#its important to them too. jack is like the only friendship they ever had that they dont see as having been broken in some way.
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okay. thinking. but a large contributing factor to why clara & even are never going to get along is that clara’s perception of even is just. wrong. not through any fault of her own; she’s literally not being given a vital piece of context aka Even Comes From A Fucking Spaceship.
after donna gets her memory wiped, the only people left who know this are the doctor (found them), jack harkness (onboard the tardis at some point prior to them picking a name and got curious), and the master (did Not ask for like 3 years of time hell, also assuming they were from earth, until they mentioned it offhandedly and made him pout in a corner of the tardis for an hour because you mean to say he’s been insulting that planet to their face for years and their lack of reaction wasn’t offense or hurt or anything because they don’t even think of it as their planet??? all that wasted time???) Clara doesn’t know. The Doctor never thinks it’s pertinent to bring up, Missy doesn’t bother, and Even. doesn’t like her.
so, to Clara, even is whoever came before her, is someone the doctor picked up and who couldn’t keep up or else they’d still be traveling with him instead of clara. even’s lack of attachment to the idea of humanity as a whole (like, say, in finding it a reasonable plan to use the dead to create cybermen because they’re just bodies at that point, just unused resources, and helping missy to that end) comes off as cold and callous rather than a very practical worldview formed by their original circumstances. their slowly rediscovered delight at simple things on earth becomes childish under a kind eye or fake under a suspicious one. Clara’s judgements would be sound, especially considering Even’s insistence on staying with Missy, except for all the history behind their decisions that Clara isn’t privy to.
and that’s really the crux of it, i think. that even’s history with the doctor is an unknown that clara makes assumptions about because she can’t actually see it. and even’s resentment of clara lies in how much they can see of her and the doctor, how much they understand about why he’d pick her, and that that. hurts. to be on the outside of.
#which is. obviously. just a microcosm of the wider issues going on between the doctor & missy over their heads.#even knows a great deal of that history. because even listens and the master likes to talk and somewhere in there there’s some truth to it.#and clara doesn’t because the doctor will talk about anything else but not that. and if he did? would she listen? when she’s made up her#mind who missy is?#also jack being one of the only people who knows a lot about even is. important to me.#its important to them too. jack is like the only friendship they ever had that they dont see as having been broken in some way.#even is also. not privy to the events of torchwood. they dont actually know Everything about jack.#their view of him is slanted in a heroic way much the same way their view of the doctor was when they met him. jack just never broke that#image for them.#anyway. off topic but for that reason thats why even’s tardis voice interface would look like jack harkness. because he was kind to them.#dw oc#look either my thoughts about even are shitposts or paragraphs of meta theres no inbetween im rotating them on a spit
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Just had the chance to read Lights of Avalon while writing my own HiJack fic, and its so apparent how much you GET Jack as a character. It's amazing to see the life you breathe not only into this different incarnation of Jack, but the Guardians and side characters like Jack's family.
As someone who is more new to the HiJack fandom (Only been writing it for a year now) how do you get the characters this fleshed out and believable? I always struggle trying to balance out elements like that without it dragging to much. What is your technique for this writing wise?
Well, technically I've only been here for a year too--I think we're coming up on the anniversary of when I read OTNWAS and got trapped here, wow, time sure flies LMAO
This is my first ever ask for writing advice, dude I'm so stoked! I'll do my best to give you a clear answer, but sorry in advance if it's a little jumbled, I'm still fairly new to fic writing and this is only my second one asldfjlasdjf
For Jack specifically, I owe a large part of my understanding of him to talking about him with @jjackfrost! I feel like I had a good grasp on his general vibes from rotg, but talking with Robin and how he approached writing Jack in OTNWAS really helped flesh him out in my mind!
EDIT: I finished typing everything out and this answer is long af, I'm so sorry LMAO. TL;DR:
Focus on who Jack is as a person, and demonstrate who other people are through how exactly they interact--and more importantly, react--to him in his POV
9 times out of 10 people won't info dump their tragic backstories to each other, so give info about them in their actions as you move the plot forward. Come up with situations that can best showcase who they are as people. Show don't tell!
How much you learn about each character will all depend on who your POV character is (Jack) and what his relationship to them is like (the closer they are, the more heart to hearts he'll be inclined to share)
Details under the cut!
EDIT 2: ALSO THANK YOU SO MUCH, I'm so glad you like my characterization of everyone!! That's super high praise!!
Things are a bit different because this version of him never lost his memories and stayed human after falling through the ice, so I focused on who he is at his core--his centre, if you will hehehe--and what kind of person he was to begin with that would make the moon choose him. He's a really specific balance of mischievous but never malicious, immature but still responsible, and very very brave and compassionate and protective and HUHHHHHH my son 😭😭😭 His strength is in how he focuses on finding joy even in the darkest times, you know? And he's very self-sacrificing in order to bring that same joy for others.
When fleshing out the other characters in the story, for me it was important to remember that Jack is the POV character, so any info we learn about others has to come from their relationship with him and what he observes in them.
For example, his heart to heart with Bunny is way more guarded than the ones he has with his mother and Emily since they're still strangers to each other at that point. Neither of them are going to info dump about their tragic backstories to the other LMAO, especially since Bunny's not a wears-their-heart-on-their-sleeve character, but that's exactly why I thought that he'd be the best choice out of the three to have the initial real talk with Jack. He'd be the least likely to pry, which would let Jack relax a bit about dropping his guard.
In their conversation, I needed to give enough info to 1) get to understand Bunny's motivations a bit more, since he definitely sticks out next to Tooth and Sandy as a bard, 2) establish trust between him and Jack that can develop into a believable friendship later, and 3) give Jack more of a reason to think that joining the Guardians is actually an emotionally healthy idea too.
So then I thought about what exactly they'd share with each other, since conversations are always about listening instead of talking. Bunny doesn't divulge into the details of his past, but you get a sense that he's been through a lot given what he does share, and that he's already had his own character arc. Jack learns that Bunny is also deeply protective of his family, and that's something he can relate to. Jack's questions in turn show how lost he is, and that prompts Bunny to give only the relevant info that he thinks would help Jack.
But then for all that to happen, they needed to have another moment of bonding before it felt believable that they'd open this conversation in the first place, hence them being forced to team up in the snowball fight lol. Plus it wouldn't be a RotG fic without one good snowball fight LMAO. Pacing-wise, it also just so happened that I needed another more light-hearted scene to brighten the mood before things went to shit again since chapter 2 was so angst-heavy, and I needed to bring the Guardians back in to give Jack the option to leave, and you see how things are falling into place now lol
Writing the Guardians is suuuuuuper fun because they all have such fun and distinct personalities from each other! I get to be a bit less grounded when it comes to them too, since they bring a lot of comedic relief and are more whimsical in nature from the movie.
For Jack's family, it was easier to flesh them out through how much Jack cares about them, and how much he pays attention to what qualities in Emily and his mother that he loves most. In turn, you get to see how much they love him too.
Obviously you spend the most time with him and Emily, so I wanted to make their dynamic as siblings really cute (I drew a lot of inspo from my own relationship with my younger brother, which helped me relate to Jack more too). You see how much she takes after him with the tree climbing and how she follows his lead in all the mischief he pulls. She's self-sacrificing in her own way, with the scene where she pretends not to be interested in the pink dress when Jack catches her looking at it, and more importantly later when she tries to stop him from leaving and finally shows how much the accident and the guilt from it has been affecting her too.
Pacing-wise, they needed to spend the most time together in order to make Jack's sacrifice for her more impactful, and how much it hurts him to leave her, so I came up with a bunch of ideas for things to best showcase the different layers of their relationship--1) clowning the bards and each other for the humour, 2) stargazing for the intimacy, 3) snowball fight for the mischief, 4) their goodbye for the FEELS, plus that whole montage about winter before Jack saves her.
You only get one real scene with his mother, and I wanted to give her more character than just "mom," so I gave her an injured little boy to help take care of so you can see how warm she is as a person when she calms him down, in contrast to how Jack can reassure the kid in his own way by entertaining him and making him laugh. Then she gets some banter with Jack so you see her sense of humour. You get a hint of where Jack and Emily get their playfulness when she mentions that she's better at climbing trees to tease him lol.
Exposition-wise, Jack already knows that she's the town doctor, so instead of having him like, turn to the camera to say it lol, the scene with her stitching up the boy's cut demonstrates that. I gave Jack and Emily tasks that showed other aspects of her role without having to explain it, ie: shopping for supplies at the apothecary for her, and delivering medication orders she made for people in town. Idk if it was too subtle, but another reason I had Jack mention that they're short on cash was meant to show that she's not in the medical field for profit (SIDE-EYES AMERICA), so she's very selfless as well.
Aaaaaaaand that's about it so far without talking about what's going to happen next in the story. I hope that was helpful!
#writing Jamie for the one-shot was so much easier because I just made him very gen z LMFAO#ask#fsbt-fanatic#advice#tloa#the lights of avalon
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The Station 19 storyline...
Am I the only one who absolutely hates the Beckett and Ross/Sullivan storyline? It seems way too dragged out by now. Why enable characters like that in a show as popular as station 19? It doesn’t add up with the statements of the writers wanting to stand for inclusivity and equality. It would have made sense it the writers actually tried to make a point with it, or if there in any way had been foreshadowing to future episodes to sort of create a bigger picture of things. Yet now it seems that the storyline is that way simply just for the sake of it, and due to writers not being able to or wanting to come up with better storylines. Plainly, it just seems like its promoting misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and chauvinism.
The same goes for the sidelining of Travis, Vic, Carina, and Maya. Why do they not have more screentime each and in interaction with each other? It seems that Andy, Ross, Beckett, Sullivan, and or other side characters are constantly in the picture as well. Travis and Vic should have a bigger storyline as well, where we actually see them interacting with Maya and Andy outside of the station.
The Jack redemption storyline? I’m just not buying it. It seems extremely hypocritical when compared to the way that Maya has been treated. Both Jack and Maya have been in the wrong with some of their actions, as well as some of the things they have said, but suddenly it’s all “station 19 protect our own, we’re a family” when Jack is suffering and pushing people away. Where is that energy for Maya? Where are her friends? It’s really sad to see the way the show has ruined her friendships with Andy and Vic. They really made Andy and Vic treat Maya terrible and say horrible things about her. I miss seeing Andy, Vic, Travis, and Maya interacting and actually spending time together and supporting each other!
So, it seems that Jack is allowed to suffer and be a person who treats others terrible, but when Maya is suffering because of a demotion caused by her saving a kid its everyone for themselves? Why drag that storyline out so much, but allow Sullivan and Beckett to continue their chaos and shitty treatment of others seemingly for no good reason at all? That just doesn’t speak anything other than hypocritical to me.
And sorry to say it, but it’s literally the most out of character thing ever to have Carina and Maya to suggest that Jack should be the donor and have them continue to actually use him as a donor. Also, yes I see why Carina would be able to forgive Jack, it’s so in her nature, but to practically swoon over him? That would literally never happen, Carina wouldn’t do that - what were the writers thinking? Lastly, that whole storyline with the Marina baby, everything was wrong about it, and it was extremely disrespectful to all queer/non-straight womenx. Please STOP putting men into/between the storylines of queer/non straight women like that, it’s just so unnecessary and weird? Both Jack and Maya could have had great storylines respectively without interactions such as the one carried out in that storyline.
I definitely also think it was the wrong choice to make Travis treat Emmett like that, it seemed to out of character and unnecessary. They were such a great couple, and Emmett was such a great addition to the show. Definitely feels like the show is missing something without Emmett and Travis/Emmett as a couple.
Last but now least, give Carina more screentime and a bigger storyline, she’s a series regular for god sake, act like it. She’s literally one the most popular and one of the best characters on the way, it’s time the station 19 writers and producers recognize that. The same goes for Marina, stop dragging this baby storyline out so much please, that would not have happened if it has been a straight, cisgender couple and that’s just sad. Stefania and Danielle are way to talented to have their characters disrespected like that, and Marina is way too important to be disregarded like the writers have been doing for a while now.
Sorry for the rant, but it just made too much sense in my head to not get out.
#station 19#marina#maya x carina#maya bishop#carina deluca#travis montgomery#vic hughes#stefania spampinato#danielle x stefania#danielle savre#barrett doss#jay hayden
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Jonathan Walsh could never commit himself to anything, least anything that wasn’t a bottle of Jack. Pure Irish blood that flowed within his veins, those in King County couldn’t blame the man entirely for his faults. His parents hadn’t given a damn about him and it showed. Dreams and hopes were always crushed underneath shoe heels. Workers boots like that of which Jonathan’s father Declan wore, tattered and torn from hard labor out in the Georgia farm fields. Homemaker heels like that of which his mother Orla donned, as pristine as the day that she bought them, as ruby red as the wine that she drank daily. Between a father who worked too much and a mother that worked too little, there was no room for love and support for Jonathan and his six siblings. They were on their own. Could do whatever they wanted, did whatever they wished, school the least of importance. Least, that was how it was for Jon Walsh until he met Annie Carter. A familiar face that made the final two months of high school bearable.
Annie was everything that Jon was and wasn’t. Richer, though her means were nothing to brag about in King County, her and her parents lived comfortably, smarter and better when it came to academics. She was blonde, gorgeous, but with a dark side to herself that scared all who got too close. As to where it came from, neither her mother nor her father knew. Jean and her Byron always worrying about their little girl, their only child after many failed pregnancies and miscarriages, a blessing that some nosey neighbors had deemed a curse. Retribution for the sins that Jean and Byron carried out. Participated in and explored without care, Jean would cry herself to sleep thinking about where it was her daughter had snuck off to. In the middle of the night - Annie would pay no mind to how her parents begged her not to leave - mysterious strangers the sort of people that she would call friends. Annie was 18, and as she would declare each and every time her father threatened to punish her, she could do whatever she pleased. She never got in trouble at school. She received good grades. She always did her chores. She was about to graduate and move out. She was allowed to have friends; Jonathan Walsh the latest. A fire that burned her gasoline.
Jean always blamed herself for the shortcomings of her daughter. Regretted the fact that she and Byron weren’t more stern with her before it all got out of hand, either of them too easily manipulated by their beloved child. She never gave much credit to the cruel words that had denounced her decades before, but as Annie grew worse and worse in her habits, late nights powered by drink and unknown companions and undisclosed locations, Jean couldn’t help but think that there was some truth to them. What she and Byron had done: she chose true love over faith. Raised in the small Jewish community that King County had, her parents had wanted Jean to do just as they had done before her, what their parents had done and what their parents had done, too. Married within the faith, stayed within the family. But Jean could not keep her affection for Byron James Carter quiet. Practically cried in happiness whenever she saw him, kiss after kiss upon his lips, would rather abandon all that she knew than ever lose him. He just as devoted to her, his proud English heart beat only and ever for Jean Hoffmann. The other half to his very soul - he would marry her and make her the happiest woman in all of Georgia.
The happiest and the loneliest all the same, when an engagement band found its way upon Jean’s finger, so did her mother and father’s disownment. She was dead to them. She would never be spoken of again. She had made her choice, and would be left to rot in misery with the man she deserted her people for. No home would welcome her. None from the community would meet her eye in friendship anymore - Jean was alone. But rather would she be alone with Byron than surrounded while in a marriage that she didn’t want. An eternity with someone that she couldn’t love, wouldn’t love, family that was lost would be superseded by one that Jean and Byron would make all their own. Children and grandchildren and more; they would create their own family. Babies that would be loved no matter what - not like how Jean was so viciously tossed out - adored and cherished. 23 and ready to take on the world with her sweetheart, a blushing bride if there ever was one, Jean’s spirit was light. It hurt no longer over the words of her parents, for her future, as she knew and believed in, would be bright. Her and her Byron and their fairytale, what came to be was far from the storybook ending that she prayed to God for.
Pregnancies never lasted. Miscarriages happened more often than Jean could count, and there had been a part of her that believed that she would never have a child. A baby that she so wished for, that she wanted so desperately, it broke Byron’s heart to see his darling Lil’ Bird in pain. He would’ve done anything to make it go away. Give her as many children as they could have, the moon and the stars. He was so good to her. Gentle, not at all like the mongrels who prowled around the streets looking to break a delicate woman’s heart, certain that, when the time was right, he and Jean would have their family. They only needed to keep trying. And, truly, that was all part of the fun. Pleasure that recognized no pain, just as Byron had said to her, so it did happen. Jean was pregnant. With child in her belly, tears of joy unable to stop their spill down her cheeks as she relayed the news to her husband, a doctor’s visit the validation that the couple needed. If God blessed them, they would have their long awaited family. A little boy or girl of their own - Annie Elizabeth Carter was born nine months later.
The apple of her parents’ eyes, their sweet girl had turned into an outsider before either Byron or Jean could blink. Graduation come and gone, before the next year came to pass, Annie had married the troubled Jon Walsh. Against the disapproval of her parents, the unsatisfied grumbles from his, Jean’s pleas to wait ignored for a honeymoon based upon cold beers and a cabin in the woods. Her own past thrown into her face like it were poison: I’m just like you, Mama!
And just as fast as the wedding, Annie’s pregnancy came immdeiately. Delayed somewhat, for a jobless couple who were somehow always so busy, 21 years old and not a consideration for the baby that she carried. Still did Annie want to live the lifestyle that she and Jonathan were attached to. Parties and clubs and bloody brawls, Jean and Byron, for the first time in Annie’s life, put their foot down. It had to end. What Annie was doing to herself, what she was exposing the baby to, they wouldn’t lose their only grandchild because of the selfishness of their daughter. But too far gone was Annie to wonder about the baby who grew in her womb. More so another person to keep her from her carnal desires than a piece of her and the man that she loved, Jonathan was no better. A drunk who abused his charm and good looks, a womanizer who bedded any and all. He didn’t care that Annie knew. He didn’t care that it broke her fragile mind even more than it already was, whatever evils that had lurked there before he ever sank his claws into her. A twisted sense of humor within her, when the baby was born, a baby boy who looked so much like Jonathan in the eyes, she named him in honor of two ex-boyfriends: Shane and Everett. Shane Everett Walsh was his name. And Jonathan could barely stand the fact. Only simmered in his anger. Temper about to burst in the hospital room.
There was no note. No message of hate. No token of love. There was only an empty bottle of liquor that signaled that Jonathan had left his and Annie’s home. Clothes all gone from their drawers and shoes taken from the closet, the little cash that the Walsh’s had was gone, too. Their home was a ghost town. Furnished by the few pieces that were bought for the baby, Grandma and Grandpa’s eager purchases, Annie didn’t have a moment to lose her sanity. Jean nor Byron unable to allow that, not ready to fail a second time to an innocent child, they had her and her baby boy move in with them as soon as the next week. A home just on the street corner, a place not too big but bigger than where the mother and son had come from, comfortable and peaceful, a safe haven. But Annie didn’t care. She never did. Leaving Shane with her parents all day, she could drink until she blacked out. Stumble around with Jonathan’s name screamed from her lips, drew blood from the women in King County who had dared to call him their one-time lover. A lover lost forever - no one knew where he was nor where he went. Jean and Byron were glad for that. Jonathan Walsh was better off alone.
Byron and Jean adored their Shane. So sweet and so beautiful, he was the perfect child. A glimmering light that brightened their days, they could almost pretend as if life was a happy one. A life that wasn’t spent worrying over their precious Annie still, all but in legality was Shane theirs, and his mother was ever delighted for that. Part of her did love her son. A chunk of her heart branded in his name, but a chunk that couldn’t be outdone by Annie’s marriage to drink and drug. Men that acted just as Jonathan used to, gossip whispered otherwise, but Jean knew that seeing her in such a way was what killed Byron. His beautiful baby girl mutilated by her own doing, poor man couldn’t stand the sight. Was perhaps too tired to fight with her anymore - his heart gave out in his sleep. Beside Jean in their marriage bed, just as he always knew he would go, with his true love beside him, Jean was thankful that Annie went quickly after. Heartache not allowed to fester - two losses within the span of a year - there was hope to a peace found in the afterlife for her treasured husband and daughter. Maybe, then, could Annie find the happiness, the answers, that she didn’t have in the mortal world. At long last, her alcohol glass was free from a fresh pour.
Jonathan Walsh could never commit himself to anything, but the same would not be said of Jean Carter. She would do all that Jonathan didn’t and more, she would love Shane and protect him, be there for him through all of his days. Fatherless but not without love, Jean would make up for the mistakes that she made with her Annie, the blissful ignorance, the love that blinded her from what her daughter was. How sick she was. Jean would do good for, and by, her darling Shane Everett. But even she couldn’t protect him from everything.
Rumors rampant in King County, for homegrown scandal always sold, truths hard to differentiate from lies: Jonathan had murdered his best friend in cold blood in the next town over. Shane was really the son of another man. Annie was a part of a crime ridden gang before she died.
But by God above, Jean would try. She would do anything for her Shane.
#Heart of A Soldier || Headcanon#Stories From A Deputy || Drabbles#// Just a little thing I wrote up about Shane's family#// Am I in love with his grandma who was named like once in the show?#// Yes I am#// I think Jean is amazing and you should love her too
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Can i request the twst first year noticing something on the fem crush's neck. They think its a hickey but its just a mosquito bite. I want them all together in one fic but if you cant do it then it's fine, it can be separated.
Ah, ah~ another fun prompt to see in fandoms! Lends itself for very funny situations
Which I attempted to portray here :b
Go on an enjoy!
Title: “Who was it?!”
-- -- --
P.E. classes always had students sweating their skin off; Vargas was a relentless teacher whose head could not understand his harsh training was hard to keep up with.
It was normal for students to remove the top part of their coverall sports uniform and zip off or roll up the long pant legs to allow fresh breezes to cool them off.
[Name] decided to partake on this today, it was burning and the professor was as demanding as ever to push everyone to their limit. She normally kept the top of her uniform to prevent unwanted gazes to her body.
It so happened that a group of first years was hanging out in the sports field too. “Ah, those guys are here as well. Maybe I should go say hi to them.”
Five boys were arguing about something or other, Sebek, Ace and Epel appeared very fired up at the discussion.
“Hey, guys! What are you all talking about?” They all jumped at the sound of her voice. “Boys can be so weird…”
“Ah! Eh… Nothing...important…” Ace delivered nervously.
“Uhm, sure.” She brushed it off, “Anyways, mind me joining you guys for a while?” Before they could answer, [Name] sat down along the group’s formation and began fanning herself to alleviate the heat and dry off the sweat.
The boys continued speaking with themselves, albeit a little robotically.
Being the closest to the ground where she sat to the [ x ] year, Epel was the one to notice it…
A red spot of considerable size on the girl’s beautiful neck.
Right then, the Pomefiore student got a flashback of those hentai manga he sneaked glances at in his hometown’s secluded library.
“The pact… They broke the pact!” He became enraged.
He exploded, “Which one of ya fuc-?!”
The pact… of not making a move on [Name] until she herself spoke out to any of them if she had a crush on someone, one of them, or anyone in general.
To the small 1st year��s knowledge, she had yet to speak about anything romance related.
Felmier tried to swallow down the even bigger urge to scream. “W-Which one of you… d-did it?! We had… a pact, you-! You dishonest buffoons!” It was hard to keep up the posh and proper Pomefiore student front when all he wanted was to punch their faces.
“Epel!!” The boy was cut off by Vil yelling at him from a distance. Everyone flinched at the stern callout.
Seems like the dorm head decided to have his yoga session outside. How inconvenient.
Jack was the first to speak, “What are you talking about? Do what? Why would you think someone broke the pact?”
Ace followed, “Are you delirious?!”
Sebek nodded, booming voice amping his statement. “I must agree with Trappola this time. You’re pointing fingers unjustly! How do we know it was not you who broke the pact?!”
Before Epel could defend himself, Deuce exclaimed, “Sebek’s right! Your sudden outburst is suspicious! No one knows what you’re blaming us for except you!”
“ ‘T fuck ya mean by that, city boy?! ‘Tis clear as day, a damn big red mark on her neck!” Epel snapped at the accusation, but a heavy glare at the back of his head corrected his speech, "Ahem… I-I mean… There's clearly a distasteful bruise marring the...pristine skin of her neck! The culprit better confess now!"
"Mark on her neck?" Jack questioned, coming closer to the sitting girl.
"Woah, what's going on? Whose neck? What mark? What are you guys even getting angry about? What pact?" The [dorm] student was full of doubts and ready to push away anyone that dared come too close.
With a shaky sweet smile, the lilac haired instructed, "Dear [Name], can you please turn your head to the side for a moment? Just...to check for something."
She hesitated, but complied no less. The Heartslabyul duo's surprised reactions worried her, "What? What's wrong?! Why are you acting so weird?"
"Look at the size of that! Well, clearly Epel couldn't do it, he's too small." Ace thought out loud, which gained him a ferocious death stare from the mentioned boy.
"Ace, didn't you have a study session alone with [Name]?" Deuce questioned, voice holding a threatening tone.
The other half-of-a-whole-idiot opened and closed his mouth, unable to speak. He resorted to winking and giving finger guns.
"Ya bastard! It was you all along!" Epel and Deuce accused.
Trappola protested, "Hey, I wasn't the only one having alone time with her! You also had a private lesson with her, Deuce! And Jack, I saw you hanging back with her after practice!"
"Woah! Look at it! It has small dots surrounding it!" The shortest boy of the group pointed at the strange mark on [Name]'s neck.
The human trio remained silent while Jack sighed, knowing where this would lead to.
"It's one of you two! With your sharp fangs and whatnot!" Accusing fingers were directed at them.
Sebek was the one to defend himself first, "I have not been able to meet [Name] this whole week for our scheduled reading session! Don't even dare point blame at me!"
"You guys are insufferable, why would either of us bite down on the one we fancy without going all out?" The wolf growled.
"Exactly! Howl speaks the truth! Coupling and the like are serious matters to us fae! ...and beastmen!" Zigvolt backed the claim.
They continued arguing intensely as a very weirded out [Name] watched in horror and confusion.
"Are they referring to me? What even is the thing they're talking about?" She pondered, her own hand traveled up to feel at her neck. "Itchy...very itchy…" So she did what instinct said and scratched the spot.
"What has gotten into their heads?" Grim suddenly approached the sitting one.
The [color] haired sighed, "Something or other about breaking a pact and a mark on my neck." She turned to look at the cat-monster, "Say, Grim, can you do me a favor and tell me what exactly is on my neck? I just know it itches and feels slightly hotter than the rest of my skin there."
Round azure eyes examined the spot he was told to. "Oh! It seems to be a mosquito bite!" The feline spoke loudly.
"Seriously?! You have those here too?! Uuugh, what a drag!" [Name] groaned at the news.
The yelling suddenly stopped.
"Come...again?" Sebek, for once in their whole friendship, spoke in a low voice.
Grim repeated himself, "What [Name] told me to look at in her neck, it's a mosquito bite… Maybe she got it while sleeping."
Everyone took a good look at the red bump again, letting a small "oh" after realizing their mistake.
"Ahaha… so, uh… guess it was all a misunderstanding…" Ace said, bringing an awkward silence afterwards.
"Anyways, guys," The girl stood up, "Care to explain what was all that about a pact and worrying who did this to me? What about that thing of biting down on the one you fancy?" Peeved [eye color] looked between all of them as she crossed her arms.
"N-Nothing to worry about much, [Name]! I-Its just..!" Deuce began.
"Dumb teen boy things, don't e~ven worry! Ahaha..!" Ace seconded.
Jack cleared his throat, "Something, uh… Leona wants me back at the dorm at this hour. See you around." The tan boy fled the scene.
"Y-Yeah! The Young Master must be soliciting my services! I must go. Farewell." Sebek followed.
"I-I believe Vil called for me earlier!" Epel ran as fast he could, in the complete opposite direction to where the dorm leader was exercising.
"Dumbasses, bunch of dumbasses…" The [hair color] sighed. "They all have a crush in me, don't they?"
Ace and Deuce looked at each other before laughing nervously, "Yeah, we, uh…"
"Have to feed the flamingos!"
"Indeed! Can't let them feed themselves!"
"So~... We gotta go, get changed, into the pink clothes, else they will...b-...b-..."
"Bite! Yeah, they bite and peck very hard!"
"Oh, yes! Aha… So… See ya 'round!"
"Bye for now!"
"That they do...that they do…" Grim confirmed.
[END☆]
Anyways~ hope this was a fun read! ( ＾▽＾)/
-- -- --
Epel, dear, you shouldn’t be on that section of the library...
Thank you for the request~
#March 2021 special#request pavilion#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland x reader#1st year gang#Ace Trappola#Deuce Spade#Jack Howl#Epel Felmier#Sebek Zigvolt#zack writes#fun times
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classic
pairing: Jack Daniels (Agent Whiskey) x reader
wordcount: 3k
warnings: none, tropes on tropes on tropes, weird descriptions of things
summary: good, old fashioned fan fiction chaos
notes: there’s no getting around it - everything I write with Jack is inevitably influenced and inspired by @scribbledghost s version of him, particularly her neighbor!whiskey. I tried not to, but I still feel I should give credit!
>>
It was the kind of razor your grandfather would have used – more of a knife than anything, because of course it was.
Of course this would be edge that your housemate used to slide along his jaw and chin and cheeks to make that perfect mustache before work in the mornings. He was the type to love old fashioned, traditional, dangerous things - it made sense. After all, that was why you were staying in the guestroom of his ranch home while your apartment was being renovated. Old fashioned courtesy between friends, of course.
Dangerous.
Jack had caught you watching him, impressed in spite of yourself as the sharp blade scraped over his neck, neatly slicing the hairs on his throat, and pushing your heart into yours. It was unnecessarily intense, dramatic, the touch of risk for the sake of vanity. It made you swallow, awed that he wasn’t covered in little cuts, and almost aroused at how casually he used something so akin to a weapon. And that alone made him smirk, cocky, as though he had been waiting for you to notice, hoping to impress you.
A few days later he’d coaxed you to him, settled in a chair with his legs spread wide with confidence as he handed you the tool, smug with confidence – almost a challenge. He had gotten wrecked at work – he actually had, and it was the perfect excuse to draw you close, make you bend to his will. Schoolyard tactics, really, but all of this was, and it was worth it to have your eyes on him alone, face a breath away from his.
It was about trust more than anything. Not that you would ever hurt him, but the power of being over him was heightened by the intimacy as you lathered the cream over his skin.
His deep eyes bore into you, not flickering to the blade as you tried to focus on your task. If he had asked you a different time, another day, you maybe could have refused, but somehow his wanting your steady hand felt heavy with implication.
Ignoring the quickening steps of your heart, your fingers grasped his chin, shaving away the stubble he’d let grow just for this. Each slice of smooth skin revealed left a thick line of froth and hairs on the blade, and you got to breathe as your turned away to wipe it off. You could feel his gaze, still, but you couldn’t bring yourself to meet it. Hovering over him while he was seated, touching his jaw, leaning close, and meeting those brown eyes would have been too much.
Your denial was as a solid as a wall with half sunk into the ground with cement – almost rooted in your fear of rejection.
It was a challenge to ignore the shots of adrenaline that filled you when he’d reach around you to grab something in the fridge, his chest against your back, hand on your hip. Already you had shoved down the butterflies in your stomach when he’d offered you a place to stay, carried your boxes, and called you sweetheart. You had spent far to long ignoring the way he hadn’t brought a single girl home since you’d been there to fold now and admit anything. Because if you did, there was a chance you would lose your friend forever, and that was out of the question.
You kept your eyes down to keep your hands steady.
For his part, Jack’s plan was only half working. He liked your attention, liked the way your breath hitched as you wiped him clean. But you were closer than you had ever been, patting in the aftershave and you wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t open the door for him to push the tools and towels aside and kiss you. All he wanted was to grab hold of you and pull you into his lap and make you melt against him but there wasn’t a moment.
You’d been friends for a long time, been there for each other countless times and he had yearned for you almost as long. At first, he tried to deny it too, grabbing at random women and hating himself when he imagined they were you as he pulled them into his room.
Then he’d given that up, stopped pretending anyone could replace you, that anyone else occupied his dreams, anyone else could be as good a fit for him, and went after you full speed. It had honestly been innocent to invite you to stay, instinct instilled in him from his childhood. Still, he had begun to see the opportunities for the two of you to enjoy intimate domesticity right away, when he’d cooked you dinner and you’d talked at his table for hours, finally not worried about having to drive home. He ached for that – not ever really having to leave you, and he spent more nights than he’d like to admit thinking of knocking on your door.
Only… you were still in your denial phase. Not sleeping around just pretending it was normal to sink into his arms after a bad day, to let your friend play with your hair until you fell asleep, to watch his lips as you gently helped him shave.
It was too vulnerable, to high of a risk to go after you with the chance that you weren't ready. The last thing he wanted was to scare you away.
-
“What, really?” you said, genuinely surprised. When you’d accepted to stay, he’d promised you there would be no problems, but now you felt guilty.
His mama was coming to town, and would more than likely be staying with him.
“I’ll find somewhere else!”
Jack was already shaking his head at you, like you were missing the joke, but he looked… almost nervous? You couldn’t tell, it wasn’t something you saw on his face often.
“Actually, sweetheart, I was hoping you could do me a favor,” he was asking, but it’s not like you could actually say no you him, when he shot that winning smile your way. It was like not petting a puppy – and you were the opposite of allergic to cowboy secret agents.
“You know Mama Daniels,” he said and you smiled, having spent many a summer helping her in her garden, and being thanked with dinners heavy with butter and love. “She’ll like you here, she’ll be over the damn moon.” And you conceded. It would be more than nice, to spend time with such a wonderful woman, an Jack had invested in a very comfortable couch. For a week you enjoyed a hopeful bliss, that she would help remind you Jack was just your friend.
The sun was shining through the windows, the winding almost singing a quiet, breathy song, and everything was as spotless as you could manage. Well worn quilts were clean, and you had set up a little station for yourself in the living room determined to make it your home for the week.
Then she came with a jacket that matched her slacks and shoes with little buckles and a paisley suitcase full of presents for her son, who she insisted wasn’t really grown. She hugged you and scolded you for being at work instead of coming to pick her up, and finally settled at the kitchen table, her intentions clear. You were to sit and catch up - Jack was already pulling the sweet tea you’d made from the fridge and a reused sewing tin filled with butter cookies appeared out of her purse.
Meekly, you sat, knowing if you didn’t eat the cookies in quantity, she would pout her whole visit. You could feel Jack settle at your side as she talked, warm and solid, a comfort, despite the heat of the day.
The cookies disintegrated on your tongue, melting with a burst of sweet before the bite was gone. They were full of love and maternal affection and things that you hated to spend money on and made all bad thoughts disappear. You were thankful your mouth was full of one when she mentioned, offhandedly, how plum delighted she was when she found out the two of you were finally dating. Abruptly, you remembered just how wrong your previous hope was.
The sweet lady had been hinting for you to marry her son since before he’d mastered his first lasso, and apparently, she was sure that moment was well on its way.
“And living together, no less!” she was beaming with pride, tradition apparently irrelevant as she chatted happily about it.
Turning to the man by your side, you found him choking, trying to breathe through the cookie he’d accidentally inhaled. There was a white ring around his irises as he stared at you, panicking and aptly confused. Sure your face matched his, you jerked your head at his mother, a silent argument ensuing.
Did you do this?
No!
What do we do?
We can’t break her heart!
It went unnoticed. You felt helpless, drinking your tea and trying not to have a small meltdown in front of a very misinformed lady who had brought you cookies.
He was your friend! And sure, you liked the weight of his arm around your shoulders or could get lost in the drawl of his voice but that was normal! It was normal to be so comfortable with him as the beginning, end, and highlight to each of your days.
Sounding weak even to yourself, a crack, solid and formidable, formed in the wall you created to protect yourself and the friendship you had built.
“Ma’am, I’ll be back in a moment,” you whispered, grabbing your phone as you grasped at air, hoping beyond logic that you could pretend it was an important call.
You didn’t exactly run away, but you walked very quickly outside, mourning the loss of your little guestroom, and the privacy it offered.
Jack would never, ever smack his mama but he did want to say some choice words. Nothing could have prepared him for the last two minutes of his life, first the embarrassment of the misunderstanding and then… the fear in your eyes.
He hated it, hated it so much more than he ever thought he could, hated that it was probably his fault it was there. And he hated that it shrouded the longing he had begun to see there, these past few weeks. Long strides carried him after you, hearing his own voice distantly saying words, explaining maybe, as he left the table.
There was a tree, trunk too wide to wrap your arms around, thicket of leaves creating bean-shaped shadow on the ground, by one corner of his home.
You were behind it, almost like a child, letting the bark press lines into your forehead. The dappled lighting did wonders for you – you looked the perfect picture of a storybook wanderer in distress.
Jack slowed, overwhelmed with the desire to encompass you in his arms, slay your dragons, and whisk you away. Now was not the time.
He kept his voice soft, reaching for you in place of his hands, trying hopelessly to find the root of your panic.
You were just as quiet, telling him it was fine, you would pretend, as long as you’d talk tonight, after she went to sleep. His heart was creating dramatic movie scenes where you would float into his room, declaring your love for him, before settling in his arms, but he shook them away, agreeing.
Smile over-bright, you touched his smooth cheek a moment too long, before pushing past him back towards the house.
He allowed the afterglow of his daydream to wash over him only a moment before he jogged go catch up with you.
-
The quilt on Jack’s bed had chickens on it, of all things. It was one of those that had clearly been homemade, years and years ago, taken care of, but worn at the edges with memories and use. One pillow had a dent for his head, the other was squashed into an unrecognizable shape
You didn’t know that it wasn’t like that, before. That his arms had only started searching for something to hold onto since you had been around.
All of his room was new to you – it made you feel strange, realizing that for weeks you’d been in his home but not this part of his space.
The afternoon his mother came, he’d been called into the field. You had never quite seen the look on his face as he reasoning fell on deaf ears – desperation and frustration like ants ruining honey on a picnic. The flannel across his back bunched as his shoulders had filled with tension before he stripped it off to change into his work clothes. Jack kissed his mothers cheek and spewed instructions for the both of you, some apologies spilling out and others kept just behind his eyes as he grasped your hand.
His final command was for your ears alone - that you take his room, and you’d been too panicked to refuse. The last three days, the smell of him and the memorabilia scattered around the space kept you company when his mother went to sleep and you slept in his bed for the first time, alone.
It was surprising how sentimental he was. His hooks had another cowboy hat on them, a little wider, brown, and considerably more worn. There was a stack of printed photos in a little box by his bed – it was open, and some of the photos had oil-worn fingerprints along the edges. You found ones of you, and your heart flipped inside your chest.
You should have realized it was impossible to deny yourself, your feelings, with him surrounding you like this. Each thing you learned, each reminder of him practically reached off of the walls, as if he were there, coaxing your heart into his hands. It felt silly, almost, that you even tried to ignore it - you had missed him the moment his hand left yours. Now you had all the time to process, surrounded by his neatly folded shirts and the line of his favorite boots.
The idealized illusion of your relationship had only lasted half a day of living with his mother. Her warm brown eyes were too much like her son’s – you couldn’t lie to them. It was good though, for her to hold your hand a listen to you talk as the birds gossiped outside the window and steam seeped out of the pie you helped her bake. Miraculously, she wasn’t disappointed with you, commending your honestly, and explaining that if she was patient until now, then she could certainly continue to do so.
The more you talked to her, the more you suspected that she was right, all along. She helped you dig up the walls, her kind determination the shovel you needed for those concrete roots.
You would work and talk and tuck yourself into his chicken-clad blanket at night and finally, finally let yourself think of him, allow yourself to be in love with him. You didn’t know he had started actually living in his room again, when he’d started letting himself love you. That he thought of your smile when he’d found his old quilt. Still, the more you thought, the more you could admit to yourself that maybe, just maybe, he loved you too.
That was how Jack found you - absorbed in your thoughts - the whiskey in his hand as forgotten as the mission and the agent he’d played for the past seventy eight hours and twenty one minutes.
He watched through the half open door, words failing him as you sat up, startled and the way your eyes searched for injuries made him want to eat you alive.
There was nothing that could’ve prepared him for the sight of you in his bed, even though he had told you to be there and three days to daydream about it. It was intensely intoxicating, having someone care for you so intimately.
With his sheets sliding down around your waist, you looked as good as the pie on the counter, as if a single snapshot could encompass everything he wanted home to be.
You were wearing a shirt he’d given you, years ago, and he swallowed, hard.
“Are you up for that talk?” his voice was rough. It would have been nice, to relish in the feeling of you checking him over, attention on him as he unwound, but he couldn’t wait. This moment was three days overdue.
“I told your mom we aren’t dating,” you blurted and he smiled, having guessed as much. Smoothing the blanket, your hand patted the spot next to you, your legs crossing.
In that, Jack knew something had changed since he left you. The flickering fear had fled your eyes, and you seemed settled into your skin more than ever before.
He sat next to you, having played over how this talk would go a million times, and still not finding the right words. Confidence was easier to find when he was flirting, poking at you, but seemed foreign in the din lights of his bedroom. Instead he shifted trying to lean back with his arm along the headboard, hoping he didn’t seem like a teenager trying to buy himself time.
You began to talk, saving him, and all the things you’d processed with his mama tumbled out of you before you were realizing that you were confessing how much he truly meant you. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been strange how comfortable you felt, but in the moment, you were in awe.
Jack was as handsome as always, if a little roughed up, like he’d worn the same clothes a few days in a row. You wanted to run your fingers over the short, patchy beard he had going, and without a second thought, you did, feeling his cheeks move as he smiled crookedly and leaned into the touch.
There was only a moment of quiet, crickets outside, before he said, “I missed you, too.” And then, “Will you stay, sweetheart?”
When you whispered, “Where else would I go?” he kissed you.
It was late, and there were still words unsaid, questions to be answered, but you both let yourselves get lost, exploring each other. Long moments passed, letting all the pent up yearning overflow like cool water after a long, hot day. Then the next steps came out, whispered between kisses and as he moved over you, shucking the final walls between you, you found yourselves actually dating, and maybe even actually living together.
Old fairy tales and historic romances played in the back of your mind, inserting their logic into your life like had never quite made sense before.
And you wondered if you had time in the morning, and his mama didn’t give you too much grief, if he would let you help him shave, and eat pie for breakfast. Because for the life of you, you couldn’t think of a single reason why not.
<<
Taglist:
@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost @writeforfandoms @0celestialbitch0 @beautyagegoodnesssize
#this got away from me#jack daniels x you#jack daniels x reader#agent whiskey x reader#agent whiskey x you#kingsman#maybe i don't know people
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Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold
Summary: He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.
(Adam's perspective throughout Mister Impossible, as his worry reaches a fever pitch, and the two versions of himself begin to converge)
Word Count: 9.5k
Warnings: mi spoilers, death/suicide mention
A/N: batshit middle books my beloveds. adam pov or bust 😌
Read on AO3
In high school, Gansey would very occasionally call Adam in the middle of the night.
He would speak low and fast, his panic pinched between thumb and forefinger and held at a respectable distance. Adam would smother the receiver with his palm and step outside of his family trailer, listening hard for movement at his back.
The news was always the same: Ronan Lynch was on his latest rampage or bender, exercising his dark talent for bullying his way into people’s lives and then breaking down all of their windows and doors trying to get out again.
Gansey would fret and apologize, guilty for luring Adam out of his wolf-den, guiltier for neglecting his duties as Ronan’s warden. Adam would wait tiredly on the line for Gansey’s anxiety to exhaust itself, and then dutifully join the search party.
He would step into his beaten tennis shoes and pry his bike from the fence, silencing the silvery shock of metal on metal, and avoiding the reedy whir of the spokes by holding the whole thing aloft until he reached the gravel road.
From there, he would venture out into the abandoned Henrietta streets, the crunch of his tires cutting clean through the woolly midnight silence. He often circled the perimeter of the park nearest Monmouth, stepped through the great dark portal into St. Agnes, and nipped under the old bridge, squinting into the darkness for the challenging shoulders, the oil-slick BMW gleam, the slump of a body or clatter of bottles.
This is a part of Gansey that I admire, he would think. And with equal fervour, this is a part of Gansey that I resent. This blood attachment to Ronan, who was not even attached to himself. The insomnia that seized two heads of the lopsided Cerberus that Adam, Ronan, and Gansey were all part of, a restlessness on either side of him that shook him awake over and over again.
He chased Ronan’s shadow, hating him. Hating his thoughtlessness, his privilege, his chokehold on Gansey’s interests, his purposefully and continuously ruined potential, and yet bristling with anxiety at the idea of finding him bleeding.
They hadn’t known then that he was a dreamer, but they’d felt the ear-popping pressure of his grief, glimpsed the hulking animal of his self-loathing, urged onwards by the twin spurs of Declan and Gansey, the past and the future, digging into his sides.
Adam had seen Ronan, teeth bared, hurling himself at rock bottom, and he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled him back by the collar.
Things are completely different now, but he still finds himself sleep-raw and petrified, reaching after Ronan in the dark.
He examines himself in the mirror of the communal bathroom in Thayer hall. The overhead lights are an unflattering yellow, the sink has a long dark hair stuck to its basin, and Adam’s face is gaunt and bruised with lack of sleep.
He’s losing it, a little bit.
He takes his own pulse, focusing on the faraway burble of the ley line. Everything, lately, seems far away.
As if through a stranger’s eyes, he slips from the seafoam tiling and bleach tang in Thayer’s North bathroom to the accordion door of the trailer toilet, the creaky cubicle shower, his gawky, hurt reflection in the burnt-out light. This version of Adam had to watch his best friend’s best friend escape suicide watch and get screaming drunk in public, treading mud and malicious dreams all over Monmouth manufacturing.
He can still smell the salt tang from teenaged Adam’s ocean of disdain.
Now that he loves Ronan, his irritation has only gotten sharper, more deadly. Ronan performs each perilous swan dive into the unknown, each foolhardy act of self-sacrifice, as if the people who care about him aren’t gasping spectators. It makes Adam furious.
Perhaps neither of them have changed as much as they wanted to believe. As Gillian keeps advising the crying club—with the confidence of a seasoned psychiatrist—progress isn’t linear.
He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.
He slides fingers over his temples, smooths a knuckle over each eyebrow to ease the tension he always carries there. Sleep is a little knot of gristle lodged at the back of his throat; he can’t swallow it and he can’t spit it up. It never used to be this hard to put his problems to bed. He would worry the weight on his chest into small pieces, and go to sleep knowing that even the worst things about his life were organized correctly.
This time though, he’s out of sorts, divided, always busy but always spinning his wheels. He has a white-hot secret pressed to the roof of his mouth.
Every time he folds himself into bed, his subconscious helpfully reminds him that Ronan might be dead. And then a highlight reel plays in his head like an In Memoriam: Adam’s hand cupping Ronan’s nape, a barn silhouetted against a melancholy sky, a fistful of dreamt light, a dozen hard-won smiles and a hundred easy ones, a white handprint on a flushed thigh, a colourful joke to placate a brother, a kiss pressed to a dream’s forehead. All of that—gone. And Adam, at Harvard.
He highlights long patches of text in his sociology textbook, drinks a sensible amount of jack and coke at Eliot’s birthday party, declines Gansey’s calls by sending cheerful and conciliatory texts, and drifts through the library with his hand knotted in the strap of his satchel, looking for something that he can’t really articulate. He reads the same line of theory over and over and over and over, feeling like he’s scrying, like his focus isn’t his own.
He did all of this before Ronan went missing too, but now it’s a whole different class of performance. It used to be, I’m convincingly attentive, I’m sipping overpriced coffee on the way to class like a good Ivy leaguer, I’m making an impression on my professors, I’m forging friendships. Someday I will cash in these relationship tokens, and it all will have been worth it. It felt impossible that his life could be so simple and rewarding.
Now he thinks, I’m studying for finals and my boyfriend is being hunted by people whose job it is to kill him. I’m drinking a latte and the only people I’ve ever loved have left me, and I'm alone again. I’m putting my hand up in class and somewhere, Ronan’s life is changing, rapidly, dangerously, without me.
He lies to everyone, all the time, and tells himself that this life he’s building is more important than anything.
Once, as they cleared placemats and mugs full of stagnant coffee from the kitchen table, Ronan—still cobwebbed in his most recent dream—had detailed the sensation of hovering over himself afterwards. He was unable to manipulate his physical body or even really recognize it as his own, and his consciousness, detached, had its own limbs, its own intentions. He was like a parasite trying to wriggle back into its host.
Whenever Adam consults his double in a bit of glass, he imagines himself as a nimble dreamer, peering down, working to bring a fantasy to life. He can see his own outline, a slick college student with a flat, pleasant affect and a gaggle of soft-shelled friends. He plays his role impeccably well, but he can’t fit himself into it. If he passed himself in the hallway he would not stop.
Looking in the mirror now, he feels a red pang of fear, then a supercut of the ways he used to let himself love and be loved, then resentfulness hot on the heels of his worry.
His reflection withers, and he looks deliberately down at his hands. It’s a Tuesday, and he needs to sleep, or his tightly-scheduled Wednesday will be a misery. It’s a Tuesday, which means he hasn’t spoken to Ronan in—he stalls. Call me, he thinks, miserably. Just call me.
He can deal with a multitude of challenging and improbable situations if only he can see them clearly. Ronan is, for whatever reason, keeping him in the dark.
The not knowing is bad. It’s not how he functions. It’s not how they function. But instead of dwelling, he puts his back into the narrative that is now his reality: Impeccable student. Devoted friend-group. Tough break-up. Bright future.
Ronan isn’t here. Can’t ever be, physically, so far from the ley line. Adam has to be.
“Croissant, as ordered.” His gaze snaps up, connecting—not with his own image, but with clever, horn-rimmed Gillian. “They tried to foist it upon me without butter, if you can imagine that.” She deposits a crinkly brown and tan paper bag in front of him, and then two little plastic pots of butter. Adam regards the squashed shape of the bag’s contents with confusion.
It’s— “Is it Tuesday?”
“Wednesday,” Eliot corrects airily, licking jam from their thumb.
“My god, Adam. Whatever happened to your infallible circadian rhythm?” Fletcher asks. “You are the Swiss timepiece by which we measure our days.”
A terrible wave of vertigo strikes him, and he’s grateful to find himself sitting, at one of two conjoined wrought-iron tables in the courtyard near Thayer. He can feel the ley line breathing for the first time in a long time.
He must have gone to bed after his late-night breakdown in the bathroom. He must have. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. His hand strays to his hair. Wet. He’d woken, showered, and met his friends for breakfast, and he can barely remember it.
“Sorry,” he chokes. “Sleep deprivation is catching up to me, I think.”
“Aw, chicken,” Benjy says affectionately. “I’ve sung those end of term blues. The profs think we’re machines. Don’t even get me started on Dr. Fraundberg’s Lit Crit for assholes.”
“Whyever would we?” Eliot says. “We want to make it to class before noon.”
“Har-har. You wound me. Adam you’d better get a tissue ready, I’m about to tear up.”
“Also,” Gillian says, pointing her be-honeyed knife in Eliot’s direction. “Speak for yourself. I want to make it to class never.”
“Your presentation is going to be exceptional,” Fletcher tells her. “Your rough draft already drove me into paroxysms of jealousy. I don’t know why you’re so concerned.”
“I don’t just want to pass,” Gillian says. “I want to win.”
“Admirable,” Benjy sniffs.
“You’re being awfully quiet, Adam,” Eliot says, at length. He’s aware that they’re all trying very hard to act like they don’t notice how poorly composed he is.
“Can’t a man savour his pastry, Eli?” Fletcher rumbles.
“No, that’s fair,” Adam sighs. The four of them peer at him expectantly, eyebrows arranged into an array of benign and non-threatening shapes. “It’s possible I’m having a slight breakdown,” he says, adopting the grim hyperbole of a student for whom finals are the beginning and end of their emotional upset.
Everyone at the twin tables indulges in a bit of mild laughter.
“What a coincidence, so am I!”
“Well if it’s only slight, I’ll stow my concern.”
“Harvard or personal?”
He smiles faintly, and says, “kind of both. The personal is political, or something.”
He thinks he’s laying it on thick, but Gillian grins at him. “'Atta boy.”
Fletcher goes to take a sip of his tea, but chokes when his phone lights up with an incoming text message. “Criminy, is it eight already? Starting the day with a bang, as usual. I’ll meet you at Weld this evening, yes?” he asks, shaking out his tweed jacket and thrusting an arm through it, securing the remains of his bagel between his teeth with his other hand.
“Of course,” Adam says. Fletcher gives him a thumbs up, mouth charmingly stuffed, and sweeps away across the now bustling courtyard.
“Hey magic man,” Eliot says. “Will you do a reading for my sister tonight? The break-up with Margot is hitting her kind of hard. I’m pretty sure she just wants to be told she’ll find love again.”
Adam watches the juddering impact of Benjy kicking Eliot under the table.
He shrugs. “First come first serve, but I’ll give her the friends and family discount.”
“You’re a prince,” Eliot says, blowing him a kiss. Adam tries to imagine any of his friends from Henrietta doing such a thing, and can’t. “Come along Benjy. Bookstore or bust. They’re giving out discount computing textbook codes at sixty dollars a pop.”
A slip of paper for sixty American dollars. Adam’s head aches profoundly.
Gillian waggles her fingers at their friends as they depart, then she turns and fixes Adam with that familiar amateur therapist look.
“What?”
“Are you sleeping?” she asks bluntly.
“I’m a very good sleeper,” Adam says wryly. “Ask anyone.”
“But are you actually doing it?”
“Yes, Gillian.” Liar, liar. “Do you want me to keep a dream journal as evidence?”
“Oh, yes please.” That shark’s grin. “I’d pay to know what the fuck is going on up there.” She taps her own temple to indicate Adam's guarded mind.
He spreads his hands between them. “I’m an open book.”
She hums, only half-smiling now. “I dunno. That Southern charm. I’m never quite sure if I should trust a politeness that perfect.”
“On that note,” Adam says, standing. He’s relieved to find that he’s wearing matching socks, and his pant legs are rolled just so. There’s a tiny streak of yellow on one of his shoes, and with a jolt he realizes that it’s dream-crab guts. He presses on. “Thanks for the croissant. And the psychoanalysis. Send me the bill.”
She salutes him with her coffee cup. “You couldn’t afford me.”
He laughs, and turns, and then spends the whole walk to his 9 AM class trying to straighten all of the haywire compasses in his brain so they point due north.
His assignment is in his bag, pressed neatly into a navy blue folder. He has three classes today, a meeting with his supervisor at three, a study block set aside from four to six, then dinner, then tarot readings all evening—his phone rings. His treacherous heart leaps. Ronan.
He stops mid-stride, scrambling for his cell in the front pocket of his bag.
“Hello?”
“I—oh—Adam! I didn’t expect you to pick up. How on Earth are you?”
“Gansey.” He exhales through his nose. “I’m just on my way to class.”
“Fantastic to hear your voice. How’s—not that one, Jane, the I-90—exactly. How’s Harvard? Are you batting away job offers yet?”
“Constantly. How are your nature hikes and hippie communes? Contracted any backwoods diseases yet?”
“Charming. I’m actually in remarkably fine form, health-wise.”
“Is that a brag?”
A guffaw. “More of a curiosity. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve been trying to get in touch. Have you noticed any surges of power from the ley line lately? I mean, of course you have, but do you have any idea what’s causing them?”
He frowns, pinning his cellphone between his good ear and shoulder as he heaves open the ancient door to the physics building. “I could give you my best guess.”
A beat, and then, “I’m listening, Parrish.” Something about the way he says it makes homesickness pulse painfully in Adam’s chest.
He finds a semi-secluded stone slab bench behind an empty stairwell, and slings his belongings across it before he replies, “Dreamers.”
“Dreamers,” Gansey repeats, but it sounds like he’s saying of course! “Plural?”
“At least three.”
“Doing what?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure yet.”
“Ronan hasn’t spoken to you,” Gansey guesses.
“Not—in a few days.”
“Is everything alright?”
He swallows, and is horrified to find tears burning at the back of his throat. There’s no pretending with Gansey. It’s why he never calls him.
“Adam,” he says quietly. “Is he in trouble?”
He struggles with his composure for several long seconds. “Possibly.”
A world-weary sigh. “I really wish you had called.”
“Yeah, well,” he says vaguely. He checks his watch. 8:23.
“So he’s playing with others. Why would Ronan want to do that?”
“I think—he’ll do anything not to feel powerless.” He understands as soon as he says it that it’s the pockmark in the windshield from which all of the damage is splintering outwards. “And people take advantage of that.”
Gansey makes a thoughtful noise, somewhere a thousand miles away, and it clicks in a lock and opens Adam’s shoulders up. Maybe he doesn’t have to be alone in this fight. How could he have forgotten careful, persistent Gansey?
“Well. He’s certainly not powerless. I almost feel back to my pre-Cabeswater self. Everything is pleasantly linear. And Blue is—lighting up.” In the background, he hears her say supercharged with relish. “I can only imagine what it’s like for full-blooded dream stuff, with all of that energy at their disposal.”
“I don’t know if I like it,” Adam says carefully. “It’s good for a while, helping all the Matthew’s of the world, and then what? Where does all of that diverted power end up? What makes dreamers qualified to harness it without their worst nightmares manifesting?”
“You’re worried about the Lace.”
The last time they spoke, Adam had told them briefly about his last scrying session, warning them to look out for the hateful, faceless thing that had pierced his cells and magnified all of his pain and fear until all he could possibly do was scream.
“I’m worried about Ronan. I know he’s in over his head, and I know he won’t believe it until it’s too late.”
“Sounds like someone I know. Don’t bite off more than you can chew with this, Adam. I know you’re enormously busy.”
It stings, a little. “I’m still going to—I’m obviously still going to make time for him. Especially when he’s—“
“Struggling. Yes. I understand perfectly.” It occurs to Adam that, unlike his well-meaning Harvard friends, he actually might. A needling murmur in the background, and then, “listen, Blue’s telling me that you should get in touch with the psychics, and Mr. Gray.”
He nods. The rhythm of problem-solving is soothing his frazzled nerves. “I’ve been considering it. I’m also pretty sure that Declan has been keeping his own tabs on things.”
“My money’s on yes,” Gansey says. Adam half-smiles. His money has been on a lot of things. “Poke around when you can. See what turns up. I’ll give Ronan a call, not that it’s ever done me much good before.”
“I’m pretty sure he ditched his phone.” He checks his watch. 8:24. It feels like it’s been much, much longer than a minute. There is so much day ahead of him.
Ordinarily, he would be compartmentalizing better than this. No feverish Gansey phone calls directly before class. No pleasure with his business. No finesse when logic will do the job just as well. But the subterranean, black-eyed Adam is still within him, tethered to the ley line and to his friends, and he wants very badly to fix this.
“Ah, Ronan,” Gansey sighs. “It’s always got to be him, doesn’t it?”
“I know,” Adam says narrowly. “If he’s not looking for trouble it’s looking for him.”
“You sound like Declan.”
Adam makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. Blue must be leaning across Gansey, because she says “that’s a new low,” almost directly into the receiver.
“I’m hanging up now,” he says flatly.
“Update me if anything changes? We’ll come home the moment things go south.”
He resists the urge to check his watch again. “Don’t cut things short on my account.”
“Well. Don’t disrupt your studies on Ronan’s. I’ve never known you to put your future on hold for anything.”
“I’m not—“ he stops. “Ronan is a part of my future.”
“Good,” Gansey says warmly. A test, then. And like most tests, there was never even a possibility that Adam wouldn’t pass.
______
It’s easy to tell when a dreamer is suffering.
As the energy from the ley line ebbs, dreamt creations judder and bolt like horses loosed suddenly from the service of a carriage, galloping towards safer pastures. If the dreamer is in more immediate peril, the dream simply folds its limbs into an agreeable shape and passes into sleep.
In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Adam lies awake in bed, dangling his hand between the wall and his bed frame, feeling along the subtle unfilled crack in the plaster. A flagpole casualty, from the day that everything stopped being enough for Ronan, and he slipped away on a dreamt current like a dark Ophelia.
He’s being dramatic.
He feels the drywall flaking, and digs his thumbnail into the split, wanting to rip the whole wall open with his fingers.
He keeps picturing Matthew’s half-lidded eyes, cloudless and blue as a wide prairie sky. The slouch of his posture, the tarnished golden head, the body briefly without a pilot.
Matthew had looked—Adam turns in bed, taking his chalky hand from the wall and fisting it in the sheets. He had looked like a faded old pillow, tucked unobtrusively into the chair by the window. He wouldn’t respond to Declan’s call, fluttering his drowsy lashes, and Adam had thought, ah. This is how I find out. His heart slumped over in his chest, dizzy with sudden grief. The tarot cards in his hands were dead leaves.
This is what happens when your life is tied to my brother’s, Declan had said, diverting his horror into scorn as he often did. The death of any one member of his family ensured the destruction of another. It had always been that way.
Matthew eventually roused, and Adam had closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling until he could be normal again. He felt suddenly foolish for peddling lies to college students when magic was so obviously in the room with him.
Earlier, he had called Maura over lunch, and she vaulted right over small talk to ask him, with concern, about his loosening grip on his psychic inclinations. She’d said, “You do know that the ley line isn’t the source of your problems, right? Give yourself some credit. You can fuck things up in a completely non-mystical way.”
She pulled the Magician, reversed, and the eight of wands, and then, without further comment, passed the phone to Mr. Gray.
Unexplained weaponry, he’d reported. The Lynch brothers loosed on two separate worlds at the same time. Buttoned-up Declan for the first time unbuttoned, schmoozing with an array of dangerous and connected people, trading in secrets just as his father had. Purposeless Ronan for the first time with a purpose, wading out from the murky waters of his dreamspace and bringing the tides with him.
Bryde, the name in the corner of everyone’s mouth, joined all at once by Ronan’s and Hennessy’s.
Renegades, liberators of dreams, scorchers of earth. He could see, easily, why this would appeal to Ronan. A mission, finally. A father figure to guide his hand. A world that wanted his dreams, and wouldn’t crumple under the weight of his unusual ambition.
When they were teenagers, Aglionby was just another one of Adam’s jobs, but it was one of Ronan’s nightmares. He would go to school, a hooded bird of prey, seething with resentment and squandered ability. He longed for the Barns because of what they represented: the childlike belief that his family would never die; the possibility for creatures like him to roam free; a landscape powered by unconditional love.
Bryde, Adam knows, must be offering him the same relief. Exquisite flight, after the cage.
It’s not possible, is the thing. It’s a pipe dream. A Niall Lynch fairytale.
Foresight has never been Ronan’s strong suit. He gets it into his head that a solution is right up until the point that it falls apart in his hands. He throws himself entirely into belief. It makes him an extraordinarily loyal and trusting person. It also makes him stubborn, rash, and susceptible to manipulation.
He believes in one facet of something, and the rest follows. He can’t just take a sip—he downs the bottle.
Adam is a boy on a bicycle in November, needing to find Ronan alive so that he can hate him without feeling guilty about it. He never stops oscillating between resentment and love, reality and unreality, understanding and disappointment. He wants to be normal so that he can choose to be abnormal. Sometimes he wants the cards without the magic.
He closes his eyes and remembers a slumbering mouse against an angular cheek. He imagines Matthew like that, perpetually immobile, perpetually innocent, like a taxidermied puppy. The pieces of Ronan’s consciousness that will linger after his death, statues in a graveyard. Tamquam—tamquam—
What would Ronan be without his dreams? Here, Adam thinks. He’d be here.
He stays in bed for another wasted hour, and then stands up, disoriented, in the dimness of the room. Fletcher is snoring softly. Someone outside their cracked window is shuffling over the concrete stoop. His upstairs neighbour is playing tinkling soundtracks while he sleeps. Adam can’t be here anymore.
He plucks Fletcher’s laptop silently from its charging station, tucks his bare feet into stiff leather shoes, drags the cardigan from his desk chair, and lets himself out into the hallway. The glare from the overhead light pins him against the wall for a moment.
He shuffles half-blind down the hall and upstairs to the solarium, nearly losing one of his unlaced shoes in the stairwell in the process. The lights are blessedly shut off up in the attic, and he feels his way to the nearest of the tables hunched in the shadows. Aching with fatigue, he sits, unfolds his stolen laptop, and gets quietly to work.
He’s never had the time nor means to be truly proficient with technology, but he extracted a handful of leads from Mr. Gray, and he’s been in touch with a friend of Benjy’s—a computer science grad student and hacking hobbyist.
He chases key phrases down rabbit holes and assembles news articles, tracking Ronan’s movement by his “unexplainable” signature (code for mind-fuckery, joyful innovation, and dark humour). Adam is a practiced note-taker and serial obsesser, so it’s barely a strain to find Ronan—whom he knows better than anyone—cropping up all over the continental United States.
“What are you doing,” Adam murmurs. The sky lightens gradually to periwinkle. He has work today, but his shift doesn’t start until noon. His mouth is bone-dry, and his head feels cotton-stuffed the way it always does when he’s pushing his body to its limit.
When it’s late enough in the morning to be socially acceptable, he messages Benjy’s friend with the bare bones of what he’s looking for: a project under wraps, a lonely last name, a suppressed pattern. They correspond, remotely, until Adam is reading government files over watery coffee, wearing sweatpants, dress shoes, and a cardigan with cracked elbow patches.
He pores over it all, cross-referencing dates, and ignoring the widening sink-hole in his chest.
Industrial espionage isn’t at all Ronan’s usual brand of destruction. Highly controlled, not much up-front gratification. A little more political than Ronan usually leans. A lot more ambitious. Whatever their agenda, ley energy is flowing more easily now that it's unobstructed on such a large scale. Adam has been feeling its effects rippling all the way out to Boston, a persistent background pressure, unavoidable as a migraine.
It’s clear that the Moderators are desperate to eliminate Bryde’s party. Their reports are a comedy of close calls.
Slowly, Adam begins to understand the scope of things.
Billions of dollars in damages, manmade structures ripped from their foundations. Magical fugitives hunted by a team that specializes in murdering the targets they call Zeds. Visionary headlights pointed towards certain apocalypse. A world that is always awake, but always, always feels like it’s dreaming.
It’s pretty much exactly as he feared. Night terrors. The Lace. Beasts and legends. Adam holds his head in his hands. It’s more than what Ronan must be imagining. It’s more than Aurora waking happily in Cabeswater, powered by the swaying trees. It’s the indiscriminate waking of every incredible thing that’s ever been dreamed.
He’s struck by a wave of hopelessness that rushes all around him and tears at his hair. Ronan, dreamer of baubles that dispense music and light, cars that go very fast, and menageries of curious creatures, recruited to a cause that transmutes creation into chaos. Ronan, promising to wait, and then running full tilt at a future that can’t possibly keep Adam in it.
His dream half is going to destroy his human half, and he’ll take everybody else down with him.
If he could just see him, maybe—
His jaw creaks, teeth clenched tight against the emotional groundswell. The late morning sunshine strikes him, and he feel more like a vague, pale shape than a person. Like a dream, maybe.
Alter idem.
If Adam can’t reach Ronan, maybe the Moderators should.
He feels the weight of that awful thought burning a hole through his stomach lining. He can’t think about it. He needs to go to work.
_____
The next evening, he experiences a surge of power so acute that it nearly puts him in a coma.
It’s another Wednesday night, and another batch of his peers hitch polite smiles to his heels as he passes them by, winding his way up into the high, arched sunroom at Weld hall. They’re all wishing for magical solutions for their mundane problems, the opposite of Adam in nearly every way.
He bumps knuckles with Benjy and Eliot in turn, pulls up his chair, and knocks his last reading from Persephone’s deck, mostly out of habit. He consults his phone idly as his friends try to make pleasant conversation, holding up a finger when he finds a new batch of texts from Gansey.
John Amos power plant in WV shut down Monday
Intense. maura said she could’ve brought HER dreams to life afterwards
no word from Ronan yet? Leads from Declan? pls advise
I’ll assume no news is good news
He puts his phone in his satchel and fastens it closed. Every new scrap of information he gets feels like a stroll through Ronan’s security system at the Barns—hopelessness compounding and compounding until he staggers out the far end weeping.
He needs to focus on something productive. He nods at Benjy to start letting people inside, straightening the notebook where he usually scribbles his observations. Here, he is an adjudicator: powerful, organized, and reserved, tallying points and offering constructive critique.
His curious audience starts pouring in then, amateur wiccans and wannabe believers, aggrieved last-resorters and skeptics following friends’ recommendations. It’s a brighter collection of characters than Aglionby could ever have hoped to foster.
Gillian texts him to say that she just passed Weld and his line-up was out the door. He is a prim and unobtrusive con artist, a false prophet, and business is booming.
Eventually, a bespectacled girl who looks anywhere from five to ten years his senior sits across from him, tucking a bag armoured to the teeth with candy-coloured enamel pins between her feet.
“Hi,” she says nervously. “Anna.” She stretches her hands out in front of her, then thinks better of it and drops them into her lap. “I’m not sure how this usually goes, so you might have to hold my hand a little bit.”
“No problem,” he says smoothly, passing his deck across the tabletop. “Just go ahead and shuffle. Concentrate on what you want to ask the cards.”
She does as directed, struggling a little to keep the papery stack in check. Not a natural born card sharp, then. He studies her neat black shirt, tucked precisely into a plaid skirt. A Marilyn mole drawn on just above the corner of her mouth. A pride flag pin he doesn’t recognize next to a cat wearing a cowboy hat, and the word “rude” in cursive.
She holds the deck fleetingly to her chest, eyes squeezed shut like a child making a birthday wish, and then plops it in the centre of the table. A card slips near the top, slightly uneven, and Adam plucks it free.
He hums thoughtfully. “Eight of cups. Okay. So you’re having some trouble with letting go.” She frowns and nods once, quick.
He lays out the rest of a simple five card spread neatly between them. A couple of stray swords, the chariot, a wand.
“It seems like things are stagnating in your personal life. Maybe your friend group used to feel like your family, but you feel like they’ve lost interest in you. And you love them, but Anna, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re pretty sure you were done with them before they even started pulling away. Right now you’re kind of just going through the motions. A couple of years overdue to convocate, right? Everyone else moved on to greener pastures.” He taps his thumb thoughtfully against the bones of his opposite wrist. “It’s not even the loneliness that gets you. It’s the not knowing. Are you supposed to chase after them? Is there another community out there for you? There is, you know.”
He notices another card spilling loose, and he grabs it without thinking. The Magician again. He thinks, huh, caught in the coils and dust of Persephone’s overturned cards.
And then the waking world disappears.
Adam is airborne, tumbling up into the atmosphere on a geyser of ley energy, whipped by branches and light. He throws his arms out to stop himself, but he’s only a projection, so his momentum doesn’t slow.
Something—Lindenmere? The cosmos?—shows him a series of images: an upturned nose made from oil and turpentine, a coiled old tree stump, a red-haired woman grinning toothily and then exploding, a rose the colour of warm dark skin, a pale scar-split hand cradling a silky head, the animal haunch of something black, a terrible voice booming turn back—
He skitters away, panicked, and bumps into his own body. Or not his own body. A double, blinking confusedly in the bathroom mirror.
His doppelgänger turns to leave, and Adam reaches after him, through the mirror, following himself into a version of Thayer which is not Thayer. Everything is alive, in this reality. Energy sings and saws its fingers together.
It’s a memory, but it’s also the present, and it’s also a nightmare. Wake up!
Obediently, the city wakes.
He gasps, although he doesn’t have a mouth. It’s the heaving first breath of a sleeping witch, like Gwenllian turning in her grave.
Adam struggles against the current of wild power, thick and pungent as gasoline. Everything feels more intense near magical artifacts, dream stuff, supernatural fault lines, and it is with great effort that he hunts for something familiar, something heavy enough to bind him. He was unprepared for this, and although everything around him is bitingly familiar, he's lost. He wheels around and around, reaching for his most trusted tethers—Gansey, Ronan, Blue, Persephone—
Persephone.
He follows the lingering perfume of her intuition, feeling blindly for those old handholds in her tarot deck, that familiar grip, like the hilt of a trusted weapon.
And then he finds himself looking again at the girl, Anna, her fate bunched around her narrow shoulders. And then at his own empty body, a glowing card clamped between his fingers. As soon as he’s aware of looking at himself, he’s looking out of himself, and he stands up quickly, overturning his chair.
“—Adam? Jesus Christ, are you okay?”
“What on God’s green Earth was that?”
A palm between his shoulder blades.
“Don’t touch me,” he chokes.
The hand retreats. A murmur: I’ve never seen him like this.
“Is it—is it bad? Am I going to be okay? Is it bad?” Anna keeps asking, horrified.
“You’re fine,” he manages to say. “I’m sorry.” The ‘o’ in sorry comes out a little wide and swerving.
“You went blank,” Benjy says, voice high with residual panic. “For like—ten minutes. Beyond hyper-focus.”
“I thought it was a gimmick,” Eliot says. “But a ten minute gimmick? What is this, Las Vegas?”
“I got carried away. I have to,” he swallows. “I need a minute. I promise everything’s fine.”
“Do whatever you need to do,” Eliot says quickly. “But, fair warning, I’m going to ask you a hundred questions when you get back.”
“And then I’m going to ask another hundred,” Benjy says. “Magic man.”
“A riddle, inside an enigma, wrapped in a sweater vest,” Eliot muses. He can tell they’re still shaken. He’ll have to deal with that, later.
“I'll be right back,” Adam says, touching them very lightly on the shoulder as he passes. The ley line is bursting, and he feels so flushed with its vitality that it almost makes him sick.
He stumbles past them, all the way out of the building and into the street. The winter air tears at his thin shirtsleeves, nips at his sock-less ankles. He shields his eyes against the sun, watching a bird swoop low overhead. A silvery, seagull-sized thing, but with knobby legs that taper into—he squints. Hooves?
He keeps moving, propelled by the mad urge to catch the bird, to pin the wild magic down so he can understand it.
Adam walks for what feels like a long time, trying to find the source of all of this haemorrhaging power. He spots a couple of fidgety-looking students, a few more curious creatures. Somewhere, faraway, there’s music crooning, and it sounds exactly the way a hot shower feels.
He stops in the middle of Oxford street, head cocked towards the natural history museum across the way, the orderly buildings, the sparse evening foot traffic. Business as usual. All of it screaming with energy.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a parade of scuttling creatures marching towards an invisible destination. Frowning, Adam crosses the street, chasing the peacock blue shimmer from an unfurled wing. He slows, stooping in the alley to pick one of the strange insects from the stream. He peers through a nail-sized hole in its head. Its spindly legs wave fearfully for a moment, and then it goes limp in his hand.
The ley energy punches out of him, and he sits back on his ankles, winded.
Adam gazes down at the jewelled beetle in his palm, its siblings scattered out like shell casings around his knees. Dreams, all of them. Briefly, impossibly roused in a dead city. He stands, letting the beetle drop from his hand and bounce across the concrete. He kicks them all hurriedly behind a nearby bench, mind racing. Bugs from an exhibit next door, no doubt. Dormant animals, transplanted from their habitats and pinned in place for decades.
What kind of ecoterror was wrought to bring about a flash flood of energy in a drought? How must Ronan be feeling, out there in the world, wracked with waking dreams? What unimaginable monsters were just stirring in the shadows because of him? Is Bryde one of them?
His lives are merging. The distant rumbling of thunder is overhead now, and the downpour is rolling in. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep dry.
Standing in that alleyway by himself, drained and ordinary again, he feels terribly alone.
He weighs his feelings against his logic for several agonizing minutes, standing still and watchful as a predator. He recalls the jarringly clinical accounts of Ronan's most intimate dreams, the sparsely encoded language in those government files outlining the world-ending dangers of something Adam had, for a long time, shared a bed with.
If something happens to Ronan now, it might kill Adam. If something happens because of Ronan, it might kill everybody.
Another minute, and he has his phone out and ringing.
“Hello?” Declan answers. Oddly, it’s not his usual prickly greeting. He sounds almost jovial.
Adam looks out into the darkening street, feeling like a death omen, a shadow across someone’s doorstep. “We really need to talk about Bryde.”
______
It’s the worst possible time for Declan to be withholding information from him.
Adam had graciously tipped his hand and Declan was, infuriatingly, holding back, as if this was a low grade in Ronan’s high school algebra class, and not the cataclysmic fuck-up of a powerful dreamer.
Declan, so uncannily like his brother in vulnerable moments like this, had thought of Matthew first. A world where dreams could stay awake, he’d marvelled. As if they could afford to think so small.
Once, Adam had awoken to find his arm glued to the bedspread. Ronan had dreamt a bee-less hive in the night, and it was oozing a steady stream of honey into the sheets between them.
“Score,” Ronan had said, when he’d rolled back into his body. “Sting-free. Fucking vegan.”
“What happens when we don’t want any more honey?” Adam had asked, critically. Ingesting dreams always felt like a slippery subject. “Does it shut off like a faucet?”
It didn’t. Ronan filled a dozen amber jars full, and then abandoned the hive in a dusty kiddy pool in one of the barns near the back of his family property.
A month later, Opal had crept in through a window looking for trouble, and emerged, shrieking, in a viscous flood of syrup.
Combing the mess out of Opal’s fur, her little legs slung across his lap, Ronan had complained about the magnitude of the clean-up job he would have to do, the special honey hoover he would have to create, what a waste of a dream it would be. Adam reminded him of his faucet idea.
“Too late for that, Parrish,” he’d griped.
It was their pattern. A marvel, too good to be true. Adam, the skeptic. Ronan, too in love with creation to care about consequences.
Eventually, it will all be too late.
Ronan will pursue this liberation fantasy, this golden daydream, even if it never stops oozing. Even if it makes the whole world uninhabitable.
______
That night, Adam tries to scry for the first time in months.
He gently pushes the crying club—only tenuously placated after the tarot incident—to have drinks without him, claiming stress-induced fatigue. He leaves his study notes open and blinking on the bed, lights a sad little tea light, and casts himself out into the ether.
Straining hard, he searches for the familiar contours of Ronan’s dreamspace, plucking the distant strings of the ley line and listening for the particular timbre of Ronan’s consciousness.
He doesn’t like walking this tightrope without a net, but Harvard isn’t exactly flush with psychic spotters. He keeps a delicate balance, far from his body, inching closer and closer to Ronan’s mind, the safe plateau at the end of this rope.
Eventually, he finds himself in a grey bedroom. It's full to the gills with water, there's a toy sailboat bobbing past at chest height, and storm clouds huddling nervously on the ceiling. Adam’s hair plasters instantly to his scalp.
“Ronan?” he calls, sloshing through the curiously luminous water. It starts raining harder. A familiar, curly-headed child stares at him through the darkness, eyes sharpened into silver points in the moonlight. “Ronan?” he asks again, gently this time.
A muffled sentence, a sad, crumpled expression, and then Adam is staring at a closed door.
“What—let me in! Ronan!” He pounds at the door. “Come on!” He can still feel rainwater, unnaturally warm on his neck.
A voice in his head, not Ronan, whispers, turn back.
“No,” he snaps, knocking harder. “Just let me—“ A sudden gust of wind in his sails, and he’s ejected from the dream altogether.
He pinwheels for a horrifying, weightless moment, struggling to tune back in to the feeble light from his stubby candle, and then dragging himself, hand over fist, back to his dorm room.
“Fuck, Lynch,” he says, when he has a voice. “Don’t be stupid.” He recrosses his legs, shaking off the pointless, clinging feeling of rejection.
When he tries to reach out again, searching, searching, Ronan’s expecting him. He never makes it past the threshold.
Back in his body, he knocks his candle over, relishing the controlled destruction, the spill of wax, the sizzle of the squashed wick. A fire he can actually put out.
______
The next time Adam scrys, Ronan looks like himself. Maybe a little scruffier, with what looks like a tunnel piercing on his right ear, and a rare openness to his posture. He’s lounging in a pasture up against a sleeping cow, boots up.
As Adam watches, he tips his shaved head back into its mottled hide, and the sun makes his eyelashes into lit matchsticks. He loves him very much. He’d almost forgotten.
“Don’t lock me out,” he says quickly. Ronan opens his eyes, and when he sees him he smiles instinctively.
“Adam,” he says, vaguely. And then he locks him out.
“No,” he cries. “Would you listen to me.” He feels for the fissure in space and time, the pocket where Ronan is dreaming, sweetly and inaccessibly, about the only home Adam has ever known.
Nothing gives. Nobody replies. He crawls back to Harvard, weak with misery.
In the next dream, Ronan is older, driving a boxy jeep over a foreign landscape. Rolling Irish hills, skies humming with artificial energy. A woman who can only be Jordan Hennessy, chattering in the passenger seat.
Then it’s Ronan with his head in his dead mother’s lap, stroking the downy wing of a black swan.
Then Ronan and Hennessy again, opposite one another in a sunny gallery. One of them examining an impressionist portrait no bigger than a postcard, the other examining the exit.
Then Ronan, discovering Matthew’s corpse in a dim hallway, blinking furiously at the stranger crouched over his prone body. “What did you do?” He sounds like a kid reprimanding his sibling for getting them both in trouble.
Every time Adam gets close, some defence mechanism stops him, like a firm hand against his chest, pushing him away again and again.
He doesn't know what to do except keep trying.
______
Blankly, he looks down at a sink full of tinfoil and uneasy water. In pieces, he becomes aware of his surroundings—green stalls and laminate countertops, a row of hundred-watt lightbulbs, and somebody rattling the locked doorknob.
“Adam, are you in there?” Fletcher. “We’re going to be late. It’s nearly ten. Adam?”
“Just a minute, sorry,” Adam slurs. He stares closely at his face in the mirror until he recognizes his own features. He has an exam at 10:30. He glances down at his watch. 9:52. He had been so sure that he could just drift for a few minutes, maybe catch Ronan before he woke up. That was almost an hour ago.
He drains the sink, hands shaking, cuffs getting damp. The lightbulb filaments float behind his eyelids when he blinks. He throws his satchel over his shoulder, smooths his hair up and out of his eyes, and rubs the bags under his eyes until they hurt.
When he lets himself out of the bathroom, Fletcher is directly outside, tapping a nervous rhythm on his hips. His hands fly from his body and into the air at the sight of him.
“Adam! Thank god. I’ll cancel the search party.”
“I got lost in my notes,” Adam says, as they both make for the stairs.
“Of course you did,” Fletcher says warmly. “A supremely Adam move. I just hope you’re taking care of yourself. Gillian thinks you might be—well—not spiralling, but—“
“I’m handling it.” He takes several mental paces backwards. “Uh—poorly, clearly. I’m sorry Fletcher, I didn’t mean to snap.”
Fletcher, to his credit, recovers quickly. “I can’t imagine going through my first semester of college and a break-up at the same time. You’re a stronger man than I.”
Adam rather doubts that Fletcher can imagine going through a break-up at all, but he nods conspiratorially. They hop down the last few steps and out into the chilly sunshine together.
“You’d be amazed what one can do out of necessity.”
“Too true. We all have our hidden depths, don’t we,” Fletcher says thoughtfully. For a moment, Adam considers telling him—something, looping him into this tangled web with him, but then he says, “now, chapter twenty-three wasn’t on the outline, was it? I beg you to say no. Lie, if you must.”
And Adam is a student again. He doesn’t have out of body episodes. He doesn’t carry wads of tinfoil in his trouser pockets. He doesn’t keep deadly secrets from people whom he is mostly pretending to like and understand.
They walk onwards, towards a test which Adam will rouse himself for long enough to ace. Then he will think of the next thing, and the next. Appease these school acquaintances of his. Tinker with finicky car engines. Make flash cards. Drift into the beyond using one of Fletcher’s three-wick candles from pottery barn. Text Declan, who activates Ronan’s accountability in a way that Adam does not. Call Gansey, if he can bring himself to face his disappointment.
And clear away his feelings, which keep pouring out of him like so much honey.
______
Ronan hangs up on him, and Adam holds himself in the biting wind outside the library for a very long time.
He’d thought, if he could only speak to him, that he could begin to undo Bryde’s poisonous influence. They know each other. They’ve known each other. Ronan would listen to Adam’s fears as he always does. Adam would appeal to Ronan’s heart, which tends to ache for helpless things. They would see how lost they had become without each other. Adam would be allowed back into Ronan’s dreams, and Ronan would be allowed back into Adam’s future.
Why didn’t you text back?
As if they’ve been suspended in time since Ronan’s last tamquam, and none of it—the running away, warding his dreams against Adam, abandoning his phone, trusting a complete stranger over his friends and family—had ever happened.
It’s absurd. He should have expected it. Ronan was searching for a reason to stay, and when he looked for his reflection, his second self, Adam wasn’t there. For a single moment, he wasn’t there, and now he’s paying for it.
Impatient, wrathful Ronan. Leaping from the moving vehicle because Adam was going the speed limit. Going rogue, and then calling Adam with all of these stinging accusations, like he was the one who’d been abandoned.
He thinks again of Bryde manipulating Ronan, preying on his loneliness, his love for his brothers, his fear of himself. This big bad rumour, older and crueler than the Lace itself.
And Ronan letting himself be manipulated, putting on blinders, using Adam’s brief silence as an endorsement for a glorified joyride with unthinkable global ramifications. Self-destructing because things got a little too quiet.
Adam feels hot rage taking ahold of him with its sticky fingers.
Then he thinks of Ronan saying I need to see you, his thin, frightened voice finding Adam from somewhere out there in the city, and his anger goes clammy.
There’s no way Ronan will call again. Negotiations were off as soon as Adam refused to house them both from the Moderators.
And now, without Hennessy, Ronan is the last arrow in Bryde’s quiver. He’s going to be the explosive that brings everything down. He’s going to be buried at ground zero.
If I'd replied an hour sooner, would he really have waited? If I’d gone to school closer, would I have noticed him disintegrating? If I explained that my dream isn’t what I thought it would be either, that he’s the only thing that feels real, would he have said it back to me?
After everything that’s happened, am I going to be the one who gives up on Ronan Lynch?
Everything is so fucked.
He calls Declan.
He picks up on the first ring. “Parrish—”
“He hung up on me,” they both say at the same time.
“Mother of God,” Declan moans. “Then there’s no hope. He thinks I sold him out to the Mods.”
“Did you?”
“No. I did exactly as we discussed. I negotiated for his safety. I thought—I mean, you said it yourself, Adam. Being anti-apocalypse is a pretty solid platform.”
He shakes his head. “Ronan won’t see it that way. He’s not like us. He doesn’t want to be moderated even a little bit.”
“Believe me, I know that. The way he was talking—about the world screwing them over, all of them, dreamers. That’s not the way my brother thinks. That’s all Bryde. And now he’s taken him—Christ—Christ knows where.”
“He wanted to see me,” Adam feels compelled to say. “He was trying to come here.”
“He said that? That's good,” Declan says, relieved. “Where—“
“I let him get away,” Adam says, through numb lips. “I let him go.”
______
He texts Gansey, things have gone south, and then he turns his phone on silent.
His puts his fingertips to the floorboards, a knobbly hand on either side of a scrying tableau: the leaping flame of a candle, a well-organized pile of cards, his overturned phone and discarded tie. He’s just finished crying, and he feels volatile and ill-prepared even as he ties himself to the flickering light.
His mind races through the night like a skipped stone. Vaguely, he pictures a vast body of water and a glittering mountain range, with no horizon line in-between. Darkness reflected in darkness.
“Ronan,” he calls. The dreamspace whirs and grinds its gears and won’t reply. “You know this is wrong. You know, or you wouldn't be hiding from me.”
It’s all water out here in this sublime mirror-space, but it’s also warm, like the steam rising from a hot spring. Something is moving, changing things on a chemical level.
For a moment he thinks he sees himself, a wan doppelgänger with its hands raised. But it’s not Adam. It’s Bryde. Cool, sturdy, a pale Atlas holding the dream together on his back. He recognizes him instinctively.
Adam deliberately throws his mind closer, into the terrible heart of this fire Ronan is creating. Smoke whispers and catches all around him, and it’s even harder to tell the difference between things now. No horizon, no seam, no reality, no death.
What have you done? What are you doing?
The heat is quickly becoming unbearable. Adam is stretched too thin, and the fire is fraying him, eating through each fibre of his connection to reality.
Ronan, please, I need you to stop. I’m losing my grip. Listen to me.
And then, without any warning at all, he collapses on his dorm room floor.
He hacks and retches, lungs full of phantom smoke. Everything feels very wrong. He thinks for a second that he’s blind, but it’s not his vision, it’s another, less tangible sense, it’s—
He scrambles backwards on his hands, heaving. He tries to pull himself up onto his bed, head first, then chest, but he has to stop with his face buried in the comforter.
Ronan is—he must be—he’s—
“God, no, oh my god, no, no.”
He needs to throw up. He needs to call somebody. There’s complete silence in his head.
He was slingshotted back to Cambridge, swatted back along the zipline to his body, because there was nowhere else for him to go.
He’s sure, in a very non-magical, intuitive way, that every dream in the world has just collectively collapsed. Adam staggers to his feet. There’s a smoke alarm going off, somewhere. A background hum of electricity groaning as it shuts off. A high, scared voice.
As if in a trance, he goes to the window.
There are five dead lightbulbs in the nearest row of street lamps, what looks like a sleeping child out in the middle of the square, and a woman clutching her chest and sitting slowly on a bench.
Panic is deadening his senses, crawling blackly into his mouth and nose and eyes. He thinks of Matthew sitting weakly by the window. Opal slumped over a stump in the woods. Chainsaw falling from the sky like a stone. Gansey’s Cabeswater heart decaying in his chest. Ronan, either dissolving into nightwash or felled by a Moderator’s bullet, dead, lost, or powerless.
Every morsel of magic, every innovation, every cherished friend, every sacred place, turned off like a faucet.
The world outside, drooping and disconnected, is now exactly as ordinary as Adam has been pretending it is.
The ley line is gone.
#mister impossible#the dreamer trilogy#mi spoilers#tdt#adam parrish#trc#trc fanfic#pynch#mine#my tfc besties...... soon#in the meantime. here's some adam pov please clap
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Timari Jan. day 8: childhood friends
@timari-month-event
The Culpa family were Waynes of Europe. They own Culpa Consolidated, a company rivaling Wayne Enterprises in not only their income, but reputation. C.C. owns many establishments across Europe and is spreading to Asia and the Americas. It's is known for their funding of causes, well payed employees, and its 'puts-up-with-no-bullshit' CEO, Felix Culpa.
Every business person knows the rules of making business with C.C.
1. No Touching
2. No Getting Off-Topic at Meetings
And most of all,
3. No Talking About The Culpa Family
Everybody knows that Felix is a widow, raising his daughter by himself, with only the help of his in-laws and mother. The first time a potential client brought up his family, they ended up getting fired from their company for ruining a business deal. There are no pictures or information on his daughter on the internet, everyone in the building has signed an NDA.
Anyone who thinks that Felix's cold exterior would make him a bad parent is wrong. Felix would sooner stab himself in the eye with a fork than ever treat his little flower as anything less than a princess.
He used to catastrophize to Bridgette, late at night when she was pregnant with Marinette. He was terrified that he'd be a horrible father.
'Just like his.' The bastard who left his mother when he was just a child and then returned later when he was a teen to harass her.
But Bridgette always made sure he understood that he'd never be that man. That wasn't Felix's problem right now. It was taking Marinette to her first publicized gala.
~
"Little Flower, you remember the rules, correct?" Marinette nodded yes for the third time that night. She understood her papa wanted to keep her safe, she wanted her papa to be safe too, but she's 9! She's a big girl, she can take care of herself.
All of her martial arts teachers made sure of that.
"If someone tries drag me away I yell, if everything gets to much I come find you, don't cause trouble, don't let anyone see Tikki or Kaalki or Trixx. I got it, Papa." Marinette was wearing her favorite fancy dress. She saved it just for today, her first gala. She'd been asking her Papa to go to one since she was 6.
"Okay then, Little Flower, we're here." They step into the Wayne Ballroom.
~
Tim was no stranger to gala's. He had been going since he was a baby. His parents basked in the attention they got from other attendees who coddled him in 'oh look how big you are.' and 'look at you. Such a handsome young man.' And when the pampering stopped he just spent the rest of the night in the kids room, taking pictures with the camera he smuggled inside.
Tim knew almost all of the kids who regularly attended galas, they understood that he didn't want to play, so they didn't try to wrap him into their mischief or games. It's not that he didn't like having fun, ever kid did. It's was because his parents made it explicitly clear that if he caused a scene, there would be consequences.
So it confused him when he saw a girl his age he didn't recognize. His parent's made sure he could recognize and name anyone important he might ever meet, including their kids.
She wasn't trying to recruit him into a scheme, so he ignored her and it seemed like she was too.
Until she walked up to him.
~
Mari really didn't like how all of the people at the gala kept touching her. When her checks weren't being pinched, her hair was being petted. Thank the kwami her Papa excused her to the kids room.
She started drawing him her picture diary. She didn't finish the page, she had a feeling her night had yet to reach it's climax.
She noticed a boy her age on the other side of the room and decided to introduce her self. Her Papa's protectiveness had left her in need of friends. Her cousin Adrien was not her friend, he let Chloe bully her and told her that she had to be nicer to Chloe, if you're extra nice to her she'll be nice to you, that's what the friendship advise videos Natalie shows me say. At least her Papa let her go to school. It was maximum security and he made sure all of the faculty signed NDAs, but it was something.
"Hi, I'm Marinette!" She had a mix of English and French accent, English from living in London with her Papa and Nan, and French from her conversations with Grand-mère and Grand-père.
The boy hesitated to answer, "I'm Tim." His disinterested tone would have discouraged most other kids but Marinette was determined.
"Hi Tim! What are you doing?" She sat next to him on the couch.
"Taking pictures." He really wanted to tell her he didn't want to play but his parents would have his head if she ran off in tears because of him.
He really didn't like how she was staring at his camera, if she was the 'steal from other kids' type he was ready to throw hands, despite how small they were.
"That's a Nikon D760 DSLR, right?"
Well, that was unexpected.
"Yeah... How'd you know that?" Tim didn't mean to be stereotypical but she didn't look like a camera expert. She looked more like someone likely to be caught on the other end to be honest.
"My Uncle Claude uses the same model, he's a photographer for my Papa."
"Cool," He noticed the book under her arm and couldn't contain his curiosity, "What's that?"
She looked down at her book. Mari didn't usually let other people look in it, it was one of the only things she had from her Maman. It was a magically endless and her Maman had written a letter for her in on the first page. She rarely even let her Papa see it, but Tim was, for what reason she did not know, special. She could trust him, she didn't know why but she could.
"It's my picture diary. I on each page I make a drawing that sums up my day. Here's yesterday's." She opened the book to the page she drew on the day before.
~
They had spent the rest of the night talking about whatever they could. They were so deep into their conversation they didn't even notice their parents walk into the room.
"Tim." Janet's voice surprised him, he froze.
Mari didn't seem to notice his parents, she was distracted by trying to catch glimpse of her Papa in the crowd of parents. "I'll be back in a second, Tim." Great, now his parents could rip into him without worrying about someone hearing.
"What do you think your doing, talking to some random nobody girl? You should be making friends with children of important icons, it's important to make friends with people like that. It will make business better when you're running a company and you have friends in high places." Jack scolds.
"I better see you on better behavior next gala or so help me-" Janet was interrupted by Mari's introduction.
"Tim! This is my Papa!" Well Tim really didn't expect this, and from the looks of it, neither did his parents.
From first look Mari and Felix look nothing alike. But if you stare long enough you see that even though Mari inherited her eyes and hair from her mother, her posture and bone structure matched Felix's. It was clear that Felix had taught his little flower to be a lady, while keeping her personality intact.
"Mr. Culpa! What a surprise! I didn't know this little angel is your daughter?" Janet's personality change would have given an unprepared fool whiplash. Luckily Tim was neither.
"Mr. and Mrs. Drake, a pleasure as always. It seem my Marinette has made friends with Tim." He smiles a little.
"I hear you'll be staying in Gotham for some time. We should plan play dates for them! Timmy here doesn't have to many friends, it would good for him to spend time with someone his age." Jack proposes.
With a little convincing from Mari's deadly puppy-dog eyes, Felix, Jack, and Janet plan met up times for the kids.
"You're off the hook this time. Don't mess this up." She whispers to him that night at home.
Tim was genuinely happy, for the first time in to long. He actually looked forward to the days ahead. Nothing could mess that up, Mari and Tim had something special, they just don't know it yet.
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SO I FINALLY FINISHED 5D’S! And what better way to celebrate than to go through my favorite characters as…briefly as I can
Slight spoilers I suppose?
Let’s work it up from 10 to 1
10- Jack
Was gonna go with lucchiano but who am I kidding Jack’s great. He’s a drama queen with an even more dramatic wardrobe. Never afraid to express himself and just bluntly blurt out what he thought.
His obsession with Cup ramen is on another level but what can I say? Love is love, Jack x cup ramen for life *wipes tears*
But seriously speaking he’s great. His very first line was enough proof of that. He just… apologized for being late then declared “I AM KING” like the…king he is.
My favorite Rival character still remains Manjoume… and… Yeah I still prefer Kaiba over Jack but damn was he a good rival.
Like he has to be the only Rival so far with an actual past with the Main character, no? That was pretty interesting because usually, the protagonist meets the rival somewhere during the first season and we go off from there. But here we had to go through their backstory to know what their relationship was fully like. Nice touch.
9- Aki
Hands down my favorite female protagonist so far. I adore Anzu and feel neutral enough about Asuka but Aki? NAH MAN AKI’S AMAZING. I think 5D’s just does the best job with its female characters. Like it actually gives them big enough roles. I loved how Aki got her own episodes…be it the D-wheel ones or just… fillers.
Her crush on Yusei was justified, at least it seems so to me, and honestly never got obnoxious. Sure she had a moment here and there but it was honestly never a bad thing. Hell faith shipping in general isn’t exactly a bad Idea.
Speaking of shipping, is anyone going to talk about her little frienshipmaybemore moments with Crow? No? Ok…
But anyway, overall, SHE’S AMAZING AND I LOVE HER. There was more to her than some boring pining love interest and it shows with each episode. So when people say she has a great personality, they’re actually talking about her personality. AKI RULES
8- Mikage
Would’ve been way WAY higher on the list if the thing with Jack was thrown out the widow.
That being said I think she’s the more mature of the Jack-crazy trio. Like sure she was just as into him as the other two, but in some scenes she was a lot more tolerable.
But that honestly might just be my bias towards this amazing woman speaking.
She’s devoted to her work, gentle, caring, gorgeous and just all around a wonderful character to see.
I loved most of her scenes in the series, and the fact that there was more to her than just the jack part. She actually had an important part to play in many episodes and honestly proved herself to be a very fun character. I just wish they gave a her little more screentime than what she got.
A lot of lost potential there- I mean come on.
7- Rua /Lua
He reminds me of Judai WAY too much. LIKE WAAAAY too much not to be on this list. The guy’s adorable. And I love how they made him the emotional one. Like they could’ve gone with the “the boy is always rowdy and tOUGH” stereotype, but they didn’t. Sure, ruka (who I don’t like as much) was much more gentle, but it was much easier to see Rua cry than it was to see her do so. It’s just fun is all.
I also adore his deck and that little theme that played whenever he dueled… Plus his relationship with Jack and Yusei…GOLD GOLD.
6- Ushio
I made a whole post about Him, You think he wouldn’t be in my Top 10? Well think again. Great development would see through again.
5- Sherry Leblanc
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA SHERRY.
What you just witnessed in the line above is my internal reaction to literally any scene this beautiful badass woman happens to be in.
She’s just amazing. She has this really… tough energy IDK HOW TO DESCRIBE IT BUT SHE’S A REALLY INTIMIDATING WOMAN. But not in a bad way, oh nonononono in a REALLY REALLY GOOD WAY OKAY.
Her character arcs and episodes somehow felt…really separate from the whole team 5D’s shenanigans even though they were basically connected…
Like she had her own motivation that didn’t particularly rely on bonds, but was still willing to accept and even form a bond with the whole team.
Revenge is kinda hot ngl.
Okay no it’s not. But seeing a vengeful character that WASN’T played off as evil or particularly wrong amidst a bunch of friendship is magic ones was pretty refreshing.
The moment she took her helmet off when dueling yusei I was HOOKED and so was Aki but shhhhhh.
But damn I love what they did with her at the end, Rushed as it may have been. It took her joining with Z-one briefly and dueling Aki and Crow ( a very underrated duo btw) to realize that maybe thinking of the past and only the past was not a very good idea.
Anyway love her. And her duels are always a delight to watch.
4- Placido
Before he showed up, sherry was supposed to be 4th but here we are. Placido Placido Placido. I want to make it clear that…I really couldn’t care less about Aporia as a whole. But Placido and Lucchiano were pretty fun characters.
Now I finally get to talk about my beloved.
This dude was…the biggest mood. EVER.
He would hang up in that third one’s face like it was nothing and constantly ignore his boring ass. Oh. You have a plan? Ok. I don’t care. It’s boring. I’m placido and I’ll do what I want. Kiss my D-wheel ass.
He has a lot of hilariously sassy lines, which include and I quote:
“I don’t know what god wants you to do.”
“But I won’t accept it!”
The guy just does not care and I’m living for it.
Not to mention his bee analogies which- Why have I not seen anyone point out????? BEE ANALOGIES COME ONNNNNNNN
aNYWAY PLACIDO’S GREAT
3- Kiryuu
Edgy dude with pretty hair. Also gay. Also the crash town arc. Need I say more?
I will anyway.
Honestly dark signer Kiryuu was pretty fun to me with all the crazy laughter and stuff…
Then past/ flashbacks Kiryuu was just as interesting but in a completely different way. Sure he didn’t get as many episodes or screentime as the rest, but what I saw of him was more than enough for me to care about the Character. Like unlike the old satellite gang (Rally and the other two whose names I can’t even remember) I actually gave a shit about this guy when bad stuff happened to him.
Not to mention his growth. Like…He went through reverse/ negative development, then uphill by the end of the signers’ ark with all the…dying in your hands gayly stuff, then downhill again by the beginning of the crosstown arc….aaaaand back up and higher than ever by the end of it. Basically the fact that his development wasn’t always constant just added some spice.
Plus his dynamic with his ex-teammates…team….satisfaction (Try saying that with a straight face) was always pretty entertaining, especially his with Yusei.
Speaking of which...
2- Yusei
With all my talk about him…and…my profile picture…and URL, it may come as a surprise that he’s not number 1 here, but honestly it’s so close you could call it a tie.
As for why I love him….Have you- Have you seen my blog????? Do I even..need to say anything????
1- Crow
Now there’s a lot I have to say about Crow honestly hE’S JUST THAT COOL, but I’m saving it to talk about later still. All I’ll say for now is this:
Flashy guy with an amazing sense of style, an earring and an incredible amount of cockiness and charisma. What’s not to like?
#AH MAN THIS WAS A RIDE#BUT IT'S TIME TO START ZEXAL NOW#...First impressions soon I GUESS?#Still putting off the crow thing because I KNOW I'll literally NEED to write about him I just do#Jack atlas#Izayoi Aki#Mikage sagiri#Rua#sherry leblanc#Placido 5D's#Placido#kyosuke kiryu#Yusei fudo#Crow hogan#Ygo#Yugioh 5D's#haven't been That active anywhere for a few days because of personal stuff but HERE I AM
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so in one of your asks you said you dont think cas was in love with dean since the beginning and idk its interesting to me because everyone seem to think he was from the start so what is your take on that? idk im just curious haha
ohhh I wanted to make a post about this so thanks for asking!
disclaimer: I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade I just have a different take on this whole thing!!!
So. I see people are like: OMG he was in love ALL THIS TIME SINCE 4x01 and I am like: no.
Was he lost since he laid his hand on Dean in hell? Yes. Was he instantly in love? Nah.
See, Cas in season 4 and 5 is starting to feel. He is conflicted, he is questioning, he doesn’t have ‘people skills’, he is confused by what he feels, he knows there is a ‘profound bond’ between him and Dean and he is rebelling for Dean, because Dean has a point and Cas feels Dean is right and apocalypse and destruction are wrong, and this human is so human and he never had that connection before. Add the sexual innuendos, the eye fucking and the tension between those two and this is what i call ‘classic destiel’. I do have a strong feeling this is partly Jensen’s and Misha’s fault though haha but I am also convinced that the jokes like ‘Cas, get out of my ass!’/’Blow me Cas’ are purely for ‘comedic purposes’ because haha gay so funny (keep in mind it’s still 2008/2009 and things were so different then BUT we still got Endverse which had not only sexual stuff implied but romantic as well - ‘all we have left, Dean and I, is each other, if Dean says it’s time to go in a blaze of glory, so be it’ (I am writing this from memory so these might not have been exact lines but you know what I am talking about).
And then in season 6 and 7 is where things start to get romantic. ‘I watched you rake leaves’, Dean’s blind faith that no, Cas can’t be working with Crowley behind their backs because come on it’s Cas and the whole 6x20 episode is *chief’s kiss* and then season 7 and Cas dies to make things right and Dean keeps his trenchcoat and moves it from every car they have been using that season to always have it with him because part of me always believed you’d come back. OK, but I was meant to be talking mostly about Cas’ point of view. Which takes me back to 7x23 and I’d rather have you, cursed or not. I think these words had a major impact on Cas. Something just clicked. Because he realized that he could say these exact same words to Dean and they still would be true.
And then we got season 8 which was a major shift and it really moved stuff from ‘sexual tension’ to ‘romantic tension’ and it’s still called ‘season fanfiction’ because I wanted to keep them away from you in purgatory and Cas generally not feeling worthy of anything but I think this is when he started to realize that what he feels is not like ‘brotherly friendship’ but something much deeper but he had his issues (I don’t deserve to be saved from purgatory thing) so he kind of kept it buried. But this was when the Real Love really started. But did he admit it to himself? Well I am not in Cas’ head but something must have been on his mind - Naomi had access too his mind and she immediately recognized that there is a certain Feeling that is dangerous and Cas needs to be fucking lobotomized (I still have shivers thinking about it). Did Naomi knew it was love? Idk, but she felt something was going on - that is why she tried to mess things up between Dean and Cas (I only wish he felt the same way ouch my heart....) and Metatron also recognized it, quicker and better (maybe because he spent much more time on earth and was generally a little more powerful and knowing as the scribe of God) and he immediately used Cas’ grace to banish angels from heaven because Cas was feeling love for a human. But did he, himself recognized it as love? Did he admit it to himself? I still have a feeling that no. I still think that his ‘I don’t know’ after Dean’s ‘What broke the connection?’ was honest.
Now let me fast forward to season 12, because this post is getting too long already and while seasons 9-11 had some good episodes and even good destiel scenes I feel this was the time many people - rightly so - were starting to lose faith in canon destiel, starting with Dean not letting Cas stay in the bunker in season 9 and bros acting like they only call Cas when they need him. I repeat - there were still some good episodes, even great ones. And we were shown Cas worried about Dean and being there for him anytime Dean called, there was so much pining but once again let me raise The Question: did Cas know what he was feeling was love? Or was he still confused, not letting himself believe, not being able to name his own feelings and emotions? And this is merely my opinion but this is also time where many people started to be bitter and negative by how writers treated Cas (and other characters in general but I am not gonna dive into that dumpster now, especially the Cas-having-sex-with-a-reaper thing which was awful, but in retrospect is even more awful because if it was Chuck’s writing this seems like some kind of sick attempt to do a conversion therapy and I want to throw up; plus he thought? he was into his boss at gas’n’sip and he thought she was into him and what even was it if not a. bad writing; b. Cas being confused; c. Cas being confused about this bad writing).
So season 12. First of all 12x12, when Cas thought he is gonna die and the infamous line ‘I love you. I love all of you’ happened. I am 100% sure this is when Cas realized. This must have prompted questions for him. Why did I say what I said? He blurted those words out but why like that? Aaaand after some thinking I think he realized why. He must’ve been like ‘oooops’. But then Jack was about to be born and he had to protect Kelly and then he died.
And then he is in the Empty who says - I know who you love, I know what you fear, there is nothing for you out there. She doesn’t know shit, she just has access to Cas’ mind and apparently those were his thoughts, already at that time, he thought there was nothing for him out there (again, his depression issues) BUT THEN CAS, MY SWEET CAS, THIS BAD ASS MOTHERFUCKER says fuck you Empty in one of his best monologues (before 15x18 I’d say it was his best but here we are) and she yeets him out, because HE decided HE is already saved and he doesn’t need a permission and you can preen and you can scream and yell and remind me of my failings but somehow, I'm awake. And I will stay awake and I will keep you awake until we both go insane. I will fight you. Fight you and fight you for... ever. For eternity.
And then Jack dies and he takes the humiliating deal. And now we’re at 15x18 and he says: ‘I have always wondered.... ever since I took that burden.... What my true happiness can even look like... Because the one thing I want is the one thing I can’t have’. SEE THESE WORDS HERE ARE WHY I CAN’T SLEEP AT NIGHT. BECAUSE THEY IMPLY at least to me THAT:
1. He was aware of his feelings, he knew what he felt was love at the time he took the deal. and after that he was like ‘I guess I am immortal now’ because the one thing I want is the one thing I can’t have so nothing else is going to make him truly happy; this also implies that there is only one thing he truly wants and the rest is just not that important, whatever else happens won’t make him happy which is heartbreaking;
2. He knew what he wanted, so this means that at some point he wondered, he imagined, he took his time to picture the ‘thing’ he wanted. Which is life with Dean. Because he is in love. LIKE HE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS, HE REALLY DID AND HE CONCLUDED THAT THIS IS OUT OF HIS REACH (now people argue if that is because he thinks it’s unrequited or because he thinks that something something hunter life-fighting all the time-no attachments lifestyle won’t allow them to have this sort of life - and frankly, knowing that he learned everything, or almost everything about emotions from Dean, who isn’t really good at them, I am not surprised if he is sure that this feeling is one-sided, because maybe he conquered his fears in the Empty the first time around but taking the deal must have made him anxious and Chuck still calls him self-hating so he probably thinks this is one-sided and he is unworthy of love anyway);
3. He tried to imagine different scenarios that would make him happy but eventually it all came down to That One True Scenario, out of his reach, that couldn’t compare with anything else, and he tells Jack - you know about that deal, it’s ok, I don’t see myself becoming happy anytime soon AND IT HURTSSS
so to conclude and tl;dr - I think Cas realized that what he was feeling was love after 12x12 although he felt it before but might have been confused by it. I do not think he was ~in love~ since 4x01. There was tension and there was pining but no. This feeling evolved, it didn’t *just* happen in the barn.
also i am so sorry this took so long but i have thoughts and feelings and can’t form a coherent sentence since november 5th anyway thanks for asking nonny, ily!!!!
#ask#asks#anon#long post#destiel is endgame#cas is in love#everything is beautiful but it hurts#spn 15x18#spn spec#spn speculation#Anonymous
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Please tell me everything you know about c!niki xD
THIS IS GONNA BE HELLA LONG SO HERE YOU GO
so niki first joined l'manberg - contrary to popular belief - AFTER the revolution, along w jack manifold. she joined bc she was good friends with wilbur and tommy.
she opened up a bakery after consulting her diary/chat, and it ended up being pretty successful. not too succesful, but successful.
during the elections, she decided to support her friend (childhood friend? the timeline is fucked up bc of c!fundy existing lbr) and together she and fundy made COCONUT2020. she didn't think she'd win, only really did it for fun, and supported wilbur even though she didn't join his party
then her best friend and friend got exiled, and so she was understandably distraught and angry
schlatt's reign was one of her low points. not her lowest, but pretty damn low if i do say so myself.
she was tormented during this time by schlatt himself, and he made fun of her for her relationship with wilbur, called her things like a "wrench", he taxed her (to the point where she had to run away!), and he imprisoned her.
it doesn't help that her childhood(?) friend betrayed her burnt down the flag that she had made for l'manberg (its so sad actually, listen to it)
she had a birthday party that while i didnt watch ive heard that wilbur threatened to blow up l'manberg so yeah
then she saw her younger brother-like figure get executed onstage, then almost got executed herself, when wilbur managed to get her away
then it is DEVASTATING as she finally finds out abt how things have been going in pogtopia (especially for the viewers who only watched niki's pov). she had thought that they had a plan, that they were working things out, when really they haven't even got a semblance of a plan
the pit fight happens, and then after she goes up to listen to one of tommy's discs with tubbo and tommy themselves
during the manberg v pogtopia war, she fights for pogtopia and watches schlatt die and the nation become wilbur's again.
then, of course, comes the part that all old school c!niki fans will remember...
during the celebration they had just after tubbo gained presidency, she accidentally uncovered a small part of the wall and saw tnt. she went still, then covered it up, on the assumption that wilbur wouldn't blow it up
BOY was she wrong
her home gets destroyed (watch this and skip forwards until niki's pov), and she doesnt find out that wilbur dies until much, much later.
to honour him, she starts wearing his coat.
everything goes fine for a little while, and she yknow dates puffy (*SOBS* im unbiased im unbiased.... *sob*), and then doesnt find out abt tommy's exile until much later AFTER that.
she doesnt really get in on the lore much during the inbetween period of tommy's exile and doomsday except for her city being built more.
then, during doomsday, she gets angry at tommy and says that he couldn't just walk in there and assume everyone would be on his side, she also shouts at ranboo abt sides and stuff.
later, she apologizes to ranboo and says that if ranboo fights for l'manberg, she will too.
ranboo ends up doing nothing except watching everything unfold, and so niki does the same, except for one thing.
she burns down the l'mantree, also known as her canonical lowest point.
after that, she hears ghostbur speaking and has a panic attack, trying to reassure herself that "he's gone, he's gone, he's gone" and because shes too flooded w memories, she ends up blowing up her bakery.
afterwards, however, she goes down into her secret city and isolates herself from everybody except for jack, who she plots to kill tommy with.
she takes tommy to a nuclear test site and almost manages to kill him, but JUST misses him, somehow
after this attempt, she scurries back to her little hole like a cryptid and (this is, in my opinion, her lowest point) isolates herself even MORE.
she has contact with exactly 1 person during this whole period of four-five canonical(??) months, and it results in her mental health getting worse.
technoblade visits her at the start of this, offering her a position as an anarchist to which she gives him a "maybe, after
i kill tommy"
she gets night terrors, and keeps herself in a literal CELL so that she doesnt go anywhere when she sleepwalks, also punches the walls whenever she wakes up from a nightmare, which is often.
eventually tho, she accepts techno's offer and joins the syndicate, naming herself as nemesis as a reference to her past self
she manages to heal a substantial amount, finally having: a) a group that lets her speak (which is SO important for her, its actually the key to her entire arc) and b) socialization!
however this takes a big turn, when she hears that wilbur's back she tries to play it off, then goes the l'manhole or l'crater, reminisces about wilbur betraying her (may i note the rocketduo where she looks pointedly at manifoldland and says "and GOD you deserved so much better dgsayufasyufgasuy)
she grabs wilbur's diamonds, some of the first ever items she got in the SMP, then hides them in the wall, as a sign of her closing off from wilbur
PHHOOOOOOEEY THAT WAS A LONG ONE
okay so imma go with this writing cause its fun.
so, you asked a few questions in response to the ask you gave me!! so lets go
1) why does she feel betrayed by wilbur?
because she was one of the first people she met (canonically) on the SMP.
he promised her that it would be a land of peace, prosperity, but she started loving it BECAUSE of wilbur.
case and point: when wilbur asks whether she's loyal to l'manberg, she goes "yes, i'm loyal to you, wil." "no, no, not to me- to l'manberg"
she quite literally wore his coat around the SMP as a symbol of her friendship and dedication towards him, because they were honestly the best of friends, and she THOUGHT she knew it.
points out) and its the way she's learnt to do things.
also remember: c!Niki is an unreliable narrator, that's the whole point of her character. it's a response to trauma (as @tubboblr pointed out)
you're also probably wondering why she burnt down the l'mantree. and it's not because she "finally realized that l'manberg was bad" it was actually really simple: she wanted to be heard.
she had been beaten down and talked over SO much (aka the BASIS for her arc) that she's so desperate to be heard she'll take desperate measures.
another reason is because she finally loses hope in l'manberg. she loved it, loves it, but she just lost hope in it. she never hated it. she LOVED it, with all her heart. she just didnt believe it had any hope to be the place she had thought it was.
if you have any other questions, let me know!!
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Tommy’s (and Tubbo’s) Character /rp /dSMP
This is a bit of a rant so like be warned. I have nothing against any CCs mentioned in this, this is all roleplay, lighthearted, and just a bit of fun analysis. Mostly this is a ramble about how I see certain people analysing Tommy’s character on tumblr and twt, and why I think they’re wrong. This isn’t directed at anyone specific, just a trend I’ve been seeing that kinda irks me. I don’t dislike the fandom, just a few ‘takes’ have been really weird for me.
TW for everything below: analysing the effects of trauma, abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, and lack of therapy.
I’m not really liking how victim-blamey everyone is getting currently in the dSMP, both in fandom and canon. In canon with certain characters but especially in fan analysis posts and especially about Tommy and Tubbo. People legitimately celebrating that Tommy might start ‘apologising’ for his actions more and 'growing as a person' somehow don’t realise that hes been made this way through a tonne of negative reinforcement. abuse, and gaslighting. And people blaming Tubbo for actions he had no choice in, rather than the actions he did choose.
Currently, as I see it, Tommy is so scared that anyone would find a reason to be pissed off at him that his fighting spirit has been completely crushed. He was exiled and abused when he should have been helped and given an understanding figure to guide him and teach him how to deal with things non-violently. In everyone’s eyes, the problem was that Tommy was creating violence with no real reason, acting recklessly and commiting crimes. Tubbo, having made him a part of his cabinet, knew that this would only harm the country. So instead of talking to him reasonably, he got angry, put him on trial, and punished him with the logbook (humiliating him by making him report back to Fundy, which he obviously hated). Tommy’s actions were, of course, bad, but did he deserve everyone ganging up on him? No. Especially when Tubbo was supposed to be in his corner, helping him out like he always said he would (”It’s me and you vs Dream” etc). This is the first betrayal of trust from Tommy’s POV. He doesn’t understand what he did wrong to its full extent, and no one can explain it to him.
However, Tubbo was under a lot of pressure from Dream and George, and he’s a literal child President, so his ‘safety over friendship’ actions are understandable. I don’t believe Tubbo is solely to blame for anything he’s done in season 2, but it can’t all be excused. If you are to blame Tommy for his recklessness, you have to blame Tubbo, at least partially, for his disregard for Tommy’s feelings and mental state. There were other ways to go about the entire thing, including the trial, which was just horrible to watch, and agreeing to give Dream the disc, something Tommy gave him in pure confidence that it would be safe with Tubbo. Yikes moment.
At that time, Tubbo knew a lot of things about Tommy. In fact, he probably knew the most about Tommy out of anyone on the server. He knew the discs were incredibly important and a comfort item for Tommy. He knew Tommy had trauma from being exiled in the past. He knew Tommy was abused, or at least manipulated by Wilbur, in addition to growing up in war. Wilbur once told Tommy to stop being reckless, and Tommy listened, changing his attitude because he looked up to Wilbur so much. Then Wilbur said ‘let’s be the bad guys’ and stopped trying to mentor Tommy. There’s a conflict here, because Tommy was told by Wilbur that he wasn’t good enough to be President (links to the idea of ‘not being strong enough’) but he knows that Wilbur was a bad person. But Tommy is never given the chance to reconsile his feelings surrounding Wilbur, both because of Ghostbur and because of the conflict he starts with George. So he is harbouring a mixture of emotions about his mentor and brother, not understanding how to untangle the ‘real Tommy’ from the manipulated boy he became.
What was going through his head when he stole from George and griefed him? Perhaps the thought that he needed to show he was still the same old Tommy. Maybe the need to ‘prove himself’ as a strong person? It could have just been an outlet for his trauma. He’s grown up in a world where everyone is either a friend or an enemy. George isn’t a friend. How was he supposed to know that hurting him was bad?
Tubbo was pressured into the actions he took against Tommy, but he was pressured far too easily. There is no moment where Tubbo turns to Tommy and makes sure he’s okay, he views him as ‘selfish’ and overdramatic, and sees his actions that way. This makes sense from Tubbo’s POV, he’s struggling to be President in ways that Wilbur *knew* he would, but in Tommy’s eyes this is the worst betrayal he’s ever known. The moment Tubbo (rightfully, but poorly executed) defies Tommy’s plan to hire Technoblade (ahem, seeing Techno as a weapon again) and exiles Tommy is the moment their friendship shatters. They’re two people who don’t understand each other anymore. Two people who are technically in the right, but only hurt each other.
What Tommy needed was a therapist, instead he had Dream, who put out the fire of rebellion that made him so strong, and Techno, who was trying to help but doing it in the wrong way.
People see tommy's change post-exile as a good thing because he's not as rebellious anymore and he’s thinking things through a lot before he does them, but they will soon realise that his rebellion was one of his best traits and the fact that no one saw it as anything but a problem really shows. He now second-guesses himself so much and is so scared of being wrong that everything seems too difficult and too dangerous. Every trait can have a positive and negative side. Tommy's defiant nature would have made him the perfect negotiator with a little practise. In fact, he had plenty of good ideas before he was exiled (using spirit against Dream, though it didnt work in the end, for example). The negative side of this was recklessness and the desire to cause problems on purpose, but what he needed was a friend (looking at you Tubbo) who understood that hes been through several wars, was manipulated by Wilbur, and hasnt known a time of peace where everyone who wasnt on his side was out to kill him. Now that ‘fight’ is gone he's just become easier to manipulate.
He may be getting better (see: telling Dream to go fuck himself) but there hasn't been any long-term growth because he was never told what kind of rebellion was good and what was bad. He was just told it was all bad. By Dream (and by Tubbo). Who he doesn't trust. So he's just going to revert back to his old ways because no one told him what was bad in a way that didn't make him feel like everyone was against him. Dream is the enemy (though Tommy’s feelings towards him are complicated, they make his brain go all ‘flippy floppy’) and Dream told him that rebellion was bad, so rebellion must be good always, right?
And then there's Techno. Techno did nothing wrong except for when he did. Techno is 100% right except for when he isn’t. He doesn't understand Tommy because Tommy was never fully open about what Dream had done and how it affected him. That's not Tommys fault though, because who the fuck openly talks about their trauma? So neither of them are to blame for pretty much anything up until the confrontation at the community house.
However, Techno's methods and ideology were not what Tommy needed. He was thrown from one extreme to another over and over again, from complete subservience to total rebellion. Neither of these inforce good attitudes in Tommy. One, as stated before, makes it so that he will regain his negative traits again. The other reinforces those violent traits as good, just like Wilbur did. The only difference is that Techno had good intentions, he wasnt trying to use Tommy, which is why he feels so used when Tommy 'betrays' him (Techno doesnt realise that he himself betrayed Tommy by teaming with Dream, he sees it more as a transaction than a personal thing). Techno feels so hurt by Tommy ‘viewing him as a weapon’ that he goes on with his no-mercy attack, completely dropping Tommy at his lowest point.
Tommy says he doesn't want to be like everyone he's hated. In fact, he say's he is 'worse' than all the villains. This is very obviously untrue, though he was clearly going down a dangerous path with Techno's influence (see: bullying Fundy, spawning wither, kidnapping Connor, and saying that the discs are more important than Tubbo, more on that later). He's not a villain but who exactly has said he's not a villain. Dream? Techno? Neither of them can be trusted in his eyes. They say he's a good guy, Wilbur wanted to be the bad guy, who's right? He doesn't know. He has a crisis of morality.
And? Some people want to point at that and say 'aha! Character development! He's finally realising his actions have a negative affect on others!' OH GOD NO??? He's a *child* who thinks that he is worse than his abuser. Does that sound like positive character growth to you?
Lastly, the discs. We know theyre a comfort item blahblahblah. He hates himself for valuing them more than he values Tubbo. He's literally innocent in this. He’s been horribly manipulated by Dream to believe that the discs are worth anything. Theyre really not worth anything if they are being used as tools rather than, yknow, discs. My poor boy. He doesnt trust people, so what can he trust? The discs. But then he says it out loud and realises he misses Tubbo and he wants to be with his best friend again and and and WAHHHH. This also isnt really character growth its just fucking sad leave me alone.
Anyways what the fuck guys. @ Niki and Jack what the fuck. Yeah we get it it’s miscommunication but wtf. Kinda worried that the actual lore will make Niki and Jack’s hatred of Tommy justified in some way and take on a big victim-blamey vibe, but I’m hoping that everyone is smart enough to not do that. I cannot praise Tommy enough for how he’s portrayed his character. I’m currently hoping that he himself understands the true complexity of it all. I’m sure he does.
Mostly though im actually pissed off at all the people praising tommy's character for 'maturing' when hes literally just got trauma. Nice one, tumblr and twt users. Thanks. Great job. He hasnt 'learnt his lesson', he’s traumatised. What the fuck.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, leave your responses in the reblogs and comments.
#dreamsmp#dream smp#character analysis#dreamsmp analysis#analysis#critical#tommyinnit#tubbo#dream#technoblade#wilbur soot#tw trauma#tw abuse#tw gaslighting#tw manipulation
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AVATARS OF THE LASTING ASPECTS
Let’s talk about Players and Aspects.
There are Two to Three Avatars of an Aspect, and then the Aspect itself. The two are the Player, and whatever Familiar / Sidekick / Fence / Companion they may have.
The Aspect itself is The Thing and the Whole of the Thing. For example-- you can picture Time without a Player. Its the measurement of events as they proceed; but its also the Begining and the End, the Pace-- Its Art is Music and its Artifact is Clockwork.
Think of all Aspects as like that.
The Avatar of the Aspect, or the Player, is capable of both introducing and controlling how the Aspect will function. If the player chooses bad choices, the Aspect will turn to those bad choices. The Aspect as the Thing and the Whole of the Thing is a neutral force of nature, only following its function, and its Avatar can dictate how that function is carried out. The Avatar and Aspect, however, are separate in this-- the aspect can still carry out its function without an avatar, just look at the Troll-Godless Earth.
The Player’s Class often tells you how the Player will dish out their Aspect.
So.
Why is this important?
Consider what we see in Homestuck.
In the Troll Sessions, the Aspects are balanced. There is an avatar for each aspect, and they carry out as players can and will and won’t to do.
But its the Human sessions where all this gets interesting.
Because the Human sessions aren’t balanced. They don’t have an avatar for each Aspect, and worse still, you can see that a powerful entity-avatar has corrupted the human sessions and one troll session (LE)-- The humans sessions is where it becomes blatant how the Aspects function without someone to direct or with someone with malicious intent.
Let’s start with Beta Session.
Here, we are introduced to Avatars of Breath, Light, Space and Time. Spacetime, its a given we need, because for anything to happen you need Space to fill and Time to pace.
But Light and Breath?
Breath is motion, progression, plot. Everything about the Beta Session is fast moving and constant action, and in fact, is too fast. Everything has to be done quickly, established quicker, and it jumps around.
This is a session without any sort of grounding-- There are no Real Aspects to tie everything down, so everything is all over the place.
Light is Relevance, Meaning and Symbols; Eyes and Color, Consciousness (lights on and everybody is home). There is next to nothing dark about what we’re seeing-- intention is often made plainly clear, most of the characters are in their right minds, and the Beta Session is chocked full of Symbols and Meaning and the promise that things will be made Clear if we can only Look.
But the problem here-- is that its too much all at once. Like above, there are no Real Aspects to ground the Ideals we have. We are given all this information, but have no fucking idea how to process it or where to put it, or what’s relevant to what.
Without Avatars of the Real Aspects (Void, Doom, Blood, Rage, Heart), there is no SENSE. And the Guardians that are there, are just that-- Guardians. They hold an Aspect, but don’t do much with it.
The Aspects that are the Thing and the Whole of the Thing are there, but they merely Are, and do not bend to or over the whims of anyone.
--- Until the Trolls come in, do things start making Sense.
Let’s talk the Alpha Session.
So we have Avatars of Life, Void, Hope, and Heart.
Life is Health, Experience, the Breaking of Impossibility and Normalcy. The Players are Alive, and surprisingly Well, in spite of their awful circumstances. Roxy and Dirk should’ve Died (Dirk fell in the middle of the Ocean as a Baby, how did he survive? Roxy fell in the midst of Carapacians, how was she not Eaten?). And yet, they’re just ordinary teenagers.
But now, the Avatars are forced to live through horrible circumstances. There is no Time or Space-- No way to move forward, and no Space to grow. Just Surviving through all Impossibility-- And its fucking awful.
Hope is Coherence, Belief, Fantasy and Divinity. The fact that the players are experiencing something wholly fantastical-- a literal Alien Empress has come to take over Earth, there are Alien Monsters outside of Jake’s door, their best friends are 500 years into the Future or are in another universe entirely, Apocraplyse and Metaphysical-- That’s a helluva a thing to have.
But now all they have is Hope. Hope that there’s gonna be something better. Hope that something is gonna come down-- and ye gods, that’s awful. They’re living 2020 without it ever being 2020.
And their hope player is a self-serving jackass.
Heart is the Inner Self and Character, the Ego and Persona, the Facet and Aesthetic, Love and Soul and Self. Each character is appropriately theme’d-- Jane is the Heiress to a Cooking Empire and literally acts like the Betty Crocker character we see on the logo (not the Batter Witch). Roxy is a Scientist, and has a Science Lab, and she loves cats and wizards. Jake is a movie enthusiast with a love of adventure, and literally has a Tomb Raider Island just outside his door. And Dirk is surrounded by Robots and Brobots, and quite literal (and distorted) reflections of himself.
And did we mention the Romance Problems.
So many Romance Problems.
Heart here is one of our First Real Aspects. And lot of Dirk’s stress comes from being one of the only Real Aspect Avatars, and trying to temper nearly everyone. Remember that music can be played to the beat of one’s heart-- Heart here is trying to play Time, and uh-- well--
I mean, you tried but...
Void is Irrelevance, the meaningless Physical, the Dark and the Deep, the Incomprehensible. The world is real damn it, and suddenly it doesn’t matter as much anymore. The Session is Void, void of life, void of hope, void of heart, until something comes along and fixes it.
One of the Real Aspects, and it more or less just sits there like a Generic Object. Literally only Roxy is thrilled about this session and for good reason-- she’s the only one in her element. Void fills in what Space doesn’t-- and it doesn’t do that good of a job because NOTHING IS HERE.
... So how many of you called Act 6 meaningless? How many of you had quit ship come Act 6? Feel bored or disappointed? Void did its job, didn’t it.
So.
What about the Aspects that Aren’t here?
Easy, the Trolls fill in what Classes and Aspects are missing. Kanaya brings in Sylph, Karkat Blood, Gamzee Rage and Bard, Sollux Mage and Doom, Terezi Mind, and Vriska brings in Thief (Though it can be argued that Jack Noir originally brought in Thief and Rage).
As an Avatar of Rage, Gamzee is mean to bring Contrivance, Madness and Passion, the Self Evident Truth. The Problem here, is that he only brings in Madness. Take the Juju Episode. He isn’t the Avatar of Rage itself, he’s the Avatar of the Lord of Time’s Rage-- He comes in to do the work of LE, not the work of the real Rage Aspect.
A real avatar of Rage would’ve shown our Alpha Players that they can change the system to favor them-- because this is bullshit.
As Avatar of Mind, Terezi brings in the Outer Self, the Choice, Cause and Effect, Superego and Karma. The Multiverse at your disposal. When she is down because of Gamzee, suddenly you lost all your Choices and there is no Karma (Pre-retcon Meteor).
Mind is also Memory and the Saved Game. If it wasn’t for Terezi, John would not have been able to go back and fix things. For a Narrative, Saved Games aren’t particularly Clean-- But SBURB is also a Game and a Story. We’ve seen what happens when the Player dies and lives are lost-- but imagine if you can just go back to a Saved Game and redo an action without having died in the first place.
That’s Mind.
As Avatar of Blood, Karkat provides not Character-- but You. Your Place, Yourself, Your Choice. Blood is the most Grounded and the Most Real of the Aspects. Everything might be Fake, but You, the Reader, are here and making it real. Blood falls under being Self-Driven, Promises and Friendship, Collective and Shared. Only as strong as your greatest weakness.
When he is down, you’ve lost Everything. When the Avatar of Blood flees, all those bonds and promises go out the window (Murderstuck). When he dies, there is nobody left but despair (Bad End).
As Avatar of Doom, Sollux provides Destruction, The Limit and the Crossed Line, Inevitability and the Impossible-- Death at the End. No matter how bad that seems, Doom isn’t a Bad Aspect. Its the Cleaner. Something has gone wrong, and there’s no way to fix it, you can take solace in the fact that it’ll be over soon. Doom is a very sorrowful aspect, with a thankless but needed job.
He tends to avoid the Human’s (and yet looks up human culture) cos he’s not that interested (Doom avoids the Players). When he’s defeated by the Avatar of Hope, Murderstuck seemingly has no End (and yet, he isn’t dead, just changed). When he leaves to go hang out with Friends once the Humans arrive, Doom has left them (Their journey is guaranteed to succeed).
Sollux has a frightful job, being an Avatar of Doom.
And what of the Muse and the Lord.
Muses are Inspirational. You have something that inspires you to create. Calliope is that inspiration. The Avatar of Space inspires its creation.
And the Lord? Well, he’s the Creator and the Director of the Piece. The Avatar of Time ensures Creation.
Worse though, is when Caliborn proves to be a malicious creator and director, and he literally takes Avatars as his own.
Gamzee, an Avatar of Rage, is now an Avatar of Caliborn’s Rage. His Madness. Spread either via Murderous Intent or Juju.
Equius, an Avatar of Void, is now an Avatar of Caliborn’s Void. His Physical Reality.
Dirk, an Avatar of Heart, fights so hard not to be Caliborn’s Heart. And plenty of Dirk’s other selves Fail this Fight. Bro is merely a distilled version, and that’s horrible enough. Hal fails outright, and his nature tends toward maliciousness toward all other players.
And Homestuck. The Alpha Timeline? -- Its Caliborn’s Time.
And you Will Follow it.
You have no other Choice.
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Fanfic recommendations part three: Season 7 fix-its
Some of these stories are post season 7 finale, some of them take place during season 7 and diverge from canon. Season 8 who? We don’t know her.
I’ve read and enjoyed all of these stories, they are all worth the read.
(By the way this is a big category, so this post is huge)
All Our Yesterdays by ChronicallyChill
After the events of "Street Fighting Man", Jackie and Hyde wish more than anything that things had happened differently. The next morning, they wake up in the past, on the morning of Vanstock where Jackie promptly makes one dream come true. They are not together—but, soon enough, one change snowballs into another... Time Travel AU.
I didn’t knew if I should’ve placed this story on the season 7 fix-it category or in the AU category, in the end I chose this one, if you think it’s incorrect, please let me know so I can change it.
Okay so this story deserves a special comment because OH MY GOD, it’s incredible. It’s amazing how the author writes the characters so well, and I simply love the addition of Buddy Morgan to the gang.
This story is a WIP, it hasn’t been updated in a while but I still have faith.
121k words, 7 chapters.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna, Buddy/Fez
Also available on AO3
As You Wish by c00kiefic
A dark comedic look at love, loss and death. Hyde’s there for Jackie when she needs him the most.
This story is complete.
7k words, 2 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Daddy’s Home by bellamarie
Jackie and Hyde’s relationship has been smooth sailing for the most part since their last break-up in ‘79. As Hyde begins to seriously commit to Jackie, her dad is released from prison and he returns home to supposedly rekindle his relationship with her. Hyde, suspecting that Jack’s intentions aren’t pure, enlists the help of his friends to try and expose Jack for the still crook man that he is. While Hyde may be a paranoid burnout, he knows that the wily politician is up to no good. There is one thing, however, both men have a common interest in: Jackie Burkhart.
Okay so this story basically ignores the existence of season 8, that’s why it’s in this category.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure this is an abandoned story. Unfortunaly. It only has two chapters and damn, I’m dreaming about the day the author will update this, I’m already hooked.
4k words, 2 chapters.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Finding the Right Future by springsteenicious
After Chicago, Hyde starts driving to Las Vegas, planning to get over Jackie. His car nearly breaks down in Iowa, forcing him to stop. While he's there, he meets Fortune, a woman who will change the course of his life forever.
This story is complete.
13k words, 8 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Halloween is Over by MistyMountainHop
Eric wants to be scared for Halloween, really scared. Donna proposes a contest, and all their friends are in. But Hyde and Jackie's renewed relationship might not withstand the stress. Donna and Kelso must fight their impulses, and Fez and Eric's chances of survival are slim.
This story is complete.
25k words, 8 chapters.
Rated M
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna
Also Available on AO3
Hyde’s Long Way Home by MistyMountainHop
This story is perfect. It literally has no defects. I love ALL of MIstyMountainHop’s stories, literally, all of them, but this one has a very special place in my heart. It’s complete and it’s definitely worth the read.
Hyde goes on a self-destructive bender after finding Jackie with a towel-wrapped Kelso. The day after that, he wakes up ... and it's the same day as before. He's doomed to live the same day over and over — unless he can figure out a way to live it right.
151k words, 26 chapters.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna
Also available on AO3
I’d Have You Anytime by anonymous author
What if Jackie after panicking in her show, gave up? And what if she made an unnatural friendship? Basically a fix it of season 7. If you like a story with good Jackie/Eric friendship moments, I totally recommend this one!
Trigger warning for past eating disorder.
This story is a WIP and it’s being updated frequently.
15k words, 9 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna
I Found a Reason by JoyfulHeartEO
Can Donna help Hyde see the light before he loses the one thing that's most important to him? Or will Jackie decide to leave at all?
Rated T.
9k words, 3 chapters.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, background Eric/Donna
Jackie and Hyde: The Untold Story by Lotusflower655
I was going to place this in the “Hidden Moments” category (spoiler alert, the next category), when I realised this has a different season 7 finale, so... here it is.
Rated M.
12k words, 6 chapters.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Let’s Grow Up Together by yabookreader96
One day Jackie receives a certain letter in the mail, and she finds her life quickly beginning to change. Suddenly she is a grown up navigating life on her own, drifting away from the sleepy little town of Point Place...and from her friends who can't seem to find the courage to discover life outside the Forman basement. Will her friends catch up, or will Jackie be all on her own?
This story is complete.
67k words, 12 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna
Magic by poetdameron
Hyde has never been good at words and Jackie has never been good at waiting, they need to find a balance to stay together. Hopefully, they'll do it before is too late.
16k words, 2 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Also Available on AO3
Please Don’t Say You Love Me (’Cause I Might Not Say It Back) by orphan_account
An alternate take on the end of season 7. Instead of running off to Vegas Hyde downs a couple of beers in the good ol' El Camino before deciding that some things are more important than his pride - i.e. his relationship with Jackie.
This story is complete.
3k words, 2 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Reflections Through the Glass by MistyMountainHop
Okay, this story is quite a trip, and it’s amazing. It’s based on a minisseries called The 10th Kingdom.
Six months after Chicago, Hyde no longer believes in love — or in Jackie. Donna's not speaking to Eric. Kelso's confused about his whole life, and Fez has gone missing. The only way back may be to leave it all behind.
This story is complete, and there’s a sequel, called Beneath a Shattered Sky. Honestly, I love the first story, but the sequel... The sequel is probably one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Those are both very long stories, but they are worth it.
138k words, 46 chapters.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna
Season 8 redo by tanith75
This is the most famous story of the fandom for a reason.
The story starts after the s7ep21 episode, so there’s no Chicago problems or people going to Africa over here :) It’s amazingly written, it’s funny as hell, and it honestly feels like I’m watching an episode of the show when I’m reading it. It’s amazing, it’s what should’ve happened in the show.
This story is not complete, but please, don’t let this stop you from reading it.
293k words, 42 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, Eric/Donna, Red/Kitty, Fez/Laurie, Kelso/Brooke
Shade by MistyMountainHop
This story ignores season 8 completely and season 7 is canon, that’s why it’s in this category.
Hyde finds himself homeless on a night where Jackie is without parents. The gift he gave her last Christmas draws him to her, but his attachment lingers past that rainy first night, grows through countless experiences, and leads him across state lines. Their relationship is a high-stakes gamble, but Jackie may fold before Hyde can show all his cards.
This story is complete and it melts my heart every single time I read it.
43k words, 10 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Also Available on AO3
The Seeker by QuarterflashWoman
With Donna and Eric's own relationship kaput, after Eric left Donna at the altar, what does this mean for our favorite opposites-attract couple Steven and Jackie? Wedding bells, baptisms, betrayals, and ultimatums. It's just another year in the lives of those of Point Place.
This is mainly a season 7 hidden moments story until it diverges from canon, and it’s lovely. I wish it was complete, but it’s still worth the read.
121k words, 23 chapters.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde, some background Eric/Donna angst.
We’re All Alright by glittermila
In which Hyde and Jackie actually talk things out after he caught Kelso at the motel.
This is a lovely story, and I really enjoyed it, seeing Jackie and Hyde having a mature relationship is everything.
This story is complete.
48k words, 21 chapters.
Rated M.
Pairings: Mainly Jackie/Hyde
Zenmasters: Seasons 3-5 by zdbztumble
I was having a lot of trouble categorizing this story, in the end, I decided that it was a season 7 fix-it of sorts, since season 8 doesn’t exist and season 7 ends in a satisfying way.
This story is a rewrite of some episodes, the author foreshadowed J/H relationship during seasons 3 and 4, and she added some pretty nice J/H moments in some chapters. The author also changed some things in some episodes (like the way J/H get back together after the nurse, and some other things). It’s a pretty good story, I like it a lot.
After "Jackie Bags Hyde," a certain subplot went into hibernation for a season and a half. What if it hadn't? And, if it hadn't, what other surprises would pop up along the way? "Tune in" to find out!
This story is complete.
170k words, 43 chapters.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
One-shots:
A change in fate by KaraSkinner
After leaving Jackie in Chicago, Hyde gets into a car crash and meets an angel that shows him just how bleak life would be if he doesn't change his fate now.
4k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
don’t I love you so by orphan_account
Hyde’d spent so long trying to keep her out, and what had happened? He’d finally opened up the gates, only to realise she’d been there the whole time and had had enough. Love — it was a goddamn Trojan horse.
or; a 7x25 fix it where hyde and jackie talk like adults for once in their damn lives.
4k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Hyde Asks Jackie to Stay by springsteenicious
When Hyde finds Jackie in the basement when she's supposed to be in Chicago, his first instinct is to push her away. Instead, he asks her to stay.
2k words
Rated G.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
I’m not a heartbreaker, so be gentle with mine by FalaZure
It's just a proposal, Hyde's been through worse and really how hard can it be?
or: 5 times Hyde tries to propose to Jackie, and one time he succeeds.
This story ignores season 8 completely, and it’s mainly just fluff, I LOVE it.
12k words.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Jackie Doesn’t Leave Before Getting an Answer by springsteenicious
Jackie stays in Point Place and waits for an answer to her ultimatum. At long last, Hyde gives her one.
2k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Let’s Do It by poetdameron
According to the tags, season 8 does not exist on this story, so off to the season 7 fix-its category you go.
There are things a man should not say after great orgasms on Christmas' Eve, Steven Hyde should have known better.
2k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Moth Drawn to Light by blackorchids
After Hyde sees how good Jackie is with baby Betsy, it makes him start to think.
Ignores the existence of season 8 completely. Just a fluff little one-shot on Hyde’s thoughts about fatherhood.
1k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Our Last Night on Earth by c00kiefic
When Hyde wakes up in the beer warehouse, he decides to actually fight for his girl.
3k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Remember to Breathe by PrefectMoony
She’s all bubblegum laughter, and butter scotch kisses. Hyde thinks he loves her, thinks he’s always loved her. Hates that it’s taken him so long to tell her as much.
Hates it even more that the first time he’s ever told her so is when the break between them is too raw— too jagged— to be able to mend with pretty platitudes.
Beautifully written.
4k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
sighs in my sleep by finkpishnets
“Congratulations,” the nurse says, smile pulled too tight as she glances at Jackie’s unadorned hand.
Jackie wants to shrug it off — “My husband’s getting the ring engraved as an anniversary gift. Isn’t that just so romantic?” — but she can’t find the breath to let the lie trip off her tongue, even in the face of pity.
2k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Street Fighting Man by springsteenicious
Hyde finds Jackie crying at the Packers Game. He tries to fix it.
1k words
Rated G
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
Tea For One by KayRight
The second Mrs. Forman walked in with a letter for him he knew what had happened. Marrying her scared him, but losing her terrified him to his very core. Takes place in Season 7 after Jackie tells Hyde she got a job in Chicago.
2k words.
Rated M.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
The One Where They’re Happy by amidtheflowers
When Jackie and Hyde start dating, it takes the gang a while to see how that relationship even works. Something that creepy and unnatural can't possibly work, right? Meanwhile, Donna wonders why she puts up with any of them.
Adorable, I love this story so much, please read this.
3k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
we’ll be alright by marvelfoodlover
What if Jackie didn't easily forgive the gang after they missed her graduation party?
Season 7 fix-it because it diverges from canon.
2k words.
Rated T.
Pairings: Jackie/Hyde
I think that covers it.
I’ll repeat this at the end of every single post: speaking as someone who writes, it would be really cool if you guys decide to leave a review (or a comment, if the story is on AO3) in the stories you read, especially the unfinished ones. It really motivates the authors, and receiving a compliment is always a mood lifter. I’ve seen some authors updating stories after years because of nice reviews, so… yeah, this is just an idea.
If you think I left out a good story, feel free to reply to this post!
Next category: Hidden Moments
#jackie x hyde#jackie and hyde#jackie burkhart#steven hyde#zenmasters#that 70s show#that '70s show#fanfic#fanfic rec#fanfic recommendations
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Top Ten Favorite Book Series
And here’s another Top Ten in my series! This one is about book series that I have read in the past, or have been reading over time. Of course, these can change over time, but I know all of these will be very important to me. So, here they are, in no particular order!
1. Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas
I loved this series since I first discovered them. I know not a lot of people like them, or at least aspects of them, and I do understand some problems with them. But I had found the first two books when I had moved in with my boyfriend at the time, and I fell absolutely in love with them. The last book came out when during my last year in college and I didn’t complete any homework for like a week. I love these books because of the important themes she had written, and there were a few scenes that made me cry, especially in the last book. I loved the friendships and complicated characters she created.
2. Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo
Again, I found this series around the time I had discovered Throne of Glass. But they were all out already, and I actually met Leigh at a book event for the last book. I loved this series more so for the darkness of its tone, and the Darkling is my favorite fictional villain, hands down. But I remember being so amazed while reading this trilogy because I had discovered I could write dark, dark stuff if I wanted, and it fed that part of me.
3. Gemma Doyle Trilogy by Libba Bray
I read this trilogy in high school, and I remember loving it so much. So I recently did a reread and I loved it just as much. I liked the tone, the characters, the settings and the magic. It has always been that stuck out to me, and I’m so glad I had found it when I did.
4. The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare
This series had changed my life, honest to god. Surprising to most, I hadn’t been a big reader growing up. I read some stuff (most Narnia, Spiderwick, Alice in Wonderland, etc), and I could never find the kinds of books I had always wanted to read. I was a sophomore in high school when I was looking through my local small bookstore, and I saw the cover of a young man in Victorian attire (my favorite time period forever!), and I remember reading the back and I was instantly intrigued. And I fell in love with it. Not only did it spark my reading as a teenager, helping me find the genres and stories I liked, but it had been with me through important times. When I had been through an awful depression that led to an attempted suicide my junior year, I was reading this series. I remember reading the second book that year in my yearbook class, and I read through class, which annoyed one of my guy friends that I sat with. When I finished the last book in the hidden classroom behind a class I was a tutor for, I cried. I sobbed as I read the epilogue, and I remember just staring at the wall for the rest of that time. This series broke and remade me, and I think it has huge influence on me personally.
5. Sands of Arawiya duology by Hafsah Faizal
I just read this series a couple of months ago, and my god, did I love it. I loved the world, the characters, the deep, meaningful friendships. This one surprised me in so many ways, and I didn’t want to stop reading it. I loved it so, so much and it’s important to my heart.
6. Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard
I see mix reviews on this series, especially the later books. But I personally loved them. I loved the adventure and magic system and my god did I love the twists. Maven Calore is probably one of the most interesting characters I have ever read. I loved how complicated and destructive it was, and the war tactics and plots were great.
7. An Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir
My god, Sabaa knows how to make really, really complicated situations for characters. Talk about torturing your own characters. And I think that was what I learned from these books, as a writer myself. She made strong, powerful characters and threw them through hell, to see where they came out. But I loved the way they wrapped up, the arcs of the characters, the beauty of their closeness. It’s just a beautiful series.
8. Lady Sherlock series by Sherry Thomas
This is just a fun series. It combines some of my favorite things—women detectives, Victorian England, mysteries, and Sherlock Holmes. But I love that Sherlock Holmes is actually a woman. They’re great books that put twists on the original books and I adore so much about them.
9. Stalking Jack the Ripper series by Kerri Maniscalco
What a great series! I loved these more with each book. I love Audrey Rose and Thomas Cresswell, as lovers and as partners, so much. But they are both intriguing in their own ways. And I adored how Kerri used different historical/pop culture aspects in her books—Jack the Ripper, Dracula, Houdini, and the Devil in the White City. They are great mysteries with loveable characters and I love it so much.
10. Well Met series by Jen DeLuca
Now, I love this series for just dumb (but personal) reasons. First of all, I haven’t found many romance books that I like. I find most of them too silly and cheesy. But I didn’t have that case with these. I found them hilarious and fun and heartwarming. But second of all, they’re set a Renaissance Faire! We have a Renaissance Faire that comes every year about thirty-forty minutes away from where I live, and I have been going every year (you know, except for last year and probably this year) for thirteen or fourteen years. It’s important to me, and it marks time for me. So, that’s why I love these.
Runner Up: Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters
This is a wonderful series. It spoke to my love of mysteries, but also Egyptology (I almost went to school for archaeology/Egyptology!). I love that Elizabeth Peters was an archaeologist, that gives a real-life feel to these as well. Plus, like you know me, Victorian period! I think Amelia Peabody is one of the greatest female leads, and I think the romance/love between her and Emerson. It totally reminds me of Evie and Rick in The Mummy, so if you love those movies, check out these books. I haven’t finished the series yet, but I think I’ve gotten halfway through, and I love them so much.
I love all these books, way too much probably. They all have a special place in my heart and yeah... I love them. I’ve said that so much haven’t I?
#top ten favorite book series#throne of glass series#the Grishaverse#Gemma Doyle Trilogy#the infernal devices#sands of arawiya#red queen#an ember in the ashes#LADY SHERLOCK#stalking jack the ripper#well met series#amelia peabody#i love too many books
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Arc-V 7th Anniversary
Alright fellas here it is! It’s been 7 years since Yugioh Arc-V first graced our lives, and I thought I’d celebrate this by going over my personal Top 5 Duels in the series! This list is just my opinion, and you don’t have to agree/disagree or whatever, it’s just for fun. Let’s get to it!
#5: Yuya vs Barret, Synchro Arc
This duel is probably the one that no one expected to be on this list, but it’s actually a critical moment to Yuya’s growth as a character (I know some might have expected the 227 duel here but that one serves more towards narrative parallels and foreshadowing rather than actual character growth). This duel is here for one important reason: It’s the moment where Yuya truly let go of Yusho’s ideals. The Dimensional War had only began to get more chaotic as time passed, with Academia sending no shortage of goons after them, but this is the duel where Yuya is forced to choose: Yuzu’s (and his friends) life, or Smile World (the representation of his father’s ideals). Ultimately, Yuya does choose Yuzu, but this duel is also one of the most agonized we see Yuya after because Yuzu was still kidnapped anyways. To him, he threw away both of them by being forced to choose. However, it’s also what does encourage him to finally take that first step he needed, the buildup to the entire Synchro arc of finding his own words, and challenges Jack for their last rematch
#4: Tsukikage and Sora vs Obelisk Force, Synchro Arc
Ok THIS ONE is the one that no one actually expected, but I really do like it since it’s a good bit of character building for both Sora and Tsukikage (also I didn’t want this list to just be Yuya duels). Tsukikage was a surprising dark horse in Arc V because of how much he actually was developed. His design wasn’t anything special and he was legitimately just hired help by Reiji. However, in this duel we see a ton of incredible character defining moments for him: His grudge against Sora and Academia for what happened to his brother, his commitment not just to Reiji but to the Lancers, his trust in Reira but also his concern, and the tag team with Sora where he makes clear that he never intends to forgive Sora for his involvement with Academia, but he thanks him regardless. This is also the duel that firmly cements Sora as a good guy after about 50+ episodes of him being a villain from his initial heel face turn, where he finally decides that the friends he made in Standard Dimension are too important for him to turn his back on despite Academia being a literal child military. Speaking of…
#3: Shun vs Sora, Maiami Championship
The granddaddy of all tone setting duels in this series, this duel has a lot going for it, but it is phenomenal for one reason alone: how absolutely brutal it is. Yugioh has always gone out of its way to forgive all the cartoon violence in duels as just monsters looking cool, but this duel kicks it up a notch by showcasing just how brutal the Dimensional War between the Fusion and XYZ dimensions was. And mind you, at this point in the series, it was only slightly hinted, and we later see it in more brutal detail in Shun vs Dennis (Friendship Cup) and the duels in the XYZ Dimension, but this duel has another point to its favor: Sora’s heel face turn. At this point, all we knew was that Shun was going around attacking random duelists for no reason. However, it’s when Sora breaks out his own Evil Face™ that we really see the dynamic at play here: Sora is the spy sent to lower everyone’s guards, while Shun is the compassionate avenger that’s trying to prevent another dimension from falling the way his did. No other duel Shun has ever had as much impact as this one with the exception of his duel with Dennis in Synchro, but when put side by side, this is the duel that stands out because it’s when the series truly begins to take its darker turn.
#2: Yuya vs Jack, End of Synchro Arc
This one I feel is a little controversial, but I absolutely cannot understate just how important this duel is for Yuya’s character. The Synchro arc as a whole was considered a drag by many, and while there certainly are parts that it feels as such, it is undeniable that it provides very critical development for Yuya. This entire time, Yuya has thought that he could simply parrot his father’s ideals as a way to cope with his own insecurities (shirou emiya much? Lmao). However, Jack sees right through his game and completely humiliates him in their first encounter, telling Yuya that he isn’t worthy to stand against him unless Yuya can find his own words instead of the words he borrowed. After this encounter, Yuya tries to force his ideals again, but realizes that he needs to find another way to convey the message and ideals of Duels with Smiles that he wants. His duel with Shinji, Duel Chaser 227 and Crow all had Yuya learn different ways of expressing himself and further evolving his duel, up until this final confrontation. Deciding that instead of letting Academia and The Tops having their way, Yuya squares up and challenges Jack on his own terms for a final rematch. Throughout the duel, we see Yuya apply everything he’s learned so far, but Jack still tells him that he’s holding back and using borrowed words instead of his own, until Yuya finally hits his breakthrough: Pendulum was something he didn’t borrow from anyone, and it’s HIS OWN WORDS to convey his message. With that breakthrough, Jack has finally found an opponent worthy to test himself against once more, because he’s grown so strong that no one in Synchro Dimension was able to challenge him and his drive for self-improvement. Jack in general was such a clutch character to bring back because he’s the exact type of impetus that Yuya needed: A mentor who wasn’t afraid to tell him that he’s simply hiding behind what was given to him, and rather pushed him to achieve greater heights than Yuya himself thought he was capable of.
Alright before the #1 duel, let me list some honorable mentions bc while these didn’t make my top 5, I do still believe they are important and are all fantastic duels in their own right.
Honorable Mentions:
- Yuya vs Kachidoki, Maiami Cup
- Yuya vs Gongenzaka, First Match
- Shun vs Dennis, Friendship Cup
- Yuya vs Yuri, Academia Arc
- Yuya vs Battle Beast, Academia Arc
- Yuya vs Duel Chaser 227, Friendship Cup
- Yugo vs Serena, Friendship Cup
- Yuzu vs Masumi, Maiami Cup
- Yuya vs Shingo, Yosenju deck Maiami Cup
- Shun vs LDS Trio, Start of Series
- Yuto-Yuya vs Kaito, Academia Arc
- Yuto-Yuya vs Edo, Academia Arc
- Yuya vs Reiji, Round 1
And now...
#1: Zarc vs Lancers, Academia Arc
By and far what I consider to be the pinnacle of all duels across the ENTIRE Yugioh series (even beating out Yusei vs Z-ONE), this is less of a duel and more of an all-out war, the culmination of 130+ episodes of masterful foreshadowing and incredible build-up that results in what I consider the best final boss reveal in the series. Arc V is a master of foreshadowing across the series, and kept giving us hints that something BIG was coming, that The Professor and Academia weren’t actually the endgame villains of the series, and after the cast barely manages to eek out a victory against Yuri, it’s ultimately a failure as all the pieces are in place for Yuya to finish his IMA KOSO HITOTSU NI fusion with all his dimensional counterparts. Every single character, good guys, bad guys, and everyone in-between watch as reality falls apart, and births the monster made by their own hands, that is Zarc. I need to reiterate here that the greatest strength of Arc-V is foreshadowing because throughout this duel, we see the application of the ideals that Yuya had developed on his own, as “his own words” are what reaches to the extended cast. It was Yuya’s duty to raise them up as the Pioneer of Pendulum, now it was their job to drag Yuya back from what he has been reduced to. And all throughout, we see how Zarc was made, how he was so similar to Yuya in almost every regard, and we are reminded of all the times Yuya failed but had his friends to help him up, and how Zarc was just a Yuya who had no one to help him when he failed. Zarc who hurt people because it was demanded of him, and ultimately embraced his role as a violent villain as his ultimate act of revenge, because his audience asked for it. And yet, we also see Zarc have his absolute ass dragged by SAWATARI of all characters, and we see just how much of a coward Zarc really was. The entire duel just has so much going for it: Jack-Gongenzaka tag team, Ray and Reiji calling out to Zarc and Yuya, Zarc’s continued insistence that he’s just a monster, It’s So Damn Good. I tell people to watch Yugioh anyways because Yugioh is a great series, but this duel is so good that I would unironically tell people to watch Arc V just so they can watch this duel (outside of the many reasons I recommend arc v). It’s so good, Zarc is such a fun villain, it’s the climax of Yuya’s entire character arc, and I hold it in high regard as the best duel in Arc-V.
Thanks for taking the time to look through this little retrospective on one of my all-time favorite series, here’s to Arc-V’s 7th anniversary!
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