot mess, thought Beetlejuice. - So be a nice emotional support demon boy please. - BJ's smile turned into a frown.

- What? Most of the time I even suck at being a proper demon... and now you want me to be a nice demon? - Rei snapped with her tongue.

- Did I stutter? Be brave enough to suck at something new. - she made a shooing gesture. - Now shoo before the waffles get cold.

When Beej arrived at the conservatory, happily floating while munching on a bug he catched earlier, Ari was sitting on the stairs, facing the inside of the garden with a sleeping Sirius in her lap. She had a red dropped-shouldered top on, which had the image of a running cherry bomb on it. She also wore comfy black knee-high trousers and fluffy red slippers with devilhorns on it. She was having a call.

- Ay no me digas! - she exclaimed with a huge hand gesture. She sounded so enthusiastic. - Is that true? Ahhh I can't wait to see mis primos favoritos! I miss those little rascals so much already! - Beetlejuice stepped behind Ari, leaned closer to her ear and whispered in the raspiest voice he could produce:

- BOO. - Ari turned around with a smile to face the demon, and scruffed his hair. Beetlejuice's hair's tips turned into a light pink shade. Ari pulled it a bit towards herself to see it better but Beetlejuice snapped his teeth towards her hand. She let out a tiny laugh.

- Sorry Mom, I gotta go now. A friend came over. - she stopped for a second, listening to the answer while smiling. Beetlejuice crouched down to her level. Sirius stood up, sniffed around the demon and wrinkled up his nose. Beej petted his head. The dog lifted his head up, licked his hand, then turned around and headed towards his dogbed to sleep a bit more. Ari wrapped a lock of her hair on her index finger. - Yeah. - she all of a sudden shook her head. - No mamá! NO?! - she faceplamed herself, then made the impression of peeling her face off. Beetlejuice let out a loud laugh. - Yepp he's weird like me. - she laughed and held her phone away from her face. She gazed at the demon with a sarcastic look on her face. - My mom asks if you're handsome or not. - she held the phone closer to Beej and did the hand gesture of talking.

- I'm devilishly handsome, Miss Rodríguez. - Ari gasped. She mouthed "Did ya remember my family name?" to which Beej nodded happily. Ari put the phone back to her ear. Her mom said something that made her roll her eyes. Hard.

- Okay that's WAY too much Mamá I'M HANGING UUUUPPP. - she sighed. - Sí, sí, sí. Give abuelita mi besos y bendiciones, okay? I love ya. - she sent kisses. - Bye, bye, BYYYEEE. - she put her phone away. Then with glistening eyes, looked at her demon buddy. - How was your dawn of haunting? - she cupped his face in her hands which made him kind of melt. At least his eyes looked like that. - TELL. ME. EVERYTHING.

- The. BEST. - he took a deep breath (even though he didn't need to) as Ari released his cheeks and planted the biggest smile on his face. - You know the house down the road? With the pretty pond and shit? - Ari nodded as her eyes started to wander around BJ's figure. - Well, a couple lives there with their kids and...

- OH MY GOD MILLENNIUM FALCON WAFFLES!!! - interrupted Ari and snatched the plate out of the demon's hand. Beetlejuice blinked fast with annoyance in his golden eyes.

- I thought interrupting was my thing. - the girl rived the Nutella from Beetlejuice's hand. He gasped and held his chest in a theatrical way. - Wow. Ya rude.

- Shut up Beej and tell me what you did to those poor kids. - the demon lifted one of his eyebrows with a cheeky halfsmile. Ari gasped and held his mouth. - Shit can I call ya that? - she definitely started to panic based on the stuttering. - I'm sorry it just came out, it's okay if you don't like it, I mean if you don't like nicknames I understand just...

Beej interrupted her with a gurgling laugh which made his head fall back. His vertebrae were cracking like an old door. He held Ari's shoulder with one hand and squeezed her cheeks together with the other. He locked his gaze in the girl's.

- If I don't like something, I'll ring a bell. - he pulled the girl closer to him by her cheeks. He lowered his voice, tilted his head a bit, pulled a smirk and some hooded eye action. His face was only a few centimeters away from Ari's. - But I'd like the best if you'd call me... Daddy. - Did... Did she just stare at my lips?

- You wish. - she said in a cooky tone. BJ laughed and let her go.

During the next hour or so, Beetlejuice and Ari talked and laughed their asses off while the demon was floating around. Beej showed Ari what he did last night, for example how he took off his head and rolled it under one of the kids' bed. Or how he hid in the wardrobe of the other child, then when he was falling asleep, he pulled his lower jaw down and let his tongue wander out of the closet, making him scream out in a half-asleep delirium. Ari tried so hard not to think about the kinky uses of a tongue like that... But she failed so miserably. She turned red as a tomato. She stood up and went to one of her cupboards of herbs to distract Beej from her face. He quickly stood up as well and stepped behind her. He was still talking while Ari was looking around in the cupboard, searching for her herb-book. Gods he sounded so happy. Ari glanced sideways with a smile. The demon's golden eyes were full of life, of freed up energy and...

- WAIT, you wear eyeliner?! - asked Ari, interrupting BJ in discussing whether he should scare the old couple living down the road just a little, or whether he should scare them to death. He crossed his arms before his chest and his smile quickly turned sour.

- Well, I like it. - he sounded defensive all of a sudden. Like he got bullied because of this before, thought Ari. - I know it's a bit wobbly but I LIKE IT and that's...

- Bug, eyeliner makes every guy hot AF. - stated Ari, making BJ surprised. He shook his head in disbelief, which made Ari giggle. - Yeah it's wobbly a bit but it looks awesome anyways! - she put the herbs down and stepped closer to Beej. He almost stepped back but Ari held him by his suspenders and pulled him closer. Her eyes twinkled as she took stock of BJ's makeup. - I think slightly metallic purple or dark green would suit your face. - Beej had the biggest, horniest smile spread out on his face.

- So basically what you're saying is that you think I'm sexy? - Ari let go of the demon's suspenders go and shaked her blushing off with a laugh. Beetlejuice blew raspberries at her since he didn't get an answer.

Ari got back to dealing with her herbs. She took a big cleaver and a chopping board out of the cupboard. Beej stepped behind her and put his head on her shoulder.

- Whatchya doin'? - Ari shrugged.

- Boring mortal stuff. - BJ clicked his tongue and rolled his golden eyes.

- Come on now, I'm not usually interested in boring mortal stuff, but this involves a cleaver so it can't be THAT boring. - Ari looked sideways, spotting BJ's puppy eyes. She snorted. Beej pouted his lower lip. - Pleeeeeaaase.

Ari smiled lightly. Nearly nobody was interested in her home remedies, not counting her family from her mother's side and her sisters, of course. So hearing someone new genuinely being interested in what she was working on, made her feel warm and appreciated. She lifted up the big, leather covered black book, which had pretty golden cornflowers painted on the cover. It had a ton of bookmarks and notes sticking out of it; some were stained, time made some yellow, some were colorful and bright and fairly new.

- I haven't slept, only 2 hours since yesterday and my body can't function with that much. But, you see, my mind is still hectic, which keeps me up, but I NEED to sleep to work properly. - Beej nodded. - So I'm making myself a nice pot of sedative, nightmare-repelling tea. - the demon nodded again. Ari's eyes wandered around his hair: now it had a fairly light green shade, with light pink and yellow tips. What do these colors mean?!

- And what do you need that for? - he pointed at the book Ari was still holding. She opened it up and started to turn the pages over.

- It's my family's herb book. It's easier to work from a recipe, I don't mess up anything like this. - she flipped a page and touched the next one. It had an extruded purple flower glued to the page. - Only a couple pages survived from the original book, but I can proudly say that some of our recipes date back to the 17th century, some are even older. - she sighed. - What I'd give to own the original copy... - she lifted the book up and hugged it. - It's nice to use the knowledge of my ancestors, it's like holding their hands. - her face turned foggy for a bit. - Even after what happened to them.

- What happened? - asked Beetlejuice while looking at the book.

- The Inquisition. Back in the 1600's in Cataluña, many of my family members were burnt at the stakes. They were thought to be witches, bringer of sickness and bad harvest. - she snorted. Loathing was audible while she talked. Beej pinched her cheek and flashed a toothy grin.

- So, you follow their path! - Ari let out a weird laugh, turned around, still holding the book, and leaned against the cupboard, smiling at the demon's slight remark. She flipped through some pages then pointed at a coffee-stained recipe.

- THAT'S IT! That's what I was looking for. - she pulled her hair back and smiled nostalgically. - Anise hyssop for defeating fear, bergamot for a good night's sleep, buckwheat because of high vitamin and mineral content, californian poppy for my anxiety, sage for basically everything, granadilla flower for calming nervousness and against bad dreams, chamomile and lavender for flavour and chillsies. - she hugged the book once again and breathed in heavily, with a smile on her face. - It's gonna be so good with honey. - Beej leaned against the cupboard as well and scratched his stubble.

- Just... Leave the sage out. - Ari raised an eyebrow.

- Why?

Beetlejuice let out a loud, aversive sigh and looked sideways at Ari while pushing his hair back.

- I bet ya know they say it repels demons. - Ari nodded slowly, disbelief in her eyes. - Yeah, shit works.

Beej made a face so disgusted it made Ari burst out with laughter. He put his palm on the top of her head and pushed her away. She elbowed his side in return.

- Okay, okay, then sage stays out of the mixture. - she said, still smiling like an idiot, and pointed at the other cupboard. - Wanna help me find my dried herbs? - Beej shrugged with a sarcastic face.

- Yeah, sure, ask the dyslexic demon to look for labeled magic herbs.

While Beej was searching through Ari's a hundred and twenty frickin tiny glass vials, for a slight second Ari checked her demon buddy out from the corner of her eye. She flashed an evil smile as a devilish thought planted itself into her mind.

- Hey, Beej, can I ask ya something? - Beetlejuice looked out from behind the other cabinet.

- Sure. - Ari's smile turned even more maleficent. Beetlejuice exactly knew what that naughty smile meant. Shit, he made that face at least a thousand times a day.

- Aren't you a little short to be a demon? - Beej gasped, held his chest, then when Ari started laughing at him sticking his stripey tongue out like a snake, he said in the most angelic tone he could produce:

- Says the oversized toddler! - Ari opened up her arms, mimicking something huge.

- But aren't you supposed to be a big, flaming entity? - Beej stepped before Ari with a similar smile on his face then lifted her up by her armpits... which she seemingly hated, based on the angry pre-schooler impression on her face. Although, the thought of "shit, he's strong... WAIT, NO, THAT'S NOT HOT, FUCK, BRAIN, NO... Okay act angry that should solve ya problem... You hoe." passed her mind.

- Aren't you supposed to be with your parents, my sweet, tiny, chubby cheeky child? - while talking, Beej summoned 2 more arms, pinched the girl's cheeks with them and did smooching sounds.

- Imma so punch you in the throat. - said Ari with the maddest tone she could. Beej raised an eyebrow and changed to a crooked, husky, even kind of horny tone.

- You had your chance when I kissed ya, but ya didn't. - Ari smirked.

- You call that a kiss?

Beetlejuice dropped Ari. He turned around, all 4 hands in the air, looking so irritated that even the tips of his hair turned into a slight reddish shade.

- EXCUSE ME?! - he pointed at Ari, who was still sitting on the ground, stroking her hurt bottom. - NO, EXCUSE YOU! HOW DARE YOU?!?!? - he popped his tongue, then went to the plate of waffles smothered in Nutella. - You know what? - he pointed at the girl again with one hand, put 2 on his hips, and grabbed a waffle with the fourth. - No more waffles for you. - he said as he bit into the Millennium Falcon. As he swallowed the bite, his eyes got wide and his additional 2 hands disappeared. An expression of wander and astonishment found its way to his face. - OHMYGOD THIS IS HEAVENLY!!! - he said in an amazed tone, then quickly changed back to his normal. I'm a badass demon, I shouldn't show emotions. - Ironically. - he stack his index finger into the bottle full of chocolatey nougaty hazelnut cream. - What is this shit?

Ari looked at him with a raised eyebrow and a weird little smile, not understanding her buddy's fuss about the delicacy. She shrugged.

- Nutella... Never heard of it? - Beej rolled his eyes and grunted.

- Babe, this house was uninhabited for at least 25 years. And the last people who lived here were between 90 and coffin-break years old. And that was in the late 80's. - he licked the paste off his finger and changed to a more seductive tone. - Lower your expectations about me. I might look young and devilishly handsome but I'm so new to these modern shits. - Ari rolled her eyes and stood up. Horny bastard.

- Okay, grandpa. - Beej stack his tongue out but Ari just pushed him in a childish way. - Gimme a bite too, I'm still starving. - she said as she reached for the plate Beej was now holding.

She took a bite out of a waffle, then put it back and started chopping up her dried herbs. She was almost done with the chopping and the piece of Millennium Falcon when she noticed that BJ was literally staring at her face with a cheeky halfsmile. His eyes were wandering around her lips.

- What are ya lookin' at? - she asked abruptly. Beej shrugged a bit and pointed at her canines as she took a last bite from the waffle.

- I like the teeth. - Ari smiled widely. She put down the cleaver and tapped her teeth with her long, black, spiderwebbed nail on her pointing finger.

- Thanks, they're fake porcelain caps. - she pointed at Beej's smile. - I like your double canines too! They look so badass. - Beej's hair turned into a weird mixture of light pink, shy white and bright green. He started to play with his fingers and looked down at his shoes. He bit his lower lip with a flattered smile. Ari leaned closer. - Am I crazy, or just like your hair and your eyes, those can change too? - Beej lifted his head up and pulled his hair back. He scratched his scrag as his teeth changed into a bear trap-esque, sharklike weirdness. Ari jumped back and screamed while covering her mouth in excitement. - OHMYGOD THAT'S SO HARDCORE! - she stepped back to Beej and tapped his teeth. - WOOOOOWZAH! - she grabbed the demon's shoulders and shaked him a bit. - You are the most awesome person I've ever seen. - she stepped back and crossed her heart with her nail. - Swear on my black gooey heart.

Beej changed his teeth back into "normal", but he was still scratching his scruff and was looking down. He was obviously taken aback. It looked liked he had never been genuinely complimented before.

- Well... Thanks... - he stuttered as he turned more pink. Ari looked at the ground too, blushing and smiling shyly as she said the next words:

- You know, I'm glad we winded up at your haunted house. If you wouldn't have been here, all three of us would be dead by now. Nobody else would have been able to stop my crazy ex. So... Yeah. - she sighed and bent down to peak at Beej's eyes. They found each other easily. They both smiled with bitten lips. - Thanks for killing him. - Beej cleared his throat to quickly regain his composure. He put his hands in his pockets.

- Ey, I got you. You know I do. That's what undead best friends are for.

After a couple minutes of awkward silence, Ari grabbed her chopped up herbs and pointed at the kitchen with her other hand.

- I'll boil these up quickly. Wanna watch The Nightmare Before Christmas in my room while I dose off to sleep? - Beetlejuice's eyes lit up as he nodded.

- Sure... Let me grab my snack. - he snapped and with that, the Nutella appeared in his hand. His devilish smile didn't tell nothing good about his intentions. Ari laughed lightly and reached for the bottle.

- Hey, come on, that's my Nutella! Give it back! - as soon as she almost reached the bottle, Beetlejuice started to float with a laugh, just out of Ari's reach. - HEY COME ON, THAT'S CHEATING!!! - she jumped up but Beej floated higher. - GIVE MY STUFF BACK!!! - Beej layed on his back while floating out of the winter garden, eating the paste with his fingers.

- If you don't pay your bio-exorcist, you will get repossessed! - Ari jumped after him one more time, then stomped angrily.

- This fuckin' demon, I swear to Ra... - she looked at her puppy, who was looking after the floating demon. - Hey, Sirius! - he peaked his ears up. - CATCH!

#alex brightman #beetlegeuse #beetlejuice #beetlejuice fanfiction #beetlejuice oc #beetlejuice the musical #fanfic #fanfiction #lawrence beetlejuice shoggoth #musical!beetlejuice #beetlejuice broadway

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thegreencircleone · 4 years

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A Belated 10/10 Story

The Girl from Out of Town.

((Eloni gets hit on/hits on someone.))

October 10th, 9 pm. Officially 1010’s 6th birthday.

It was between a few big events; but honestly from looking at Eloni, the green Android, one could not tell. October 10th was a big night for 1010, but it was one of Eloni’s favorite nights in general (apart from maybe new-years)... Even now he wandered to-and-fro speaking with guests, introducing himself, even pairing people off with other dancers.

A robot’s job was never truly done, but Eloni lived for this! 1010 loved to party, but Eloni in particular loved THIS party. He loved the formal wear, the excuse to get gussied up, the copious amounts of booze and alcohol, the exorbitant amount of food (though he couldn’t enjoy it). Right now he was waiting primarily for the game of croquembouche jenda- but as he did so he scanned the room for any negative or alarming emotions.

… And that is exactly what he found.

Bar.

Eloni slowly maneuvered his way in between throngs of party-goers toward the bar; his vision of the emotions causing the disturbance to his radar began to ping more completely. Anger was brewing loudly at the bar, though the cause remained a mystery. There was no fight, no arguing that he could detect; it seemed like the barely contained rage was simply stewing there on it’s own…

And then it’s source came into view.

At the bar sat a woman with vibrant yellow skin, brownish hair with streaks of medium blond curled into a loose, low, and messy bun at her neck. Her jewelry was simple and ornate, but hung close to her body aside from her sequined headband and row of pearls that hung in a knot all the way down to her navel, and her dress was an old-fashioned tabard-style dress of white and sequined gold and copper. She looked less like a party-goer, and more like a run-away or jilted bride.

She was stunning, even if you didn’t have a thing for the art-deco look… Or her pretty, pissy face as she slowly sipped whatever drink she had in that martini glass. This mystery woman also did not look like she was a typical party-guest for the 1010 crowd.

Eloni needed to intervene.

And that’s just what he was going to do.

Eloni slid up to the bar-stool right beside her. “You know;” he began with an earnest grin. “I thought the Captain turned off the time-machine before the party.”

The mystery woman stopped, looked up at him and gave him a dubious scowl. For a moment they stared at each other in mutual silence as the heartbeat of the EDM around them did some of the talking for them.

She locked eyes with her as she took a pointed sip from her glass as he started to continue.

“Hey. Name’s Elo-” but the Android stopped his sentence half-way through as he realized something much more interesting to talk about. “Oh wow. Your eyes are pretty.”

The woman continued to sip her drink, this time her brows knit in confusion. Beneath fluttering, heavily eye-lined lashes and golden eye-shadowed lids lay a set of perfectly vibrant emerald eyes- with a ring of ultra-light purple around her pupils.

Finally, she spoke. “That’s it?” she asked. “... I thought y’were some sorta robo-casanova. You pick up most skirts like this?”

Eloni was flabbergasted.

“I mean- I…” he blinked as he tried to unpack what all the heck she just said. “Oh. OH, no. I’m not- I’m not a lady-killer. That’s uh- that’d be my brother. He’s… Uh…” Eloni felt his shoulders ride up in awkward embarrassment as he gestured elsewhere. “I just… Uh. I didn’t greet you as you came in and you seemed really mad, and I thought I’d come over to… You know?”

“Shoot the shit?”

“... Help?” Eloni offered, smiling. “What are you drinking? Where are you from? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

From where he sat the woman’s ire retreated noticeably. She was still angry, but now she was more… Uncomfortable than angry. Well… No. Mostly angry… She just wasn’t the rage-filled time-bomb waiting to go off.

She looked back to Eloni, who by now was leaning halfway over the bar, trying his best to be suave. He thought for a moment that her anger retreated entirely-- and then the rage was back.

She let out an audible noise, crossed her legs the opposite direction from him and returned to her drink. “One; if this is your attempt to get me to say by boozin’ me up; don’t bother. It’s lemonade, sugar. Two; you just insulted my dress. Why the heck’d I’d tell ya where I’m from?”

Eloni sat up. “What? Nooo. I didn’t- I didn’t mean to insult your-” he gave her a once-over again. 1010 wasn’t really programmed to oggle fans, at least not discriminate, but Eloni still found her sense of style utterly different and definitely worth looking at. The dress, be it old-fashioned definitely fit her pretty well, and upon closer inspection it wasn’t white; but a very pale yellow. She looked and talked like a gangsters wife from some of those old mob movies.

“My eyes are up here, birthday boy.”

“Sorry!” he said on instinct.

The mystery woman turned around in her seat and finally looked at him again. “Don’t’cha have some fan to flirt with?” she asked. “Doubtless this is comfortable for you.”

Eloni smiled a little more. “Try me! My prime directive is to make sure all our fans have a good time at our birthday party!... Annnnd you seem dead-set on being pissed.”

The woman gave him a disbelieving look and crossed her arms, letting her drink sit on the counter empty. “Butter my scotch n’ call me in the mornin’, you ain’t gunna give up on this, are ya?”

“I’m programmed to make people smile!” Eloni insisted, sitting up straight and giving a little, informal salute. “Noooo frowns on my birthday!”

“Uh-huh…”

Eloni relaxed and leaned a little closer to her. “So, seriously baby. If I’m bothering you; I can always get one of my brothers. I’m not the popular one, but you say the word! All I want is a smile from you, and it’d be the best birthday gift.”

“Ppft,” the woman dismissed, but then she got a little quiet. “... No offense…” she said quietly. “... I’m flattered, but, seriously. You should go try to flirt with one of your fans, okay?” she asked. “It’s sweet you’re trying to make me feel better, but it’s not going to do much for me.”

“SiiiiSTER!” came a bombastic voice from right behind them. “Sister, I have procured the caviar and blinnies! You are correct! They are-” Eloni turned around to see a man with long, straight blond hair with stripes of green, but the strangest thing about this man was not his hair- but the goggles worn on his face.

The moment that Eloni saw the man seemed to be the moment the man saw him in return. There he stood, knees slightly bent with two plates filled with the aforementioned hors d'oeuvres on little plastic plates.

“OH. A 1010!... I will- uhh… I’ll just.”

“Zeebs, it’s fine…” the woman said, turning around and sliding off. “We were just going anyway.”

Eloni spun to follow her with his eyes. He should have just dropped it- everything in his code should have told him to stop his pursuit of this faraway, foul-mouthed, foreigner… But it was his birthday, dang it.

“You know; it’s rude to come to the party and ignore the birthday-boy!”

The pair stopped. The man with the goggles; (Zeebs wasn’t it?) turned around and let out a low and singular laugh. “It’s rude to harass a troubled woman! You don’t see her complaining!”

The woman held up her hand to her companion, then glared back at Eloni. “Well, kill me softly with his song- for an NSR goon ya don’t give up, do ya?”

Oh! That was a musical reference… Actually it was two. The comment on being an NSR goon was a bit befuddling for a moment, but figured it had been because she plainly was not from Vinyl city.

Eloni saw her irritation flare, but all he could do was smile. By now their interaction had proven to become interesting to the people around them. “1010 never surrenders,” he recited.

The two unknown party guests stopped and seemed to survey the situation. Zeebs glanced around a little more frantically than his sister whose interesting gaze settled back onto the green android after a moment. “Oh my goood… What. Do. You. WANT from me? A smile?” she asked, not at all afraid to show she was still mad. “‘Cause I’ll have y’know: I have a reason why I’m absolutely livid!”

“Sister… Ix-nay on the Ad-may…”

“Fuggit. We’re already here,” the woman said back at him. “Go on, birthday boy. What’ll it take for you to let me skip town in peace?”

Eloni stood up, stretching out to his ten foot height. “If you weren’t here for my birthday; you should have made an appointment!” he chided, watching the face of this mystery-woman’s flinch with embarrassment. “Tonight’s my night! A night to pAaRrTty~” he hummed musically. “What sort of party would it be without dancing?”

The woman paused, her face still scrunched in disbelief before she turned to her brother. “... Hold my purse,” she instructed softly, turning back to Eloni with a little stomp. “Alright, soldier-boy,” she said lifting a finger up at his face… From allllll the way down there. At least five feet down. “You get ONE. Dance. After that, and I’m gone. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Eloni studied her emotions for a moment. She was still… Mad, but she was almost acting comically pissy. To liken it to something easier to explain- if red was anger and yellow was happiness, then her emotions teetered on a pale orange. She was just as happy to be pursued as she was angry it was him.

Eloni leaned down. “Sure, baby. I can make one dance count.”

There came a tart snort from the woman below him. “Oh,” she laughed… Then slowly her anger receded a little more. “Oh. I’m gunna fucking run you into the ground, you sentient lamp-post.”

It was a threat. It was playful. It was a challenge… It tickled him.

Eloni let out an equally incredulous laugh. “Can you even… Dance in that thing?” he asked, taking in the nearly floor-length gown.

But surprisingly the woman forced a smile, grabbed Eloni by his suit jacket and started dragging him off to the dance floor. “Quit talkin’. Move ya gams.”

Eloni let out another chuckle as he watched the woman drag him out to the dance floor. The anger was practically no longer there. Only tracings remained; but emotions didn’t necessarily just stop because you had moved on: they lingered. This stranger had some fight back in her, but it seemed she was enjoying this more than not.

“So aggressive, baby~”

The woman looked back up at him. “Don’t call me ‘baby’, sugar.”

“Don’t call me ‘sugar’, doll.”

“Don’t call me ‘doll’, either.” By the time Eloni was dragged back into the dancing fray the woman had turned around and snapped to, heels he hadn’t had the chance to see snapping to as she readied herself. “You swing, darling?”

Oh. Oh he didn’t entirely know how to respond to that.

“... I’ll take that as a-”

“I’ll match whatever you put out, ma’am,” he finally pushed out.

The woman finally seemed to regard him for a second, before shrugging, not looking at him straight in the face. “Mm. We’ll work on it,” she said, stepping close. “Ever dance with a partner?.... And I don’t suppose you can use your super robot powers to play a good swing number?”

Eloni…Wasn’t entirely sure what happened after that. All he did was look up towards the DJ booth where Subatomic was playing his fair share of music and sent in a request, message hurried and likely missing a few vowels. He didn’t care.

“... So, uh,” Eloni started. “Uh, I’m sorry. I’m not normally this brave…” he said. “Or. Uh this pushy…”

The woman cocked her hips and shimmied a bit closer. “It’s your birthday,” she excused. “... And it was kinda rude of me to stop and not say hi, at least, so. Two-fer-two, darling.”

Eloni blinked again as DJ came through- birthday boy requests were high on the chain of command. Soon the sound of electric-pumped ragtimey-toons pounded through the air… That’s when it was all a blur.

1010 was designed to dance, yeah, but new dances took a lot of concentration and coding on the part of the Droids AI. Eloni and his brothers were great with their dance routines, but sometimes their personal dancing skills were hit-or-miss… Even then Eloni liked to think his long legs would hit those swing-high kicks; but he was nothing on this woman. Sheer fabric and high-heels were competing with him faster than he had ever seen…It wasn’t a quarter into the dance that his lead was entirely taken over by her.

It was a situation he had no idea was coming; a woman half his size beating him at dancing. A HUMAN woman practically running him into the ground… It was a lot, it was an endless barrage of legs and shimmies…

It was pretty great.

Just as soon as the song had started; it had ended, Eloni was practically bent over and the mystery woman was done. Off she trotted in her high-heels to re-join her worried looking brother with a completely enraptured Eloni to follow her.

“W-wait. What’s your-” but before Eloni could finish the question or even grab her attention- he felt his hydraulic knee buckle- and land him square onto a nearby table.

Plasticware and plates flew to the floor and Eloni struggled to keep his holographic head above a pool of spilled rose and champagne. When people rushed him to see what was wrong he gazed around.

The Mystery Woman and her brother were gone.... Well. At least he made her smile!

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inevitably-johnlocked · 5 years

Note

Hey! I was wondering if you’ve got any good Johnlock recs that focus a bit on soldier!John? I read a lot of your recs where they’re together before John goes to Afghanistan, but I just love BAMF!John!

Hi Lovely!!

Ahhh, I’m glad you enjoy my recs! I’ve not very many Soldier John fics, but let’s see what I got!

SOLDIER JOHN

See also:

Sherlock’s Military Kink

Alternate First Meetings (Canon-Feeling)

Alternate Professions

Past Sholto / John

BAMF! But Insecure John

Sherlock’s soldier!John Kink is Getting Out of Hand by wendymarlowe (E, 1,247 w. || Secret Crush, Military Kink, Masturbation) – Sherlock’s got a secret kink. And a secret box where he hides his pictures of John in uniform. And a very, very secret crush on his flatmate.

Corn Dog Daddy by inevitably_johnlocked (M, 2,719 || Sherlock POV, Fluff and Crack, Corn Dogs, Fairgrounds, Coming In Pants, Euphemisms, Military Kink, Flirting, Sexy John, BAMF John, Smol Sherlock, Pining Sherlock, Humour) – Sherlock and John wind down after a case in a small town at a county fair. Sherlock’s imagination goes awry as John’s sexiness drives him crazy. Also: John knows how to handle a meat stick. Part 2 of I-J’s Tumblr Ficlet Collection

It’s After That Hurts by jonnyluvssherlock (T, 2,791 w. || City of Angels AU || Fantasy, Fallen Angel Sherlock, Soldier John, Pining Sherlock, Friends to Lovers, Permanently Incomplete Fic) – Sherlock’s an angel stuck as a guardian to danger addict John Watson. Everything is fine until he gets too involved. Now he has to make the choice, eternity alone or one life time with a man who may or may not love him.

Straight Shooter by nefariosity (E, 3,249 w. || Est. Rel., Light Dom/Sub, Military Kink, PWP) – Sherlock has a military kink. John indulges him.

The Bee Charmer by dreadpiratewatson (M, 3,314 w. || Est. Rel., Captain / Soldier John, Idiots in Love, Domestics, John in the Army) – Greg goes to 221B to check up on Sherlock after a strange phone call pulls him away from an important case, and is stunned to find himself in front of a gun brandishing soldier with a sleeping Sherlock on his chest. John Watson is a doctor, a war hero, a husband, and the only one in the world who can soften Sherlock’s heart.

Spoils of War by sweetcupncakes (E, 3,563 w. || Bottomlock, Military Kink, Comeplay, Anal) – John brushes his thumb over the gun’s slide, over the rear sight. Sherlock’s mouth feels too wet. He could lick John’s fingers, suck on them, bite down softly on that callus that is a direct result of John’s frequent need to handle the gun at all. Sherlock could do that, John might like it, really. Sherlock has been told his mouth is absolutely lovely.

Uniform by kirakira_nanoda (E, 4,050 w. || Military Kink, Horny Sherlock, PWP) – John indulges in Sherlock’s military kink. Part 2 of Sherlock’s military kinks

Private Rituals by justacookieofacumberbatch (buffyholic) (E, 4,377 w. || Masturbation, Anal, Light BDSM, Military Kink) – Sherlock has a very specific masturbation ritual, but what would John think of it?

The Prize We Sought Is Won by deathfrisbees (E, 4,610 w. || First Time, Mild D/S, Oral, Military Kink, Bottomlock) – Sherlock’s in love, or in lust, or both–unfortunately, the object of his affections is not only his completely oblivious flatmate, but said flatmate would probably run screaming into the hills should he find out. John’s been invited to a wedding–unfortunately, the groom used to serve under him back in Afghanistan, and requests that John wear a uniform he’s honestly not sure he fits into. Unfortunately for both flatmates, Sherlock’s got a military kink the size of Kandahar and John wants to know if he actually can fit into this uniform or if his eyes are deceiving him. It goes from there.

Winter of Life by You_Light_The_Sky (T, 5,178 w. || Christmas, Fluff & Angst, Magic Realism) – It was an experiment, really. On Christmas, Sherlock wrote to Santa asking for a friend. He got a broken toy soldier instead. This is the story of how he finds him again and again.

5687 (Approximately) by prettysailorsoldier (T, 6,771 w. || Est. Rel., Alternate Canon, Christmas, Pining, Fluff, Soldier John) – When John’s leave request for Christmas is denied, Sherlock is nothing short of devastated, not that he’s letting it show. The holiday season now something he’s just waiting to end, Sherlock doesn’t think anything can possibly make it worse. That is, until he realizes no one in his life believes his army “boyfriend” is even real, but, luckily, everyone is in for a surprise. Part 13 of 25 Days of Johnlock

I Need You To See Me by Mssmithlove (E, 12,625 w. || Angst, Amnesia, Soldier!John) – After going back to war, John is yet again invalided home, this time with a broken ankle and a chunk of his memory missing, unable to recall the last five years he’s spent being Sherlock Holmes’ partner and husband. Part 9 of Happiness Awaits

All the Girls Love a Soldier by Book7BrokeMyBrain (E, 12,951 w. || Military Kink, Frottage, Domesticity, Post S3, Pining Sherlock, Kilt John, Wedding, Dancing, Oral, Romance, ) – John is invited to a stag party and a wedding. The related accoutrement suit Sherlock to a T.

The Nutcracker by Odamaki (T, 13,758 w. || Nutcracker AU || Christmas, Dark Magic, Dolls) – Sherlock is unimpressed with Uncle Rudy’s present. A doll? What does he want with a doll?

whiskies neat by Ellipsical (E, 20,660 w. || Alternate First Meeting, POV Second Person Sherlock, Slow Burn, One Night Stand, Rimming, Blow Jobs, Anal, Soldier John, Crying, Emotional Lovemaking, Switchlock) – Home and hearth and whiskies neat, or, alternatively, Sherlock Holmes falls in love.

And A Doctor by StillWaters1 (T, 27,393 w. || Friendship, Doctor John, Whump, Soldier / Doctor Dichotomy, Five and One) – It was only when people actually saw John working as a physician that they began to understand: that it wasn’t just about bullets and IEDs and trauma care under fire. That “doctor” actually covered a pretty wide field. And that John was bloody good at covering ground. 5 times Dr. Watson treated others and 1 time he treated himself.

Guidelines by WithLoweredVoices (M, 43,018 w. || Winglock || Angels, Fantasy, Angst, BAMF! John, War) – The Good Soldier, one of the oldest and strongest of the fallen, is offered a bargain: to live as John Watson and to Guide a fledgling archangel so that he will stay on the path of good. Of course, Sherlock Holmes has different ideas about his destiny. Fantasy AU. Warnings for violence, occasional gore, and a whole load of hurt and angst.

A Week is Just Seven Days Isn’t It? by scifigrl47 (T, 39,906 w. || Humour, Friendship/Bromance, Stroppy/Bored Sherlock, Undercover/Army John, Texting, Pining-ish Sherlock, John Whump) – When John heads overseas for a week, Sherlock’s forced to fend for himself. It goes about as well as anyone could have anticipated. Which is to say, very, very poorly. Don’t worry, things’ll be fine in just seven days.

Bedroom Tales by Junejuly15 (M, 49,950 w. || Friends to Lovers, Through the Years, H/C, Military Kink, First Kiss / Time, Romance, Insecure Sherlock, Voyeurism, Post-TRF, Ficlets, Fluff and Angst, Fix-It Fics) – Bedroom Tales is a collection of John and Sherlock ficlets. They are set at various stages of their relationship and are in no particular order. Some are fluffy, some sexy, some angsty, there is hurt and comfort, romance and love. What unites them is that they all play in a bedroom, but not necessarily the one in 221B.

Two Two One Bravo Baker by abundantlyqueer (E, 114,574 w. || Military AU || Afghanistan, War Story, Thriller, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining) – Captain John Watson of 40 Commando, the Royal Marines, is assigned to protect and assist Sherlock Holmes as he investigates what appears to be a simple war atrocity in Afghanistan. An intense attraction ignites between the two men as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens everything they’ve ever known, but Sherlock is as much hunted as hunter, and everyone close to him is in deadly danger. Can he solve the case in time to save himself and John? Part 1 of Two Two One Bravo Baker Universe

MARKED FOR LATER

A Box Where I Keep My Love by Aelfay (T, 2,274 w. || DomJohn / SubSherlock, Soldier John) – In the pursuit of a criminal, John agrees to use his dominance to keep things from getting violent. Sherlock suddenly feels his world change gears. Part 1 of the Levels!verse series

Soldier’s Pins by justacookieofacumberbatch (buffyholic) (E, 3,615 w. || Dog Tags, PWP, Porn With Feelings) – Sherlock has developed a habit of wearing John’s dog tags, but what happens if John catches him?

To Be Consoled by 221b_hound (T, 4,770 w. || BAMF John, Doctor John, Graphic Descriptions, Mild PTSD) – An ordinary day is torn to shreds by a bomb blast, and John’s friends are reminded that he’s not just Sherlock’s blogger and assistant: he’s a soldier and a doctor and a leader in his own right. But he’s human, too, like anyone else. Part 28 of the Guitar Man series

we have never seen a greater day than this by Lediona (T, 16,090 +w. || WiP || Royalty Night Out AU || WWII / VE Day, Meet Cute, Prince Sherlock / Soldier John, Alternating POV) – Peace. At long last. It’s VE Day and Prince William desires to join the celebrations. It is a night of excitement, danger and the first flutters of romance.

Dead Letter Office by a_different_equation (M, 20,364 w. || ‘Bartleby’ Fusion / Office Setting AU || Different First Meeting, Epistolary, John’s Blog, Angst with a Happy Ending, Pre-Canon, John Watson is Sherlock’s Boss, PTSD John, Military Backstory, Writer John, Drug Use, Texting) – John Watson comes home from the war, gets a new job and meets Sherlock Holmes through Mike Stamford. Same tale since 1891, except this time it’s 2008, John is Sherlock’s boss, and they work together at the Dead Letter Office in London. It’s not a love story, until it finally is.

A Twist of Fate by cloud_wolfbane (M, 21,103 w. || Omegaverse, Mpreg, Drug Use, Parentlock) – In a cocaine bender Sherlock forgets to take his heat suppressants and spends his heat with a soldier readying for deployment. While he remembers the man’s kindness he does not remember his name. In a move even Sherlock isn’t sure he can deduce, he decides to keep the child. What will he do 10 years later when he meets Dr. John Watson at Barts? Part 1 of the Twist of Fate series

Mad Doc Watson Series by ThetaSigma (G to E, 21,516 w. across 9 works || BAMF!John, Captain Watson, Est. Rel., John’s Past, Sherlock’s Military Kink, Scars, Kidnapping / Hostage Situation) – John Watson is utterly BAMF and basically a goddamn madman. Following are stories of him in Afghanistan and him in London, being the craziest bastard ever (Sherlock is besotted).

The Bravery of the Soldier by bakerstreetgirl (G, 101,703 +w., WIP || BAMF John, John in Afghanistan, PTSD, Post-TRF, Case Fic, Sherlock Cares, Epic Bromance, Platonic Soulmates, Platonics, Flashbacks) – When a news story about a hostage situation in Afghanistan breaks, details about John Watson’s military service come to light that the doctor had kept secret for a long time. Sherlock is intrigued and John manages to surprise the British government. What John needs in light of this story and the PTSD responses it flares up, is a friend. Can Sherlock Holmes step up to the job? Deals mainly with John’s career and military background, plus epic friendship, BAMFness and a little bit of case fic. Part 1 of the Before Baker Street series

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #soldier john #my fic recs #military kink #bamf john #afitz1996 #fic rec sunday

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willsff7rthoughts · 4 years

Text

[REVIEW] Final Fantasy VII: Remake

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for both Final Fantasy VII (1997) as well as Final Fantasy VII: Remake (2020).

Introduction

Before I get into things, I feel like this review deserves a little bit of context.

Final Fantasy VII (1997) is my favorite video game of all time. As a kid, I liked my Game Boy games; Pokémon Red and Link’s Awakening were good fun as I passed summer days at my grandparents’ house. However, it wasn’t until I played Final Fantasy VII that I fell in love with video games and realized the platform’s potential as an art form. The game packed a full and impactful punch – a vast and varied world to explore, an engrossing and gripping story, characters whose lives are changed forever, stunning graphics (at the time), a simple yet deep combat system, and a new way of keeping things fresh at every turn. All of this spanned across four discs and fifty hours of a completely riveting gaming experience.

Video games have been my foremost hobby and passion since my first foray into this wonderful adventure, and thus it isn’t a stretch to say that Final Fantasy VII helped define who I am as a person. So, let me be the first person to say that I was nervous when Final Fantasy VII: Remake was announced. I wasn’t one of those people who obnoxiously kept asking for it, nor did I even really want it. The odds of this remake meeting the sky-high expectations set by the original were astronomically low, and the thought of recreating my first love in a modern gaming culture where games are more popular, more culturally relevant, and more heavily scrutinized than ever before was downright terrifying. Imagine that the thing you loved and championed for the most was vilified in the social media era. Indirectly, the part of you which that thing helped to define would be vilified, too. If, in the middle of the remake’s development cycle, Square were to suddenly announce that the plug was pulled on the project and it would never see the light of day, I wouldn’t have been upset because I was so fearful of being disappointed. Nothing could have eased this fear – not the news of the old guard getting together to make this game, not the breathtaking visual previews, or the overwhelmingly well received gameplay demo. I needed to see for myself if Square could re-capture lightning in a bottle.

The point that I’m hoping to illustrate here is that this isn’t a Kingdom Hearts III (2019) situation where Square could have put prison gruel on my plate and I’d still eat it up like a well-seasoned filet mignon simply because I’m happy it exists. Quite the opposite, in fact. Upon popping the disc in, I went in with a strict and critical mindset because this game had to be absolutely stellar; anything else would be a massive disappointment.

With that set up, and a thirty-eight hour escapade from the Sector 1 Reactor to the highway out of Midgar in the books, let’s get into it. I’ll be covering and assigning subjective scores to each of the following categories: Visuals, Sound, World, Gameplay, Characterization, Story, Ending. At the end, I’ll deliver concluding thoughts and attempt a final subjective score.

Visuals

We’ll start with the bells and whistles. Visuals, and then sound.

I’ve always been one to say that graphics are a low priority in the world of video games, that the “game” part is what should grip you moreso than the “video” part. In fact, I haven’t adhered to this more loudly than when defending the 1997 original because no game has been subject to more “polygon graphics” and “Dorito hair” memes.

All that said, good graphics are one hell of a cherry to have on top. And this game’s cherry is a sweet one.

Square Enix has always been at the forefront of graphical prowess for pretty much their entire history; they tend to set the bar in this department when it comes to a new Final Fantasy installment and this remake is no exception.

It’s pretty simple here: Everything. Looks. Fucking. Amazing.

We’ll start with the character designs. All stay true to the original; the biggest liberties that Square decided to take were Barret’s sunglasses to highlight that renegade, demolitionist aesthetic (he may or may not wear them indoors a bit too much, but I digress) and Tifa’s new stockings and sports bra underneath her iconic white tank to give her more of that sporty, martial artist look. Both are welcome additions. Zooming out and taking a look at the entire cast, everyone looks absolutely brilliant in their 2020 self.

Facial expressions, lip syncing, and body language are of course impeccable and life-like for all characters throughout the game’s entirety. It’s important to note, too, that Square pushed the envelope so much on these character models that it’s often hard to distinguish whether or not in-game models or pre-rendered models are being used in cutscenes.

Animations both in battle and out of it are extremely fluid and well-done. Battle particles and visuals are flashy and distinct without being overbearing or stealing the limelight away from the gameplay itself. Between Kingdom Hearts III and now this game, it’s probably fair to say that all of the chatter surrounding Square’s adoption of Unreal Engine 4 can now be put to rest.

I’ll cover the visual quality of Midgar itself in the “World” section, but as you can probably imagine, I was blown away by that, too.

Visuals Score: 10/10

Sound

Let’s begin with the voiceover quality (I played in English). This is actually a harder obstacle for Square to tackle than people realize, I think. These aren’t brand new characters. People know them already. The original game’s dialogue was done completely in text, so if you’re Square, you face this challenge where your players have a distinct voice in their head for these characters based on their appearances, backgrounds, personalities and choices of words. Can you capture that exactly?

I think Square did a great job, for the most part. You can hear Cloud’s fake apathy, the sincerity underneath his front of not caring. There’s a distance and mysterious quality to his voice that I think is so essential to his character. Barret is likely the weakest in terms of vocal performance; when he gets loud, I can’t get the Internet’s early comparisons to Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder (2008) out of my head. However, when speaking at a normal tone, and especially when speaking at a somber tone, I think he’s absolutely perfect. Gruff and tough, yet absolutely empathetic and passionate. Tifa likely has the strongest vocal performance, perfectly capturing a character who is pensive and struggling to identify what’s right amidst the chaos around her while being put in the position of needing to be the voice of reason. Aerith’s voice is higher pitched and carries more whimsy than I had imagined, but I also really like this version because it paints Aerith as this ordinary, innocent and playful woman which is true to her initial characterization before we find out that she is connected to something much, much deeper. The rest of the characters are voiced beautifully, from the Shinra crew, to the entirety of Avalanche (shoutouts to getting Badger from Breaking Bad to play Wedge, how absolutely perfect), to the random scared citizens we meet amongst the slums.

Moving onto the soundtrack... just wow. Nobuo Uematsu, you brilliant son of a bitch.

I’m of the opinion that Final Fantasy VII boasts the second best soundtrack in the franchise, second only to Final Fantasy IX (2000), and I really didn’t see where it had room to improve. Imagine if all of The Beatles were alive and said today, “Yeah, we’re going to remake Abbey Road, and make it even better.” Like... how? How do you improve upon a masterpiece? The potential and possibility is just outside of our comprehension, right? And yet, they would probably find a way.

Similarly, in a 2020 landscape in which Nobuo has a lot more tools, tricks, and experience up his sleeve, he managed to churn out a reimagined soundtrack that builds upon the core strengths of the original to create something new and grand. For example, from the jump, we can compare the Bombing Mission tracks. The original is fantastic, and a classic – a spunky baseline combined with anxiety-inducing synth horns create the perfect ambience for the mission at hand while setting up Midgar’s feel of a grungy, electric city. Nobuo’s version for the remake utilizes a sweeping orchestra to create the exact same feeling but with a much fuller sound fitting for a modern game.

Of course, plenty of new tracks were created for this game as well such as the score for the Wall Market sections, and certainly deserve their place amongst the old songs that we fell in love with before. Because of this, no two areas of Midgar felt the same (which can happen in a world where everything is called a sector and a number), and areas from the original took on that received their own theme took on a life of their own. Finally, the collectible jazz tracks were an amazing touch that provided an alternative look at the game’s iconic themes without breaking the immersion of the world too much.

A few of my personal favorites from throughout the game:

The Airbuster – A remake of Final Fantasy VII’s boss theme, and it just... slaps, as the kids say.

Critical Shot – An alternate battle theme that we first heard in the trailers which was simply a lot of fun to fight to

Tifa’s Theme – Seventh Heaven – The iconic piano track blossoms into a wonderful and iconic orchestral experience. Beautifully done.

Aerith’s Theme – Sector 5 Church – This one’s a bit of an outlier; it’s not actually listed on the FF7R OST and is in fact original to Nobuo’s Final Fantasy VII piano collections, but it’s the perfect example of music tying a ribbon onto a scene. Cloud falling into the Sector 5 Church and meeting Aerith is something I’ve seen countless times, but I was still moved to tears by how beautifully everything comes together.

On Our Way (Collectible Jazz Track) – We get the Kalm theme early with this one. Man, oh, man that saxophone.

Sound Score: 10/10

World

To be honest, it was basically a given that Square was going to nail the bells and whistles. Square-Enix games rarely, if ever, disappoint in the audiovisual department. With those out of the way, we can start moving to the meat of the review: How well did Square-Enix recreate this iconic world? In the case of this edition of the Remake, did they manage to bring Midgar to life in an acceptable way?

I’m going to make a confession. After the bombing mission, I felt bored. In fact, I turned the game off and called it a night. This isn’t to say that the bombing mission wasn’t recreated beautifully – it certainly was – it’s just that I've been conditioned by the original game to associate Midgar with being this slow, uninteresting opening act of the Final Fantasy VII story and that the bombing mission is just the first step to leaving Midgar so that I can start the real adventure.

And then, I got to Sector 7.

Holy shit.

I hadn’t really put much thought into how many levers Square had at their disposal to bring Midgar to life. Sector 7 served as the first of many slaps to the face that absolutely nothing was off limits, and whatever Square was going to touch was turning into gold. What in the 1997 edition was simply one screen with the bar, a couple shops, and an apartment or two we could enter was transformed into a full-on city. A grid of streets, avenues, and alleyways littered with townsfolk whose conversations about recent plot points we could overhear as we passed by, which created a pulse within the slums. A bevy of different stores and buildings to explore. A fresh cast of characters and NPCs to converse with which deepened our connection to these slums. And the plate. I could talk for hours about this – in the original, such a big deal is made of the two layers of Midgar, and how the top plate on which the privileged live blocks out the sky and pollutes the air for the slums below. But we literally never see the freaking thing because obviously, how could they show it in a top-down view? And yet, in this remake, it’s very much omnipresent. The steel sky of dread and inequality spans omnipresent across the slums we traverse (I unashamedly spent a legitimate five minutes just staring up at it, like “Holy crap. There it is...” as if I were a kid catching Santa Claus on Christmas night).

And of course, Sector 7 was just the tip of the iceberg. Sector 5 got a very similar treatment in addition to perfectly recreating Aerith’s house while capturing its vibes of being a diamond in the rough. Shinra HQ was downright gorgeous and more grand than we could have imagined. Something that stood out to me was Square’s ability to expand on areas from the original Midgar that were total afterthoughts – the journey from Sector 5 to the Sector 7 playground which in the original was a couple unremarkable screens became a winding stretch worth hours of exploration, puzzles, and battle. Other originally miniscule areas like the train graveyard, the sewers underneath Wall Market, and the climb up to Shinra HQ all got a similar treatment. Square didn’t stop there, either, introducing new areas such as a brief foray to the suburbs topside of the plate which showed new light upon this electric city. Honestly, what floored me the most was just how much life there was in all of Midgar. The conversations that the city’s inhabitants in virtually all areas that we pass through served to not only give Midgar a heartbeat, but also to make us as the player truly feel the gravity of our actions.

Truly, Square’s brilliance shone bright here – the bland and boring original Midgar only served as a blank canvas for the city to be invigorated in grand fashion for this remake.

World Score: 10/10

Gameplay

This is possibly the most important section. All the bells and whistles about this game are great, and the setting was recreated beautifully while capturing every vibe of the original and then some... but in the end, this is a video game, and aesthetics and soundscape don’t mean anything if your game isn’t fun.

Square-Enix had a monumental challenge before them when having to come up with a combat system for this remake. On the one hand, you have the classic Final Fantasy ATB system which longtime fans of the series absolutely love; this rewards tactical thinking, preparation, and methodically planning out and expending turns and resources to reach the outcome that you desire. On the other hand, turn based combat isn’t exactly premium gaming in 2020. I’m a Final Fantasy purist and even I can admit that. We’re just not as limited anymore. Developers have the ability to create these fantastic action-based games with better responsiveness, flow, and hitbox/hurtbox technology than ever before, and this style of gaming is obviously a lot more appealing and rewarding to a wider audience of players who frankly know better in this day and age.

So, Square did their best Dora impression and said “Why not both?”

And from it came perfection.

Yes, I said “perfection”. Square was somehow able to find a way to make old school and new school tango, and they are wonderful dance partners.

A brief summary for those who are out of the loop: In a normal state, combat plays a lot similarly to a lot of action-based games we know and love today (think God of War, Kingdom Hearts, Dark Souls). You can move around freely, guard, dodge, and attack to your heart’s content. There are elements here that are absolutely necessary in a modern video game that were missing in the original Final Fantasy VII: Constant engagement. Real-time skill expression.

The traditional Final Fantasy players don’t get left out either. By playing through combat normally – attacking, blocking, and dodging – the player builds up their ATB gauge. Once their ATB is full, they can enter Tactical Mode, which slows down time dramatically and allows the player to use their character’s skills, magic, summons, and items.

And the absolutely beautiful thing? You need both standard play as well as Tactical Mode to succeed in combat. The necessity of standard play is obvious – you need to be able to run around, attack, and defend to thrive in combat. But you won’t get anywhere with tougher enemies just by whacking them. You need to use your ATB gauge in order to pack a significant punch to enemies, to discover and exploit their weaknesses, and to heal up your party.

Speaking of the party, I deeply enjoyed being able to switch seamlessly between controlling the party members with the push of a button. AI-controlled party members’ ATB gauges fill up more slowly, which means constant switching, assigning ATB usage, and moving to the next party member are key to maximizing effectiveness. Hooray for even more avenues for skill expression!

And let me just take a second to gush. Perhaps my biggest criticism of the original Final Fantasy VII is that literally every character is pretty much the same in battle. Yes, their base stats vary slightly, as do their Limit Breaks, but aside from that, with enough materia and stat increase item shenanigans (and it doesn’t take much), every character plays and feels the same in combat.

Square completely shattered that criticism in this remake. Every character feels unique and satisfying to play:

What’s remarkable to me about playing as Cloud is how well Square nailed the speed at which he plays at. ‘Cause think about it, right? Dude’s holding a sword that weighs 80-100 lbs, so his attacks and moveset have to be able look and feel like they pack a heavy punch. But at the same time, we know that Cloud’s no rook, and he has some dexterity and speed to him. To find this balance, his combos from beginning to middle a great tempo and good flash, and they finish with a visible powerful and empathetic smash.

Tifa is far and away my favorite character to play as. Honoring her Final Fantasy monk inspiration, Square designed Tifa in such a way that she feels like she came straight out of a fighting game. Lightning quick, an emphasis on combos, and get this – you can animation cancel. As an example, I was fighting a boss and already had Unbridled Strength (damage boost) and Haste (ATB buildup boost) activated on Tifa. I dodged the boss’s frontal cleave with Focused Strike, strung some basic attacks together, threw in Overpower which links with your basic attacks, and finished by using Whirling Uppercut then canceling the landing animation by using Divekick. That’s. Insane.

Square nailed Barret’s awkward role as the supporty-ranged tank. His damage isn’t great, but he plays at a safe range and is your best bet to take down units at a far distance. He has some ridiculous HP and defensive stats and is a solid magic user so he was honestly great to switch to when my higher DPS characters needed a breather to get healed up.

Okay first of all, thank God they gave Aerith a magic-based ranged basic attack. The sound of her whacking something in the original to the tune of, like, 12 damage will haunt my dreams forever. Aerith feels fantastic to play as well. I draw comparisons to the Final Fantasy XIV black mage – switch to Aerith, set up an Arcane Ward (doubles spellcasts!), don’t move, and watch as her ridiculous magic abilities burn enemies down. She’s also great to leave on AI-controlled standby so that she can attack safely from a distance and heal up the party as needed.

The battles themselves were great; each boss felt unique and had a weakness to discover and exploit. Seamlessly weaving in cutscenes and dialogue added a cinematic flair that was just another cherry on top of an amazing combat system. The typical monsters and trash mobs that we came across were all unique as well, and their variants encountered later in the game added twists of required tactical thinking.

I have only a couple points of discomfort with the new combat system, and they’re both very minor ones. First, the fact that skills/spells (and even Limit Breaks!) can be interrupted by enemy actions could be extremely frustrating – especially if there were larger amounts of enemies present, your character could get juggled quite easily. Filling up your ATB gauge and readying a skill just for it to be interrupted because some demon hound ran up and smacked you in the head has to be the least “Final Fantasy” feeling ever. That being said, this is easily where you can throw the term “skill expression” right back at me. The second point of discomfort is that enemies were very clearly agro’d to whoever you control as the player. This made playing a ranged character like Aerith annoying at times, because, dammit, I just want to DPS without hordes of monsters running at me! Again, “skill expression” is a double edged sword, but I found it a little strange that enemies would drop what they’re doing, stop fighting Cloud, and start running at Barret just because I switched to him.

Zooming out to other facets of gameplay! I really enjoyed how materia was implemented which may just be a derivative of how smart the combat system was that Square created, but I think Square really hit the mark of having to carefully plan out your party’s materia loadout and envisioning how it would execute in battle. The weapon level-up system adds an extra layer of depth and reminds me of Final Fantasy IX’s skill learning system, which is great. Finally, the large amount of minigames and side quests available added a good deal of variety to the game, without being overly complicated or time consuming.

This was probably the most enjoyable game in the Final Fantasy series from a pure “this is a fun game” standpoint.

Gameplay Score: 10/10 (would honestly be an 11 if such a thing were real)

Characterization

The Final Fantasy series is typically at the top of its class for its character building and development, but I was still slightly nervous heading into this remake that Nomura wouldn’t recapture that magic accurately. Maybe I was conditioned from Final Fantasy XIII (2009) and Final Fantasy XV, but I was especially worried about Cloud. “Please don’t make Cloud this typical brooding, angsty emo Final Fantasy protagonist,” I remember thinking to myself. Because that’s not who he is. Cloud Strife is a dork. He’s a dork who adapts incredibly poorly to new situations and puts on a front of apathy when uncomfortable, but he doesn’t hate the world.

I should have put more faith in the fact that the original game’s character designer became the remake’s director. For the most part, I truly feel like the cast’s Act I character arcs played out and were shown as they should be. Cloud starts out apathetic but that front really begins to melt after he meets Aerith. Aerith herself comes off as this fun and innocent girl but progressively drops more and more hints that she’s part of something much bigger. Barret begins as the loud and rambunctious leader figure which gives way to a total empath who’s still trying to process just what he’s been caught up in. Tifa is shown with her typical slow and steady struggle to come to terms with what has to be done to make things right in the world after traumatic childhood events made her averse to it all.

The rest of the cast’s characters were painted beautifully. Sephiroth made more appearances than normal in this Midgar section (more on that later), but we still don’t understand a word that’s coming out of his mouth. We see the distinct division in those under the Shinra umbrella between those who have morals and those who sip the Kool-Aid. We’re introduced to a new cast of characters in the slums who are working tirelessly to make life better for those around them despite being dealt a terrible hand, and they function to strengthen both the main cast and the story as a whole.

A particular gem that I was delighted by were the interactions between characters. The original was somewhat limited in this department, but we can visibly see the cast grow closer as the remake goes on. Cloud goes from being disinterested and saying “For a price” to any request that Avalanche have for him, to selflessly agreeing to help Barret search for his friends and family post-plate drop, to poking fun at his old self in front using his old “For a price” motto. Additionally, because the areas of Midgar to travel between locations were expanded immensely, things like conversations between characters with no other purpose but character development were added in as we made our way through these winding stretches. That’s a huge advantage that a modern voiced game has over the original that had to use text for dialogue – we had to literally stop everything in order for an interaction between characters to occur. Now, they can just be thrown in wherever. We see more high fives, cheers, ribs, jokes. hugs, and tender moments than ever before. And to me, what this establishes for the cast as a whole is such a beautiful change of pace from a classic Final Fantasy game. This isn’t just a collection of individuals with aligning goals. These are friends.

This in particular makes me really excited for future installments; we now have evidence that these characters are everything that they should be. That baseline allows for more interactions and development, and even the most hardcore old school Final Fantasy VII fans will get to know and enjoy these characters on a deeper level.

Characterization: 10/10

Story

Too often did I get one of my friends to try the original Final Fantasy VII, hoping they’d fall in love too, only for them to lose interest before leaving Midgar because that part of the game is downright boring. Everything is dark and dreary, we don’t really care about the people of the Slums so we don’t feel the empathy to want to help them, the story crawls along, the deaths we see are of characters we only knew briefly, and all of it seems for naught because we find out Sephiroth is the much bigger threat; not some greedy electric company.

But much like with the design of Midgar itself, I hadn’t really put much thought with just how much they can build upon that unexciting first act.

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paperclipninja · 5 years

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Younger post-ep ramble 6x03

This week’s episode of Younger, ‘The Unusual Suspect’, was a big one. No scenes felt wasted, each one moving the story along and it all felt very purposeful. Despite some capital H hotness and really light and funny moments being scattered throughout, mostly thanks to fave (and only) NYC agent Redmond and the resurrection of some truly classic Diana Trout, there was definitely the sense of tension on the rise. It’s been simmering since the end of this season’s first episode and I feel like this week we have hit an apex.

We open with brunch at Maggie’s and what one can only assume is a time jump (either that or Clare has recovered remarkably well from birthing a baby the size of a four month old) and right away an overarching theme for this episode is established, as Lauren enters raving about the latest hit podcast, Exonerated. I’m gonna come straight out and say that I am so into this premise. The excitement around the table sounded like the break room in my office most days, they definitely nailed the trend of true crime fixation. It immediately allowed for Maggie’s quip about white women loving murder, a delightful array of OTT facial expressions from Liza and Kelsey dropping in that Millennial will be meeting with Audrey Colbert, subject of the podcast, to nab her book before anyone else does. Of course the other big news is that Josh and Clare appear to be happily family-ing it up (though mommy wipes, daddy dipes = vom in my mouth a little bit) and Maggie is dealing with unresolved BoUBT (Back of Uber Birth Trauma). Lauren’s vow to help get Maggie back on the ‘h for hunt’ once again epitomises why I love her character so and I want to record her sympathetic ‘oh Divaaa’ as my ringtone. I just love that Maggie, of all characters, is the one who seems like she should be the most pragmatic when it comes to something like birth yet her coping level is zero here.

You know who else wasn’t coping? Me and my Liza and Charles loving heart as Liza suddenly up and left the brunch because she ‘was late for a thing’, cue the scene that was released as a sneak peek last week that I have definitely only watched a normal number of times *cough*. The set up for The Rubin Museum from the opening conversation was fab and the fact that Charles and Liza are using the podcast to frame up a role play situation is just too much. Obviously I had seen the scene prior to the ep and while it is certainly *insert flames here*, I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like not to have expected it (actual combustion probable). I mean regardless, I will never think about a trip to the museum in the same way again. The voice-over narrating what we were seeing was such a great device that is really different to anything the show has done before, it built the anticipation of what was playing out and it felt like a scene from a movie. The moment when Charles turned and came face to face with Liza was a great reminder of how electric the chemistry between these two can be (actual lightening bolts were sighted) and quite frankly, seeing these characters being adventurous and lustful in their relationship is a yes on all fronts. I think the fact it all took place in a place of intellect and culture was extra fitting, it somehow kept the whole thing true to the characters and I am here for the #nerdlove.

The office drama was amped this whole ep and that of course was largely due to the ever growing reign of our season 6 villain, Quinn. With the time jump since last episode confirmed by the fact that Quinn’s book is both published and sitting on the best seller list, Kelsey and Diana’s first encounter with Quinn as she uses the WiFi for a conference call included a) Diana saying goodbye in Mandarin, which was yet another lovely tidbit to add to this character while also setting up the classic Diana we got throughout this ep and; b) some of the best fashion and hairstyles all in one scene (and episode as a whole) ever. I mean the fashion on this show is always next level but this episode in particular took it up a notch: Diana’s high-neck printed electric blue top and Kelsey’s hair/makeup/outfit in the conference room were so stunning I was actually distracted by them.

Kelsey’s office refurb was also noted, loved Liza’s ‘set it (Claw) on fire’ comment and of course, Diana telling Kelsey that now she is publisher, maybe she should stop speaking like a trucker was D. Trout golden line no.1 for this episode. Even better was seeing Kelsey, Diana and Liza settling into this new way of working. I adore the dynamic between these three and the way we’re seeing Diana adjust to her former assistant now being a peer without a fuss is why this show is so wonderful. It would have been easy to have Diana trying to assert herself and maintain some sort of authority, but to see her just want to get on with the work and do the best job she can gives a great credibility to the notion that this character is the best in the industry. I could pretty much write out every Diana Trout line from ‘The Unusual Suspect’ and leave this entire ramble at that (’why is everybody in this country obsessed with true crime? Actual people have died and they’re selling branded beanies on Etsy’ LOLLLLL) but I would then need to do that for Redmond because the fave one and only agent in NYC was back this week and as always, he was in fine form.

The pitch of Audrey Colbert’s book is up there with the funniest scenes of this series, from the creepy af Audrey (A+ casting of Willa Fitzgerald) to Liza and Kelsey trying to play it cool while being hella freaked out to Redmond’s attempt to present a compelling pitch being railroaded by Audrey’s ‘crippling lack of media training’, it was Younger writing and delivery at its finest from start to finish. Seeing Redmond so unnerved by Audrey was unnerving in itself and really, I am so happy with the amount of Michael Urie in this episode. Our next encounter was of course when Kelsey and Liza interrupt his infrared sauna treatment (again, so many hilarious lines, I really feel that a transcript of the entire episode is about the only way to do it justice but may be problematic to pass off as a recap/review…or would it?) and discover that Audrey’s book is being shopped around thanks to the dagger next to Claw on the bestseller list, which = bulk sales = dodgy business = Chinese bots tweeting = Quinn is the worst (math doesn’t lie) = Audrey doesn’t want to be associated with anything suspicious on account of the fact she’s been accused of murdering two ppl (fair). I do want to back this truck up a little though to the way Kelsey and Liza discovered their next big hit was being pitched to half the major publishing houses around town.

Diana Trout hobbling into the office on crutches before dropping the bomb that her injury was the result of being so frazzled upon hearing the news re: Audrey going elsewhere, that she got caught up in her reformer (just go and re-watch this scene, you will not be sorry) is everything I never knew I wanted to see. The reference to Jackie Dunn, who you may remember has been a longstanding nemesis of sorts of Diana’s, was such an utter delight as a long time fan and once again, seeing Kelsey, Liza and Diana all equally vexed by the news was so great and continued to solidify them as a team. I promise no more direct quotes* (*this is a very loose promise), but ‘postpone the power-trip Kelsey, I am handicapped’ in response to Kelsey’s stunned expression upon Diana’s request for espresso, is so outrageously funny and makes this whole scene an absolute stand out on account of its hilarity.

I missed Lauren and Diana interacting this week, however I appreciated seeing Lauren be the wonderful friend she is to Maggie and Josh. Taking Maggie to the support group obviously allowed us to meet Beth, who Maggie engaged for some one on one tutoring (looking forward to seeing where that goes this season) after returning to the store to apologise for running out during the group session. While Maggie was lining up her ongoing therapy, Lauren and Josh shared a sweet and heartfelt moment that highlights why their friendship is such a lovely one on this show. Obviously Josh had told Lauren that he and Clare had a moment that made him think, ‘maybe we should make this relationship work’ and Lauren is following up to see where his head and heart are at.

I absolutely loved said scene between Clare and Josh, when he had finally settled the baby, asks Clare if she wants to go to her bed and then joins her on the floor when she says she sleeps where she can now. There was such a sense of unity and care and it made my heart swell. So in his discussion with Lauren we also find out the baby is named Gemma (last name TBC, for both father and daughter) and when pressed about what he actually wants, Josh reveals that he doesn’t think he and Clare are right for each other. I have said it before, but for all the wacky that Lauren can be, she is the most incredible friend who only wants the best for those around her in such a relentless and genuine way and this scene really highlighted that once again (the line about her dad having such a little bottom though brought us straight back to Lauren light in the best possible way).

The divorce proposal was such a great scene and while I was hoping that perhaps Clare and Josh could work things out, I am thrilled to see that the writers put both these characters on the same page right from the get go. I love that this show constantly bucks stereotypes and expectations of how certain characters and relationships will play out, so to see two adults who have an agreed desire to put their child first but know they need to do so outside a romantic relationship is something really unique on television. I have always enjoyed Josh and Clare’s dynamic and I hope we get to see a real, loving co-parenting arrangement play out.

Kelsey’s interaction with Zane when she is buying a bottle of Dom Perignon to celebrate scoring Audrey’s book (eek!) is my favourite interaction of theirs this season. Their banter was really effortless, Zane’s, ‘you’re not listening’, as he pulled out the cash to pay for the one remaining bottle smooth and a little bit over confident, but really played up that he has something in the works that is legit. I especially love that we later discover both are buying champagne to celebrate the same win. I feel like we also need to stop and appreciate that they were about to drop $400 between them on two bottles of bubbles like it was no big deal. What is this life? How do I get it?

Though admittedly Kelsey deserves a nice glass of something this ep considering all that she is dealing with. I have made no secret that I have struggled with Kelsey’s character these past couple of seasons and no one is more surprised than me at how much I am getting on board with her this season. Kelsey calling out Quinn point blank that she faked her best seller was so good to watch and seeing Liza backing her up and standing her own ground made this extra satisfying. Gah, I just LOVE how Laura Benanti plays Quinn and her stating that ‘the money is real, what else do you need?’ is so cold and matter-of-fact. What I love most about this whole confrontation is that it immediately made me think back to the first time we met Quinn - her whole presentation was about the fact that no one wants your success more than you do and that women helping women is actually holding women back. That right there should’ve been the red flag that her “helping” Liza and Kelsey was not legit.

And so her true motivation for investing in Empirical becomes evident. It had nothing to do with saving an ailing publishing house, it was to ensure her book would be published, she could have some control over how big it would become and be seen to have the support of a reputable publishing house, all in order to gain name recognition so she could successfully run for Senate. In her mind, Kelsey and Liza benefit from the whole thing financially so it’s a win win but she also holds the power so feels like she has the upper hand. Which is why the scene at The Cut (which is so fab, the looks Quinn shoots Kelsey are searing), when audience members question the dagger next to her book, is so damn satisfying. Kelsey’s move to announce Quinn’s run for Senate is so bold, I am very on board and boy oh boy Kels, I think you’ve got yourself quite the adversary. I was very much Liza watching this all unfold, shocked, impressed and a little bit scared for and of Kelsey and what this all means.

Now Liza was late to the event because she was living out the next chapter of the podcast at the Brownstone which we need to discuss, however I first owe some of you an apology. At the end of last week’s ramble I suggested you may need a fire blanket at the ready after seeing the museum scene sneak peek to you know, contain the flames. I fear some of you may have deployed it prematurely (this is not a euphemism though I am very aware it sounds like one) in response to how damn hot that scene was, but I was not to know that we were going to get this later scene, in which Liza just wanders into the townhouse BECAUSE SHE HAS A FREAKING KEY (suspected ep 2, confirmed ep 3, appreciated always) and decides to have a good old snoop at her bf’s mail. Similar to the museum scene, this set up felt more like a movie than a typical Younger episode. There was an ominous weight to it; the music, the lighting, the Charles padding silently up behind her (barefoot again?) and the tension was palpable.

Liza asks Charles about what’s going on, he provides a vague answer about moving some things around before asking her if she’s listened to chapter 7 of Exonerated, which conveniently mirrors almost exactly what just occurred, with Audrey’s ex finding her going through his things. Ok, so this is where it gets tricky for me. This entire exchange, from the way these two fall into that speaking in third person and wrapping a narrative around themselves, the way Charles wraps his arms around her, the way they look at each other, I mean, this whole thing makes my heart spontaneously combust because it is sexy and flirty, dripping with desire and just really really hot *reaches for backup fire blanket*. But then Liza is clearly distracted by that letter and Charles’ deflection and part of me is wondering why on Earth she isn’t pressing him harder for an answer or following up, I mean, we saw how open they were with one another last season, but then the other part of me looks at Liza and thinks, you are a person who has eyes and that whole situation is right there in front of you so I get it, go with it and worry about it later.

I am aware of how long this ramble already is, but I am going to do something a little different here and digress slightly away from the episode itself and put out some conjecture on my part. It could well be completely over-analysing (lol, I’m neck deep into a freaking novella about a 25 min episode of TV, I think that’s a given) but I know that there is concern about Charles behaving secretively and I have seen some people expressing disappointment in this season so far.

For what it’s worth, my take on it is that it might seem as though some of the characters are behaving a little out of character but I feel that actually, the characters are behaving in ways we haven’t seen before because they’re in situations we haven’t seen them in before. As invested viewers we feel like we know these characters as whole people in every aspect of their lives when in fact, we’ve not seen Liza at the top of her game in her career or Josh as a parent or Charles in a romantic relationship or away from the office. So while the way they behave might not be the way we imagined it, to me it isn’t so much out of character as seeing a new dimension of the character. Also, the addition of flaws does not necessarily equate to destroying a character, it builds them out and makes them more real, if anything.

In relation to Charles and Liza’s relationship and the ‘Charles is being shady’ concern, IMO the key purpose of that is to create tension and you can FEEL it building. As crazy as it may sound, I think the Liza/Charles dynamic thrives in the build and resolution of tension and that’s why their moments in this episode felt so electric and hot, it’s like those unspoken, unresolved tension points charge their chemistry. As much as I think I would love to have Charles and Liza sitting around blissfully happy (I mean, I would obvs), the reality is, it’s not that fun to watch. I believe the tension is building towards a resolution of sorts that will actually put them in a better place and move the relationship forward. (*Full disclosure: since writing this I listened to the podcast from ATX fest and Joe Murphy, one of the writers for Younger, said very similar things so if you listened to that podcast I promise I have not just taken what Joe said and pretended they’re my thoughts, I legit had this written and then heard (ngl, I may be feeling a little smug as a result). I’m putting it down to us both being Australian because clearly that is a thing that makes sense).

I also think there is an unsettled feeling this season because the entire premise of this show, the roles these characters played, the interactions we have grown accustomed to week after week, has been completely flipped upside down. As viewers we garner comfort from the routine of watching a show but also from knowing where the players are positioned, how they will behave and what it looks and feels like. I think the writers know exactly what they’re doing and are achieving exactly what they would’ve hoped (apologies writers if this is wildly inaccurate and I’m just assuming things incorrectly left, right and centre) - everyone is sitting in discomfort and it’s largely due to the unfamiliarity of it all. The set up, the way we’re seeing characters etc, it reflects what the characters themselves are experiencing on our screens, which is all kinds of meta and actually pretty cool. But the further you push that discomfort and make viewers sit in it, the greater the impact and more satisfying the resolution. It’s like waiting for a beat to drop in a song, the build up can become almost unbearable but damn it’s good when it lands. That’s how I feel this is all going to go.

That is what I meant by this episode feeling like an apex, it feels as though there’s a limit to how far an audience can be taken in a state of flux without some resolve somewhere. And the writers know this, it’s what they do, it’s WHY we tune in. I’m not suggesting that everything is going to go back to the way it was, the evolution of a show like Younger is exciting and part of the fun is seeing where it goes, but we are three episodes in to a twelve episode season and while we consume it week to week, it ultimately has to make narrative sense across the whole season. It’s as though we’re at the end of an ‘establishing’ phase right now. So I am reserving any judgement until I see how it all comes together, but have no doubt there will be many resolutions and many new points of tension throughout.

Right now, I am thoroughly enjoying all that we’re getting and I think the writing this season has been excellent so far, with moments like the final scene of ‘The Unusual Suspect’ providing us with the first true cliffhanger of the season. Our last bit of Redmond for the ep was peak Redmond (I love that he dashed off to a better table uptown), and of course the big Mercury reveal, YESSS. That moment of realisation washing over Liza’s face, props to Sutton Foster, and I cannot WAIT to see how this all goes down. The prospect of inter-generational team ups of Kelsey/Liza vs. Zane/Charles while members of each team are in relationships with one another is the kind of set up I live for in a TV show. Is it July 10th yet?

#original post #incorrect spelling in link

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frickfracksnatchisback · 5 years

Text

You’re Worthless (AGIT AU-Part 1)

I love the AGIT AU (@shaykai & @hatsparadox they’re amazing go check them out!) and wanted to write a fic about how the prince became Snatcher and Moonjumper (And it’s a bit long since I’m tagging instead of submitting it). Some of this might not be completely accurate to the AU, like Vanessa is a human in this version. But hopefully it’s good? Anyways, without further ado...

***

She wanted...no, needed to have one.

She had seen the advertisements over a hundred times. On the TV, at shops, on fliers, practically everywhere. Everyone in town had been talking about it nonstop. And she absolutely needed to have one.

She begged (well, more like threatened) her parents to get her one as soon as they came out. She had to make special appointments to see them, as they were always “busy”. They were refusing to buy it at first, mostly because of cost reasons but also because they really didn’t care. But they soon gave in to her demands just to get her out of their hair. It was always how she got what she wanted in the end. Besides, they were pretty much rich enough to buy the whole town. So why not buy something as practical as this?

It took only a couple days for the package to arrive, but it felt like years for her. Once it had shown up on her doorstep, she took the box and locked herself into her room without saying so much as a simple “Thank you” to her parents. She didn’t need their attention anymore, she had all the company she would ever need in this one, large box.

She wasn’t an expert when it came to robot maintenance, that much was clear by her social stature. But through her excruciating days of waiting for the package to arrive, she had managed to pick up a few tools and self-teaching books here and there. And they would suffice rather nicely.

It would take even more countless days before it was fully assembled. She stayed inside her room day in and day out, completely absorbed in her work. Oil was spilled and tears were shed over many ruined dresses. But on one faithful day, she had finally managed to complete her work.

She stood back to admire her handiwork. The android stood completely still, not moving a muscle. Slowly and carefully she walked up to the sleeping android, pressed the activation button on the side of its head-

And brought it to life.

***

There was darkness. A void of black nothingness. No sound, no light, no voices.

And then suddenly, there was.

He felt his systems booting up for the first time as visual overlay of numbers and letters lit up before his eyes. His gears began to whir in excitement and his robotic joints slowly began to shift.

“HELLO, #2-5-6-7.” a computerized voice in his head welcomed him to the new world. He began to move his fingers, his arms, and then he opened his eyes to take in the view around him.

The room he was in was rather large and covered in bright pastel pink wallpaper. There was a wardrobe that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, a vanity that stood behind him, a royal canopy bed, and plush toys that filled the many shelves on the walls. In fact, the whole room was covered wall to wall in toys and trinkets of many shapes and sizes. And a desk with various metal parts, tools, and blueprints piled on top stuck out from all of the toys. It was a very strange thing to have in a young girl’s room.

And standing in the room with him was a young girl, wearing a fancy, green dress. She had beautiful golden hair and stunning blue eyes that shone like sapphires.

“THIS HUMAN WILL BE YOUR MASTER. YOU WILL DO EVERYTHING SHE COMMANDS OF YOU.” the voice piped up once more. He stared intensely at the girl, and she stared back. She was smiling at him with a look of pure joy. She walked up to him and held both of his hands with her own.

“You’re perfect.” she spoke with a soft and subtle tone. He felt his eyes widen at her response and he slowly began to smile back at her.

“Thank you.” he felt himself speaking for the first time in his own soft tone. Her eyes lit up in surprise and she began to giggle to herself. She then looked back at him with a strange expression in her eyes that he could not quite read.

“You are my prince.” she said to him as she started to fix the collar of his shirt. He now realized that she had fitted him with a royal outfit of red with purple accents to match her dress. She let go of his hands to stand a few inches away from him. “And I am your princess.” she said as she held the sides of her dress and curtsied in his direction. He quickly began to add her commands to his data bank in just a matter of seconds. When he was finished, he put his hand on his chest and bowed back.

“Yes, my lady.” he said without hesitation. She giggled once more, leaving him to stand there confused.

“There’s no need to be so formal, my prince.” she laughed as he stood there, with his head cocked to the side. “You may call me Vanessa.” she said casually. He smiled, he liked the sound of her name.

“Very well, Vanessa. I will do anything you ask of me.” he vowed to her.

And he kept his word. As the days, weeks, and months went on he became more than just her prince. He was almost like her caretaker in a way. He woke her up in the mornings, went shopping with her, he even cooked meals for her on special occasions. Her parents didn’t even seem to notice him being around her all time, nor did they seem worried about it. They used it as a good excuse for constantly neglecting her. He didn’t seem to mind, just so long as he was with his princess. He cared for her every passing day and they were both happy with each other.

That is, until the prince made a fatal mistake, one that would change his life forever.

***

Today was a very special day.

Today was her birthday! Although, it started off like any other day. He woke her up, helped pick out her clothes, and brushed her hair till it was silky smooth. After all, she had to look her finest for the ball she would attend later this evening. But despite the promises of ball dancing and birthday cake, she didn’t seem too happy about it.

“It’s not fair!” She protested loudly in her seat while he brushed her hair. He had just gotten to the 89th stroke when stopped at her sudden outburst.

“What’s wrong, Vanessa?” he asked, concerned as to why she was suddenly upset. “Are you not excited?” he questioned.

“No, I’m not.” she huffed and crossed her arms. “I just wanted to spend my birthday with you! I never asked to go to that stupid ball. Mother and father are making me go.” she pouted. He was confused. Didn’t she love dancing? She always loved to put on fancy dresses and do the waltz with him.

“Maybe your parents wanted to spend some time with you?” he proposed, hoping it would make her feel better. It unfortunately didn’t. Instead, she huffed even louder and kept her arms crossed.

“My parents don’t care about me. They’re always busy whenever I want to do something. They’re not throwing this ball together for me. They just want to keep me away from you while they talk with all the rich officials.” she replied bitterly. He fell silent and continued brushing her hair. He always felt strangely uncomfortable whenever she was upset. She was like a time bomb, ticking away at every negative, scathing comment. And if he were to slip up and to say something wrong…

He didn’t want to make his princess mad.

“My lady, I don’t see why you should be so upset. Especially on your birthday no less.” He said calmly after setting the brush on the nearby vanity. “I think you will look lovely in that dress you picked out.” He continued on as he grabbed a necklace that was sitting on the vanity. “Just imagine! You will be the center of attention with your lovely hair, your stunning gown, not to mention your necklace that matches your beautiful eyes so well.” He complimented her as he was putting the necklace around her neck. She giggled, and it relieved him greatly.

Compliments were his go-to command and they usually did the trick whenever she was in a bad mood. But there was always his overlay telling him how there was a small probability that something could go wrong. Percentages and possible outcomes flashed before his eyes every time he acted upon himself. Most androids would simply take the advice, execute it directly, and not think twice about it. But for some reason it bothered him and he couldn’t tell why. Maybe it had it to do with the fact than he was assembled differently, or something special in his coding made him more self dependent that other androids. Whatever the reason, he somehow managed to tune it out and do what he thought was best. After all, he knew his princess better than anyone.

“I suppose you’re right my prince. It wouldn’t be very lady-like of me to be unhappy on such an occasion.” She sighed happily to herself as she put in the earrings that matched her necklace. She then stood up from her seat, turned to him, and softly planted a kiss on his cheek. “You always know what to say, my darling prince!” she said while smiling and holding his hands. “After all, I programmed you that way right?” she asked him. He stood there for a moment, still a little flustered by the kiss. “My prince?” he saw that she was waiting for a response and quickly snapped out of it.

“You’re right, my lady.” he said meekly.

“And you will always be kind to me, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you won’t ever leave me for someone else?”

His head went up in shock. “Heavens no! Why on earth would you think I would do such a thing?” he asked in panic. She stood there for awhile and then suddenly burst into laughter.

“Oh, my prince, you are so very loyal! I know you would never do that to me. But it doesn’t hurt to check right?” she said softly as she dragged her fingers across the metal hair on his head. “Promise me that you’ll never leave me, won’t you?” she asked in a sweet voice.

“I promise, Vanessa.” he vowed to her.

“Well! That’s enough talk for now I think.” she said plainly, as she walked past him. He watched as she made for the door. She was going to be out shopping with her parents before it was time to leave for the ball, he remembered. “You behave now, alright?” she ordered him, as she was about to leave the room.

“Yes, my lady. Have a good rest of your day.” he said and finished with a bow. She seemed satisfied and closed the door leaving him in her room all alone. He was about to go over to the vanity when he heard the door open once more.

“Oh, and don’t forget! Today is my birthday, so I’ll be expecting a present from you!” she reminded him.

“Of course, I already have the perfect gift in mind.” he bowed to her once more.

But then he heard the door close, meaning she had already left. After that, he turned back to the vanity and opened one of the four drawers at the bottom. Inside there were two gold coins that he had hidden under all of the hair pins and jewelry. He had been saving them specifically for this occasion. She always liked when he did romantic things with her, like candlelit dinners at night or dancing with her in the main hall. And she also liked it when he gifted her romantic things like chocolate, perfume, stuffed animals…

And pretty bouquets of flowers.

There was a florist cart that had set up shop not too far away from the manor. He had seen it before when he went shopping with her on one occasion. Lovely daises, fragrant roses, blossoming peonies, and so many other flowers decorated the wooden cart. He had always wanted to buy his princess some flowers ever since that day, so why not on a day a special as this? He took the coins from the drawer and proceeded to walk out the door. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face once he handed her such a colorful bouquet of flowers! She would be so proud of him!

***

As the day slowly turned into the afternoon, she was starting to wish she had never agreed to this stupid outing. Her parents had been dragging her to various stores and shops to buy her gift, after gift, after countless gift. Well, not “buy” her gifts exactly. Once every shopkeeper saw that the royal family was in their shop they would drop the prices immediately or just say “It’s on the house!” in order to receive praise. Besides, they weren’t doing this for her. Nothing that they ever did was for her, not really. They were only buying her gifts so that the townspeople could see that they were loving parents when, in reality, they just didn’t want to tarnish their reputation.

Whatever, it didn’t matter to her and neither did this stupid ball she was being forced to attend.

What did matter to her is that her prince was being a good little android and behaving himself back at the manor. Like he should be. This morning had been a little troublesome with him nearly talking back to her when she complained about her parents. Of course, she only complained about her parents to test him and to get his attention. But he wasn’t supposed to do that regardless. He wasn’t supposed to have thoughts or opinions on the subject because she didn’t program him to do that. He was just supposed to agree with her and that’s it. Thankfully, he did come to his senses and even complimented her. Good, she hoped he wasn’t bugging out and that she would have to make her parents buy her a new android. That would take to much effort on her part honestly, so she decided to keep her mouth shut about the weird “quirks” he’d been having recently.

Much to her annoyance, there was still one more shop that her parents wanted to visit. It was somewhere close to the manor, which meant that they were going to stop soon. Thank goodness, she thought to herself, relieved that she would be able to get home before the ball started. As soon as they all walked up to the store, her parents had already avoided her and started talking to a rich couple inside. She didn’t care, they were just showing off anyways. She started to do the same by ignoring them and instead looking at the shelves. There wasn’t much there that she didn’t already have, so she decided to look out the window instead.

There were people bustling on the sidewalks and carriages that carried the busy people on the roads. And mixed in with all of the human were robots doing their jobs. Robotic children following their human parents, robotic carriage men instructing mechanical horses to bring their masters along the roads, and robotic shopkeepers tending their stands in place of their owners.

One particular shop had caught her eye, a small flower stand that was just across the road. The florist was an android with red metal hair “tied up” in a braid and freckles painted onto her face. She was even wearing an apron and a handkerchief over her head. She watched with a sort of fascination as the florist watered the flowers around her stand and arranged them in a more appealing manner. She almost couldn’t believe how lifelike those androids looked from far away. A man in a bright red outfit walked up to the stand and was trying to get the florist’s attention. Seeing the man’s outfit made Vanessa think of her prince’s outfit. It looked almost exactly like his and-

Wait a moment. Was he wearing a crown on his head? And was that metal hair she was seeing?!

She couldn’t believe her eyes, it was her prince and he was with another android. She got closer to the window and watched as the two androids were chatting with one another. She couldn’t hear what they were saying over all the noise outside, but she could tell that they were having a rather friendly conversation. She watched as her prince said something to the florist and the florist laughed in reply.

She didn’t like this at all. She didn’t like what she was seeing one bit.

Her prince pointed at one of the bouquets on the stand. The florist nodded and began to decorate the bouquet by tying a purple ribbon in a bow around it. She saw that her prince was fixated on the florist’s movements, with a look on his face that she did not like in the slightest. After the florist was finished, she then handed her prince the bouquet and he gladly took it from her. She watched in disbelief as the florist extended her hand out to him...

And. He. Held. Her. Hand.

Promise me that you’ll never leave me, won’t you?

I promise, Vanessa

She could feel hot tears running down her face as she watched the whole thing. The broken promise echoed in her mind as she saw her prince walk away from the stand with the bouquet. He lied to me, she thought in rage. He said he would always be with me and he lied. She could feel herself clenching her fists. Her whole body was shaking in anger. She felt like breaking down and crying in the middle of the store. Or better yet, running over to her prince to bash his head in against a brick wall and throwing him out into the road for good measure.

But instead, she managed to keep most of her violent thoughts to herself. She walked over to her parents to tell her she was ready to leave. They weren’t listening of course, but she was used to that by now. She simply ran away from the store and left her parents behind, not that they would ever notice. And as she ran down the stone path leading to the manor she could only think of one thing.

She had been lied to, and she was going to make that android suffer.

To be continued...

#ahit #a hat in time #a hat in time spoilers #agit au #a gear in time #ahit fanfiction #frickfrack fic #hoped you liked reading it!#go check out the original au!#they're a really cool blog!

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exxxxuusmee · 5 years

Text

The change of time Part 1

Mainly Fem Reader x Taehyung but also the rest of the seven members.

Fantasy:au royalty:au timetravel:au

Smut/Fluff/Angst

Slow burn

Warnings: non to note

Prologue: https://exxxxuusmee.tumblr.com/post/185045752161/thechangeoftime

Authors note: So.. the first part of this series. There is going to be a lot of backstory to this. There are some things that i fell like i have to write for this to be a good fic.Hope you like it. Tell me what you guys think!

This must be the place. You found yourself high up in the mountains in Seoul.

You didn’t really know how you ended up here. After arriving to Seoul, the first thing you did was checking in at your hotel. And you had planned to take it easy and soak in a bath with one of your favorite bath bombs. You felt like you needed that after the long flight. To be honest you felt a bit jet lagged. But then you found a brochure on your bed over some mountains chain that just looked absolutely amazing. You didn’t know what it was that compelled you to view it closer, it was like you were drawn to it. You had sat down on your bed and started to read about the place. Magical and ancient? huh, why not. You read the paper and decided to go immediately. You felt like you had to visit this place, you didn’t know why this urge was so strong.

That was how you found yourself in the middle of a mountain chain. It had taken some while for you to get there and the sun had started to set. Your normal self would had freeked out by now, but somehow you found yourself completely calm. You almost felt like you were where you belonged, how strange.

You started to walk. You didn’t really know where you were going but you followed your gut feeling and walked further through the path. The mountains where beautiful, the city so far away but you could still see it in the distance. You could see the snow on the highest tops and how the sun slowly but surely made its way down. You could here the wind howling and smell the fresh air, no noises but nature.

When you had walked for a while you started to see the entrance to a cave further up the path. A strange feeling washed over you, the feeling of excitement but also nerves. You walked a bit faster to get to the cave and see if something interesting was hidden inside. The feeling you had felt earlier, your tiredness from the flight was gone, like the wind had carried it with it and away from your body. You turned and walked in to the cave. Inside, the first thing you saw was a pool, or a spring of some sort. It was stunning. Your eyes were drawn up when you noticed the light. You walked closer to see what was giving away the light source. It looked like an million stars plastered over the caves roof. On closer inspection you could see that it was some kind of fluorescent gem stone.

Suddenly there was a strong puff of air flowing in to the cave, the hair on your body stood on end and you could feel a shiver finding its way down your back. A ringing sound started in your ears and you felt groggy. Everything happened so fast. And before you knew it you landed in the pool. It had almost felt like someone had pushed you in.

You were emerged in the water. Lightheaded, the ringing in your head still there. You sprinted in to action and tried to get to the surfes. It felt impossible to get to the surfes, so tired from your heavy wet cloths weighing you down. But at last you succeeded. You crawled out of the pool. Trying to find your breath. you rolled over on your back, panting loudly. ‘’What the fuck’’ you whispered taking a long breath. You stayed there for a while, on your back, trying to calm yourself.

You wondered how that had happened. You most have been more tired than you thought. You sat up slowly, so not to chock you system. After a while you got yourself up on your feet. You turned around and started to find your way out of the cave. ‘’what?’’ you said in chock when you saw that the su stood high. How was that even possible? The sun was almost down 30 minutes ago. You started to wonder if you hit your head or something because this was to weird. You looked around. Where was the city? Did i walk out a different way or what is this. You turned around to see if you accidentally walked out the wrong way, but well in the cave again you could see that it was the only way in or out. You couldn’t comprehend what was happening, the sun was standing high like it was mid day and the city was gone, no roads as far as you eye could see. You started to feel scared, had you gon mad? What was this.

You decided that you had to move from the cave and get down from the mountain. Maybe you could find some people that could help you.

It felt like you had walked for hours. When you had come down the mountain you couldn’t see anything or anyone. Just the nature. You started walking to see if you could find something ahead. You think you walked for hours. You didn’t know what to do. You started to feel frustrated, scared and sad. All you wanted to do right now was to be in your mothers arms. You could feel how the tears started in you eyes, you couldn’t hold them back. You legs felt weak and you fell down to the ground, you head in you hands.

You were so out off it that you didn’t even hear the distance sound of hooves to the ground. It itched closer and closer and it wasn’t until you were surrounded by them that you noticed. Six horses with riders were surrounding you. You lifted you head from your hands, eyes puffy and red and looked at the riders. They were all wearing some kind of armer. But couldn’t for the life of you understand why, was this some sick joke or something. You looked around at all men. They looked stern, angry almost. Your head snapped back when one of them started to almost scream at you. He spoke in korean, that mush was certain. But you had now idea what he was saying. He looked at you and you could tell he was waiting for a response. ‘’Where am i? who are you?’ you were terrified ‘’please help me’’ You new that they probably wouldn’t understand a word but you had to try, you also knew that it was a stupid idea to try to get them to help you, but what chose did you have? You looked at them sniffling with pleading eyes. They started to argue amongst them self. The black haired man suddenly stopped and looked at you. His eyes warm brown, with features that could catch any young girls heart.

He dismounted his horse and walked to you, you flinched back. He started to chuckle and said something to the others. Whatever he said made them all laugh. It felt worse, it was better when he was stern. Know it just felt like he they were degrading you. You felt small, and you didn’t like it. He kneeled down at your side and put his hand forward. Waiting for you to take it, he could see the fear in your eyes. ‘’Me, eh, help you’’ he said while pointing at him then at you. The feeling of a stone that you had logged in you chest rose with his words. So he new som english. You stared deep in to his eyes. They were kind, or at least that was what you wanted them to be. You hade to take a chance. You had no idea how many hours you had walked so far and you felt on the brink of collapsing. You decided then to take your chances. You took his hand and he helped you up.

Once you stood up all the men started to advert there gazes, on the blond man beside you you could se a blush that spread from his cheeks all the way to his ears and neck. You looked around at them and could tell that they all was suffering the same. You couldn’t understand why. You looked at the black haired man infront of you, an confused look in your eyes. He laughed nervously and adverted his gaze as well, the he spoke. ‘’ehh, you not musch cover’’ You stared dumbfounded at him. He looked at you then down your body and then up in your eyes. Oh.. ooh. You looked down at yourself. Cover only in a tank top and small training shorts. You big hoodie left in the cave after you took it of. You looked up att the black haired man again and a small smile planted on your face. Was this bothering them? You didn’t now why. These were pretty normal workout clothes. The black haired man lead you to the horse, first he mounted then he helped you up so that you sat infront of him. He held you with one arm hand the rains in the other. Then he said something to the others, and before you knew it you took off.

Your eyes felt heavy. You could hear jabbering voices in the distance. You slowly opened up your eyes. You sat up and looked around. It wasn’t a dream like you hoped. You were in a room laying on well, sort of a mattress on the floor. The room looked like out of a asian samurai movie. Decorated with all kinds of beautiful art in gold and red. You could smell some kind of pleasant scent, like spices, cinnamon and apple. To be honest it smelled like Christmas to you. You looked around the room to locate were the voices was coming from. You couldn’t see anyone in the room. But you could see two shadows outside of the room. The doors where made out of some kind of paper or fabric. You could hear them talking for a bit more before they stopped. You could see how one of them walked away. The other shadow was still there.

Suddenly the door slided open and in came the same black haired man from before. You met his gaze, and he gave you a small smile. He walked over to you and sat down beside you on the mattras. He stared at you for a while before speaking. ‘’Jimin’’ he looked at you again before saying ‘’ you?’’. His name was Jimin. What a pretty namn to go along with that pretty face. You looked down at your hands and then up at him again. ‘’Y/N’’. ‘’Y/N’’ he repeated. ‘’Why Y/N out there? dangerous’’ You were a bit taken a back. Dangerous? How was it dangerous? ‘’I don’t know what happened.. i was hiking in the mountains, found this cave with a pool, i fell in then when i got out of the pool and the cave i didn’t recognize anything. The city was gone, the sun was high although it was about to go down when i fell in the pool. I don’t know what happened and i don’t know where i am. Where am i ?’’ He looked confused. Of course it was hard for him to understand you. He let out a hmm and furrowed his brows. ‘’You from goddess pool?’’ His gaze bore in to you, he almost looked excited. ‘’ Yeah i guess? now, where am i?’’. He looked happy about your answer. ‘’You in emperor Kim Taehyung’s kingdom’’ he said with a smile. Kim Taehyung’s kingdom? what was this? The only explanation you could find was that this was a dream or you must have eating or drinking something that made you hallucinate. You had to ask, ‘’what year is it?’’ He looked amused, like he couldn’t understand why you would ask that, still he answerd ‘’1200 ad’’ he said simply. You just stared at him with a open mouth. What did he say?! year 1200?! This couldn’t be real. He was amused by your face and laughed. ‘’You, Y/N are funny girl’’ then he stood up. ‘’I’ll find Y/N clothes, and food. You sleep more’’ with that said he left you to your own thoughts.

You sat there trying to figure out this puzzle. First of all, when you came out from the cave the sun was new, like it had just risen. The city that you had seen before you went into the pool wasn’t there anymore. The roads that you hade seen before you went in to the pool wasn’t there anymore. The men and Jimin were riding horses with old fashion looking gear, they were wearing armer. The room that you were in right now looked like something right out of a history movie. And then what Jimin had said came in to mind. The godess pool? Did he know what had happened to you? And the emperor Kim Taehyung part? And the most terrifying of all. This was year 1200 not 2019. You knew that Korea didn’t have a emperor named Kim Taehyung thats for chore. And you knew that you where i Korea. Everything had looked almost the sam when you came out of the cave except that things were missing. But the landscape was the same. With all this to mind you were now curtain.

I have somehow traveld in time.

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raywritesthings · 5 years

Text

Wrong Road to the Right Place 12/?

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, Quentin Lance, John Diggle, Thea Queen, Moira Queen, Joanna de la Vega Pairings: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: Laurel finds herself curious about the marks Oliver showed her that night in his bedroom - and the tattoo on his left shoulder stands out in particular. When she discovers its meaning, she finds herself questioning everything she knows about the man she doesn’t want to admit she still loves. *Can also be read on my AO3 page*

Laurel let herself into her apartment and went straight back to the closet in her room, eyeing everything that hung there critically. It had been quite a few years since she’d needed to attend some fancy to-do like this, and she wasn’t exactly sure if anything she had was up to snuff.

A second opinion would probably help. Thea was out of the question, both because she was not about to ask Oliver’s sister what to wear on a date with him and also because she wouldn’t have a good idea of what Laurel had on hand. Joanna had been on a few shopping trips with her, though, and even talked her into buying a couple of the dresses she now owned. And she’d missed talking to her friend about casual stuff like this.

Laurel set her phone on speaker as she took a couple of items out and laid them on her bed. After two rings, it was picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jo, it’s me.”

“Hey, how’s everything been going? CNRI coping without me?”

“Just barely,” Laurel answered with a grin. “I’m going out tonight, and I wanted your opinion on what to wear.”

“Well, what kind of going out are we talking here?” Her friend asked. “Clubbing? Drinks with a friend? Dare I even say a date?”

“Believe it or not, it is.”

“What?” Laurel was glad she didn’t have the phone to her ear, because that exclamation would have had her wincing. “Oh my God, the day has come! What kind of date? With who?”

“It’s one of those fancy rich people auctions,” Laurel explained, then braced herself as she added, “and Oliver invited me.”

There was a beat of silence. Then Joanna started.

“Well, well, well.”

Laurel held back a groan. Just barely. “I know.”

“I didn’t say anything yet.”

“Go ahead.”

“I just seem to remember you being very dead set against anything like this happening when Oliver got back — not that anyone would blame you. But seriously, did he at least get down on his knees and beg first?” Joanna asked.

“I know what I said before.” Laurel shook her head. “I can’t really explain it, but he’s just a different person than he was, Joanna. He’s still Oliver, but I know I can trust him now. He gets that life isn’t just some game you can solve with money and good looks, and he really cares about how his actions affect other people. That’s on his mind a lot.” The whole reason he’d taken on the mission of the Hood in the first place was the responsibility he felt to right the wrongs his father committed.

“Well, I guess as long as you’re happy with it, that’s what matters,” her friend said. Laurel didn’t answer that.

Was she happy? She felt better than she had the last few months, knowing the truth and being involved in more than just the sidelines. And everything she’d told Joanna about Oliver was true; she really believed he’d learned from his mistakes and was working every day to be better. She respected that about him and cared for him because of it, even if they weren’t actually dating. And she could admit, if only to herself, she wouldn’t mind if they actually were.

“So, wardrobe advice?”

Laurel blinked. “Uh, yeah. Trying to decide between the red or blue dress. Floor length, the both of them. You know which ones I’m talking about, right?”

“Uh-huh. Well, they’re both good choices for that kind of event. I guess the question is, what kind of mood are you trying to set?”

Laurel wasn’t sure how to put ‘catching an art thief’ into a mood. “Nothing in particular. It’s just a date, Jo.”

“Yeah, but there’s a difference between bold, hooking-up-after-this red and elegant, I’ll-invite-you-up-if-you’re-lucky blue. You know?”

“We’re not hooking up,” Laurel stated. And she wasn’t looking to stand out from the crowd so much as blend in so she could spot the thief that didn’t belong. “Blue it is. Thanks. Let me know if you’re free sometime soon.”

“Oh, I will. I have got to get these details, for one thing. And I’ve missed you a lot,” Joanna added before she could even start to roll her eyes. “I’ll let you get ready for your date. Have fun.”

“I’ll try.” Laurel picked up the blue dress as Joanna hung up and held it in front of a mirror. She wasn’t sure how much fun tonight would be, but it definitely would be interesting.

She’d finished getting ready with five minutes to spare when Oliver sent the text that he was outside. Laurel took the elevator down and found John waiting in front of the car to open the back door for her.

“Miss Lance.”

“Thank you, Mr. Diggle.” She had to bite her lip to hold in a smile. Sometimes playing along with the charade just felt a little ridiculous, and tonight promised to be especially over the top.

Oliver was sitting in the back as she slid inside, and he looked up. There was a brief pause, and he licked his lips before saying, “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you. You cleaned up well, too.” She was glad the lights were low in the car; her face was already feeling a little warm as she looked him up and down in the tux. She was painfully aware of her own words of a few months ago: obviously, we’re still attracted to each other.

Oliver cleared his throat and leaned over as the car started to move, showing Laurel his phone screen. “This is the brooch I’ve donated from my family’s collection. We’ll need to keep our eyes on it and on the lookout for Dodger. Winnick Norton is his actual name, though I doubt he’ll be using it to get into the event.”

“Right.” Laurel studied the photo for a few minutes before passing it back over. “Any reason why he’ll be interested in the brooch and not anything else?”

“Everything he steals comes from the same time period. The Ominous Decade. The brooch will be the only piece from that time at the gala, so it’s the only option he’s got.”

“Well, that’s lucky.”

“We’re coming up to the front, you two,” Digg called into the back. “I’ll drop you off and park, then see if I can get any intel from event security.”

“Sounds good,” Oliver replied. He got out when the car stopped, walking around to her door and opening it for her. As much as she wanted to shake her head at all the formality, she knew the important thing to do was to go along with it and not seem suspicious.

He offered his arm, and she took it, walking up the steps and through the front doors. There were already a few people milling about and admiring the exhibits.

“Mr. Queen.” A woman in a smart pantsuit walked up to them. “Thank you so much for your generous donation. I hope you enjoy the event.”

“Of course, it was my pleasure,” Oliver replied with a quick smile. They moved on and he leaned in close to murmur in her ear, “The important thing is to always have someone’s eyes on the brooch. We don’t want Dodger sending someone to grab it right out from under our noses.”

“Alright, so take turns?”

She felt as much as saw his nod as his chin tickled her hair. Laurel was about to turn to him when she was suddenly blinded by the flash of a camera.

“Oliver Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance! Out for a night together?”

Paparazzi. The absolute worst part of these high society functions. She hadn’t missed them.

“Miss Lance! Does this mean you’ve forgiven Mr. Queen for the events of five years ago?”

“Uh, no comment,” Laurel stammered. She could barely make out any individual faces through the next several camera flashes.

“Mr. Queen!”

“Miss Lance!”

“If you all could back up, please,” John requested, appearing from what seemed thin air and using his bodyguard position to his advantage. A fair few of the paparazzi were inclined to listen to him based on the authority in his voice and look alone.

“Come on,” Oliver muttered in her ear. With one hand at the small of her back, he guided her out into an empty side hall, the heavy doors shutting out the shouts and clicks of cameras.

Laurel drew in and let out a breath.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” She glanced to the side at him. “Just forgot how intense the paparazzi could be at these kind of events.”

“They shouldn’t even get in the door,” Oliver said with a frown. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Oliver. I should be well aware what dating you entails by now.”

He was silent, though she could tell there was a lot on his mind.

“Hey, you need to get back out there, okay? I’ll join you and John in a few minutes.”

“Okay.” Oliver brushed his fingers along her arm briefly, then turned and slipped back through the door to the main room. Laurel swallowed and tried to ignore the goosebumps his touch had left behind on her arm.

Was this just attraction or something more? She could never seem to keep her head straight around Oliver.

But she needed to get a grip. Tonight wasn’t about them. That was just the cover. They had a dangerous man to catch.

Laurel adjusted her grip on the clutch she carried and stepped forward towards the doors—

A gloved hand gripped her forearm and a stick was shoved in her face. Sparks flew from the tip for a brief instant, causing her to jump back, right into the chest of the man threatening her with it.

“Careful there, love. That’s a stun baton. I would hate to have to use it on you.”

“You’re the Dodger,” she breathed.

“You’ve heard of my work? I’m flattered,” the thief said in her ear. She felt him slide something around her neck and click it into place, and her heart rate picked up with a sudden spike of fear. The bomb collar.

“Now then, since you know what I do, I’ll just cut right to the chase. There’s a pretty little brooch on display out in that room that I need you to get for me. You do that and bring it back here without alerting the authorities, and I’ll let you go safe and sound.”

Laurel had to think fast. She couldn’t do as he asked because that would mean losing the brooch and him. How closely would he be watching her out in that room? Could she somehow get Oliver or John’s attention? Or was that putting too many people at risk?

And there was a part of her that was just about fed up with all these attacks on her.

Laurel dropped her clutch so she had one hand free to reach back and grab a fistful of the Dodger’s shirt while knocking his arm that held the stun baton behind. She failed to duck his own swing at her when she spun around, but before he could follow it up Laurel returned it with her own punch to his face.

He dropped the baton with a grunt, and it went rolling out of reach for the both of them. She could either let go of her grip on the Dodger to run for it or—

Laurel tightened her hold on his shirt collar, dragging him closer, and grabbed his arm with her other hand, twisting his wrist so that he let out a sharp gasp of pain. “Get this thing off me.”

“And why would I do that, darling?”

“Because if you don’t, I’m gonna march us right back through those doors for everyone to see.”

Dodger’s eyes narrowed. “If you do that I’ll—”

“What, blow us both up?” Laurel couldn’t help a smirk as she watched the realization sink in. “You don’t like to get your own hands dirty on a job, do you? That’s why you force other people to steal. Well, sometimes the people you want to use know how to fight back.”

“You’re bluffing,” he rasped.

“No, Mr. Norton, you are,” she said. “Which one of us is going to call it?”

They stared at each other for several tense moments, Dodger trying to break her hold and Laurel keeping a firm grasp on his arm. It was her only option at this point; letting the thief go meant her death. If he proved stronger than her, this wasn’t going to end in her favor.

She couldn’t pinpoint how long their confrontation had been going on, just that there was sweat beginning to bead at her brow. But it was long enough that the door to the main hall opened again, and Oliver stuck his head back in.

“Laurel, are you—” He froze.

Dodger struggled harder, and she scraped at his calf with her heel in retaliation. He gave a yelp and then glared.

“Ollie, hey,” Laurel said, forcing her tone to remain light. Whatever Dodger would think of her, they couldn’t afford anyone getting ideas that Oliver had been here to set him up. “Get Mr. Diggle?”

Oliver stood there another moment before turning sharply and indicating to someone back in the main room. Then he came forward and took hold of both Dodger’s wrist and his neck, shoving him up against a wall.

“Oliver!”

“Who are you, and what have you done to Laurel?” It was a wonder he’d even remembered to play ignorant considering he wasn’t bothering to hide his anger in the slightest.

“The better question is what’s she done to me,” Dodger replied. “Unbelievable. A vigilante spoiled my first attempt in Starling and now this. Your police should hang up their caps in shame.”

John came through with some additional security from the event, and he took over holding Dodger in place while the thief was searched. A device turned up that was apparently linked to the collar still around her neck.

“Here, hold still. I handled bombs in Afghanistan,” John said, one hand on her shoulder. He hit one of the buttons and the collar popped loose. Laurel let out a breath as John removed it and passed it over to security.

“I’m not scared. I don’t know why I’m shaking.”

“That’s the adrenaline,” John told her. “It’ll wear off.”

Oliver meanwhile was doing his best impression of an indignant rich person. “I want this man in a cell at the SCPD.”

“Of course, Mr. Queen. We apologize for the ordeal you and your guest were put through.”

Dodger was taken away, and Oliver immediately turned around to face her now that it was the three of them. “What happened?”

“I was about to head back out to you and Digg, but Dodger grabbed me from behind. He must have been looking for people on their own to use as his proxy.” Laurel shrugged. “I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction.”

“You’re okay?”

“Yeah. He threatened me, mostly, but I wasn’t hurt much.” Her side where he’d struck it was a little sore, but nothing felt broken or anything serious.

Oliver stepped forward and cupped her face with both hands. For a single moment, Laurel thought — but he pressed a kiss to the top of her head instead. She couldn’t help a slight feeling of disappointment she did her best to hide.

The murmur in the main room was getting loud enough to be noticed, and in the distance the wail of a police siren was getting louder. Laurel sighed, not at all in the mood to stand around answering questions or giving a statement while the paparazzi no doubt hovered around taking pictures.

“What’s the betting it’s my dad?”

“Could be McKenna Hall. She was at the scene when I went after Dodger the first time. But they can wait. You two head out the back, and I’ll talk to the organizers and the cops.” Oliver made to leave, but paused and looked to Digg. “Stay with her.”

“You got it.”

As much as she didn’t want to be coddled, she was also glad for the excuse to get out of there, so Laurel followed after Digg to the lot where he’d parked. It felt weird to get in the back when she was the only other person in the car, but Oliver would be rejoining them at some point.

“So, not exactly a night on the town,” she remarked.

“No. Never is when it comes to Oliver. But now we can focus on getting the truth about Malcolm Merlyn, so I’d say this worked out for the best.”

Malcolm Merlyn. On one hand, if it was true that meant they were that much closer to stopping things. On the other, her heart felt heavy whenever she considered the idea that Tommy’s dad might be involved. What would that do to their friend?

“Sort of makes you grateful to the Dodger for the distraction,” she muttered.

“Maybe so. But Laurel—”

She looked up. Her friend and trainer gave her an approving nod.

“Nice job.”

She smiled back at him. “Thanks, John.”

—-

“We’re really making a habit of this,” McKenna remarked as she walked up to him.

Oliver tote his gaze from where Dodger was being led to a squad car by a cop and shook his head. “I kept my nose clean this time. Just here to represent my family.”

“So how come you’re the one being questioned?”

“Norton tried to attack my date, and I said I’d answer the questions for her for the moment. She promises to come down to the station tomorrow for a more complete statement, but I had my bodyguard take her to the car to avoid the cameras.”

“Ah.” McKenna gave a single nod. “I will need your date’s name now, though. Has to go in the file.”

It was definitely fortunate she was primarily working this case as opposed to Lance. Oliver still briefly cleared his throat before replying, “Dinah Laurel Lance.”

McKenna looked up instead of writing, both eyebrows raised. “Well, that’s a turn up for the books. Sorry, not professional.”

“That’s okay. We knew people would find it a little surprising.”

“Alright. I know Laurel’s good for showing up to the station, so I’ll let you get back to her. I hope she’s okay.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.” Oliver turned and started to walk towards the exit, but McKenna calling out to him brought him to a stop.

“Hey, Oliver!”

He turned back.

“I’d appreciate if you continued to keep your nose clean, if you catch my drift. Or me and the others in the bullpen are never gonna hear the end of it.” She cracked a wry grin as she said it. “Sorry.”

“I deserved it. And I promise you’ve got nothing to worry about.” He was able to leave after that for the car and got into the back. “We got lucky.”

“McKenna?” Laurel asked, and he nodded. She relaxed back against the seat. “Good.”

“He’ll probably be finding out soon,” Oliver felt he had to point out. He wasn’t insulted that Laurel seemed keen to prolong that moment; the last thing he really wanted was Lance even more on his case.

But there was something on his mind that was troubling him. “You fought Dodger.”

“Yeah. Well, I knew if I went along with what he wanted, we’d lose him.” She wasn’t looking at him. Instead her gaze was on her hands where they played with the clasp on her clutch. “The thing is, I’ve sort of been, um—”

“I offered to give her some pointers on keeping safe,” Digg interrupted. “She’s got defensive basics down. We’ve just been going over technique.”

“Uh-huh.” Oliver highly doubted it had actually been John to make the offer. More likely, Laurel had asked and he had agreed. He looked at her. “We talked about you staying safe.”

She was eyeing him with that familiar stubborn light in her eyes. “Well, sometimes fighting back is how you stay safe.”

“But sometimes that can end badly. I am grateful that didn’t happen tonight, but the people I go up against are dangerous, Laurel. They don’t fight fair, and there are times when I nearly haven’t won. And times when I haven’t.”

“I know that. And I never said I wanted to take on the Dark Archer in hand-to-hand, but I want to be useful to the team,” she insisted. “And that starts with me not being helpless.”

“I never said you were, but Laurel, I need you to be safe.”

“You’ve said.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. If something happened to you out there because I got you involved in this mission, I couldn’t live with myself.”

It was silent in the car for a long moment. Laurel’s lips were parted slightly, and she couldn’t seem to find the words for a moment. “Ollie…”

“Laurel, we’re at your building.”

“Okay. Thanks, John.” She reached for the handle and glanced once back his way. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he echoed softly as she left the car. He watched as she walked up to her building and disappeared through the doors with a swish of the skirt of her dress. Maybe it had been too much to hope for a lovely evening, but even when she was walking away from him she was beautiful.

Diggle’s voice called him back to reality.

“Man, you really lost your smooth moves on that island.”

Oliver sighed. “Home, John.”

When he did step through the doors of the mansion, he walked into something of an ambush. Thea popped out of the sitting room and gave a sigh of relief at the sight of him. Then she called back over her shoulder, “He’s home, mom!”

“Speedy, is everything okay?”

“Yeah, well you tell us. You’re the one who went to a gala where that bomber guy showed up.”

Right. He walked up to her as their mom was standing up from the couch and shutting off the news.

“I’m fine, promise.”

“What were you even doing there anyway?”

“I was on a date with Laurel,” he answered his sister. “Which you will probably see covered in the next tabloid issues. So don’t read those.”

“Laurel?” His mom repeated. “You’re seeing her?”

“Yeah.” He watched her for a moment. She seemed almost alarmed. “Is that okay?”

His mother recovered her usual grace with that question. “Of course it is. I’m just surprised, I suppose. Pleasantly.”

“Yeah, he really lucked out on that one,” Thea remarked.

He looked at her. “Don’t you need to be in bed so you can be well-rested for school?”

Thea rolled her eyes and made off for the stairs. “Night.”

He and their mom both replied in kind, and then Oliver turned back to her. “I’m sorry for worrying you or Thea. I promise everything was fine tonight. We were in more danger from the paparazzi than a bomber.”

“They can certainly be as ruthless as one,” she agreed.

He nodded and started to make his own way to the stairs.

“Oliver?”

He backed up until the sitting room was in view again. “Yeah, mom?”

His mother walked up to him, her hands clasped together. “Perhaps, in light of all the attention from the press, it might be best for you and Laurel to take some time away from Starling. There’s the beach house in Coast City. I’m sure some staff could have it ready within a week.”

“Not exactly beach season yet, mom.”

“No, maybe not on the West Coast,” she agreed. “There’s always some of the other vacation properties.”

Oliver stared at her for a moment. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she wanted him out of the city for another reason. And maybe he did know better. But whatever his mother was mixed up in — whether it involved Malcolm Merlyn or not — couldn’t involve getting him out of the way. At least, not when she didn’t know his identity.

“I’ll think about it,” he told her. It was an empty promise, but hopefully it would put her at ease for the time being. “Maybe once the club is up and running.”

“Alright.” She placed a hand to his cheek and smiled. “It’s good to see you happy again. I really am proud of you, sweetheart.”

In spite of everything he did and didn’t know about her, he couldn’t help himself feeling touched by the praise. “Thanks, mom.”

“I just want you to stay safe.”

“I try to,” he lied. His mother couldn’t know, of course, that there were reasons he had to take risks out there if he was going to save this city.

It took him a while to reach sleep once he had gotten into bed. He was tired, but there was still so much on his mind.

His mother wanted him to be safe while she engaged in who knew what; in turn, he wanted Laurel to be safe while going out there and risking his life most every night. Was he too much his mother’s son? Was it hypocritical of him? How did he balance his care for Laurel with respecting her decisions?

Oliver rolled onto his side and reached for his wallet. He took out the old picture that still sat there, his thumb smoothing over one of the folded corners. For five years, Laurel and her life and safety had kept him going through the worst tortures. But now that he was back, maybe it was time to stop imagining her or what she might say. Maybe it was time to listen to the actual person.

—-

“Detective, you got a minute?”

Quentin looked up from his desk at Hall’s approach. She was a good cop, even as new as she was. He’d been considering bringing her onto the task force for some time now. “Yeah, what can I do for you?”

“Nothing, really. Just wanted to give you a heads up. We brought in the Dodger.”

“I heard. Good work on that.”

She smiled briefly, but shook her head. “Can’t take too much credit. Private security at the gala detained him after an altercation with one of the guests.” She paused. “That guest was your daughter.”

Quentin’s mouth dropped open. “Laurel? What was she doing at one of those things?” She hadn’t been anywhere near that high society nonsense, not since—

“She was there on invitation. And she’ll be coming in to fill out a witness report for me tomorrow. Just thought I’d let you know.”

Hall left for her desk before he could demand any further information. But he had a rotten feeling in his gut, and it started with a Q.

He made sure he was in the bullpen bright and early the next morning, not wanting to miss Laurel’s arrival. Quentin hadn’t had a real chance to talk to her since their fight about the Hood’s phone, and that had been eating at him. So had Merlyn’s information about her sniffing around something to do with the Triad. And now with this, well, the silent treatment was out the window. Clearly if he didn’t keep a close watch on things, his daughter tended to lose her head.

Laurel showed up around 10:30, easily navigating her way through the station. Hall had gone for coffee,

Which left Laurel standing in the bullpen looking for the right desk. There was his opening.

“Hey, honey.”

“Dad.” Laurel’s expression was guarded at best. He might have felt guilty about that, but more likely she was feeling guilty. “I’m actually hear to see McKenna about a witness report.”

“Yeah, I heard. You were at that fancy auction last night. And how might you have come by an invite to that?”

Her voice was flat as she responded, “Dad, don’t do this here.”

“Do what? Catch up with my daughter? See if she’s doing okay? Ask her why in God’s name she’s decided to spit on her sister’s memory and go back to that cheating—”

“Yeah, that. That exactly,” Laurel cut him off just as his voice was starting to raise. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that Oliver is a changed person. I don’t know how much more evidence you need put in front of your own eyes, but he is. And I know that doesn’t bring Sara back, but I also know it was never his intention for her to die out there. So you can stop acting like it was.”

“Why are you wasting your time on him? Defending him? Just answer me that,” he said. “You’re always involving yourself with the wrong people. I just don’t know what I did for you to grow up that way.”

Laurel scoffed, her arms folded.

“Well, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Laurel, hey.” Hall had just entered the bullpen with her mug. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“That’s okay,” his daughter replied, turning away from him completely. “I probably would have been held up regardless.”

She joined Hall at her desk, and they were both talking too quietly for him to pick up anything of use. With a scowl, Quentin returned to his own seat.

Laurel left the station without a goodbye, not that he was inclined to give his own. Hall got up without the file and left the room. Quentin glanced around. Hilton hadn’t come in yet, and no one else was going to call him on it.

He got up from his desk with some papers in hand and crossed the bullpen to Hall’s desk. Laurel’s witness report was still sitting right on top. He flipped through the testimony, his eyes widening as he read.

She’d fought off that thieving maniac? With a bomb collar strapped around her neck? What was going on in this city? And where the hell had Queen been?

Quentin had to hurry back to his desk at the sound of Hall’s approach, but his mind was buzzing. Laurel could have died last night. He could have lost his only daughter, all because of some date she’d been on with Queen. That rich idiot didn’t know when to quit.

He took off from his shift a little early and headed down to the bar. It was that kind of day. Quentin sat there, shoulders hunched as he nursed one, and then two, and then three drinks.

Trouble followed that man wherever he went. Less than two days after he’d come back, he’d been kidnapped. Then there’d been the hit at that party he’d held while under house arrest. Now this. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it was a pattern.

Actually, there’d been something else. He’d been there, too, that first night someone had tried breaking in to Laurel’s apartment. The Triad.

That had seemed open and shut. Martin Sommers had been working with them, and Laurel had been in the midst of prosecuting him. But then strange how Queen had just happened to be there.

And then again, when he’d first gotten worried, when he’d found out she had a client with Bratva ties — she’d been handling Queen’s case. She’d told him when he begged her to leave the Bratva alone that she didn’t have that client anymore...just after he’d dropped the charges on Queen.

Laurel wasn’t an idiot. If she really was seeing Queen, something about him had to be different than when he’d left on that boat. But that something didn’t have to be good. Laurel was just as bad as he was about attracting trouble. Quentin just couldn’t let go of the idea that there was some kind of connection between these seemingly disparate events.

Was he drunk? Was he crazy? Seeing something that wasn’t there?

Quentin put down some money for his tab and stumbled off the stool. He had to get this down in writing. Start drumming up some leads.

As he left the bar, he got a whiff of himself. It was pretty obvious where he’d been. He couldn’t go to the station like this.

Lance staggered home, his intent to shower and then to get to work on this clear in his mind. But by the time he cleared the front steps it was all he could do to make it to the couch.

Tomorrow. He would start tomorrow.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #john diggle #thea queen #moira queen #quentin lance #mckenna hall #black canary #green arrow #joanna de la vega #my writing

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solastia · 6 years

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Sandcastles | 1

Chapters: [Prologue] [1]

Pairing: Namjoon x Reader

Word Count: 2,356

Genre & Warnings: Angst. Infidelity/Open Relationship. Some smutty MxM action.

Notes: I’m on a roll! So much inspiration for this story. Outlander fans will notice a similarity in the beginning. It’s the one scene in Frank and Claire’s relationship that struck me the most. If you can’t even give each other the basics, even just going to a movie, what is the point?

“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to have rules, yeah? Some pretty common sense stuff. Use protection. Be discreet. Shower before you come home. Our place is off limits. No spending the night.” Namjoon listened as she listed everything off. He still didn’t know what they were doing, but this sounded...okay? No. It felt wrong. So why wasn’t he stopping her?

“If we’re doing this to stay together then you’re going to have to spend time with me too. Date nights at least like, once a month? Alright?” He nodded because that was reasonable. Actually, when was the last time he took her on a date? He couldn’t even remember. Maybe their anniversary? No. Shit. He just gave her flowers and a card before going to bed. Fuck, he was an asshole.

“And, if you end up falling in love with someone else, just...tell me. I’ll let you go. No need to string so many people along. I just want you to be happy.” He could hear her voice cracking and couldn’t believe how strong she was being. She shouldn’t have to be.

“Are you really sure you want to do this?” He asked one last time.

“No, but you didn’t give us much of a choice, Namjoon. It’s this, or we’re done.”

He hated himself as he looked at the face of the woman who’d been his whole world for years and saw nothing but sadness and pain. His Princess. He’d done this to her.

And he couldn’t stop.

“I understand. I’ll follow the rules.”

“Hey. That modern art museum finally opened up a couple weeks ago. I know you were looking forward to it. You want to go see it this weekend? We can make a day of it? Maybe have dinner and walk down the river.”

His girlfriend looked so excited, smiling happily up at him as she asked.

“I, uh. Already went. Last week.” He sheepishly answered, not knowing why he did. He should have kept his mouth shut and just went again to make her happy. Why didn’t he just do that? Because, as Yoongi likes to tell him so often lately, Kim Namjoon is a fucking idiot.

“Oh....Oh. Yeah, of course. My bad.” He hated how she visibly drooped. How her pretty smile vanished, and her eyes dropped to her lap. Because of him.

She set the tea she’d been drinking onto the counter and walked towards the bedroom. Namjoon followed her with his eyes, noting the slow steps and clenched hands. Before she closed the door, she glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Just remember to follow the rules and save some time for me too, yeah? This isn’t going to work if you can’t even give me the basics.” She said softly before closing the bedroom door, the echoing click that followed letting him know she wanted to be alone.

They’d been doing this open relationship thing for three months now. At first, even though he really felt guilty, the selfish asshole part of him had been excited. After all, it was every guy’s dream to be able to fuck around as they please and even have a good home to go back to. He never lied when he said he still loved her. He absolutely still did. She was his Princess. The one he planned on marrying someday. But for some reason, he was letting his dick make his decisions lately.

He supposed part of the blame could be put on his career. His rise as one the Seoul’s top music producers had brought him into the limelight. Suddenly singers, actors, and models were all throwing themselves at him, and he was flattered. He’d never had that kind of attention before. These men and women that he used to only see on the TV were begging to jump his dick, and would anyone say no to that?

He knew that he should.

And he hated that he didn’t.

He got up and grabbed his keys and threw on his snapback, gazing longingly one last time at the bedroom door before he quietly left the house.

“Faster....fuck! That feels so good....”

“You want it faster, Jimin? You want me to fuck that ass so hard you can’t walk for a week? Is that what you want?” Namjoon growled as he pounded him into the mattress.

“YES, fuck yes.” Jimin mewled before he buried his face into the covers, his wails muffled by them. Namjoon increases his speed, the smacking of skin on skin echoing throughout the room. He smacks Jimin’s plump ass once, growling as he can feel himself getting close. “Oh, shit...I’m gonna cum!” Jimin moans and Namjoon finishes as soon as he feels Jimin’s muscles contracting around his cock, filling the condom. He pulls out with a ragged groan and throws the condom away before falling back onto Jimin’s bed.

He stares at the ceiling as he catches his breath, the now familiar guilt rising to practically suffocate him. He pushes himself up and makes the trek to the fridge to grab two water bottles before heading back to the bedroom and handing Jimin one, draining his own bottle quickly.

What was she doing right now? Was she watching the door, waiting for him to crawl back home? Crying to her family and friends that he was fucking up their lives? Sitting in front of a cold dinner like...

He sighed audibly, shaking his head at his thoughts. Why would her life revolve around him anymore when he does this to her?

“You know, I can tell when you’re thinking about her. Your jaw juts out, and you get all tense. You look like a T-rex.” Jimin giggles, poking Namjoon in the back with his foot. “I still can’t understand how you fuck around if you’re so whipped for your girlfriend.”

“We’re in an open relationship.”

“So just because you can, you do? Don’t get me wrong. I’m benefiting from that arrangement by getting some bomb ass dick, but if you’re sad every time you fuck me, it kinda bums me out too.” Jimin is sitting up and stroking Namjoon’s arm in comfort, and Namjoon leans over and gives him a peck on the cheek.

“Sorry, Chim Chim. Are you saying you want to stop?” Namjoon asks, almost hoping that he’ll say yes to help him avoid one more temptation.

“Nope. I’ll happily be one of your side pieces as long as you want. You know you’ll miss this ass.” Jimin jokes, giggling cutely when Namjoon flips him over and smacks it. He props himself up with his head on his hand, observing Namjoon in a way that makes him feel like he’s under a microscope.

“For real though, you know we’re friends first. If you need to talk or something, you can count on me. And if you ever need to cut this off, we’ll still be friends.”

“Thanks, Jimin.” Namjoon quietly says as he gets up and grabs his clothes. “I’m going to jump in the shower and then head out. I’ll see you at work on Monday. Have fun on your date later. Don’t compare him to me too much.” Namjoon grins over his shoulder at his friend who throws his boxers at him.

“You wish you could compare to him, you giant nerd.” Jimin laughs. “Have fun on your date tomorrow, too. You’re going to see that model chick again, right?”

“I don’t know if one picture makes you a model, but yeah, seeing her tomorrow.”

“Good luck, Joon. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Namjoon arrived home a little later than usual and he hoped she’d eaten dinner. Most of the lights were off but she’d left one on in the hallway so he wouldn’t have to walk around in the dark. He walked to the fridge and opened it, both touched and saddened to see she’d saved him a plate of food. Even when she knew what he was out doing, she still thought to take care of him.

His gaze scanned the apartment, cataloging all the little things she does for him. Saving him dinner. The plate full of cookies that she bakes for him even though she doesn’t like them. The notes of encouragement she still puts on his laptop so he’ll see it before work. The basket next to the couch filled with clothes of his that she mends because he’s always ripping them on something.

He hangs his head in shame and shuffles to their bedroom, trying his best to be quiet as he gets ready for bed. He can tell by her breathing that she’s really asleep, so he slides in as gently as he can so he won’t disturb her.

Namjoon stares at the back of her head, marveling at the little strands that are highlighted by the moonlight. He wanted to gather her up and cuddle her. He couldn’t even remember when they started sleeping on separate sides, but he was sure he started it. He didn’t feel like he deserved to touch her anymore. He was tainted. Someone like her couldn’t last in a relationship like this. She was everything that was good, and this would destroy her.

He should let her go.

But he couldn’t.

He scoots as close as he dares and breathes in her comforting scent as he falls into a deep sleep, where he could pretend there was nothing wrong with him and everything was right with the world.

Everything about this woman was wrong. She was rude to the waiters, she spoke with her mouth full, her hair was too short, she was too tall, her nail polish was a weird color...

Namjoon knew he was just picking at things. He couldn’t help it, though. His princess at home was everything he wanted. Why did he keep looking? What was he looking for? Or was it him? Was he the one that was missing something?

“Excuse me, just gonna head to the bathroom. I’ll be back.” Namjoon said, not waiting for a reply before escaping.

The room was empty, thankfully, so he took a moment to stare at his reflection. The same ugly face he always saw looked back at him. He could practically hear his girlfriend’s snort in his head, the one she always did when he’d make a negative comment about himself. “You’re stunning, my Joonie. From the top of your gorgeous head to the tip of your long, elegant toes.” Namjoon stared at himself, trying to see what she saw, what they all saw, but all he could see was ugly because his foul actions were painting the outside.

The bathroom door opened as someone came inside, so Namjoon quickly turned on the faucet and ran his hands through the water, patting his face with a bit. The guy stood next to him at the bathroom counter fixing his hair and dabbing on cologne. He looked like a movie star, and Namjoon wondered if he’d ever seen him in anything. The guy looked over at Namjoon with a boxy smile, nodding in greeting.

“You on a date too?” He asked as he fixed his hideous outfit. The man was draped in head to toe Gucci. Expensive and high fashion, sure. But hideous.

“Yeah. Kinda nervous, you know.” Not really, but it would explain the way he was acting, he supposed.

“Yeah, man. Me too. I mean, I hit the jackpot. This girl, she’s in a complicated relationship thing, but she’s...way worth it. You know? Like, wife material. Beautiful, funny, sweet. I met her at the dog park and was super persistent until she finally agreed to a date today. I don’t know what finally got her to agree, but I’m not going to waste my chance. I don’t know why the guy doesn’t have her on lockdown, but he’s a dumbass. They don’t get better than her.” He animatedly raved about his date as Namjoon politely nodded, wincing at the parallels to his own situation.

“Well, good luck with her then, man. I hope it works out. She sounds great.” Namjoon said as he made his way to the exit.

“Yeah, same to you!”

Namjoon walked back to his table, apologizing for the long absence. He grabbed his glass of wine and took a sip as he saw the Gucci guy exit the bathroom and walk towards his table. Namjoon watched, curious to see what kind of woman could land someone that looked like a real live anime prince. The man sits at a table near the windows, and his date glances up to smile at him in greeting.

He knew that sweet smile. The red silk dress she’d worn on their second anniversary. The garnet necklace he’d given her for their first Valentines day.

Gucci guy laced his fingers with hers and brought her hand up to his lips for a kiss, and the woman blushed so prettily and bit her red lips.

Namjoon was so focused on the woman he didn’t hear the startled gasp of his own companion, or feel the pain as the wine glass in his hand was crushed; it’s shards embedding themselves into his palm.

Namjoon had forgotten the most important thing about open relationships.

They’re open both ways.

((AN: Is it really Taehyung if he doesn’t make friends in the bathroom?))

#kkreationsnet #KWritersKollection #kpopwritingnet #btswriters #bts #Kim Namjoon #bts angst #namjoon angst #namjoon fic #namjoon fanfic #bts fanfic #bts fic #Namjoon smut #bts smut #kpop fanfiction #Kpop Fanfic #namjoon x reader

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o-taryn-o · 6 years

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Watching The Last Jedi Thoughts and Reactions

I’ve been obsessed with reading Reylo fan fiction since the opening night I saw TLJ. Ive seen this movie a lot but thought it would be fun to watch it again and react. I guess I had a lot to comment on Rose and Finn and also DJ. Enjoy~

Wow these opening credits are super vague…

I really love this opening scene it’s 100% my favorite Star Wars opening.

Carrie Fishers daughter is super cool. Hux looks v tired and/or on drugs.

Sansa’s insane aunt from Game of Thrones. Love BB-8, I ship Poe and Hux more then Hux and Kylo tho. “punch it!” I love that they have enough time to say cute one liners when piloting a ship. THIS SCENE IS EDITED SO FUCKING WELL THOOOO. Its literally FLAWLESSLY edited. 2nd “punch it!” When the bombers show up my heart starts beating faster, my favorite action sequence ever. Not even thinking about how theres no gravity in space. I love Paige so much! Have I ever seen a asian woman save the day in a movie ever? Why are her hands so beautiful? I LOVE THE COSTUMES OF THIS MOVIE. I wonder where Kylo is? Finn bb!! I wonder why he’s in a storage room? This movie is SO SEXUAL. Love me some beautiful island porn. LOVE that Luke throws the saber, love subverting expectations. “Master Skywalker?” is so cute I have such a crush on Rey. Wow the huts are so cute. Daisy is literally so beautiful, want to be and also kiss her. Progs, so cute. Rey literally doesn’t waste anything love it she takes the books later also. “Where’s Han?” and then cuts to Kylo love it. The fuck is a “cur”? ADAM DRIVER fuck. This room is so red, its so pretty. This movie is visually STUNNING. Ben’s hair is fucking glorious, also look at those LIPS! I just want him to be with Rey and happy. Ben is fucking loosing his mind Ryan made him look so broken I love it. “Prepare my ship!” is so sexy. Rey’s accent is so perfect. Literally what Luke said he doesn’t want to do he does by the end of the movie. Love poncho Rey! This island is so fucking cool I need more high quality pictures going around. The green milk is so funny. I love that Rey looks away from the creature in embarrassment but then not Ben’s naked chest. I need to take so many screenshots of this movie, theres so many moments people forget! Rey in the tree, so beautiful, I can’t wait to find out id those books give us any information next film. I hope the next film starts with the vision Rey and Ben saw next film. I want to see Reys dreams. I miss Carrie.

Poe is so annoying, Leia is so right. What a great line, “get your head out of your cockpit”. How does Finn know what the binary beacon is? THIS is when shit goes down. I really like that everything in this movie goes wrong. “Follow my lead” so sexy. Ben is literally crying feeling his mothers presence. And yet people thing this isn’t a redemption story. *shakes my head* Even The First Orders uniforms are so crispty its beautiful. I really like that Leia saved herself. Finn looks so good in that jacket I’m so excited for his blue pants look. Chewy and Porgs is all I ever needed. The lights in the cockpit of the falcon are really beautiful. The shots in this movie are GORGEOUS. I feel like R2 has a really dirty mouth. I can’t wait for Ben and Rey to escape with the falcon from somewhere and then takeout. IM SO READY. Luke is kinda creepy? Never liked Luke, Leia should have been the protagonist of the original trilogy. HOLDO is a BABE! Love her look and tone and everything she saids is bomb. I love that she talks about everyone else in the galaxy and the importance of keeping everyone hopeful. Why is there so much sexual tension between Poe and EVERYONE? I do feel like Poe is bi tho. Holdo is RIGHT, Poe is annoying and a dick. Sorry I don’t make the rules. He’s hot but wrong. Finn and Rose are so GOOD, it makes me so happy this whole scene. I’m sorry bb Rose I wish I could give her a hug. “Doing talking…” haha I love Kelly so much. Rose is v smart and I love that she stuns him and then drags him. DRAG HIM GIRL. All the men in this movie are making mistakes and the women are being smart this is true to life. Rose and Finn are honestly so perfect together. Its so annoying that Finn and Poe keep interrupting Rose, also true to life. Maz in the next movie is gonna be into Reylo. Also “union dispute?” what the hell is Maz talking about? How and why does Poe know Maz? I love sleepy Rey, Ben isn’t even mad when he sees her. He looks her up and down so many times throughout this movie. He’s so in love before she is, its cute. Reys outfit is perfection. What Rey said actually wasn’t completely wrong. “s tension, a balance” REYLO! I love that they go into what the force is in this movie. Porgs on the ship is so cute, so is Rey in rain. Ben with his questions, I like that Ben is actually listening to her to see how she feels about him. HE LOOKED AT HER LIPS! WET GLOVES. Finn is so distracted. Pretty cool looks in the casino, those glasses are sweet. Finn/John is so hot. Love watching Rey with her staff. I need one of those belts. An ICON. Could listen to Rey’s theme all day. I feel so bad for the locals, Reys a little bit of a dick. Right when she decides to follow Luke I need that gif! This conversation is great but all I can focus on is the fact that Luke saids “huberous” twice always makes me anxious. I love space operas. Men failing, *a theme*. “I need someone to show me my place in all this” its Ben baby! DJ is cool, why does nobody talk about him. He’s such a interesting character. BB-8 is a badass. Fathiers are so beautiful. It was unnessicary for them to crash through the window and run inside, this whole case is too long. I can’t believe that they have already filmed most of the next movie. I like that Leia and Luke are talking. Now Reys asking the questions, she’s trying to understand him, she wants to understand him. I haven’t noticed till now how inconsistent their voices are over the force. Sleeping baby Ben is my favorite, with his calligraphy set? Precious. Did he show her his past? Or does she just believe him? I want to see the other cut scenes from Reys storyline. Its really cool to see Rey mirroring herself. This is a really cool scene. I’m so happy Ben has long hair in Episode 9. Bens already crying just from her telling him about how lonely she is!! They are eye fucking rn, I know what that look is. I REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE SEEING!!! Luke fucking ruins everything. Ben must be freaking out rn. Yeah get him Rey! I love this fight in the rain. Rey is right. The thing is like how do you know someones completely evil? Who makes that judgement call? This scene is cool, love the look of Yoda. Its a lot of pressure on Rey to continue the Jedi order if she’s the one who knows all the stuff in the books, Im glad she grabbed them. “The greatest teacher failure is”, “we are what they grow beyond” GREAT QUOTES. Rose is a badass. DJ is kinda right tho. “Let me learn you something big” so funny. No one can tell me Rey didn’t wash up and get pretty for meeting Ben. Ben made sure he was the first face she saw, he looks hot. Sweet hacking skills. The iron is really fun editing, they all look really good in the uniforms. The first shot of the elevator scene is so sexual, Ben holding her lightsaber in front of him with her hands in handcuffs. Oofff. Ryan made this scene as sexy as he could. Its so intimate. They want each other so bad. Rey whispers and leans in. Ben is so soft. His trying to hard to focus on his goal of killing Snoke and saving Rey. Rose is so salty “of course you do”. I feel like everyone puts up with Poe because he’s hot, because he’s a dick. Another failed plan. Yeah Leia get him! I love that she just shoots. Her daughter surrendering is really funny. Leia and Holdo are so cute I hope they made out one night really drunk when they were younger that was ,y first thought when they held hands. I absolutely love Holdo’s hair. Reys outfit in the throne room is so cool. She’s so strong, Ben is trying so hard to keep it together in the back. Theres no way Snoke bridged their minds. Ben got so scared when he said that. “No” she’s so strong. Ben looks so sad. Oscar Issacs ass is fine! John is really good in this scene and Rose’s scream is terrifying. Murder in Bens eyes. Its really scary that Snoke has so much control over Rey. Rey with Bens saber is all I ever needed. Bens gloved fingers are v sexy. Also THAT FLICK! When they look at each other they know, there in love. THIS FIGHT IS EVERYTHING! When DJ saids “maybe” I felt that. They are so powerful together. I love watching them fight together, can’t wait for the 9! Ben fighting off 3 guards is so hot. Rey dropping her saber and backhanding ir is really hot. Wow this moment is so intense its so quiet. Im so mad Ben didn’t stop the fleet though. The way he saids Rey, why are both of their voices so hot. I need Rey to tell him off in the next movie the way he’s telling off her parents. “Please” murders me. Rey is so smart, she knows he isn’t good yet. This is Rey’s moment of “I know what I have to do” Its crazy that Rose and Finn almost died by being beheaded! The silent part is so beautiful. Why was Phasma so far away? BB-8 in that thing is pretty weird though. Finn is so powerful. He’s super reckless in this film. Rose is so good I want to be her and slide hug her. “Rebel scum” is such a good line. Snokes lower body falling off the throne is super graphic. Ben is so mad Rey left. I can’t wait to see more of soft Ben, I don’t like him choking Hux even though its Hux. Rose and Finn are very lucky they made it below that door. I think everyone always thinks of Rose and Finn as cute and funny, but they are honestly serious and smart. So many people died in this movie. I don’t understand how they aren’t wearing goggles if its salt, they would be crying right now. This run takes a lot more time then it is distance wise. Its so pretty though, so I don’t care. Rey and Chewy saving the day is my favorite thing. “Wooh I like this!” so cute. I love watching Rey shoot. The crystal creatures are so pretty. Finn no! Yes Rose! “I saved you… dummy. Thats how were gonna win, not fighting what we hate, saving what we love.” Rose is right everyone! Listen up! Why does Ben say “no prisoners”, maybe he is bad? I love Reylo I don’t understand I believe in Ben. Is he lying to himself? Could he actually kill his mother? Luke and Leia are so sweet. Also their conversation about Ben makes everything more confusing, so he’s not gone? Aw Luke kissing Leia’s forehead is really sweet. Lukes wink is funny. This music is so good. Finn taking care of Rose is my favorite thing. The editing is so beautiful. Rey in snow >>>> Also “Lifting rocks” how does she know thats what normal Jedi start training with? Ben is such a baby in this scene, he’s so upset. I love that Rey and Finn normalize intimate friendship. Ben is the truest definition of a ‘Dark Prince’ if Ive ever seen one. I’m really glad Luke died here, its time, the sunset it really nice.

Bens eyes say it all here. Chewy and Leia so sweet. Reys smile is so AWW. Finn putting a blanket on Rose is the best. Rey knows she’s thinking about Ben. “We have everything we need” I bet Leia had a big part in 9 I’m so sad Carrie is gone :(

This last scene with the kids is really the perfect ending, HOPE.

#reylo #star wars tlj #netflix #love #finnrose

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facets-and-rainbows · 6 years

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Blue Exorcist: Spy Game - Yukio in Wonderland (part 2)

More of this insanity, now in glorious technicolor English. Every time you see a name that looks different from usual, it’s because it’s a feminine version.

[Part 1 is here]

Part 2

“We’ve got plans to go hang out with Ryuko and the gals, don’t you remember?”

“Who’s Ryuko?!”

“Koneko is out doing something for the sutra club, but once that’s done we’re gonna have a girls’ day out.”

“Can…can guys even come to a girls’ day out?”

“Seriously, what are you talking about? You’re acting really weird.”

Rin dragged her little “sister,” who was still acting suspiciously, to True Cross Academy’s new girls’ dorms.

“Huh? Yuki-chan-sensei’s been acting weird? Like how?”

The girl whose room they were in, Ren Shima, was talking with a piece of sweet-looking rock candy in her mouth.

She had light pink, curly twin tails and rosy cheeks. Overall she was cute like a porcelain doll…except that she seemed perfectly content lying on a bed that was absolutely covered with dirty laundry, fashion magazines, half-eaten snacks, and home workout gadgets.

The hardest part to accept was her outfit, which consisted of just a T-shirt, a pair of boy’s boxers, and, for some inscrutable reason, fuzzy leg warmers. With fashion sense like that, it was hard to tell if she was hot or cold, or male or female, or what.

“I dunno, all of her’s weird. The whole pitcher.”

“Pretty sure you meant to say ‘picture’ there, Ni…Nee-san.”

“Right there! See? What’s with the ‘Ni-nee-san?’ Why’s it start with ni?”

“That is kinda weird. And you’re not talking like the usual Yuki-chan-sensei…You kinda sound like a boy.”

Ren agreed with Rin’s prompt criticism. Despite her flippant attitude, she was actually pretty sharp.

Annoyed, Yukio fired back, “You’re the weird one here, Shima-ku… I mean Shima-san.”

“Huh? Why’s that?”

“There’s so much I want to say, but for now, just stop dressing like you were robbed by bandits on the way here.”

“Hahaha, you really are acting weird.” Ren snickered. “Bandits? Seriously? That’s funny.”

“Hey, Ren. Knock it off,” came a voice scolding her friend. “Sensei’s been busy with all sorts of stuff lately. She’s probably just tired.”

The concerned voice belonged to Ryuko Suguro.

She was tall, slender, and attractive, with the same bold two-tone hair as the male version, and for some reason she was wearing a maroon tracksuit with “Class 3B – Suguro” written on the front. There was also some embroidering that looked like the name of a middle school, so maybe it was an old tracksuit that she was wearing around the dorm.

She had a few rubber bands on her wrist, which gave her a certain down-to-earth quality…okay, it mostly made her look like a middle-aged woman.

“You should get a little more rest.”

“Thank you, Suguro…san. By the way, if it’s not too much of a bother, I’d like to ask…Why are you wearing a middle school tracksuit?”

Yukio was expecting an answer like “all my other clothes are still in the wash,” but Ryuko nonchalantly replied:

“Oh, this? Well, it still fits fine and it’d be a waste to get rid of it, obviously. Plus it’s comfortable.”

“It’s not like anyone’s gonna see it, right? Comfort first,” Ren agreed, yawning lazily. “You know Ren-chan can go a week without a shower if she’s not meeting any boys.”

“Okay, a week is way too long,” Ryuko scolded.

Obviously. Yukio agreed wholeheartedly in his mind.

“Though I’m totally fine going a couple days without washing my hair.”

Huh? Yukio glanced over at Ryuko, but she seemed completely calm. What’s she saying?

Weren’t girls supposed to be the ones who knew all about different brands of shampoo, and were late to things because they were doing their hair in the morning? Weren’t they supposed to exchange cute candy-like bath bombs as gifts, and take hot baths for their health, and maybe even try making handmade soaps sometimes?

Was that all just an illusion in the minds of men? Just a dream?

Is this the reality? Is…Is Shiemi-san like this too?

Yukio was stunned. His sister asked, “What’s wrong, Yukiko? You’re making a really weird face.” She laughed innocently. “Hahaha, you look ugly like that.”

Yukio wasn’t even at liberty to respond to her thoughtless comment. He tried to pull himself together.

Calm down. These guys…well, these girls? They were boys originally. They don’t count! That has to be it!

Surely normal girls showered and washed their hair every day, and sometimes went all-out doing their hair in the morning, and wore cute clothes even around the house, and kept their rooms clean.

Surely they weren’t like this, hanging out in dirty rooms wearing strange outfits, having lively conversations about gross topics. No way.

As Yukio was repeating that to himself, his sister said,

“Man, it’s hot in here though.”

She set up camp in front of the old electric fan, and started flapping her skirt up and down.

“Ah, nice and cool. I think I’m coming back to life.”

Shocked, Yukio grabbed her hand to make her stop.

“Don’t you have any shame?!”

“What’s gotten into you, Yukiko? You’re overreacting. It’s fine, I’ve got shorts on underneath. Everyone does this kind of thing at all-girls schools and stuff.”

“That’s not the problem!” Yukio yelled at his sister, another of his dreams about girls shattered. Just then—

“Sorry I’m late,” said a husky voice as the door opened. “It went on longer zan I sought it would.”

“Oh, Koneko, you finally made it.”

Miwa-kun?

The other inhabitant of the room, Koneko Miwa, had returned.

Yukio instantly thought of what Konekomaru had looked like dressed as a girl—but what appeared was…

A drop-dead gorgeous woman with a tall, well-proportioned, glamorous body like a model’s, and beautiful blonde hair that went down to her waist. She could have been a Hollywood actress.

“Wh-Who are you?!”

“I’m Koneko Miwa…Is somesing wrong, Yukiko-sensei?” Koneko asked in a slight accent, her face clouded with confusion.

Well, I sure didn’t expect this…

Is she…half-foreign?

The only thing about her that seemed like Konekomaru was the glasses.

Yukio fell to his knees on the floor.

Just what is going on here?

What could have happened to him and everyone else?

As Yukio was nursing a headache, his sister cheerfully said:

“Welp, since Koneko’s back, should we get going?”

And in the next instant—

“Hold on a sec!” “Uhh…Ten minutes. Just give me ten minutes.”

Ryuko and Ren’s voices overlapped.

Before they even got a response, they were already running around trying to get ready.

Why didn’t they do this in all the time they had before? Why were they just hanging around chatting when they weren’t even ready to leave?

Yukio stared at them in disbelief. Pretty soon, ten minutes were gone in a flurry of whining about lost combs and lost socks and stains on a favorite bag. And then…

“Five more minutes.” “Gimme ten minutes. Ten minutes.” “Just five minutes.” “Six minutes!” “I just need four minutes!” “Three minutes!”

…time kept getting added on endlessly.

What is this? Why didn’t they just say how much time they really needed from the start? Why announce it bit by bit? I can understand this coming from Shima-kun, but what happened to the serious, detail-oriented, order-loving Suguro-kun?

Yukio was getting annoyed, but his sister and Koneko next to him seemed like they were used to this. They didn’t seem especially bothered, and didn’t try to hurry things up.

“Hey, Koneko, did you know about the Happy Buffoon over at True Cross Sweets House?”

“I do! But not ‘Buffoon.’ ‘Buffet.’ True Cross Sweets House even ’as pancakes on zeir buffet menu. It’s so popular!”

“Sure is. So I was thinking, how about we go today after we’re done shopping?”

“Oh! Zat would be wonderful!”

“Right? Right? They’ve got a chocolate fountain and everything, you know? I’ve gotta try that with some marshmallows.”

“Tee hee hee. Zat sounds like fun.”

They just kept up the excited girl talk (?).

In the end, they were only able to leave after waiting on Ryuko and Ren for an hour and a half…

[Part 3]

#blue exorcist #blue exorcist novel #spy game #oh my sweet summer child

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