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deepperplexity · 5 months

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Prompt: 11. Imperfect Holiday [D1]

Pairing: Gruber x Fem!OC

POV: First, OC

Setting: Train heading north through the English countryside

Continuation of: RICKMAS2022 Prompts 14. Icy Roads & 15. Frosty Glass

A/N: It’s been a year! Well, three days short of a year but still a year! And I’ve had so many messages, lots of asking about Hans and Anna-Louise — how it turns out, if she finds out who he really is, how she reacts to it if so, and everything else. I’m honestly so thrilled this story caught so many darlings’ attention and I’m more than happy to continue this story. As I write this it’s 16.09 the 10th of December and I’ve yet to actually start writing - the past few days have been hectic and my little one has been sick so there’s been need of extra cuddles which hasn’t allowed me to write until now. But I’m excited! (Continuing this note after I’ve written the fic…)

Okay, so, this turned out to be bloody long - again, why do I do this to myself? Especially on days I have so little time 😅👍 I’m very happy with the continuation of this story though, and in true Hans x Anna-Louise spirit, there will be one more part this RICKMAS - two parts, just like last year, and I’ll probably make it tomorrows prompt actually - why not? It matches up well and I’m sure to have a bloody war with the keyboard yesterday as well given I tend to make these fics longer. WORTH IT THOUGH! 🙈👏

Tags/TW’s: Different Lifestyles, Running Away (technically), Self Doubt, Forehead Kisses, Kissing, Caring, Hand Holding, Being Spoiled A Little, Falling In Love, Unmarked One Bed Trope, Motion Sickness, H/C, Patient MMC/Anxious FMC, Following One’s Heart, Secret Identity

Recap of last year’s fics: Anna-Louise (Lulu/Schnuki) Humphrey met Hans Gruber a snowy evening when he pushed her out of the way of an oncoming car while she were slipping around on an icy road in the middle of her run-down hometown. He captivated her with his handsome features and eyes that seemed to truly see her, and he was in turn captivated by her, seeing much potential and sweetness.

When they met again at the little café where Martha (the old lady with a fat dog and a cane she liked to swat at peoples legs) exclaimed him to be a handsome gentleman while Anna-Louise did all she could not to die of embarrassment at the old lady’s choices of conversation they ended up talking about her coming with him. Anna-Louise told Hans that was how to get kidnapped one-o-one but Hans pointed out he felt they were far more than mere strangers.

All her life she had been treated like a nuisance, a person not even worth mentioning by her full name — sometimes just as blabber missy even — and she had longed for years to leave. But she’d been frightened, fearing she’d end up a lonely puddle of anxiety more than anything. Yet, Anna-Louise ended up running to the train station at nine in the evening, hoping he would be there, and of course, he was. They left the poor little town together on the train heading north after sharing a toe-curling embrace where Hans kissed her forehead while calling her Schnuki and his sweet treat…

Word Count: 4.9k+

LINKTREE // AO3 // MASTERLIST

The train lurched into action and my stomach dropped. I was a silly-nilly, a delulu Lulu truly. It’s all gone pear-shaped now, hasn’t it? Dad won’t make it without me, sis will be a furious mess for him to deal with when Ferdinand’s litter box needs cleaning and when he needs his weekly bath with the oils and nobody will do the laundry, and the bins, it’ll pile over and— But my eyes went to Hans at that moment — sitting opposite me in a private cabin with red chequered seating and walnut furnish — and my rampant thoughts calmed down.

He watched me, his undivided attention fully on me. I wanted to squirm under his clear eyes yet I remained still, feeling wholly seen and wanted by that mere look of his. “Is my mind in a hoax with my eyes?” he asked, making me scrunch my brows. “I can’t believe you are actually sitting there, here, with me.” My cheeks burned at his words, spoken in that German accent of his. “I can’t believe it myself to be honest. I feel… Stupid.” “Stupid?” he asked, his eyes widening while his brows shot up. “This is a thing of romance movies and hostage situations, perhaps a police chase movie with bombs and exploding train tracks that’ll force the passengers to jump into the snow at break-neck speeds and run for their lives or—” I clamped my mouth shut. “Sorry, rambling again…”

Hans tilted his head, one leg crossed over the other with his coat only resting atop his shoulders, watching me with a small smirk. He was too bloody handsome. My very bones felt warmed by that daftly charming smirk. It wasn’t as devastatingly chaos-wrecking as his smile though. I liked both equally either way.

“You are worried, no?” he asked. “Worried?” “Well, you said it yourself, we are strangers and it is kidnapping one-o-one for a woman not to go anywhere with a stranger, especially a man. Yet,” he held out his hands, “here you are. Having boarded a train taking you anywhere.” The fact he remembered exactly what I’d said had my heart performing a stutter before my mind kicked into gear. “Not anywhere, last station is Durham, I’ve wanted to take this train many times. Not that I ever thought I would, I kept track, pun not intended mind you, but I never thought I’d actually get on, you know? Where would I go? I have nowhere to go, never had anywhere to go, and why would I leave when my family needs me,” I rambled on, my nerves getting the better of me again. Stop, stop, just, stop, or he’ll kick you off the train before you can say you’re a blabber missy. God, I’m so annoying.

“Well, you are correct, schnuki. The last station is Durham. The rest of your words, I can’t deem as right.” “What? Why?” “You have everywhere to go, many things to see and experience. Your family treats you poorly and I, for one, do not accept someone as bright and sweet as you to be kept bound to such a terrible fate. Cat claws and mints, doing other people’s bidding at all times.” He watched me most intently as he spoke, goosebumps travelled down my spine when he spoke of doing other people’s bidding, the words felt two-fold for some reason I couldn’t wrap my thought-riddled head around.

“You’re rather blunt, you know.” I thought that from the very start so maybe it’s a trait of his? Or a German thing? Martha would have a field day if he were to join for crisply burnt biscuits and cold tea next Thurs— Ah, right… “Schnuki?” I shook my head to focus on the man and not my bloody overwhelming thoughts. “Are you well?” he continued. “S-sorry, just, lots of thoughts.” “Speak them,” he said, leaning back and getting comfortable (at least it looked like it).

I blinked at him for a moment, my hand squeezing the edge of my duffel bag beside me while I did all I could not to weep at those words. He probably thought little of them, but they had me gobsmacked. “Speak them?” “Yes, you know, say them out loud. Is that not the term in England? Works fine in America.” I chuckled while my entire face heated. “Yeah, sure, it’s right but… I talk enough as it is.” “I doubt you could ever talk enough, schnuki,” he said with a deep chuckle.

My face sank, my shoulders slouched and I felt a million utterances of blabber missy and shut it, Lulu attack me from within. From the past. The very, very recent past. But Hans wasn’t like that, he wasn’t some prick spilling poppycock into my ear or forcing me to do something I didn’t want to do. No, he made me do something I’d dreamt myself blue about.

The plush bench beneath me sank on my left side, Hans sat right next to me and I hadn’t even noticed he’d moved. His hand enveloped mine, my eyes turned wide while he squeezed my still-scratched-up skin — Ferdinand was probably at the top of the tree now, swatting at tinsel and knocking off the star at the top while I was nowhere in sight and I wasn’t sure how it made me feel knowing the feral kitty wouldn’t be fully cared for. Would he end up on the street or could I at least count on sis keeping him, and feeding him?

“You are brave, my sweet treat,” Hans said. “I will not allow you to squander your life away any longer, understand me?” he continued and I gulped down a breath before nodding, my constant stream of words quiet for the moment. My insides were in shambles over the sudden close contact though, he was so warm, and he smelt like mint— No, not mint, menthol. Menthol and ginger, and something… something else I’ve never smelt before. “Speak those thoughts,” Hans said beside me. “You smell good,” I blurted out without thinking first.

My ears were given a cacophony of his laugh, deep and rumblingly loud — it was perfect. “You smell like a treat,” Hans said and smiled at me after he’d stopped laughing. “A sweet treat.” “Oh, it’s my shower gel, it’s scented like gingerbread cookies.” “Ah, yes, that’s the smell, partly at least. There’s more to it though.” “More?” “Yes, something incredibly sweet,” Hans continued and we fell silent as our eyes locked. His were so clear, so open, and endlessly bright with sprinkles of grey within the blue I hadn’t noticed before. Blimey, you’re perfection… “I’d say that’s you,” he said softly and I blinked. “Did-, did I say that aloud?” He chuckled and leaned in, kissing my temple, while he rumbled a deep “yes”.

My cheeks burned, feeling bloody mortified and flustered. “Oh,” I managed and he squeezed my hand. “You have the brightest of voices, schnuki. Speak as much as you need,” he assured and what on earth was I supposed to think of that? Nobody had ever said such a thing before, my voice was annoying and far too shrill, and used too often too — ask anyone, I’m a blabbering nuisance.

We fell into a stiff silence, but he never let go of my hand and the train chugged onward toward the north with the winter wonderland hidden in darkness outside the window only reflecting the inside of the space we sat in. Hans urged me to get some sleep, we were apparently a few hours away from our stop, but how could I possibly sleep with adrenaline and nerves turning me into a mess? I felt a sandwich short of a picnic, as if I’d gone completely bonkers — the entire situation was madness, and what if it all went to pot? Dad and sis would take the Mickey out of me if I returned home after a few days, they’d know I tried to get away and have a laugh at my uselessness…

Hans had already drifted off to sleep beside me, his hand softly clasped around my smaller one while my entire body gravitated toward his. He was warm, sturdy, and I couldn’t help but lean against him while my eyelids drooped. It was close to midnight I think when I finally dozed off, my head still spinning with questions and worries of all kinds.

***

Hans called my name just as I chased Ferdinand through the house to snag him up in a towel after his weekly bath. He hissed and roared in a manner no kitty was ever supposed to, I clamped down on him, rubbing with the towel when Hans called my name again. My home evaporated and I found myself back on the train, clamping down on Hans’ hand too harshly. I let go and scooted to the side a bit.

“Dreams?” “Just, yeah, Ferdinand needed a bath and I had to dry him and rub him with a— Oh, you don’t need to know that, sorry,” I said while my voice went from hoarse to its usual state. “The cat?” “Yeah, right, sis’ cat. He’s a feral thing, he’s sweet, but he’s… Sorry…” He nodded and reached out to grab my hand anew, little indents from my nails littered his skin, just beneath his knuckles. “I’m sorry, I-, I didn’t mean to scratch you.” “This?” he asked, holding our joined hands up. “It’s nothing, don’t fret over it, sweet treat,” he continued and kissed my fingers one at a time — I was sent into a burning heaven of warmth by the action.

The train came to a halt and my sluggish brain went into overdrive again as Hans let go of me and stood. “This is us,” he said and the speakers sparked to life with a woman saying “Darlington Station” and then repeated it once more. “We’re off here?” I asked and he nodded while grabbing my bag for me. He had no luggage at all it seemed.

My nose wrinkled at the sight, he walked ahead of me as the doors were too narrow for us both to go through and the lane just as tight. My bag looked beyond cheap when slung over his shoulder dressed with a seemingly incredibly expensive coat, and the Oxfords on his feet paired with the grey linen trousers matched so perfectly that my bag stood out like a ragged reindeer among Arabian horses.

He took my hand the moment we stepped off the train, the station lay nearly deserted so there was no need to stick close yet he kept me right by his side. “I can carry that myself, you know,” I said and he nearly glared at me. “No.” “I’m perfectly capable—” “I’m aware, but just because a lady is capable doesn’t mean she should. You should know how to change a tire, but you shouldn’t have to do it. You are perfectly capable of carrying your bag, but I will not allow it when I can do such a thing for you, schnuki.” “O-oh…” I whispered, my cheeks once more burning hot while he smirked at me and squeezed my hand.

We moved across the street to a car park with snow crunching beneath our feet. Hans released my hand and bent down by a gorgeous car — it was sleek and maroon blue with an air of richness to it. It looked like it hadn’t been parked there for very long though. He dragged his hand by the wheel and produced a set of keys.

“This is yours?” “Rental,” he said. “Allow me.” He opened the passenger door like a gentleman and I slunk inside, keeping my feet outside the door to dunk them against each other not to drag in more snow than needed. The creamy leather smelled divine even if it were terribly cold, my old jeans did little to keep the chill of the seat from crawling into my skin and up my spine while Hans dropped my bag in the trunk and slid into the driver’s side.

The engine purred to life and I buckled up. “Good girl,” he said and gave the strap over my upper body a tug, cinching it across my middle at the same time. “There, perfectly strapped,” he continued with a cheeky grin and began backing out of the lot while I gaped at him.

Hans drove with skill and ease, weaving through the streets, taking several turns along smaller ones with tightly packed buildings dressed in Christmas lights standing on each side before the open road lay before us and my eyes remained fixed on the road ahead. Should have grabbed my motion sickness patches, I thought while my stomach protested and the back of my mouth filled with saliva I struggled to swallow.

“Are we driving far?” I asked, my voice quieter than usual as I gripped the car door to make my body feel a bit more stable, it usually helped the motion sickness a wee bit at least. “Twenty minutes, given the roads are clear. Why?” Hans glanced toward me and his eyes widened. I was probably a bit pale. “Motion sickness,” I said, slightly shamed by being a nuisance once more. “I’ll drive as steadily as I can. Is it speed, turns or the motion in general?” he asked and I gaped at him, feeling like my jaw got too much exercise since I met him. The care and interest he showed in everything regarding me was insane. “Acceleration and unsteadiness,” I confirmed to be the worst parts for me. “But you drive really well.” “I’ll do my best to keep steady, schnuki.”

Hans eventually slowed down when we entered a narrower street lined by giant trees void of greenery. It was still pretty though. “Here we are,” he said and steadily slowed down before making a smooth turn into a giant estate with several brick buildings. It was absolutely beautiful but truth be told I just wanted out of the car to breathe some fresh are and stave off the motion sickness. The red sign at the end of the driveway dressed with garlands and twinkling lights said Headlam Hall, Rural Resort & Spa in golden letters.

I was out the door as soon as the car stood still. Hans came around and stroked my back a few seconds later while I breathed deeply to take away the worst illness. The fresh air was wonderfully clean and crisp. A faint scent of cinnamon and hay lingered within it and I honestly couldn’t say I disliked that particular smell. Smelled like Christmas on the countryside.

“Are you alright?” he asked gently, his care beyond sweet. “Yeah, just need some air, it’ll pass in a few minutes. Sorry for being such a nuisance, Hans.” “Don’t say such a thing.” He looked almost offended at the words. “What thing?” “You are in no way a nuisance. Had I known I would have procured some pills for you.” “That’s my responsibility, I have patches at home, crazy how well they work for me without side effects. Should have grabbed them, but I packed so fast. Martha got them for me, some Chinese shop had them when she was in London visiting her sister. They’re bloody brilliant really, the pills always make me drowsy for over a day, and I— Oh, sorry, rambling,” I said and stopped myself from spewing more unnecessary words by taking a deep breath. “Stop gifting me words in your sweet voice only to apologize for it,” Hans said gently and kissed my temple. I shivered in my thin, tattered jacket and he fetched my bag while I tried to steady my legs — if it were his sweetness or the motion sickness making me wobbly I couldn’t really tell.

I was in some form of an awed daze while Hans led me inside the three-story brick building covered in vines that still held their leaves even in winter. The building was beautifully decorated with fairy lights around windows and the roof, with a blanket of snow all around it looked like it was taken out of one of those Christmas rom-coms where they needed to save the inn only to end up falling in love and living happily ever after (after some sappy words or cringe-worthy kissing scene).

The reception area was spotless, a beautiful mix of modern and classic English style that made me feel completely misplaced. It was rich, luxurious, and far beyond anything I’d ever dreamt of experiencing up close. Unlike the little café in my hometown with its tacky santas, plastic garlands, and altogether jumbled decorations this place was stunningly decorated in red and gold with real trees and boughs. I felt truly out of my depth. But Hans, well, he moved with an air of belonging to him, his strides confident and his whole look made it feel as if it were an obvious thing he belonged in such surroundings.

I kept looking around, nearly twisting my neck off to see without moving my legs, and Hans got our room sorted and declined any attempts of the receptionist to ring for someone to show him to it. He ended up leading us through the building, past a modern bar with a burning fireplace and sitting area next to it, through a big room with several seating areas, up some stairs, and through some hallways. It was as if he knew where he was going, as if he’d been there before. I merely followed like a lost puppy.

The room was stunning. Absolutely gorgeous with hints of tweed fabric, deeply rich wooden furnishing, and pale beige and white fabrics that soften it all. Tasteful Christmas decorations were placed in perfect spots and there was even a little hearth in the room, with two winged-backed chairs and a little table in front of it as well as two stockings hanging from the mantel. The giant four-poster bed screamed for me to lay down but the bathroom off to the side called for me even more.

Hans came up behind me, setting my bag on the floor before wrapping me in his arms, holding my back toward his front while my heart hammered as if I were some silly little schoolgirl with an irrevocable crush and filled with unruly hormones. “How about a bath before bed?” he rumbled by my ear and I nodded, lost for words by how closely he held me. “I’ll sort the room and you go relax, schnuki. Take a bath, and then we’ll turn in for the night.” “Sounds good,” I managed to say while he kissed my temple quickly before letting me go.

I ended up taking a long shower rather than a bath. I was too tired to wait for the tub to fill and it felt like a waste when I hadn’t the energy to really enjoy a long soaking. Hans didn’t bother me, even if I had left the door unlocked. As I dried my hair, while wrapped in the lushest of white robes, my tired body began to tremble. My hands worst of all while my legs felt like overcooked spaghetti strings beneath me.

I sank down on the chair by the claw-footed tub, squeezing the towel in my hands to try and stop the shaking. I left. I really left. And I’m in a spa resort, with a German bloke I don’t know. I’m a bloody moron for all of this. Am I completely daft? I’m usually not some muppet, but this is beyond stupid. I can’t even get home if I want to, not that I want to. I don’t want to, why don’t I want to go home? Shouldn’t I want to be with my family and all that good old hometown fluffing people always talk about? Especially during Christmas no matter that I know it would be a more than imperfect holiday, a disaster as usual, with things for all others and none for me but those from Santa that really are just from me to me. I'd probably end up wailing in bed with my face pressed into the damn pillow, just like every year...

A knock at the door interrupted my, rambling, pittyfull thoughts. “Yeah?” “Are you dressed?” he asked. “I’m in a robe.” The door opened the next second and I did all I bloody could to stop my hands from shaking and my face from betraying my anxious state. “Schnuki, my sweet treat, are you alright?” Hans asked while he stepped up to me, sinking to one knee while wrapping up my hands, still holding the wet towel, in his. “I’m— Well— I am, I am but, I’m not. I should be, and I am, but not really no.” I made no sense.

“Let’s get you to bed, you need sleep. Did you eat before meeting me?” “No, no Dad had his pals for poker and sis had me running to the shop for a new lipstick and then I packed, and I tried to make sure Ferdinand would have enough food and I did his litter box, cleaned it fully and put new sand and everything and I took out the trash and started a load of laundry and then I packed, and I cleaned my room and stripped the bed so—” “Schnuki, my sweet treat, calm down for me,” he said and cupped my face with his hands, his eyes holding mine steadily while I stopped rambling; in a rush to explain myself to the best of my capabilities so he would understand why I hadn’t eaten.

“There’s a silk pyjama on the bed for you,” he said, talking softly as if I were some delicate thing needing gentle care. “I’ll order some room service and you’ll eat before we sleep. Eggs and bacon, sound good?” “Y-yeah,” I exhaled, feeling all degrees of spoiled and pampered, cared for, and baffled by the warmth it filled my stupidly thundering heart with. I’m such a silly-nilly… I couldn’t help but wonder if I had been right two days ago, about Christmas being the time for kindness and care, perhaps this Christmas would be one like that for me?

“Alright then. I need to make a call, I’ll be on the balcony.” “There’s a balcony?” I asked, my eyes widening, and he smirked with a cheeky look. “We’ll have breakfast with blankets out there tomorrow, sound good? The view is fantastic you see.” “Oh, oh yeah, sounds brilliant,” I replied and he kissed my forehead most softly before leaving me to dry off my hair completely. That I wished to know what those lips felt like against my own was a thought I couldn’t quite get to pipe down. I bet he’s brilliant at kissing, nothing like Bobby Parker… I shuddered at the memory of my first kiss, and soon enough my mind ping-ponged like a rabbit between holes in the ground with memories of the kisses I’d had in life.

Bloody hell, I’ve had terrible luck in the love department… Well, the kissing department, I’ve never fallen in love with anyone. Maybe it’s all the blokes unable to kiss making me unable to fall in love. But I knew it was a place thing, rather than anything else. Living in a tiny town had few options lining themselves up, and with my sis being the pretty and popular one I stood even less of a chance. Every bloke I’d ever kissed she’d already been pawing in one way or another only to lose interest.

I hung the towel to dry and left the bathroom only to see the lilac-coloured pyjama set of silk on the giant bed. It looked like pure luxury. I’m supposed to wear that? I couldn’t do it, so I rummaged around in my bag for my old flannel pyjama bottoms and my old Bowie tee washed out completely and worn at the seams with a little hole right where I always fiddled with the hem. I glanced at the lilac silk once more before scurrying back into the bathroom and changing.

I walked over to the balcony door, finding Hans pacing on the other side of the glass in just his linen trousers and white shirt, his red tie still firmly secured too. He looked good enough to eat whole. Don’t be daft, Lulu…

As he paced back and forth I could hear a muffled snippet of his conversation every time he was close to the door. Words of stocks and vaults, then words of exits and insurances. Perhaps he worked on the stock market? Or a bank? He looked the part, like one of those Wall Street blokes you’d see on TV from time to time. Just, less dishevelled and without the crazed look of rapid exchanges needing one’s full attention.

“We will be in and out in four minutes,” he said while stopping with his back toward the door. I saw him fully through the sheer curtains but he hadn’t taken any notice of me. “Alex can crack it, Henry will be in the car and it’ll be smooth sailing. I’m close to Newcastle, picked up a little something special on the way so I’m a day late and will be two days late getting there. Can I trust you to handle getting the team set up and ready to go in four days? Friday’s are checking days, it’ll be stocked.” I wasn’t sure what the bloody hell I was hearing but it sounded important. His voice was so much harder than when he spoke to me, and clipped in a different way entirely. The sweetness and care had vanished, leaving only a decisive deep voice behind. A commanding one at that.

He ended the call and I scurried back to my bag, rummaging through it, pretending to search for something when the door opened and closed behind me. For some daft reason, I wasn’t scared despite the red flag of him being so different on the phone. Nothing about Hans scared me, not even being in the dark about who he was. He was Hans, he cared and he listened. He tended to me and took me away from the place I’d been dreaming of escaping for years but never dared to leave. He saved my life the very first time we met. I don’t know anyone who’d put themselves in harm’s way for others… Especially not any stranger in the middle of the road.

“Schnuki, what’s this?” he asked and I half turned my head, still kneeling on the floor by the foot of the bed with my hands in my bags. “Do you not like my present for you?” he asked with a glance toward the pyjama set. “You bought them?” I asked while straightening, abandoning my pretend hunt. “Yes.” When? “I love them,” I confessed. “But I can’t wear that.” “ That ? Something wrong with them?” “No, no! They’re perfect and pretty and super soft and a beautiful colour and everything,” I rushed out. “They’re just… expensive looking. I don’t wanna ruin them, you know?” “Ruin them? By wearing them as intended?” Sure, when you say it like that it sounds as silly as a goose having shoes and a bonnet.

Hans stepped closer, his eyes roaming over my form hidden beneath the loose, tattered fabric I wore. He tugged me into his arms and I gasped at the sudden closeness. He was still so warm, despite having been out in the cold English winter for several minutes. “Anna-Louise,” he said gently, “you ought to get accustomed to wearing fancy things, and eating good food, being in luxurious surroundings. I won’t have you in anything less than that.” “Hans… What-, what do you mean? I’m perfectly fine with way less, I don’t need all that fancy stuff. I’m used to—” “You’ll get used to better things quickly enough, schnuki,” he interrupted. “Hans, we barely know each other, you can’t lavish me with things like that.” “Don’t say such a thing.” “That I don’t want to be lavished upon like some fancy old lady sitting in parlours sipping tea in expensive silk while waiting for her dear husband to return home from some overseas journey?” I joked while giggling, but he didn’t laugh. “Hans?” “I do a lot of business overseas, would it be terrible of me to wish to come home to you, waiting in pretty silk, after each trip?”

He took a step back while I tried to take in what he’d said. Our eyes locked together and I damn near couldn’t breathe as he looked at me with such longing. “In pretty silk?” I whispered, wholly overwhelmed and wondering what kind of rich man I’d stumbled upon. “All finery imaginable,” he said with a nod. “Why would you want me?” I asked, for the first time posing the question which had been bugging me for a long time without me realising it. “Why would I not want you?” he asked, but before I could ramble a number of reasons, he kissed me.

I melted. He kissed me softly but with urgency, his thin lips perfect against mine. He kissed me so well my foot came off the bloody floor like in a sappy romance movie, I couldn’t help it. Fireworks exploded in my veins, my mind turned utterly quiet and nothing in the world mattered but him holding me close, kissing me with passion and longing leaking out of him with a dark hum while his arms tightened around me.

…To Be Continued…

LINKTREE // AO3 // MASTERLIST

A/N: Oh boy... this really did turn out to be quite long but gosh I love these two so much I can't help but wanting to write for them - and it's just too much fun too 😂👏 I hope you enjoyed the continuation of this story from last year and as I said above there will be one more part to this story tomorrow! Hope you're excited for even more of these two and the secrets they carry along with the love that's flourishing between them 🥰❤

Q: Would you rather spend Christmas at a big resort, with all amenities, or a small town in a picturesque cottage? 🎄 A: I'll take the cottage - I do love those cosy vibes and I don't mind having to stoke a fire and wear an extra jumper and socks 🥰

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[Dec:2023]

#rickmas2023 #rickmas 2023 #rickmas #hans gruber #hans gruber x oc #hans gruber fic #christmas fic #alan rickman #rickmaniac

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kaylinelizabeth4004 · 7 months

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Here We Are In Heaven

A snippet of my longer story ‘Heaven is Here’ on ao3. This is chapter 10. Linked at the end! This just made me kick my feet and blush so I had to share.

Crowley and Aziraphale finally addressing their relationship.

It had been a few days since Y/N saw Crowley’s greenhouse, and the image of her inside it wouldn’t leave the demon’s mind. He felt that he saw her everywhere. And granted, to an extent he had. She was still interacting with them daily, but she was also a busy woman. Neither of them wanted to force her to change her lifestyle for them. But even when they weren’t speaking, even when she was at her flat and Crowley was dreaming on Aziraphale’s couch while the angel made diligent notes of his newest prophecy book, he saw her.

Crowley wondered if Aziraphale thought about Y/N the same way he did. Was everything this all consuming? Aziraphale certainly was for Crowley. Not all the time, perhaps all consuming wasn’t the right term, for there were times when the demon could go about his life and not think too much about him. But there were others when all he wanted, all he yearned for, was the sweet angel who loved crepes so much he risked his own life for them. The thought made him laugh slightly.

“A penny for your thoughts, my darling?” Aziraphale said into the silence of the night. It really was a wonderful moment they were sharing. Crowley was daydreaming, lounging on the couch and letting his imagination fly into all the most obscure realities. And Aziraphale was studying a book he’d recently acquired, 113 Partially Correct Prophecies for the Year 1922 by Oscar Wilde. It was turning out to be a more satirical book, mocking the different ways in which people were readily able to believe in prophecies, but Aziraphale still found it an excellent read. And he had been alarmingly correct about Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

“Y/N,” Crowley answered.

Aziraphale didn’t try to fight the smile on his lips as he turned in his seat to look at the demon. “Ah, I see. And what about her has got you laughing?”

“It’snot her, it’sabout her.” He slurred his words slightly. “Do you… do you find yourself always thinking about the people you care for?”

Aziraphale nodded, “yes, I do.”

“Really?”

“I find that it’s not always the way the novels might describe it. It’s not always fiery and passionate, but it’s certainly there. In the subtext of your mind, so to speak.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, “stop being so bloody smart, angel.”

Aziraphale frowned, “you asked me a question, dearest. I was just trying to answer it.”

“I know,” Crowley said, shoving himself up off the couch and going to Aziraphale selection of vinyl. He started to thumb through them, hoping to find something that had lyrics. Of course he appreciated classical music as much as the next immortal fellow, but when your brain just couldn’t stop thinking, sometimes words were what you needed to distract you. Other words to silence the ones up there. Crowley smiled at the Etta James vinyl, he’d quite fancied her music. Thought she had an excellent voice.

“Angel,” Crowley said softly, his expression suddenly serious. He let his fingers trace along the Etta James vinyl, nail scratching along the letters.

“Hmm?”

The demon was not always known for saying exactly what he needed to say, communication could be very difficult for a demon when your entire mode of communication is based on lies. Or Freddie Mercury. But maybe it was the way he kept replaying his angel kissing her, or the way Y/N listened and loved all of his plants with a kind heart, but he knew exactly what he wanted to say. As adorable as Aziraphale was, Crowley was going to get these words out. “We need to do something about Y/N.”

The angel looked confused and his pink lips came in a little pout, “whatever do you mean?”

“She’s not immortal. She’s going to continue to age. I, I, I don’t want to go through this again.”

Aziraphale’s face fell and he removed his spectacles from the tip of his nose. The conversation had turned very quickly, and he couldn’t quite trace Crowley’s train of thought. Bugger, he hadn’t focused on that bit of everything quite yet. He was so excited with getting to know Y/N, getting to love her as her outside of the whole soulmate situation. Though the situation is what brought them together. He sighed, “I don’t know if there is much we can do.”

“C’mon, angel, think. Use that pretty little head of yours and think.” Crowley came to him quickly, imploring for Aziraphale to help him find a way. The angel’s lips parted when he realized Crowley had called him pretty. However, the demon was on a mission. As beautiful as Aziraphale was and as much as he would love to continue telling him that, he knew they couldn’t get distracted. He could still hear her giggle as rose bushes popped up when she said their name. “Angel, think about it. Y/N’s not going to stop aging. She’s going to die. She’s going to die and forget about us, and we might never get to see her again. And even if we do, she’ll die and forget again. It will never end.”

“Well what do you suggest we do, Crowley?” Aziraphale said with a little whine, he felt helpless.

“Miracle?” The demon said halfheartedly, knowing that it might not work but choosing to say it anyway.

“Heaven and Hell will know if we try to miracle her immortality, and they won’t leave us alone.”

Crowley straightened. Despite everything, despite the inner feelings of self hatred and the torment Hell had put him through, Crowley was an optimist. He believed in good, and he believed that things would work out. An apocalypse had been stopped by belief, by imagination. His Bentley had survived. Despite it all, he chose to be optimistic about their future with Y/N, he refused to let it die with her. “We have to try, Aziraphale. You know we do. She deserves it.”

“She does.”

There was a pause. The angel was thinking very deeply about what they could do, if a miracle would even work. Then the soft chords of Etta James’s ‘At Last’ started to play on the record player. Aziraphale hadn’t even seen the demon put it on, but he couldn’t fight the small smile as the music enveloped him. His eyes fluttered shut and he took in a deep breath.

Her voice was rich through the ancient speaker. Crowley and Aziraphale listened with intent.

“At last

My love has come along…”

Aziraphale’s eyes opened when he felt a pair of warm hands settle on his waist, pulling him closely to another body. Crowley let his head fall onto the crook between Aziraphale’s neck and shoulder, letting out a shaky breath. He worried the angel was going to kick him away, and was going to reject him. 6,000 years of pining and yet he didn’t know if a simple dance was too much to ask for. At first the angel didn’t know how to respond, but as Etta James continued and he took in the scent of Crowley, he felt himself melting into the touch. Aziraphale’s arms came up around Crowley’s neck, hands buried in the red hair as the couple swayed back and forth to the song. His nails scratched along his skin and Crowley let out a sigh of relief. Aziraphale rested his head against Crowley’s.

“At last

The skies above are blue

My heart was wrapped in clover

The night I looked at you…”

Crowley remembered one of the first times he’d seen Aziraphale, way back when he’d been an angel. He hadn’t noticed it then, he’d been too caught up in the creation of a galaxy too beautiful to comprehend, but he remembered Aziraphale had looked quite pretty. He looked soft and sweet. Like candy. Crowley couldn’t comprehend that this moment was real, that he was holding good personified and he was his.

It took Crowley three stuttering tries, but he finally managed to get out over the soft chords of the song, “you deserve it, too, Aziraphale. You deserve her, the love, all of it. You deserve eternity with her.”

They both pulled back slightly to look at one another. The angel soaked in the sight of Crowley’s amber eyes, so raw with unexplained emotions. He hadn’t seemed to expect that from him and his eyes darted back and forth, trying to gauge what Crowley was feeling. He seemed to know something the demon wouldn’t dream to express. Aziraphale brought a hand to cup Crowley’s cheek and without thinking, he nuzzled into the angel’s touch. “My darling, you deserve it too. You are deserving of everything.”

A tear slipped down Crowley’s cheek, and Aziraphale wiped it away with the pad of his thumb. The angel spoke softly, almost hiding under the music, but Crowley would have never missed his next words. “I love you dearly, my Crowley.”

Crowley didn’t hesitate this time to make the next move. He rushed forwards and took Aziraphale’s lips with his own. A crescendo to 6,000 years of pining and trying to understand themselves. It was all that Aziraphale had dreamed of and more. The demon moved with a raw passion, taking in the form of the angel’s lips, but he wasn’t demanding. Crowley tasted of whiskey and heat and his lips felt softer than sin. Etta James’s melody cried from behind them and they held each other closer, as though letting go would mean they’d never get to touch again.

“You smiled, you smiled

Oh, and then the spell was cast

And here we are in Heaven

For you are mine … at last.”

#good omens #good omens season 2 #fanfiction #aziraphale x crowley #good omens fanfiction #aziraphale x crowley x reader #crowley is a simp #crowley has self esteem issues #aziraphale #Aziraphale is hot ngl #this made me giggle #I love this #even if it’s shit I love it #fluff #dancing together because it’s fucking adorable

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nabateaprodigy · 9 months

Text

Masterlist

Finally got around to making this! Here's a collection of my writing.

Where are you y/n? (Rhea x GN!Reader)

By Your Side (M!Alear x Vander)

Heartache (M!Byleth x Seteth)

Fódlan Sibling Headcannons (Dimitri, Felix, Constance, Linhardt, Caspar, and Yuri)

A King and his Summoner (Dimitri x GN!Reader)

A Picnic and Flowers (Clanne x Citrinne)

Starlight Sky (Rhea x F!Byleth)

Byleth and Shez Comfort Headcannons (M!Shez and M!Byleth x GN!Reader)

Domestic Life Headcanons (M!Shez and Claude x GN!Reader)

Cuddle Time! (Arval, M!Shez, and M!Byleth x Fem!Reader)

The Prince and His Maiden of Death (Dimitri x Fem!Reader)

Alcryst, M!Alear, and Gregory Headcannons. (Alcyst, M!Alear, and Gregory x Fem!Reader)

I'm Not Jealous! (Hortensia x Clanne)

Hey! That Dance Is With Me! (Ferdinand, Caspar, and Dorothea x GN!Reader)

A Friendship of Fire and Ice (Natsu x Male!Reader)

Papa Where do Babies Come From? (Juvia x Male!Reader)

My Lovely Rain Woman (Juvia x Male!Reader)

Can't Look Back (Juvia x Gray)

Angelic Care (Angel x Male!Reader)

Hidden Power (Mirajane x GN!Reader)

Love At First Drink? (Gray x Male!Reader)

Uninvited Guests (Gray x Fem!Reader)

Rude Awakening (Wendy x Male!Reader)

Musical Mishap (Team Natsu x Fem!Reader)

Talk To Me (Juvia x Male!Reader)

I Can't Lose you to (Gray x Fem!Reader)

Snakes Curse (Wendy x Male!Reader)

First Word (Juvia x Male!Reader)

Rain, Rain Go Away and Come Back Another Day (Gray x Male!Reader)

Overflow (Gray and Lucy x Male!Reader)

Dear Little Brother (Greige x Fem!Reader)

Moving On (Gray and Juvia x Male!Reader)

Vs Y/N! (Omori, Kel, Hero, and Aubrey x GN!Reader)

Ice Skating Mania (Omori, Hero, Kel, Aubrey, and Basil x Male!Reader)

Goodbye...Omori (Omori x GN!Reader)

Hopeful Maid (Nagito x Mahiru)

Rantaro and Kokichi Headcannons (Kokichi and Rantaro x GN!Reader)

Lady of Despair (Junko x Fem!Reader)

Music and Stars (Shuichi, Kokichi, K1-B0, and Rantaro x GN!Reader)

Kokichi and Nagito With a Sensitive S/O (Kokichi and Nagito x GN!Reader)

Please Don't Turn Me Into a Marketable Plushy! (Mukuro, Junko, Komaru, and Sonia x GN!Reader)

Pain In His Eyes (Fuyuhiko, Nagito, Kazuichi, and Leon x GN!Reader)

Attention (Kokichi x GN!Reader)

Playful Tendencies (Kokichi x GN!Reader)

A Mountain of Plushies (Nagito, Fuyuhiko, Kazuichi, and Hajime x Male!Reader)

Hopefully Compassion (Nagito x Fem!Reader)

Cheerleader Star (Leon x Gn!Reader)

Deserved to be Loved (Mahiru x Male!Reader)

DR1 and DR2 Cuddling Headcannons (Makoto, Chihiro, Hajime, and Nagito x AFAB!Reader)

Love of History (Kyoko, Mukuro, Ibuki and Kirumi x GN!Reader)

Life or Death (Kyoko and Mukuro x Male!Reader.)

Fire Emblem games i write for and character x character pairings

If i write for platonic x reader.

If I write for Naruto

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kumeko · 6 months

Text

Prompt: secret relationship, forehead kisses, accidental marriage

A/N: For dsw78, I know you didn’t have anything particular in mind, but I tried to use as many of your tags as possible. Kinda with the accidental marriage/enemies-to-lovers, but…referenced. I was tempted to go angst but…they’re angsty enough in canon.

…

Edelgard was not one for flights of fancy. She was a practical woman, through and through—the plots of the Adestrian Empire left her little other choice. Whether it was to stand tall amongst her siblings, claim the title of the next emperor, or to merely just survive, she had long learned how to cut the excess from her life.

Which is why Edelgard didn’t care for the look in Dorothea’s eyes when she informed her aide, “I shall take a brief reprieve in the gardens.”

“Oh?” Despite how noisy the ballroom was, the lilt in her voice was impossible to miss. Dorothea’s eyes gleamed, a sly smile on her red lips. Coyly, she asked, “I thought you had your fill of the gardens earlier? Claude even gave us a private tour.”

“And it unsettled me the entire time,” Edelgard muttered, her eyes narrowing as she gazed across the ballroom at the newly appointed Leicester Alliance leader as he danced with his fiancée Byleth. Even back in their school days, when they’d meet once a month to discuss the matters of their houses, she had always felt wary around him. Perhaps it was the way his smile had never reached his eyes or how silver-tongued he was. Yet, unlike the treachery she was used to, there was no malice behind his actions.

Perhaps that was what disturbed her the most: the fact that she couldn’t read what he wanted.

“You always feel unsettled,” Dorothea jabbed, rolling her eyes. She rested a hand on her hip, her wine-red skirt swaying slightly as she turned.

“With good reason,” Edelgard replied tartly. Though she had been wrong about one thing: swirling across the dancefloor, Claude smiled at Byleth, and in the three years Edelgard had known him, she had never seen such a genuine smile grace his face.

It seemed the every-elusive Claude had at least one honest bone.

“Some would call that paranoia,” Dorothea sighed, shaking her head. She slipped her arm through Edelgard’s, pulling her closer and leading her to a nearby balcony. As the glass doors closed behind them, the music and laughter faded into the background. “Even when you’re happy, you refuse to let yourself be happy.”

Edelgard arched a brow. “Where is this coming from?”

“Edie…sometimes I worry about you.” Dorothea leaned closer, resting her head on Edelgard’s shoulder. Her long hair tickled Edelgard’s neck. “You’re allowed to think of yourself first.”

“What are you driving at?” Edelgard asked, disgruntled.

“Good question,” Dorothea smiled mysteriously. “Just…don’t run away when the time comes.” She pulled away and leaned against the balcony. Scanning the darkened garden, something caught her eye and her expression lit up.

Edelgard glanced over but she could only catch a glimpse of gold and blue before it disappeared.

“Anyways, I’ve been delaying you.” Dorothea pushed Edelgard away playfully. “You wanted a walk right? To have your fill of the garden?”

Her mischievous tone made Edelgard stiffen. She had seen Dorothea tease Ferdinand long enough to know just what she was driving at. Suddenly, she knew all too well just who had vanished into the garden.

And the worst part was that Dorothea knew it too. Edelgard warned, “Dorothea.”

“What? I’m just saying, perhaps a little protection wouldn’t go amiss. It is dark outside, after all,” Dorothea continued, batting her eyes innocently.

It had been amusing to watch Ferdinand turn a thousand shades of red when Dorothea gave that look to him, less so when she experienced it herself. Edelgard felt a headache forming. “That’s straightforward for you.”

“Because today you need a blunter touch,” Dorothea replied with a shrug. She made a shooing gesture. “Now, scram before another one of your suitors pop in.”

An even more perilous situation. Edelgard had not enjoyed the first hour of the ball with all the pests chasing after her. Giving Dorothea one last look, she added, “We will discuss this later.”

“Whatever you say,” Dorothea said, already turning back to the hall. “Now, I spotted a really cute knight, and she won’t dance by herself.”

-x-

The few outdoor lights near the balcony did little to brighten up the garden. Edelgard’s eyes adjusted to the dark quickly, the dark shapes of roses and bushes all she had to guide her along the footpath. The hem of her red dress grew damp with dew. With each step, the party grew quieter and quieter, leaving behind only the last of the crickets and birds to fill in the silence.

A fountain gurgled nearby, and she turned toward it. As expected, a figure sat in front of it, a small lantern at his feet. Even without seeing the blue of his uniform, she knew it was Dimitri. Few men sat as straight, fewer men were as tall and muscular.

Quietly, she stood there, watching as he ran his hand through the fountain, as he patiently waited for her. The flickering light highlighted his blonde hair and glinted off his gold buttons. She’d seen him enter the ballroom scant hours ago, unwillingly dragged by Claude from bachelorette to bachelorette. How he had discretely escaped that fox’s eyes, she didn’t know.

Then again…Claude had once thrown her a glance earlier, his expression akin to Dorothea’s, and perhaps he had known just what he had been doing.

Edelgard clenched her fist. She was not supposed to be that easy to read.

As the moon emerged from the clouds, Dimitri lifted his head, noticing her. “El?”

She could see his face, see the way his eyes brightened, the way he smiled. It was nothing like the polite smile he had given earlier, nothing like the smile he used amongst his friends.

No, this was Claude’s smile to Byleth, Hubert’s soft upturn of his lip when Ferdinand argued with him.

Her own expression reflected in the glass when she’d spotted a familiar figure heading toward the garden.

No wonder Claude and Dorothea knew. A shiver ran up her spine and Edelgard resisted the urge to flee.

“Dimitri,” Edelgard replied politely, forcing a distance between them. Quickly, she scanned their surroundings, confirming they were truly in fact alone.

Dimitri had no such reservations. He strode over, joy speeding up his gait. Then again, he had never wanted to keep their relationship a secret.

No, that had been her request.

“I was worried you couldn’t make it,” Dimitri said, his hand already reaching up to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed her skin, sending sparks of electricity. It was the thing that had surprised her the most when they had started meeting like this—how affectionate the usually reserved prince was, how he seemed to gravitate her like the moon to the earth. His other hand interlaced with hers, leaving her no avenue to escape.

If this hadn’t been House Reigan’s gardens and instead one of their own, Dorothea’s insinuations wouldn’t have been far off base.

“I almost didn’t," Edelgard replied, allowing herself to briefly relax. “Now that my father has abdicated, the suitors swarm like flies.”

She didn’t miss how Dimitri’s eyes darkened, his grip tightening. He was the perfect prince, the golden child, and yet at times like these, she could sense the beast lurking within. Part of her wanted to prod, to see what it would take to unchain that creature.

But Dimitri wasn’t hers to keep.

And if Edelgard went any further, she feared she might forget that.

“I’m glad we aren’t holding this meeting in Faerghus.” She changed the topic swiftly, pulling away. “Even with furs, it’s far too cold there in Red Wolf Moon.”

Dimitri laughed, deep and rough. “I cannot deny it.”

“I would prefer it if the next one isn’t there either,” Edelgard continued. While the quarterly meetings between the three nations helped improve the stability of Fódlan, bringing down the threat of war, Edelgard had experienced far more of Faerghus’s winters than she would have liked.

And as warm as Dimitri’s bed was, she could only remain there for so long.

“While I hope you don’t host in Enbarr in the summer,” Dimitri replied with a laugh. “Your country gets far too hot.”

“You should go to Brigid,” she replied. It was oddly easy to imagine Dimitri on the sandy beaches, his hand in hers as they strolled that boundary between the sea and the land. An ordinary situation for any pair of lovers. A situation that could never occur for them.

Edelgard was not one for pretending. She was getting soft. “You haven’t experienced a real heat yet.”

“And I would rather not.” Dimitri reached down, his hands clasping hers once more. “Perhaps it is good that we came to Leicester lands then—the temperature here is far more moderate.”

A silence fell over them, one she didn’t want to break. This fragile moment would not last much longer.

But she also wasn’t one to run from her problems and at least in this, she would remain true to herself. “When is your coronation?” she asked.

“A month after my birthday.” Dimitri raised her hand, pressing his lips firmly against her knuckles. In the dim light, he looked rakish. “I’ll see you there?”

Yes.

“I am not certain,” she replied indifferently, schooling her face into a coldness she didn’t (couldn’t) feel. “I will be busy with my coronation.”

If he was off put by her response, he didn’t show it, merely tightening his grip on her hand in response. “Is it settled then?”

“I have all but convinced my father to abdicate,” Edelgard said softly. With Hubert’s help, she had finally brought sense to her weak father. It wouldn’t be long before she could cleanse her ranks of the greedy and corrupt.

“Then, next time we meet, you’ll be Emperor Edelgard?”

“And you King of Faerghus.” Edelgard watched as his eyes darkened once more, his expression growing distant as he looked away. Dimitri had to realize it too, just how futile their relationship was. How there wasn’t any future for it. Perhaps, if he had remained prince or she princess. A political marriage to calm the tension brewing between their respective countries.

But as rulers…impossible.

It was something she had known from the start.

It was something that should have deterred her from taking his hand that first night, so many moons ago, when they had been students and he had approached her at the goddess tower.

“I will be there,” Dimitri said softly, turning back to her now. Her breath caught as his eyes met hers, filled with an unnameable emotion. His hand cupped her cheek once more, his thumb gently stroking her cheek as he leaned down to tenderly kiss her forehead. “I swear.”

And yet, as he embraced her now just as he had back then, as his kisses slowly drifted lower and lower, Edelgard couldn’t deny that even knowing how it would end, she would have still taken that hand.

-x-

Dimitri had never been one to let logic dictate his emotions—that had been Edelgard’s speciality, something he had more than once complained to her about. Feelings weren’t meant to be curbed and brought to heel, to be put out at the slightest inconvenience.

So, the day after Edelgard’s coronation was announced, she wasn’t surprised to find a marriage proposal on her desk from the King of Faerghus. It was a very Dimitri-thing to do, particularly after Claude’s influence. And perhaps, perhaps, the constant schemer knew of a way around their political problem.

No, what surprised her instead was how she was opening the letter instead of tossing it, how she was considering it instead of rejecting it.

Edelgard had never been one for flights of fancy but somehow, Dimitri made it seem possible.

Don’t run away, Dorothea had said, and she must have known of Dimitri’s intentions that night, must have seen it long ago. Maybe Edelgard had only been tricking herself into thinking she could cut this off at any time.

She really was getting soft.

“Hubert,” Edelgard called out as she ran her fingers over the blue seal of the Faerghus. “I have a task for you.”

But not entirely soft. If this is what he wanted, if this was what she wanted, then she’d just have to make it a reality. She’d just taken over an empire; this couldn’t be much harder.

#dimigard #fe3h #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #edelgard von hresvelg #dimitri x edelgard #fanfic #dorothea arnault #back when the first trailer came out and we saw that dance scene #my sister and i were just: that's a ship #and then hilariously got side tracked by claudeleth before we ended up playing their routes #anyways #glad to finally write for them

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inbarfink · 3 months

Text

List of which songs are included on each Polka under the cut

Polkas on 45: "Jocko Homo" by Devo, "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple, "Sex (I'm a …)" by Berlin, "Hey Jude" by The Beatles, "L.A. Woman" by the Doors, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly, "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix, "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads, "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash, "Jumpin' Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones, "My Generation" by the Who

Hooked on Polkas: "Twelfth Street Rag" by Euday L. Bowman, "State of Shock" by The Jacksons and Mick Jagger, "Sharp Dressed Man" by ZZ Top, "What's Love Got to Do with It" by Tina Turner, "Method of Modern Love" by Hall & Oates, "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes, "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister, "99 Luftballons" by Nena, "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins, "The Reflex" by Duran Duran, "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" by Quiet Riot, "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Polka Party!: "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel, "Sussudio" by Phil Collins, "Party All the Time" by Eddie Murphy, "Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Richie, "Freeway of Love" by Aretha Franklin, "What You Need" by INXS, "Harlem Shuffle" by The Rolling Stones, "Venus" by Bananarama, "Nasty" by Janet Jackson, "Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco, "Shout" by Tears for Fears, "Papa Don't Preach" by Madonna

The Hot Rocks Polka: "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)", "Brown Sugar", "You Can't Always Get What You Want", "Honky Tonk Women", "Under My Thumb", "Ruby Tuesday", "Miss You", "Sympathy for the Devil", "Get Off of My Cloud", "Shattered", "Let's Spend the Night Together", "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - all by The Rolling Stones

Polka Your Eyes Out: "Cradle of Love" by Billy Idol, "Tom's Diner" by DNA featuring Suzanne Vega, "Love Shack" by the B-52's, "Pump Up the Jam" by Technotronic, "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M., "Unbelievable" by EMF, "Do Me!" by Bell Biv DeVoe, "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, "The Humpty Dance" by Digital Underground, "Cherry Pie" by Warrant, "Miss You Much" by Janet Jackson, "I Touch Myself" by Divinyls, "Dr. Feelgood" by Mötley Crüe, "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice

Bohemian Polka: "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen

The Alternative Polka: "Loser" by Beck, "Sex Type Thing" by Stone Temple Pilots, "All I Wanna Do" by Sheryl Crow, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, "Bang and Blame" by R.E.M., "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette, "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" by The Smashing Pumpkins, "My Friends" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, "I'll Stick Around" by Foo Fighters, "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden, "Basket Case" by Green Day

Polka Power!: "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, "Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)" by Pras featuring Ol' Dirty Bastard and Mýa, "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" by the Backstreet Boys, "Walkin' on the Sun" by Smash Mouth, "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys, "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba, "Ray of Light" by Madonna, "Push" by Matchbox Twenty, "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind, "The Dope Show" by Marilyn Manson, "MMMBop" by Hanson, "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground, "Closing Time" by Semisonic

Angry White Boy Polka: "Last Resort" by Papa Roach, "Chop Suey!" by System of a Down, "Get Free" by The Vines, "Hate to Say I Told You So" by The Hives, "Fell in Love with a Girl" by The White Stripes, "Last Nite" by The Strokes, "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed, "Renegades of Funk" by Rage Against the Machine, "My Way" by Limp Bizkit, "Outside" by Staind, "Bawitdaba" by Kid Rock, "Youth of the Nation" by P.O.D., "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem

Polkarama!: "Chicken Dance" by Werner Thomas, "Let's Get It Started" by Black Eyed Peas, "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand, "Beverly Hills" by Weezer, "Speed of Sound" by Coldplay, "Float On" by Modest Mouse, "Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz featuring De La Soul, "Don't Cha" by The Pussycat Dolls featuring Busta Rhymes, "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers, "Slither" by Velvet Revolver, "Candy Shop" by 50 Cent featuring Olivia, "Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell Williams, "Pon de Replay" by Rihanna, "Gold Digger" by Kanye West featuring Jamie Foxx

Polka Face: "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga, "Womanizer" by Britney Spears, "Right Round" by Flo Rida ft. Kesha, "Day 'n' Nite" by Kid Cudi, "Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum, "Baby" by Justin Bieber ft. Ludacris, "So What" by Pink, "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry, "Fireflies" by Owl City, "Blame It" by Jamie Foxx ft. T-Pain, "Replay" by Iyaz, "Down" by Jay Sean ft. Lil Wayne, "Break Your Heart" by Taio Cruz ft. Ludacris, "Tik Tok" by Kesha

NOW That's What I Call Polka!: "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus, "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People, "Best Song Ever" by One Direction, "Gangnam Style" by Psy, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Scream & Shout" by will.i.am feat. Britney Spears, "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye feat. Kimbra, "Timber" by Pitbull feat. Kesha, "Sexy and I Know It" by LMFAO, "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz, "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams

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joethetoonfanandoutcast · 6 months

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This is the complete list of characters I would have cameo at a Universal Animation assemblage similar to Once Upon a Studio.

Felix the Cat: Felix the Cat

Woody Woodpecker: Woody Woodpecker, Winnie Woodpecker

An American Tail: Fievel Mousekewitz, Tanya Mousekewitz, Papa Mousekewitz, Mama Mousekewitz, Yasha Mousekewitz, Tiger, Henri le pigeon, female pigeons, Tony Toponi, Bridget, Honest John, Gussie Mausheimer, Warren T. Cat, Digit, Maus Street Maulers, Cat R. Waul, TR Chula, the Cactus Cat Gang, Miss Kitty, Wylie Burp

Land Before Time: Littlefoot, Cera, Petrie, Ducky, Spike, Littlefoot's grandparents, Chomper

Opus 'n Bill: Opus, Bill the Cat, the ducks

We're Back!: A Dinosaur's Story: Rex, Elsa, Woog, Dweeb, Louie, Cecilia, Vorb, Stubbs, Captain Neweyes, Dr. Bleeb

Casper: Casper the Friendly Ghost, Stretch, Fatso, Stinky

Babe: Babe, Fly, Rex, Ferdinand, the mice

Balto: Balto, Jenna, Boris, Steele, Muk, Luk, Nikki, Kaltag, Star, Dixie, Sylvie, Rosy

Rocky & Bullwinkle: Rocket J. Squirrel, Bullwinkle J. Moose (in their 2D/CG 2000 looks), Fearless Leader, Boris Badenov, Natasha Femme-Fatale (in their 2D 2000 looks)

Curious George: Curious George, Ted the Man in the Yellow Hat, Maggie Dunlop

The Tale of Desperaux: Desperaux, his parents, Chiaroscuro "Roscuro", Chef Andre, Boldo

Despicable Me: Felonious Gru, Lucy Wilde, the Minions, Dr. Nefario, Margo, Agnes, Edith, Kyle, Vector, Mr. Perkins, Silas Ramsbottom, Eduardo Perez/El Macho, Antonio Perez, Scarlett Overkill, Herb Overkill, the Nelsons, Balthazar Bratt, Dru Gru, Marlena Gru, Fritz, Clive the Robot, the Vicious Six, Master Chow, Wild Knuckles' henchmen

Hop: EB, Easter Bunny, the Pink Berets, Carlos, Phil, bunnies, chicks

The Lorax: the Lorax, the Once-ler, Ted, Audrey, Mrs. Wiggins, Granny Norma, Aloysius O'Hare, O'Hare's bodyguards, Sy the Delivery Guy, the Hummingfish, the Swommee-Swans, the Barbaloots

The Secret Life of Pets: Max, Katie, Duke, Gidget, Snowball, Mel, Buddy, Pops, Tiberius, Rooster, Chuck, Liam, Daisy, Hu, Sergei, wolves

Sing: Buster Moon, Miss Crawley, Herman, Rosita, Norman, their piglets, Gunther, Johnny, Marcus, Stan, Barry, Ash, Lance, Becky, Eddie Noodleman, Nana Noodleman, Mr. and Mrs. Noodleman, Hobbes, Meena, her mother and grandparents, Mike, Nancy, Suki Lane, Porsha Crystal, Jimmy Crystal, Jerry, Nooshy, Darius, Klaus Kickenklober, Clay Calloway, the Q-Teez

The Grinch: the Grinch, Max, Fred, his mate and calf, Donna Who, Cindy-Lou Who, Bean, Buster, Bricklebaum, Mabel, Groopert, Axl, Izzy, Ozzy

Super Mario Bros.: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Bowser Koopa, Donkey Kong, Cranky Kong, Kamek, penguins, Giuseppe

Migration: the duck family, Delroy, Pigeon, Erin

Characters I'm unsure would make the assemblage:

The Veggies of VeggieTales

The Jetsons, Mr. Spacely and anyone involved in Jetsons the Movie

And for real-life people:

Steven Spielberg, David Kirschner, George Miller, and Chris Meledandri as themselves.

What do you think?

#once upon a studio #universal animation #illumination crossover

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talenlee · 7 months

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Game Pile: Commander Keen — The Kid; id; Tom Hall

youtube

Hey, kid

Hey psst

Ya ever heard of this game, DOOM?

Doom, the Firstest Person Shooter. Before the 2016 game that came out trading on its identity, this name referred to a game that came out in 1993, and was quickly followed by a sequel named Doom 2, then by Quake then by Quake 2, then by Half Life, then Half Life Episode two, then Half life Alyx – and there is a chain of history that defines the literal everyday environment of videogames that is, probably, directly spawned from DOOM. Steam, one of the dominant gaming platforms, is in part the result of people who made a mod for Quake called Team Fortress, which was one of the children of DOOM. A large body of the early architecture making remote gaming possible pre-internet that was made For DOOM started out with a service called DWANGO, which was so successful in Japan that it’s now a major corporation that itself owns Spike Chunsoft, and is owned by Kadokawa, the company that runs Bookwalker. Competing with and attempting to displace the genre of gameplay Doom and its children in Quake created resulted in a shareware distributor called Epic Megagames to create the videogame Unreal and that engine now runs everything including Star Wars TV Shows. Doom is so important to games that for a time that genre of ‘first person shooter’ was known, at one point, as doom clones.

Doom is important.

Doom is so important it’s difficult to express how important it is.

Talking about how important DOOM is to gaming history is like trying to describe the importance of Franz Ferdinand. Except that dude isn’t fun at parties, since he’s dead, while by comparison, you can boot up original Doom right now and still blast around having a great time with a game that largely holds up using a simple system of design tools iterated on endlessly over thirty years. We have never stopped playing DOOM.

When we talk about games being important, we tend to describe games in a way that hints at a sort of historical sequence of necessary steps – hi Ted, I know I’m skirting close to teleology here. You know, the narrative that this game existed so this game can exist so this game can exist. Trust me, I’m not: This is not about how things had to happen, it’s about reflecting backwards on how people say things happened, because they’ve told us. In the same way that 90s terrible RTS Krush Kill N Destroy directly led to the creation of Total Warhammer because it sucked so bad, we know that Doom and its enormous success is what led to the gaming landscape we live in looking like it does now.

DOOM is one of the great landmarks, one of the first touchstones, of the PC gaming landscape that made it relevant to gaming beyond the boundaries of the PC.

With that in mind, let’s not talk about DOOM.

Let’s talk about the game franchise that made it possible for DOOM to exist. Let’s talk about the language of Minecraft, the formation and end of id software’s earliest identity, and an inexplicable cameo by Tom Cruise.

Let’s talk about Commander Keen.

Kicked off in 1990, Commander Keen is a series (kinda) of six games, made and distributed with the at the time new Shareware model of games. They’re adventure stories, focused on the adventures of one William Joseph Blazkowicz II, aka ‘Billy Blaze.’ Incredibly smart, with an IQ of 314, Billy is an inventor, who at the age of only eight, has been tinkering away in his backyard, even making a spaceship out of junk from around the home. For reasons at that point uncertain, he dons his older sister’s football helmet, and declares himself Commander Keen! Defender of something or other, depending on the text. All we know really, about Billy at this point, is that he’s a plucky kid, he’s a boy genius, and he’s going to solve problems himself.

It’s Calvin and Hobbes, but the spaceship is real and the sense of humour is grim.

Shareware was a really cool way to get games back in the way – you were given free licence to distribute some or even all of a game, as shareware, but the people who made it asked you to send them some money to register the copy, as a thanks for the program you had. Sometimes registering shareware would also get you more of the game or product. Doom was shareware, Wolfenstein was shareware, almost every game distributed by Apogee and Epic Megagames were some sort of shareware, and shareware was the way that good, easily distributed games became popular and made money enough to sustain their development. That meant that a lot of games of this time were divided up into chapters, so they could shareware the first part and then sell the rest. Such is it with Commander Keen’s first three games, the Vorticon Trilogy.

First up we have Marooned on Mars. In this story, while his parents are off having a nice dinner, Keen sneaks out and goes to Mars. As you do. He explores around a bit, and when the time comes to head home, finds his spaceship, the Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket, has had four of its parts nicked, and now you’ve gotta go explore the world to find them. Along the way, you encounter the aliens of Mars, which range from the friendly Yorps – one-eyed goofy friendly problems that run into you and push you into things but are just trying to be friendly – to the deadly Gargs – giant two-eyed monsters that can race at high speed towards you to kill you – and finally the pajama-clad Vorticons. Not Vortigaunts, they came along later, but builds on my theory that this game is part of the lineage that leads to Half Life 3.

Vorticons are a kinda-dog-alien that isn’t from Mars with the mysterious ability to jump. The Vorticons are connected in some nebulous way to the plot to keep Keen stranded on Mars,which they didn’t just try and do by waiting by the Megarocket and kill Keen, but you know, we take those. You thwart their plot, usually by shooting these Vorticons, you drop an enormous weight on their leader, and then make your way home.

This was the shareware episode of the trilogy, so it’s the one most people of the time are likely to know. It dropped in December 1990, and gave you 16 levels to peek around in. It was brightly coloured and had big, detailed (for the time) sprites. In purely technical terms, it’s incredible, but not in ways that most people would ever even notice. It’s a real classic videogame of its type, and you might be forgiven for asking ‘well what’s the big deal’ to look at it. This is definitely a type of game that looks unremarkable to the Nintendo market at the time – it’s basically a slightly higher resolution version of something like Super Mario Bros, and maybe a bit more of an exploration game than a to-the-right hold-on-tight plotless execution game.

We got a lot of videogames early on in the history of shareware that were ultimately exploration games. Drop you into a space to look around, and then gives you stuff to find that lets you win the game. A lot of them were about going to some strange distant place, and walk off with the treasure. This particular narrative, from a designer perspective, is really desireable because it encourages you to get involved with a place and look around for things you might want, but also it’s a trend you’ll see come up in a lot of conversations around colonialism in games. Yes, I’m saying Paginitzu is probably racist. And yes, that game series goes places, but we’re not talking about Paganitzu here. We’re talking about Commander Keen1, Marooned on Mars.

What Commander Keen does is that instead of putting you in the shoes of a coloniser, it puts you in the shoes of an explorer who has been trapped. Keen shows up on Mars to look around (because dang that’s cool), but his goal isn’t the enrichment of the self, it isn’t his own treasure and loot, it’s rather reclaiming earth artifacts that the Martians seem to have stolen (why do they have Pepsi?) and the tools taken from him to stop him from escaping.

Mars’ history, as we understand it, is that there are the Yorps and the Gargs. Gargs, violent and aggressive, ruled over the Yorps for year and built a civilisation on Mars, and then in 1976, humans accidentally killed the King of the Gargs by dropping a exploratory probe on him at speed (based). Then the civilisation was fractured, and all these city states are left to fend for themselves… and then the Vorticons show up and take over a few places. It’s weird because in a way, as much as this silly aesthetic holds together. In the context of trying to make a game that looked and felt like the Mario Bros, short for Brossentias, It’s kind of just videogame stuff… and it tells you about a colonised people at war and their attempts to ensnare a stranger into their mess.

I believe this to be entirely, one hundred percent accidental.

Alright, so, moving on to the next game! Keen fixes the Bean With Bacon Megarocket and flies back home to earth before his parents come home from their nice dinner out (this was a thing that could happen in the 90s, it’s wild). Anyway, they arrive home and check in on Billy. Finding their beloved son faking being asleep, they’re about to go to bed themselves before they notice the Yorp he brought home. Rather than contend with it so late at night, his parents promise to talk about it in the morning and go to bed.

Once his parents have gone to bed, though, Billy sneaks out again, because now he has to deal with the huge floating battleship next to Earth that he saw on the way home.

This begins the second game , where you now have to quest your way through a battleship, which has guns trained on a bunch of important(?) earth cities. If you want, you can even fire the guns, ending the game and blowing up a city you think sucks. But it’s the same basic energy as the first game: Find your way through levels, avoid baddies, shoot things, explore secrets, and break the right machines so you can get out and go home.

In any given trilogy you run the risk of creating the ‘middle’ problem. The middle of a story doesn’t usually get to do anything because the stakes are set up in the first part and resolved in the third, so the middle can feel like padding. The Earth Explodes avoids that because it is still an interesting game with its own exploration mechanic to it, and a real consequence for failure, its own stakes, but the why isn’t explained. It is a detour but not an unrelated detour.

3.1

Also, this game has a gun. It’s not Keen’s first gun. His first gun is the one you pick up from the surface of Mars, not one of the things Keen makes himself. That’s also where he gets the pogo stick which was maybe some sort of alien artefact they stole from Earth a long while ago, sometime after 1919. Don’t get bogged down in those details. The point is, the gun in Commander Keen is external to the self. He gets his first gun in the first level, and it’s marked with a sign that he can’t read.

This gun is essential to completing the game – there is a final puzzle that cannot be solved without access to the gun. Also along the way, numerous lethal threats can be contained with the gun – enemies that are willing to kill Keen are shot, and stop. Some things won’t stop when shot, and some things are only annoying when they’re un-shot, but basically the gun is framed as a tool for protecting Keen himself.

In the mothership, you pick up your next gun, which seems largely the same as the last gun, but stronger – it can now best Vorticons in only one hit – and you’re off. Keen disables the many guns of the mothership and is presented with very few opportunities for a truly pacifist run. While the nature of the game doesn’t make shooting enemies absolutely 100% required, it is definitely necessary for a blind playthrough, and level design makes any alternative pretty much impossible for playskill levels that doesn’t rely on speedrunning pixel-perfect tricks. This is a game where the gun is essential (for breaking the ship’s plot-critical guns, as gun feeds on gun) and presented as part of solving problems.

But there is an optional level you can do, where you find, after a long passage that has involved shooting some more Vorticons, a frozen Vorticon. The frozen Vorticon tells you that first of all, the Vorticons are mind controlled at the behest of the Grand Intellect. All of them.

Then it asks you not to kill them.

This carries with it two horrifying realisations. First, to proceed through the rest of the game with this knowledge requires knowing that you are killing Vorticons, helpless slaves in their own bodies. That’s bad. That’s a rough challenge for a game that is, at the least, a bit unfair about how it distributes difficulty and spawns sprites in its enormous, chunky, vertical-over horizontal engine. This game isn’t easy, and I haven’t finished it without shooting, despite my time trying.

The other thought is that you’ve already killed people! The Vorticons aren’t an alien nothing, the guns you shoot on Mars aren’t knocking people out, they’re killing people, and the killing was done without you necessarily knowing. Though I guess there wasn’t a way to nonviolently crush the Vorticon captain.

The justification – that they are threatening you and may kill you – is perhaps compelling (and we’re not going to get into the Juul-side idea of how multiple lives interact with the game fiction), but even then that’s not necessary because why is this game about being an 8 year old super scientist so dark all of a sudden, and also, all along.

It’s one of those things that I think is part of how Tom Hall got along in id software early on. There’s a bleakness, a schlockness to it, and it is pretty funny to realise the game at one point goes ‘hey, blood is on all our hands. Anyway, doot de doo, go get some teddy bears.’

This is an interesting example of what structuralist game examination, the kind Gerard Geanette never does, calls hypertext. Text is the work, a participation in the media, then there’s paratext, the zone of media created to experience that media, which includes things like interviews about the work, the box it came in, the way your room changes your perception of the light. There’s also subtext (things in the text implied but not stated), and supertext (things the text says that it has in common with other unrelated works), as well as metatext (the way the text replicates trends in other, related works), and finally, finally we get to hypertext.

Hypertext is the way a text changes when you participate in the same text multiple times. First coined when describing interactive fiction (like Twine games!) Hypertext is the conceptual space where videogames can thrive. Hypertext is how you can develop a view of a text by iterating over it again. Sometimes this means rewatching a movie with a twist ending, or watching a movie for the thirtieth time and seeing all the technical details in it now you can appreciate them, or maybe it can mean reading a book twice, with a ten year gap in between. The point is, hypertextuality is using the text to examine the text.

In this case, the first time I finished Commander Keen 2, I never thought about the moral implication of the shooting, because I figured the enemies would get back up. Some of them did. Some were immune. And they were shown falling over, or bouncing and glaring or being surprised at their state. Also, it was a boy’s adventure! There was no need to think about the morality of the violence because the story was more focused on exploration and making that violence relatively low impact. You don’t see blood or violence or injury. Just, well, enemies are zapped.

Once you know about this other point – that the gun works, the gun kills, and nobody you kill in game 2 deserves it – the entire game changes. You can’t not know about it. It was true whether you knew it or not, and the game has no intention of making you feel good about whether or not you engaged with that.

That is some heavy stuff to drop on an 8 year old!

Commander Keen 3, Keen Must Die, is the capstone of the first trilogy, and is meant to be a kind of finale for the character (for now). While one is an escape and two is a rescue, three is a weird kind of journey to confrontation, and the first real representation of something you could consider a boss monster in this otherwise runny-jumpy looky-shooty game. In 3, Keen travels to the homeworld of the Vorticons to do battle with the Grand Intellect, who is both in charge of the invasion force and directly out to get Keen, personally. To defeat the Grand Intellect, he fights his way through the normal homes and lives of the Vorticons, which have been militarised and made into defences for the Intellect.

The intellect, who you then discover, right at the very end is your rival!

No!

Way!

Who you’ve never heard of before this point!

It’s Mortimer Mcmire. Not Morty Maxwell. That was a different 90s videogame villain, second Super Solvers reference ding.

Why does he want to blow up the earth? Well, because everyone there sucks and he’s smarter than him. That is to say, Mortimer McMire believes that everyone in the world who doesn’t test well on an IQ test compared to him deserves to die, and in that way this game was remarkably prophetic about the state of nerd culture in 2023, yikes. Mortimer’s IQ is 315. Billy’s is 314. You know, pi reference. Mortimer, knowing that he’s smarter than even the smartest other kid in the world, has resolved that he can blow up the world and lose nothing. Which, if nothing else, you have to respect the scope of the pettiness.

Structurally, 3 is Billy kind of presented as an aggressor and it’s for a strange purpose. He’s on the Vorticon’s home planet to try and find the person imprisoning them and liberate them, but in the process of liberating most of them he’s going to certainly kill a lot of them. Including several children. The story even makes a point of it: The final narration says that you’re crowned and hailed as a hero by the Vorticons you haven’t slaughtered.

Cough, pause, anyway.

Something you might have noticed so far is that despite being games full of levels for you to play, the narratives of each Keen game quietly ask you to finish the game with as little time spent in the game as possible. In the first game, you’re under a time crunch – you have to get your ship repaired before your parents come home. In the second game, your priority is the destruction of the guns on the ship, and you don’t really care about the other things on the mothership. In the third game, you’re exploring the everyday homes of the mind controlled Vorticons, who you know definitely don’t deserve to be killed.

It’s interesting because this kind of game is one where the fun of the game is usually in exploring and playing them. There’s reward in the form of points from doing a level and looking around in it and finding stuff. They make you stronger or better though, Pogo stick aside, you never get better, you just get lives and points and ammunition. The first time through the game you’re trying to find the end of the game, but after that point, on the second play through you’re left playing a game where your optimal path through the narrative is playing as few levels as possible.

These are games that narratively invite speed runs.

Oh there’s more to it of course, like there’s a whole narrative about Mortimer McMire, and the idea of Billy having a villainous opponent. Across seven games, then, there’s a chance we’ll see more development from this character, right?

Right?

(Not really).

This game also gives you the first full translatable cipher of the Standard Galactic Alphabet, which is used to decorate all the signs around the levels. When you find this secret area it lets you finally go back and translate all the other notes you’ll find written in this.

Like you see in Minecraft.

Yeah! Minecraft’s little weirdo script of enchantments? That’s from Commander Keen.

Does this mean anything? Not really. I guess Hatsune Miku is a fan of 90s shareware videogames.

Thus ends the first three games of the Commander Keen saga. But those are the games as game texts, things for immediate critique. The games are boxes you reach into and you move the parts around inside them. What about the box outside the box? What about the machine that made the game, the id software that started a genre that defined an industry? And where does Tom Cruise figure in? And I know, I know, if you’re a super nerd who knows the origin of Doom you may think you know how Tom Cruise is involved, but no, it’s not that.

Commander Keen was a game made to solve a problem. Before Commander Keen, the PC videogame market had an unsolved problem, and it was a problem that the consoles of the time, the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, could handle easily. The question was about smooth scrolling to create a space. If you looked at videogames from before Commander Keen, it’s very rare to see a game where a game entity, like a player, walked forwards and the screen moved with you.

Instead, you were likely to see screens that split things up bit by bit, or limited the movement of the player to big, chunky steps, because what it was secretly doing was drawing simple tiles and keeping a protagonist moving slowly was a good way to keep the buffer from being overwhelmed.That’s how other games, such as the Super Solvers, handled their Ageless-Faceless-Gender-Neutral-Culturally-Ambiguous-Adventure-Person, waddling along at a fixed rate in a slow scrolling background in fixed distances. These fixed steps meant that

Even then, you’ll notice, the screen loading is weird and feels choppy. This creates a phenomenon called ‘tearing,’ where layers of the screen load differently to one another.

Okay, so, scrolling backgrounds and fluid movement. It was a thing EGA based PC games could do, but couldn’t do it fast, they couldn’t do it fluidly, and they also couldn’t do it in a way that handled input from players and allowed for fast reactions.

The problem was the EGA chip, or ‘Enhanced Graphics Adaptor.’ It was a lot better than its predecessor, the CGA Colour Graphics adaptor, but both were pretty ugly. CGA could manage four colours, but EGA? It stepped up to sixteen whole colours. The VGA was years away and the EGA was the industry standard for PC Games, and what it could absolutely not do is Nintendo-style smooth scrolling. Now I’m not going to try and give you a lesson in how the EGA chip handled things, because I can’t, and even if I tried, it would just be me copy-pasting into my script from Masters of Doom. The solution, as best I can describe it is that they simply lied to the graphics display about what they were loading.

Rather than try to load the whole level on demand, at any given point, you were loading A Little Bit More of the level than you could see, and moving that grid of extra space around. You had one full tile on each edge, – you showed a 15×15 square of screen tiles, but you were loading a 17×17 square – and when you moved over one, you didn’t load a neverending thread in that direction, you were just moving the invisible tile off the edge into the visible area, unloading the ones that just left, and loading into the freshly emptied space. Rather than ‘on demand’ it was a sort of ‘just in time’ delivery system for visual information.

When it comes to this kind of ingenuity, you hear that and I bet, if you’re one of my very smart graphic friends with lots of technical knowledge and bappy wolf paws, you go ‘duh.’ But also this was being done on a chip that could manage eight kilobytes of graphics at a time. For comparison, the plain text Wikipedia page on ‘kilobyte’ is 227 kilobytes. The plain text of this script is – at this point of six thousand words – thirty kilobytes. Eight clapping emojis is about eight kilobytes. Eight kilobytes is very small, and using a space that small to process smooth visuals, atl east the first time was very, very impressive.

Commander Keen isn’t the first thing they made with this. The first thing they made was Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement, which was a proof-of concept where they made a Super Mario Bros level that ran fluidly and correctly on an EGA computer. This was a disk famously left on Romero’s desk after Carmack spent all night making it work, and was a proof of concept that the PC could do the kinds of games they wanted to do, that they could make the things they wanted to make the way they wanted to make. In a lot of ways this technology is what let id software form, going from a business in potential to people with a product.

A year before Commander Keen 1 came out, the MCGA and VGA chipsets dropped and EGA was a dead chipset walking. When Commander Keen was out, it was already running on old tech. But PC gaming moved slowly, people weren’t going to update their video card to run one game – and making a game that ran on the computer most people had was necessary.

After the closure of the Vorticon trilogy, what next? Well, next up was the ‘lost’ chapter of Commander Keen: Keen Dreams, released only months ahead of the next ‘real’ Commander Keen game, in mid 1991. Keen Dreams marked a turning point in Commander Keen design. Where the first games were about overcoming a technological impossibility (as they perceived it), Keen Dreams was a game to address a new problem: Legal obligations.

Commander Keen was a success! Id software had the money to make themselves into a proper company! They could stop working it as a hobby while doing a day job, pulling together the early dream team of Johns Romero and Carmack, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack. Together this squad left their job at Softdisk Software to make a new company.

Except there was suddenly a little spike in the tail – because it turns out they’d developed Commander Keens 1-3 on Softdisk’s computers, in their off time at work. Id, considering the situation, and really, really wanting to make their own games rather than being on the hook to keep being part of Softdisk, made a deal to settle this misuse of company machinery. The deal was that they’d make several games for the Softdisk Gamer’s Edge subscription service. This deal was, essentially, a shareware game a month. Id delivered on this and sure, the games had a fairly healthy ‘guess that’ll do’ vibe. Educational games, puzzle games, a mah-jong game, things that can be made pretty easily and the question of how well you do is a matter of polish. They weren’t all walk-it-in style friday-night-of-the-assignment games though. There wer the two pre-doom first person shooters Hovertank 3d and Catacomb 3d, and the Very id vibes game Dangerous Dave In The Haunted Mansion.

And there was Keen Dreams.

Keen Dreams is a… decent game. It’s fine. It’s alright. It’s definitely weaker than Keen 4 and a little bit better than Keen 3. There’s less game here than you’d think, less spectacle, less fun exploration. Enemies are all based on vegetables, and usually, some variety of pun or playing with words that sounded similar. You’re going to run through places that are, well, also puns or wordplays, find keys, collect Flower Power for flinging at baddies, in an attempt to defeat the villain of the story, the leader of all the vegetable kingdoms, Boobus Tuber.

Keen Dreams is definitely a Commander Keen game; it’s about Commander Keen. It was the first of the VGA Keens released but not the first made. It was essentially . Now, the remaining three Keens (4, 5 and 6) use this base engine, but they have a very different style. They continue Keen’s adventures into space while Keen Dreams is focused instead on the story of Keen being a child. The first adventures were about getting up to something exciting when left to your own devices and your parents were out at dinner, or dealing with a school bully, while Keen Dreams is about not wanting to eat your vegetables and having a nightmare about being tormented by food you don’t like.

The whole game has a lot of what I think of as Tom Hallness to it. There’s a really deliberate lightness to the whole thing – Tom’s reported that his parents weren’t happy with how the Vorticons in Commander Keens 1-3 left behind corpses, because, y’know, you were killing them. In Dreams, instead, your Flower Power seeds that you throw at enemy vegetables, they just turn them into flowers for a bit. When you ‘die’ you don’t even do the classic wiggle-bounce that other Keen games do. You fall asleep. It’s just a gentle game, really.

It’s weird then, that Keen Dreams has a failure state.

The Commander Keen games are relatively robust. They’re not glitch-free, by any means, with the first three games having holes in the ceiling you can thwack into, the ways Dreams lets you sneak keys out of levels, 4’s death warps and 5’s door manipulation, or the most ridiculous thing you can do in Keen 6. Still, the games are, for the most part, an engine dedicated to to handling scrolling correctly.

Levels are largely about just moving – running, jumping, climbing, predicting your jumps and your awareness of vertical or horizontal arcs. They’re pretty much simple iterations on simple objects, and there aren’t a lot of things that can do things that create weird glitchy situations. Plus, the way that you die to almost everything dangerous means that if you’re ever stuck, the game will usually default to just killing you off, and that kicks you out of the game. You may not win, but the game doesn’t lock up, with nothing to do, while it deprives you of ways to advance.

Also, to make the exploration more safe, Keen games tend to be designed as a sequence of levels you can do in almost any order. That means outside of skipping the Pogo in Keen 1, it’s very hard to make whole levels unwinnable by dint of a choice in the earlier game, and it’s not like the Pogo is hard to get.

In Keen Dreams, to kill Boobus Tuber, you need things called Boobus Bombs. Those bombs are scattered throughout the world in sets of three, and in a number of levels in hidden spots – you can finish those levels without getting the bombs. That presents the possibility that you can finish all the game’s levels without getting enough Boobus bombs and find yourself running around in a game world that cannot be finished. There are seven levels with Boobus bombs in them, which means it’s possible to finish four of the sixteen levels, and by not getting the Boobus bombs there, meaning the game doesn’t have enough Boobus bombs in it to finish the game.

It’s a byproduct of freedom and it’s an example of something id games normally design around. It’s a lesson that most of the subsequent Keen games avoided. It’s a phenomenon that you might be familiar with in the Sierra game space as dead man walking syndrome, where the game is bricked, but you won’t know it’s bricked until you’ve spent a lot more energy exhausting your alternatives.

Oh and you don’t have a pogo and you can’t grab ledges, which means that Keen Dreams doesn’t control a lot like either previous or subsequent games.

But okay enough faffing around with the ‘lost chapter,’ this Contractually Obligated All Just A Dream Keen. What about the next place for the story to go?

Commander Keen 4: Goodybe Galaxy! Billy Blaze is off cruising the galaxy again looking for fun on the weekend, and he hears a distress call. Investigating it he finds that there’s a new threat to reality, but to understand them he’s going to need some heavy duty information gathering, which he does by approaching the Gnostiscene Ancients on the planet known as the Shadowlands. Thus begins another journey of Keen to the fire level, the water level, the ice level, the … hole… level? To find the eight beardie dudes and their janitor (if you’re good).

At its heart, the game is a treasure hunt, like Commander Keen 1 and 2. You arrive in a top-down world where you move around between a bunch of little places of interest, and these are levels. These locations of interest can bar your way to progressing to other locations, and there are other locations that are further barred by less obvious means. For example, there are some islands you can’t get to at first, and there’s no obvious adjacent level to beat to work out a way to progress. There are only about eight levels you ‘need’ to finish (some levels gate other levels), where you can find the eight Gnostic mystics that will be able to divine your needed information and win the game.

Keen 4 was the chapter almost everyone got to play, because it was free to share, because, like I said, shareware. It also was brightly coloured, had vibrant music if you had an adlib or soundblaster, and it didn’t feature lots of blood or guts, the way that videogames were parodied as being at the time. You weren’t shooting things with a laser gun that killed them (any more). Basically, Commander Keen 4 was easy to distribute and worth distributing. You’d use it to show off what your computer could do, and you could just straight up give someone a game for the cost of a disk as a present. That normally is enough to make a game a nostalgic classic, because videogames of the 90s were in many cases there to be something you reused until you absolutely had wrung everything out of it. In the case of Commander Keen 4, though, it’s a merciful coincidence that the game is also really quite good.

An interesting question is what are these places? If you look around the environments of Gnosticus IV, you’ll find that a lot of these places are designed to reflect a space people don’t necessarily live but where they do go. Locations like Slug Village, Border Village, Hillville and even the Perilous Pit are all clearly places people live, as you can tell by the number of doors and lodgings, even if they’re not exactly fleshed out with beds and the like. They’re all village-shaped, with a sort of villagey-ness to them. There are large forts, like Sand Yego and probably Crystalus, places that have some purpose that implies a construction, and there are pyramids, which imply mysteries and hidden knowledge with things like runic iconography.

This is of course, a byproduct of tilesets and the limited colour palette of VGA graphics. Oh, you could put 256 colours on the screen, but loading them and moving them around made scrolling less excellent, so if you made everything out of standardised tiles that you can bolt together, you get things to load faster. This is why very few levels have any unique visual elements – oh, they’re sometimes elements from another level, but aside from Miragia, most levels look like a unique combination of elements rather than a unique element. Which is also pretty cool, small numbers of parts used well.

Goodbye Galaxy is a mid-point game; it’s in a way, the kind of story you’d see as 2 of a trilogy, rather than the start of one (though, it and its sequel were conceived as a pair, not a trilogy). It’s because what you’re doing, the thing you’re after, primarily, is information. Billy is trying to rescue eight grumpy old men who can commune with a really powerful artifact (in a funny way) and get information Billy needs about how to stop the Shikadi.

If you look at videogames of this period, the typical end of any given game is killing something. The plots of these games may sometimes have made that end goal – a boss monster – something that may have impeded information, or may, like in games like Bio Menace, reveal to you that hey, actually there’s something else you didn’t know about, now. Now, I’m not getting all functional determinist here, I’m not trying to argue that because videogames express violence that’s all their good for, because it’s kinda dumb? But the premise of Goodbye Galaxy isn’t that you’re finding an artifact broken into pieces, or build a weapon, or awaken some evil you can kill, but instead you’re trying to find people, who can explain something to you. There’s something to be said about the instrument the game is shaping, and what matters to Billy.

There’s something weirdly sweet in all that, too: Billy is trying to learn something, and as much as it can be metaphorised, all of this game is about that quest for discovery. Oh, sure, he still gets through it with a stun gun, but there’s questions you have to answer on the way to building that collection of eight elders.

There’s something weird about this because we often see the question of ‘middle’ stories in trilogies as being hard to do. In Goodbye Galaxy, they don’t bother introducing or explaining the story (which they could do as their own thing), but if they had done a story introducing the conflict, then Goodbye Galaxy would be a nearly perfect example of a middle story. You know there’s a problem, you don’t know how to solve it, and you look for a solution that makes a game mechanical demand out of finding not the solution, but finding out how to find it out.

Anyway, what I’m saying is Commander Keen 5 is the real Half Life 2: Episode 3

One final note about this, though is this: The music in Commander Keen 4 is nothing but bangers.

Commander Keen 5 is kind of the last full conclusion that Commander Keen got. Not a shareware game, and arriving on the scene as BBSes were getting to the point of being able to pirate games a bit more readily, it was apparently a real good seller, at least according to id when asked about it. In 5, you’ve found and boarded the Shikadi’s Armageddon Machine, and have to travel to all the different parts of a great big ship – again – to disable all the bits of the machine that are going to do something bad – again – until you encounter a final stage that involves doing something a tiny bit different, and that’s new.

It’s back to exploring a location with more of Keen running jumping climbing fighting. This time instead of encountering wildlife and living creatures, he’s mostly fighting fighting against ship security, and guard robots and the occasional hapless system operator that can completely mess with the game code if it touches you accidentally.

By the time we reach The Armageddon Machine, the game definitely has a feel of mastery to it. There are more secrets designed to play with your expectations and assumptions. Monsters are a little more time-crunched, and there’s also the biggest monster in all the games, the wonderfully enormous big red robot. The levels are a bit more interwoven, a bit more easy to get lost. Reading the tea leaves I feel like the game is just a bit larger and made by people more familiar with the tools they were using, but also… I might just be getting that vibe because I’m less familiar with it.

Where Goodbye Galaxy was populated by monsters that were meant to be the native wildlife and weirdo beasts in the existing Shadowlands, the Armageddon Machine is a spaceship, set up and set aside from its environment. Everything in it is something that’s meant to be there, things with a purpose and a reason to be where they are.

Because someone chose to make them that way.

Because someone – someone human – is guiding these monsters. That’s right, once more the revelation is that the story of Commander Keen episodes 4 and 5 is about Mortimer McMire, and you can tell because uh

They’ll answer that later.

But yeah, monsters in Aramagddeon Machine are a lot more directly and deliberately malicious and a lot less whimsical. There’s no slugs that poop or charming friendly bouncer balls, or even just things that you can point at and see as creatures just living their lives. There’s a lot more mechanical, a lot more purpose to the game and its setting. But while Shocksunds may be cute, there’s something so much more charming about Goodbye Galaxy’s monsters, what with things like the pooping slugs and the Sneaky Rocks.

And then, finally, we reach the last game in the Keen Heptalogy, Aliens Ate My Babysitter.

Gosh, it’s just a nice one to look at. Or maybe that’s just me.

Keen 6 is set on the world of Fribbulous Xax, where Billy’s babysitter has been kidnapped to. It means you get a mix of the beautiful outdoor environments of the style of Goodbye Galaxy, but along with that, you also get the wonky, weird factories and buildings of the Bloogs as they emulate human society. There’s a really fun, charming aesthetic here that feels, again, to me, very Tom Hall, where there’s an inherent comedy in a world full of extremely stupid versions of things we’re already familiar with.

There’s a lot more funny, silly style to the monsters of Fribbulous Xax. A lot more silly words, things like you’re not breaking fuses and destroying elaborate machines, you’re getting the second biggest sandwich you’ve ever seen. There’s a grappling hook that you can’t really use but can kinda pretend you’re using! The bloogs have factories but run around in them smacking the ground with big clubs to guard things!

Iii love Keen 6. It has also one of the most ambitious end-games of all of them, with the final level being essentially a maze that’s explicitly trying to play with your memory and perceptions. It’s all in a very 1990s aesthetic, in the odd colour scheme and the wonky architecture, intestine walls and high tech flaming orbs.

Uh, Commander Keen 6: Aliens Ate My Babysitter is the most broken of the keen games, with a big bug that you would never discover if you weren’t actively trying to push glitches in speedrun tests. You see, somehow, the bullets your stun gun fires are considered objects – so if you execute the particular technique right, Keen stands on the bullet as he shoots it, which launches you in a straight line across most of the level. It makes Keen 6 one of the more shocking games to watch in speedruns.

Shout out to CapnClever for teaching me this trick.

Keen 6 ended with a promise of a final confrontation with Sir Not Appearing In All But One Of These Games, Mortimer McMire. This final confrontation never happened, for perhaps obvious reasons: There were no other Keen games. The license for Keen doesn’t really belong to id any more, and the people who made the first games all moved on to another stage of their lives, and other projects.

I like talking about Keen in light of Doom in part because Doom is so significant and important , but also because it’s this mix of adolescent and selfserious. It’s a game with murder and blood and demons and rocket launchers and chainsaws and it doesn’t feel like the followup game to a bunch of games about collecting teddy bears on Mars. It’s very easy to look at the gap in aesthetics between Commander Keen and Doom and Quake and ask ‘what happened? Did they lose something that made this kind of game not work any more?’

And kinda, yeah. The answer is Tom Hall. Tom Hall was the lore and fiction guy, the storyteller (and other stuff, I don’t mean to imply he just wrote documents all day) of the early id days. Famously, he didn’t have a lot to do on Doom and all the work he did on Quake was scrapped – and if you wanna know what that work was like, you can find it in the Ordering Info for Commander Keen, where that game describes the ambitious story of the future, of the game they want to make, far off in the future where you play a hammer-swinging demigod called Quake.

I don’t mean to just retell Tom Hall’s story. Hall moved on after id to work on games like Rise of The Triad and Terminal Velocity, both great games on their own terms, Anachronax which was at the very least an interesting game. It even fails to deliver on its plot and assumes it’ll get a sequel, in the true Commander Keen tradition. Nowadays, if you look him up on social media, he’s mostly spending his time playing with games, offering advice to other developers, and doing weird experiments like a game whose whole code base can fit inside two standard sized toots.

Tom Hall is responsible for the Dopefish’s design. He’s responsible for Commander Keen, along with others, of course.

It might suck to have his story have this wrinkle where id software pushed him out because they didn’t need him, but also: I suspect he’s pretty fine, now.

… Okay, so that’s Minecraft, Tom Hall, and is there anything I’m forgetting?

Oh! Oh yeah, there is!

Tom Cruise! Of course!

What are you thinking I mean relates to Tom Cruise in this project?

If you’re a particular kind of nerd, you might be thinking about how Tom Cruise is the guy who’s responsible for the name of Doom, based on this clip from Risky Business.

But no.

That’s about Doom.

That’s not about Commander Keen.

The traditional way to talk about id software is about its genesis. There’s usually the vision of the company as being at its heart, the intersection of the work between John Carmack and John Romero, usually as seen as being two guys in their early 20s, after major life changes, given the freedom and space to work with one another. But did you ever wonder how they met?

They met because they were both recruited, to make videogames, by a guy called Jay Wilbur. Jay was the guy recruited by Softdisk to make videogames for them, and he recruited Carmack and Romero, seeing a programmer and a game creator who both had the minds to work on the kinds of project he wanted them to make at Softdisk. And Jay Wilbur, who is now, the vice president of business at Epic Games, before he worked for Softdisk?

He was the guy who taught Tom Cruise how to mix drinks in a showy, theatrical way for the movie Cocktail.

There, I think I got most of the things you’d find if you just read the book Masters of Doom by David Kushner.

This video was the product of months of work, if you can call writing like this work, per se. It was originally meant to be a thing a lot like the text-and-video work like the Super Solvers. As it is, that didn’t work out for the schedule so instead I’ve just slowly chiselled away at the script for this one.

So hey, if you’re the kind of person who thinks that my short videos are bad, tell me about it, and tell me if you liked this. Or if you’re the kind of person who thinks my long videos are bad, tell me why this is bad. What I’m saying is please, give me feedback, I crave attention.

And of course: This was made with the support of my patrons over on patreon, and I thank you so much for that.

#Game Pile #Games

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salt-up-to-your-ankles · 11 months

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since its pride month i present to you:

my favourite men xoxo

(ps there may be spoilers for games / shows!!)

1. ALEX KAPRANOS - FRANZ FERDINAND

where do i even BEGIN first off hes so good looking like oh my god hes definitely to blame for my gay awakening and he seems like such a nice guy hes so talented and energetic at the franz concerts hes just really cool

2. LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR - LUCIFER

okay please do not spoil any because im on season 2 anyway omg hes so hot its not even funny i love his accent even though i hate the british (kidding) and hes actually pretty funny lol

3. GERARD WAY - MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

oh he is sosososo hot and his voice is so fit too hes so good looking and so sweet and such an icon honestly hes super talented too i love him so much i love all of mcr tbh theyre all cool also his hair especially in hesitant alien >>

4. CLIFF UNGER - DEATH STRANDING

okay hes REALLY good looking im sorry like dilf? sorry. dilf? sorry. anyway i also think hes pretty badass especially in the war parts of the game and i feel kinda bad for him like he only wanted his kid back poor guy

5. LUKE DANES - GILMORE GIRLS

aaafsghfgshs i love him so so so much hes so sweet hes so funny i love him with all my heart he deserves happiness he deserves everything and hes so cute i wish lukes diner was real so bad

6. CONNOR - DETROIT BECOME HUMAN

hes such an awesome guy (so is bryan dechart btw) and i love his dynamics with hank as well as his personality he can be such a badass and so cute at the same time also hes good looking and i really like his suit it looks good

7. MARKUS - DETROIT BECOME HUMAN

god hes hot im sorry also his eyes???? hello???? sex??? kidding but anyway hes a super badass hes so cool and i love him i feel bad and i wish he lived a happy life with carl but also hes super awesome so

8. JAN BORYSEWICZ - LADY PANK

mmm hes good looking also i love lady pank theyre so cool id write this part in polish but the rests in english so itd look super weird but anyway hes so cool and still is

9. DR FRANK N FURTER - ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW

ladies and gentlemen i wont lie he made me question my sexuality a little hes so hot but you know what i love more than men? men in drag xoxo he pulls all the outfits off so good and his voice is amazing

10. MIKEY WAY - MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

you cant have one way without the other amirite guys anyway i love him so much hes probably my favourite member i loved him when he was younger i love him how he is now he looks amazing any time and hes such a good bass play and honestly a bit of an inspiration musically

NOO TUMBLR WONT LET ME ADD MORE PHOTOS

YOU WILL NOT SILENCE ME I WILL SHOW THE WORLD MY BAD TASTE IN MEN !!!

anyway yeah if you can see a type no you cant

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originalfireemblemscenarios · 1 year

Note

Hello hello!

For your unsent letter prompt, would you do a confession from Ferdinand to a compassionate, music-oriented fem!reader that was never sent due to the war beginning? So then when the monastery is eventually reclaimed, she is told to go through all the old rooms looking for supplies, and she happens across it? In terms of their relationship, Ferdinand has been more confident and forward with her since the war began, but he never actually established his feelings to the reader. Thank you!

Omg finally some love for Ferdinand!

This is a part of 3x Valentines event (All slots are taken)

Confession Unsent letter from Ferdinand

When you were told to go through the rooms in search for anything you felt a little bad. Ferdinand was busy so when you asked him if it was okay for you to search he proudly exclaimed that he had nothing to hide and if you could find something useful it'd be great for everyone. So he can't possibly be against that!

But instant regret hit him when you left. Because that's when he remembered about his not so perfect love letter. He wasn't ashamed of his feelings, but rather you finding it out through the words of his old self.

He didn't chase after you or do anything to stop you from finding it. He just hoped you'd miss it.

That wasn't the case though. It wasn't in the open but it wasn't hidden either. And when you saw that it was addressed to you, you decided to check it.

My dearest Y/N

There's several things that have been on my mind lately. It wasn't hard to make the connections because all of my thoughts were occupied by you. Your grace, your voice, your kindness, it's almost like I can't function without you at this point. Usually, I'd prefer to tell you directly but I found myself having trouble with saying how I feel about you. You're special to me, and my love for you is like everlasting flame that guides me to you. I'd do anything for you if you do as much as ask for it. So, if there is a chance that you love me too, do not keep it to yourself any further.

Love,

Ferdinand

You looked at it stunned for a moment as you could feel getting flustered. It all made sense now. The way he acted around you ever since you reunited. You thought he just changed but it turns out that his feelings might've influenced it. Whether he realizes it or not is a different story.

Still, as hard as it was you needed to focus on your task. This conversation could wait a moment... But you tried to finish what you were set out to do as quickly as possible.

When you approached Ferdinand with the "We need to talk" look his heart dropped. He was mad at himself for keeping the letter when he didn't give it to you in the end.

He didn't try to explain himself "Everything you read there was the truth, but today I'd put it a little differently" he awkwardly laughs it off. He certainly meant what he said but it was a little much for a simple confession.

As he saw a soft smile from you, he felt almost like he fell in love with you all over again. That wasn't all of it though, because you told him about your mutual feelings.

He was overjoyed, it was hard for him to handle his own emotions but it was just so sweet to see. Winning your heart to him was like winning at life.

#3x valentines #ferdinand fire emblem #fe3h ferdinand #ferdinand von aegir #fire emblem ferdinand #ferdinand x reader

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unmistakablyoatmeal · 2 years

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URL+Songs Meme

Tagged by @lqtraintracks - I seriously thought they were trolling me because of my ridiculously long user name but no... they just thought, "Oh Shelly likes music" 😂 Anyway, because I have quite a few letters to go through, I tried to pick a variety of genres... we'll see how successful I was U - Us Ones in Between by Sunset Rubdown

N - Not a Love Song by Uh Huh Her

M - Mirror by Guckkasten

I - If My Heart Was a Car by Old 97's

S - Starlight by The Superman Lovers and Starlight by Muse (They are both named the same so I'm cheating by putting them both down)

T - That's What I Want by Lil Nas X

A - All I Need by Jacob Collier ft Mahalia and Ty Dolla $ign

K - K.K. Crusin' by K.K. Slider (yes, Animal Crossing, yes)

A - A-Yo by SHINee

B - Breaking Out from Shock Treatment

L - Lonely Life by Miike Snow

Y - You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos!

O - Omaha by Tapes 'n Tapes

A - Africa by TOTO

T - Tourniquet by Rasputina

M - ME+U by f(x)

E - Evil and A Heathen by Franz Ferdinand

A - Answer is near by One OK Rock

L - Lazy Sunday Morning by Classiquai (where the title Save My Wonders came from btw!)

My Spotify is linked to my wallet name, but I put together a youtube playlist for anyone interested. Was super tempted to put my own fanvid in for Evil And a Heathen, but I resisted 🤣

I'm not active enough around here to know who'd like to be tagged for this sort of thing but I'll tag @omarandjohnny because he also has a long user name (not as long as mine tho!) and anyone else who wants to do this ❤

#meme #music meme #I don't know how tags work here anymore

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misselko · 2 years

Text

BEAUTIFUL MIND

Chapter V: Flourish

Catch up here: Part 4, Part 6

Warnings: Graphic description of violence, gore, and blood, making out.

Snapdragons can represent strength, grace, and deception. But they can symbolize love and passion as well.

Their death is surprisingly quick. The spy had not uttered a sound when I pierced his chest. Killing him with magic would have been too messy, too conspicuous.

I feel the warm blood spill out of their chest over my knife and onto my hand. I knew I had done the right thing. I knew it. They were nothing but a threat to the Black Eagles Strike Force. Not only did he have the audacity to try to leak out important information about our strategies, they even tried to sneak another spy inside our flanks. The choice was clear from that point on.

I pulled my hand away with the knife and more blood fell to the ground along with their limp body. The final dregs of their life had left their face as they crumpled silently to the ground.

A fitting end for someone who is willing to sell our information to the enemy. Just one more reason to be overly cautious in the future. I remove my blood stained knife and quickly wipe it with a handkerchief from my pocket. I will never turn a blind eye for a bastard like them.

Another day. Another corpse.

I cannot risk being here longer. Time to go back to the Monastery and report this unsavory matter to Lady Edelga—

“Ah! Here you are, Hubert!” My hand moves in reflex to hide the knife and blood stained handkerchief when Ferdinand calls me out of nowhere. How did he manage to find me in this forest?

“There is an assassination attempt in the Dining Hall and (Y/N) has captured the culprit. I am worried sick for her safety. We sho—"

My blood ran cold from Ferdinand’s exclamation. I cast a Warp spell and we were gone before he finished his sentence. Please be safe, (Y/N).

---

Panic runs into my brain. My lungs are burning and I feel out of breath. I feel relieved when I see that there is no sign of hurt or wounds on (Y/N) when we arrive at the Dining Hall.

Cold and unyielding, those beautiful eyes are deadly and lethal. A true killer. Vicious and lethal. I see no hint nor traces of emotion in them. Unlike (Y/N) that I used to know. She looks down on the injured man from atop a pile of broken glasses and plates, knife in her hand glinting menacingly. Various utensils are scattered on the floor haphazardly. Red and black are painting the ground sickeningly. Blood and… charred wood? Soot? I can see Professor and Lady Edelgard from my peripheral vision. They stand side by side and have their weapon at the ready.

Everyone is surrounding both of (Y/N) and the culprit with bated breath, including myself.

There is a loud crash that reverberates through the Dining Hall. Even my trained eyes cannot follow her movement when she slithers behind the man and locks his arms on his back, another hand is holding a kitchen knife right to his throat, the sharp side is digging on his jugular. Precise and effortless.

“Who has sent you?” Her sharp words send chills down my spine.

Blood trickles from the assassin’s neck as (Y/N) scrapes the knife slowly on his neck. The man is on his knees, his back straighten stiffly. A satisfying amount of fear glimmers in the his teal eyes when he involuntarily grits his teeth and still managed to force out, “Adrestian wench” to (Y/N).

That scum.

Ferdinand loses his composure at his insolent manner of speech and leaps straight to the man with his iron lance. This is bad. His abrupt strike surprises (Y/N). The assassin exploits her opening to lunge and attacks her with a head butt to her jaw. Another wave of relief washes over me when I see (Y/N) is able to evade the attack with feline grace. A true embodiment of perfect beauty. Not that I would admit it out loud to her.

My Dark Spikes barely reach their target when the assassin pivots on his heel and sets his aim on Lady Edelgard. He reaches for his breast pocket and attempts to lunge at her.

(Y/N) shifts her weight and flies into a somersault, leaping high to strike the assassin before he could attack Lady Edelgard. She kicks his head then plucks a dagger from her bosom and shoots it right on the man’s spinal cord without blinking an eye. A swift, clean, and merciful death. Not even a single speck of blood spilled on the floor. Not until she lands on the man’s back and slit the knife across his throat effortlessly.

“Why did you kill him?”

“Better safe than sorry.”

A cloud of warning settles over my features as I storm to (Y/N). Red explodes in my vision, and I couldn't breathe fast enough, couldn't think above the roar in my head. One heartbeat, I glower into her eyes–the next, I seethe. “That assassin might have countless important information regarding his plot and employers.” My body is shaking with rage and concern. Either for her well-being and the loss. I can’t tell. But I am sure it is the latter. Or I wanted to believe so. “Things that we could extract from him have gone with his death! You should not be so reckless.”

(Y/N) lets out a heavy sigh and bows her head deeply.

“My abysmal reflex has put us in disadvantage. No words can make up for my failure. He has tried to bring harm to Miss Edelgard with this.” Rummaging the man’s inner breast pocket she produces a vial then throws it on the table in the middle of the dining hall. The piece of wood becomes black with loud hiss when the substance splatters on it. Sulphuric acid?

“This vitriol oil could burn your insides and kill you if ingested. It is a strong acid and highly corrosive. Sulphuric acid can cause severe burns and tissue damage when it comes into contact with the skin.” She stalks over the man and tears his sleeve to seize more vials filled with that colorless acid. I can hear the collective gasps of everyone. They are squirming with uneasiness. Growing apprehension is palpable in Lady Edelgard’s violet eyes. “I found him prowling around the kitchen at dawn and managed to corner him here. He has poured those vials into our breakfast and utensils. It is odorless. That's why I had to break everything. Please pardon my impudence.” She shifts between her legs and stares at the floor.

Ignoring murmurs and astonishment from the Black Eagles, Professor gives (Y/N) a reassuring nod. “(Y/N),” they interrupted her thoughts, reaching up and lifting her head from where it had been glaring at the floor. “It’s okay. You did a great job. Thank you for saving Edelgard and everyone. You have our gratitude.”

“I can’t put the Black Eagles life at stake and Miss Edelgard’s safety is my utmost concern.” Her smile is radiant and breathtaking. She is about to turn on her heels when she catches my gaze and gives me a knowing look, then gestures to me to follow her later. I will make sure to stop by her quarters. I need to chastise her for being so reckless.

---

Shivers run through my spine as the spring wind licks up the back of my neck, the air cooling as the sun descends quickly between the thick trees. I have changed into my casual clothes and while they are warm, the chilling wind's bite is colder than I had anticipated. My feet walk mindlessly toward (Y/N)’s quarters but instead of knocking on her door I decide to warp inside.

“Sneaking up on me is unwise, Huey.” She says to me without even batting her lashes.

My chuckle dances through the room at her remark. I always find her sharpness to be enchanting.

“How did you find that man?”

“I was unable to sleep after you left so I decided to walk around the monastery. I asked you to come to my quarters because it wouldn't be wise if they knew that you had killed someone as well, Huey.”

She pauses and points to a minuscule speck of blood beneath my glove. Opening her drawer she takes two soft towels and dips them into warm water then gives one to me.

“We do need to maintain secrecy, don’t we?” She sits on her bed and cleans the bloody kitchen knife. When did she take that? Always so agile and meticulous. “The path we must walk...is soaked in blood. And the pool of blood at our feet is growing larger. But I don’t mind it at all. For Miss Edelgard’s sake.”

“I share the same sentiment, (Y/N). She does not need to trouble herself over these trivial matters.” I wring the wet towel and dab it on my glove to wipe the dried blood. After making sure that the towel is clean, I fold it neatly and put it back on her desk. “Still, you need to take better care of yourself.” I nudge a particular spot on her waist gingerly and she flinches in pain.

“How did you find out, Huey?”

“You were swaying when you got out of the dining hall when you thought no one was looking. Why didn’t you tell anyone? Or me?” I do not understand what this suffocating feeling in my chest is when she winces and clutches at her side painfully.

“Fernie noticed but I told him to not sweat over this. Just a small bruise.” My eyes narrow at her words. I cannot comprehend which bothers me more, her pet name for Ferdinand or bluish purple bruise that peeks at me when she sits on her bed and pulls her shirt up a bit.

“That assassin managed to slam me into the chairs before I hit his solar plexus and subdued him.”

I kneel before her and produce a vulnerary from my pocket which she accepts readily. Her gaze never leaves me as she drinks the potion. I can tell even without looking. It is making me uneasy. Like a predator and its prey. Unyielding intense glare that never falters even when I am standing tall and trying to not make any eye contact with her.

“You care. You really do, Huey. Thank you.” As if appraising me (Y/N) lifts her head with a slight smile then looks, really looks, into my eyes. Gorgeous doe eyes filled with trust that make my breath hitch.

She smells like milk, honey, and fresh soap. How intoxicating. Blood is rushing to my head, my breathing gets quicker. I could feel my own heart beating out of my chest. Damn (Y/N) and her ways to distract me.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” Her brow furrows at my words. Confusion is blooming on her gorgeous face.

“Please do not look at me like that. About my confession, I truly mean my words. I really do, (Y/N).”

“!!!”

“When it comes to you, I—" Ugh. No. This is not good. I am Hubert von Vestra. I must conceal my feelings with my stoic façade. Alas, she makes my heart go weak. I am too afraid to return her gaze. "If I may ask..." I shift on my feet, pulling at the collar of my shirt nervously. "Is there a reason for your being less abrupt with Caspar and Ferdinand? They do not seem to draw your ire as much as… me.” My heart feels like it is going to burst from my chest and I cannot breathe. I swallow but it does nothing to ease the dryness in my mouth. I feel like I’m losing my mind as I close my eyes and continue with my question. “Especially Ferdinand.” What has gotten into me? Why do I blurt such things?

“I do understand what you are trying to ask, Huey. Duke Aegir and Count Bergliez… They…'' she nods weakly to silently indicate what their parents did to hers. “I did. But.. Fernie is very caring and respectful towards me. He often took me for evening horse riding to cheer me up when I was drowning in despair. Fernie loves to walk with me through the woods looking at the flowers and he has me over to tea. He talks constantly, and sometimes that is needed to keep my mind away from darker and worrisome things. He is full of sunshine and light. Although I do not deserve to fully belong in the light, there are times when it is comforting."

No. My world is falling apart at her words. The way her eyes shine brightly when she speaks his name. The lilt and warmth in her tone of voice. What is this burning and painful feeling in my chest?

“Caspar is simply funny. He dives in head first, having no idea how deep the water is or what he is attacking, but he's ready for it. A little chaos in the mix always makes things much more interesting. When I locked myself inside my room, he almost turned me deaf every morning with his loud yells and broke my quarters door once but I know he meant well. It’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?”

I am sure (Y/N) is singing lots of good things about them but my mind is failing at grasping it. They sound like ruminant rambling in my head. Everything is blurry, everything is hot.

“Huey? Are you okay?” The next thing that I know is (Y/N) waving her hands in front of me. “Are you listening?”

(Y/N) trails up to interlace her fingers with mine. Her tiny hands fit perfectly in mine. Her eyes are soft and she has the tiniest smile on her picturesque, delicious lips. She locks her eyes with mine as she speaks.

My lips set in a grim line as I try my best to choke out a simple “Yes, I am.”

“…That’s why I wanted to tell you… Your kindness has helped me to open my mind, my world, Huey. Our pasts don’t define who we are and it is you that taught me so. To be able to accept the Black Eagles’ warmth, care, and affection. Make peace with my past and move forward. I can’t describe how thankful I am.” She looks down at our joined hands and takes a deep breath, looking me in the eye with the loveliest smile. "Your kindness overwhelms me."

She barely whispers it loud enough for me to hear, a subtle embarrassment at her honest confession. “I love you, Hubert von Vestra.”

Have I heard her correctly? There must be a mistake here. How could she love an unlovable, not deserving of a love—a man like me? Compared to me, Ferdinand is always so appropriate and easier to get along with. With a smile as bright as the sun, gorgeous flowing locks, and gentleman demeanor, women generally enjoy Ferdinand’s company better.

“Are you sure, (Y/N)? H-How about Ferdinand?” I stammer nervously. Profound warmth burns my cheeks, they are becoming so red now. Words are jumbled out from my lips but I don’t give a damn.

“Fernie is more like a big brother to me, Huey. He really dotes on me and loves to pat my head gently. Why do you seem to resent Fernie so much? You did mention him a lot today.” She floats and nudges my elbow with a wolfish grin. “Do you like him?”

“What?” (Y/N)’s power and acumen is beyond impressive but her tact is on par with Caspar. For someone so strong and intelligent, she is very dense.

I am sure (Y/N) is as dense as a rock.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Have I said something wrong?”

“Foolish.” It was a miracle that I managed to say it with an impassive scowl. My heart is jumping up and down happily from her admission. No, I am not supposed to be happy to know (Y/N) is not romantically interested in Ferdinand. And no, I am certain that I do not hold feelings for him either.

“It’s rare to catch you smiling, Huey. Suits you better than your usual sour look.” A small giggle escapes her lips. Oh what a tease. Such a mouse. My feisty mouse. I would be the happiest person alive if I could hear that for the rest of my life. I could not help the pull of my own lips, mirroring her expression as I slid my arms around her waist and pulling her closer.

“I cannot fathom the hold you have on my heart. How much I dearly love you. This is not how I wished to tell you, but my heart is open, willingly offered to you for the taking, (Y/N).”

My heart continues to race as I search in her eyes for any answer. The air is heavy, filled with anticipation, excitement and fear. My confession hung heavy in the room, one I both feared and looked forward to. I can feel her arms respond in kind, hugging me tighter to her. My gaze falls to her lips, soft and supple, drawing me closer. Pressing my forehead to hers, my eyes shut tight as I try to rein myself in.

I can barely control myself.

“...May I?” I dare not look at her. I cannot let myself fall into the abyss of her eyes, be enchanted by her scent, or melt into the warmth of her small body pressed against mine.

“Yes, Huey.” It isn’t a whisper, it isn’t begging, it is loaded with all and every emotion she had ever held towards me. “Huey…” She repeats again, but a little more forceful. My hand trembles as I hold her cheek and as I lean down to kiss and revel in the taste of hers.

A thrill runs down my spine as I feel her soft warmth against my own lips. They touch firmly, feeling a little like heaven, if there ever was one. My thoughts are many at once as I run my fingers up and down her back, caressing her hair, the back of her neck, and then cradling her face affectionately.

A spark. A fire. An explosion bursts in my mind. I cannot begin to explain the feeling of my lips against hers, drinking her up. (Y/N) looks lost, eyes wide and hands tightening around my arms while she is panting.

Grazing my lips against the shell of her ear I quietly tease, for only her to hear, “I have you speechless at last, (Y/N).” I cannot take my eyes from her flushed face, nor could I ignore my hunger for her.

“Y-yes”. Her breath warm against my lips makes me shiver in delight. She is flushed head to toe, her breath coming in ragged stutters. I lean my forehead onto hers, closing my eyes to take in what has happened. This feels unreal, hazy like a dream, to be here in her quarters, to have her in my embrace. Though I am trying to hide it, the corners of my mouth are twitching upwards.

We are impossibly close until I finally cease the gap and kiss her again passionately. My callused hands graze her hips, her waist, claiming her. She gives in, opening her mouth into the kiss and letting my impatient tongue brush against the seam of her lips, slip in and explore each crook she has, tugging her tongue and making her moan gently into the kiss. I am savoring her moans in earnest and offering up mine in return.

Lightning lashes through my veins and my focus narrows to her fingers, her touch, her breath, her body on mine. “(Y/N)”. I breathe her name like a prayer more devout than any Mercedes and Marianne had offered to the Goddess in Cathedral everyday. My tongue sweeps her mouth again, growl reverberates in my chest as I worship her with my soul.

“Hubert....”

My name sounds so good when (Y/N) moans it out loud like that.

For a moment, I am nothing. Not the shadow of the Adrestian Empire. Not the notorious Count Vestra. Just Hubert von Vestra. This—This moment, it is just me and (Y/N) and nothing between us.

An involuntary growl escapes from my mouth when she pulls me away with a smack of her lips, a thin string of saliva connecting the two of us. She gulps down heavy breaths of air. The haze leaves us light-headed and incoherent. Her thighs are trembling like a newborn fawn as she crumbles against my chest, her legs finally giving out.

Did I go too far?

“T-That was.... intense. I feel like melting, Huey.”

I simply chuckle against her temple and place a few pecks on her skin. Despite her protesting fusses, I withdraw my hand and curve my arms around her panting form, holding her close and caressing between her shoulder blades.

“Did you like it, (Y/N)?” My jaw feels tense as I grind my teeth in anxious worry.

She nods softly. “You’re an idiot, Huey.” She slurs, as quiet as a mouse. (Y/N) turns her gaze away, wipes the saliva and puffs a breath to move the sweat-dampened hair that's fallen over her eyes. Those puffy cheeks are utterly adorable. Warmth floods through my body. The longer I study (Y/N) the softer my eyes become.

“I can’t tell the difference between your face and tomato now. Small, red, and puffy.”

“Eeeekkk!!! How dare you!” Tiny hands deliver sharp jabs at my chest. It hurts but I don’t mind. That squeal, I can listen to it for my entire life and never get bored of it. Her reactions are well worth the pain and I can never get enough. Previously, she was ferocious and cold-blooded. But now my touches make her brimming with emotions. In times like these, (Y/N) makes me fully aware of just how much I love her.

“I am not one to give hugs, usually.” My hands saunter and hold the back of her head in a protective way. Her futile attempt to hide her blush in my arms is utterly precious. I can see red is rising to the tips of her ears. Fortunately my gentle ministration is sufficient to stop her pummels. Her soft, warm body feels nice but... (Y/N)’s petite body barely reaches my chest.

As she snuggles deeper into my stomach, I can feel her warm breasts are smothering my groin with her tight embrace. Mercilessly. I can even feel her thundering heartbeat throughout my body. The sheer intensity of it is enough to send my pulse racing. To my head. To my heads.

No. This is bad. I had not expected such a turn of events. A flush of colour warms my cheeks. My heartbeat is a drum in my ears—fast and loud. It might have been funny if the room actually isn’t much hotter than usual and my face isn’t burning red from pleasure. This sensation is driving me wild. I feel hot and bothered. What is this? It is a question for later, but the thought has kindled something within my chest and pants.

I have to get her away before she takes notice of my physical evidence of my arousal and not so innocent thoughts. I need a distraction. Now. Everything happens in a flash. My hands shove (Y/N) away (more forcefully than I intended) to her bed and I can hear a soft plop and yelp.

“Ouch! What was that for, Hubert?”

My eyes nearly pop out of my head when I look at (Y/N) is splayed on her bed in all of her glory. Her skirt is hunched up around her waist, the blanket barely covers her thighs and panties. My mind snaps. It’s relieving to see that the bruise is getting less swollen than before. No. I must look away. I must not indulge myself in this impressive scene. I will not burn this image in my mind for future reference. I am not Sylvain Jose Gautier. I promise. And I will not falter.

(Y/N)'s glassy, heavy-lidded eyes and parted lips made my thought process entirely derailed. Whatever pithy remark I had intended to tease her floated clean out of my mind. I swallow around the lump in my throat and turn on my heels.

I need to cool off. In the nearby lake. Now. Anywhere but here will do.

“I must take my leave now, (Y/N). I have an important matter to attend to. A meeting.” And with that petty excuse I cast a quick Warp spell to get away from that damned room.

---

The pure black of the night is my comfort. It is the starry kissed night that makes the pale crescent moon shine like a silvery claw in the sky. My fingers ache in the fierce spring wind as I clench and unclench them, trying to keep the feeling in their tips.

I let myself sink in the shallow part on the far end of the Monastery lake to gather my thoughts and sanity. My clothes are thoroughly soaked but my mind is clearer now. Water is rippling around my body when I resurface and push my wet hair that's fallen over my eyes.

“That is a new way to fish, Hubert. You could ask for Professor’s help to instruct you on how to do it... better.” Lady Edelgard looks at me up and down. Ah, her casual sleepless night stroll. Circles under her eyes show me that she was unable to sleep from the thoughts tormenting her. The same nightmare had haunted her every night for the past week. I hope her short walk can chase them away even just for a bit. I ought to do something to ease her mind.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Lady Edelgard? Ferdinand gave me some of his best selections yesterday.”

“Thank you for your kind offering but I must politely decline. Just a stroll is enough for me.” A sad smile crept on her face solemnly. Her stare dips to my clenched fists. My nails dig crescent moon shapes into my palms until I'm sure I have broken skin.

“What brings you here, Hubert? You look troubled.”

“I am just trying to organize my thoughts.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

Vivid image of my heated make out session with (Y/N) came across my mind. Absent-minded quiet moans left (Y/N)’s lips, eyes closed as she relished my caress, her body was melting under my touch and both of us got caught up in the moment, letting desires lead and not quite realizing where it was going. The way she moaned my name into my mouth and looked back at me with her glassy eyes. Delicate thighs that I yearn to…. no. I have to take a hold of my own thoughts.

I could’ve sworn my heart is going to burst out of my chest at the flashbacks. My pupils are blown wide at my own imaginations. The hard bulge on my pants is becoming more uncomfortable now. I have to turn away from Lady Edelgard before she notices. And wipes my drool and nosebleed to maintain some decency. How unbecoming.

“Nothing in particular.”

“Then what are you doing there at the dead of the night? The lake must be freezing.” She cocks one eyebrow high.

“Contemplating. I am in a dire need to cool off my mind, Lady Edelgard.” There is a doubtful curve to the way she looks at me but, then again, she never presses me to elaborate further and I am grateful for it.

“... And let that Golden Fish bite you? Is that really necessary? How intriguing.” I can hear her stifle a soft giggle to save me from further humiliation. Her gaze is attentive, never straying from my face and she beckons me to get out from the lake. “I am all ears if you need someone to talk to.”

Heat itches along my cheeks and neck but it does not excuse what I had done. I swallow against the burning in my throat and nod. My hand moves involuntarily to burn the fish with dark flame and cast a spell to dry my drenched self dispassionately.

Lady Edelgard chuckles at my actions and claps her hands. “I am so happy for you. Glad to know that you have found your special someone. I wish all the best for you and your loved one, Hubert.”

“I-I... Thank you.”

An amused look dances on her violet eyes as she muses, “You might want to check the books in Abyss for all of your romance problems, Hubert.” There is a sing-song quality to her voice. She knows. It always manages to surprise me that Lady Edelgard always sees right through me like an open book.

“See you tomorrow. Be careful not to catch a cold. Good night, Hubert.” Lady Edelgard waves her hand and takes her leave.

Maybe Lady Edelgard is right. I should go and scour the books in the Abyss. The vast library offers a variety of different materials, including books banned from the library at Garreg Mach Monastery. I require every help and knowledge regarding this subject.

My self discipline and composure have been through many years of tempering and teaching. I have taught myself how to NOT respond to people provoking me. Trying to conquer anything that would bother me, what would upset me. To never let my guard down lest the enemy finds out something about me.

Alas, (Y/N) on the other hand, breaks my walls as easily as the thinnest glass. I cannot hide any emotion from her. She always has her way to set my feelings running rampant in my mind and throughout my body.

‘(Y/N), you are the worst. Your lips are my demise.’

Tonight will be another sleepless one for me. So off I go to the Abyss Library to broaden my horizon.

#fire emblem three houses #fe3h #fe3h fanfic #hubert x reader #fe3h hubert #hubert von vestra #hubert fire emblem #fe hubert #hubert fluff #hubert angst #making out #fire emblem x reader #fire emblem three hopes

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starlit-dreaming · 2 years

Text

[20] in the back of my mind

Fandom: WMMAP Rating: G Ship: Eventual Lucathy, Felily, Calena, and more Note: the Twin Sibling AU that i tried so hard not to write, but i DID, so naturally i have to call myself out for writing it. will be cross-posted on ao3 and wattpad under the same title

A/N: I made a mistake in earlier chapters regarding the ages. To fix this, I'm making the clarification that Ferdinand is 8 y/o while Charlotte's 9-10 y/o. I'll make the proper edits when I'm able to.

This chapter's a bonus of being almost 4k words as opposed to my usual 3k. I highly recommend reading this fic on ao3 instead of on Tumblr (under the same title and username) because the formatting's always a pain to deal with and doesn't accurately reflect how I want the story to be read.

Also, I'm thinking of making character profiles for everyone. I'll be posting them on my Tumblr, and there will be a spoiler and spoiler-free version of the profiles (information including sexuality, names of love interests, backstory on their history in "Toska", and whether or not they will end up in a romantic relationship with Athanase at one point (as in, actually having a courtship, but no mentions of being his endgame))

The spoiler-free version will simply say if the character has appeared yet, which chapter they show up in or will be expected to appear in (which isn’t very accurate as it varies on how the story progresses during the writing process), and basic information like their full name and age.

Granted, this will take a long time for me to even get started on, even if I don’t draw the characters (I’m thinking of maybe commissioning someone if I get too lazy to draw).

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Arc 1: Beginning of the End 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Arc 2: Of Princes and Villainesses 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | [20] | 21 | 22

Side Story: maybe, i’m afraid (verena/athanasios) 1 | 2

Summary:

He was pretty sure he transmigrated into a fanfic of [The Lovely Princess] — after all, he would’ve remembered if Princess Athanasia had a younger twin who died.

// A retelling of WMMAP with a vital difference — Athanasia has a younger twin brother.

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20. no one believes in me except for you

——————————

Of all the people that had to be standing in on a personal conversation between Athan and Ver—Autumn, it just had to be Felix. If it was anyone else, Athan was confident that they'd be able to sell it as an inside joke with Autumn that helps him calm down from his overactive imagination, that it was just childish nonsense.

But Felix took part in being his caretaker for the past two years, and for him to be reliant on Autumn would be pretty suspicious. Autumn only entered his life a few months ago, and that wouldn't have been enough time for her to know how to help him in such a panicked state.

Granted, they could explain that it was a side effect from her saving him, but that sounds like a bad case of dependence.

If Athan didn't do anything, Felix might even suspect Autumn of manipulating him.

After all, it was suspicious that a little girl was capable of saving him from suffering the same way as his sister despite the fact that he was far away from the castle with his whereabouts unknown for hours. Even if Lucas was the one who did it, Autumn was considered his saviour.

He glances over to Autumn, who remains seated in a chair at his bedside. She was adamant in keeping her gaze down, and he knew better than anyone that her mind was racing with possible ideas.

A quick glance around the room was more than enough to know that it was only the three of them in the room and no one else. This place was vaguely familiar, and yet he knows that he's never seen this room before—

Wait, this room...

(It was very... bright, he thought with an inward grimace, gaze drawn to the windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor, with its pink curtains drawn back with careless regard. Everything was very colourful, when he glances out the window and catches sight of the swaying field of flowers and the fluttering grass.)

He remembered parts of his dream with startling clarity, recalling the figure of a young maiden hidden by the white gauze curtains with blurred determination. The windows reached from nearly the top to bottom like his dream, but the curtains were a pale orange like the colour of a zinnia flower — a delicate flow and a gentle sight. It wasn't pink like his dream, and he didn't see any gaudy and overbearing sight of flowers...

("Truly, your [brother] indeed cares about your wellbeing, but there is a limit to his naïvety and wilful ignorance," he dryly comments, taking slow strides over to the armchair at the girl's bedside.

It was cold, as if no one had dared to sit and keep the bedridden lady company.)

And yet he was absolutely certain that this was the same room. A gaudy armchair was in the room, at the bedside and currently used by Autumn.

This was a room that was meant to be long forgotten.

...but for whom?

("For the day I [part] from this world, you will never truly forget me — you cannot, nor will I ever let you—")

"Where are we?"

The question brings a strange sort of dawning realization that he can't quite place, as if it were a word on the tip of his tongue. It was an inkling of who the maiden was — a young noble he must've met at the garden party his father hosted.

A lot of ladies approached his older sister while the opposite was true for himself, but only a small handful of girls had spoken to him directly from what he could remember. He couldn't think of anyone else.

They were also the only notable girls that the Original Athanasios interacted with.

Autumn, Charlotte "Lottie" Milford, and Irene "Iris" Nightingale.

So that was the question, really.

Between the three, who was the girl in his most recent memory?

Maybe it was because he noticed his impatience, Felix had answered promptly, "We arrived at Marquess Milford's Estate."

Really? It couldn't be that easy, could it? Charlotte was the girl he promised his love to? Well, it didn't seem too farfetched, did it? With Verena and Charlotte being against one another, it must've been an easy decision to be made once the Original Verena started showing her true colours. Charlotte had been the only girl who was willing to outright oppose her. Maybe the OG prince fell in love with Lottie's fierce personality?

It was very... strange how the memory of someone he once knew affected him like this.

(But then... what about Ijekiel?)

Felix was frowning, with his eyes slightly narrowed at Autumn just in a mere glance as he calmly and respectfully spoke to Athanase. "It was the closest place for Your Highness to rest after collapsing."

Ah, right...

It'd be nice if Felix would just accept that Autumn wasn't up to anything suspicious, but that would probably be a bit much, wouldn't it?

With how he kept shifting hesitant yet wary glances at Autumn, he definitely wasn't going to drop it...

And to make it worse, Athan collapsed.

. . .

Why the fuck did he even collapse in the first place?

"It's a relief that Your Highness, the Crown Prince, has woken up," Autumn stated in a gentle tone of voice, closing her eyes as she tilted her head low in a small bow as a sign of respect. 'You probably remembered something, but I really didn't think that this whole temporary amnesia trope would be this dramatic,' if she was frustrated by the inconvenience, she didn't let it show as she remained still with closed eyes. 'If anyone was supposed to get smacked dab with a temp amnesia trope, it would've been Ferdie for the divergence of surviving the Hunting Comp...'

'Well damn, thanks for the easy explanation, author,' he blinked, jewelled blue eyes staring at Felix. 'Autumn?'

'Yeah?'

'How much trust would you place in Felix?'

'Unless I became a supporter of former Emperor Anastasius, I trust him with my life. A full twelve on a scale of ten on being both trustworthy and hot. Trust-hottie, if you will. Duke Robain is a DILF, so naturally his son is also S-rank. I haven't worked out my tier lists for S, double S, and triple S-rank, but I'd say the Duke's a triple while His Majesty is a solo 'cause child neglect ain't sexy, and Sir Felix being a double S because he stepped up to the plate of being a caretaker when he didn't have to.'

And it was then that Athan deeply regretted his decision in asking Autumn for her opinion. It didn't matter that her confirming Felix's trustworthiness — among other things — was the solution to solving a landslide of their problems.

Like, really. How difficult is it for Autumn to stop bringing up DILFs when he never even asked about it to begin with?

'Why do you ask?' Autumn finally looked at him, a frown on her lips as she stared at him.

What aren't you telling me? That was the question written on Autumn's face as sharp blue eyes looked at him.

His hands trembled, clutching the bedsheets. He thought of the young maiden — er, well, Charlotte, he supposes — and how she sat still as though she were a corpse. It didn't help that her hands were cold, and she had pale skin, but he couldn't shake that image away from his mind. The feeling of her knuckles, her fingers, and the warmth she sapped from him still remained.

That was real, he knows this without a shred of doubt. While he knows nothing of what happened to lead up to that interaction, nor does he know the aftermath, but it was very clear what had happened.

She was dying from an incurable illness, and he could only sit by her side, keeping her company until the day she died.

He wasn't sure how he was going to save Charlotte.

'I'm gonna tell him.'

Autumn never mentioned anything about Charlotte dying, either. Maybe he was wrong about the maiden being Charlotte? What if the dying maiden was an adopted daughter — maybe even an illegitimate daughter? Wait, that was crazy talk. Was he actually accusing Marquess Milford of infidelity when he loathed his birth father for the same reason?

Still, even though he was pretty damn confident that it might've been Charlotte at this point, there just wasn't any guarantee.

So... maybe Felix would be able to help give him a little more room to work with.

'Hold the fuck up — you're gonna tell him that I think he's a trust-hottie?!'

Athan ignored his friend's moment ruining panicked thoughts and looked at Felix dead in the eyes:

"This isn't my first life."

Silence immediately followed after the statement was made. His heart pounds, his stomach churns — he feels... he feels nauseous, to say the least.

Everything felt... unpleasant.

("Well, maybe he should've kept his mouth shut," she grumbles.

He laughs, "You think so, too?"

. . .

He gets the impression that she smiles at him, and his cheeks burn and his heart flutters.

'Oh,' he thinks. 'Oh.')

Autumn was — well, she wasn't angry or horrified, but he heard absolutely nothing from her. She was frozen in place, dark pale — purple? No, it was definitely blue — eyes staring at him in stunned silence. Her lips paled, an indication that she was biting her bottom lip as her eyes anxiously flicker to Felix.

He could feel that the reveal to Felix had left her unsettled and upset.

(Or maybe it was him projecting onto her.)

Honestly, he understood her view of confiding in somebody else. There wasn't any reason for her to think that Felix would trust them. Hilise Inoaden from The Solitary Lady was a prime example of being considered a lunatic when she confided in her family regarding her time loops, and frankly that wasn't what he wanted as an end result. Unlike Hilise, Felix genuinely cared about him. On top of that, even though Athanase didn't necessarily want to die, but rather, he wanted to live comfortably and content.

In order for Felix to believe his words, he needed undeniable proof to show that he wasn't crazy.

And that proof was the existence of Jennette de Alger Obelia.

He opens his mouth, intent on saying her name, only to lose his voice as the image of the original Athanasia flashes through his mind, face red with tears staining a wretched face. It was an unsettling image, an older version of when Athy had cried when she woke up for a few minutes during her brush against death a few weeks back.

("I'm your daughter too, father.")

No, he couldn't. If he introduced Jennette, then wouldn't everything worsen? After all, that would only mean that he and his sister would be more likely to die early. Maybe Countess Rosalia would even try to frame him or his sister for poisoning Jennette before they're fifteen...

Everything was already changing, but Athan wasn't ready for that sort of problem in particular. Jennette entering their lives early would only alter the chain of events.

That would ruin everything and he knows it.

"I don't actually want to be at the Arlantan Hunting Competition. Frankly, it sounds like more trouble than it's worth to even go, even if I think learning how to wield a sword is pretty cool. You can dismiss it as a child's overactive imagination, or just me overthinking things, but I want to prevent a war between Arlanta and Obelia."

Felix stared at him with wide eyes. He was dumbfounded and speechless, which wasn't very surprising. How does anyone react when a little kid tells them that a war was going to happen?

'What are you doing?' He wasn't sure how, but Autumn managed to maintain a blank facial expression. 'He's never going to believe that.'

"Marquess Milford's true history, from living as a commoner to the actual reasons for the deaths of his sisters," he states. Felix jolts upon hearing that, his eyes snapping back to Athan. "The Countess Nightingale and the purpose of her family and the role they play for the imperial family despite providing nothing more than ambiance music. I even know the truth of why His Majesty's engagement to Lady Penelope Judith, the younger sister of Countess Rosalia Judith, was broken off."

Athan could tell that just from three sentences, Felix was unsettled by the fact that he knew more information about the things that no longer mattered to noble society or was the best kept secret within the imperial court. There was no way for Athan to know, and under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have known.

But, Athan had reread those 12 chapters Autumn had written for Toska countless times. Over and over again, to the point that he memorized the sequence of events and even remembered the names of side characters — including the ones mentioned only one time and the chapters they were brought up in.

He read the character sheets, the additional background, the side stories that had no direct involvement with the canon characters.

So Athan knew more than enough to convince him.

"Let's speak of Marquess Milford, as his story is less personal to the two of us. He grew up as a commoner until the deaths of his parents, in which his birth father had decided to lie and cover up the truth of his parentage in order to officially give him the Milford Family Name. He was never meant to inherit the noble title, as he had an older sister who was executed for angering the former tyrannical Emperor. It was an informal setting, given that he had killed her during a ball in the hallways. She had worn a dress and was unarmed, but if she fought back in any way, she would've been given a charge for treason and therefore get everyone in her family executed."

Nobody was supposed to know how the eldest of the Milfords had actually died. It was covered up as an assassination attempt against the former Emperor, and the former Milford Heiress had gotten caught in the crossfire...

Except, the youngest Milford had been a witness to the murder of her sister. She saw her sister die and was left traumatized.

(Like Ferdie, the youngest Milford, witnessing the death of Autumn's parents.

And just like his aunt, he lived to tell of it...

Not for long, of course.)

"So, the former Heiress was murdered, and the younger sister saw enough to be traumatized in the end, but she told her family before she died. It's the only reason why you and father trust Marquess Milford more than Countess Nightingale. You both ensured his loyalty by getting rid of the former Emperor."

Felix's mouth remained shut, his eyes trained on Athan with a sense of seriousness that he's never seen before in either lifetimes, and that included all the posts tagged with "Lovely Princess Felix" — not a single piece of fanart of a handsome and serious man.

Nevertheless, it was clear that Felix didn't know what to say, or perhaps he didn't know where to start.

Should he have started from the beginning? Or perhaps he should've given Felix some time to digest the information...

But if he didn't do things like this, then Felix would've dismissed it as a child repeating the things that he's heard before. After all, Marquess Milford's history could easily be found out by asking the right questions to the right people.

Would Countess Nightingale's history be enough to prove his words?

"How did Marquess Milford's younger sister die?"

That was the only thing Felix had asked for.

If he answered this wrong, Felix might assume that someone with a grudge against the Marquess had spilled all of this information.

But fortunately for him, he knew the answer.

"People say she killed herself," he tells him without missing a beat. "In actuality, she screamed the supposed "accusations" at one of the nobles' meetings, barging in there in place of her brother who had to leave for the Arlantan Hunting Competition as his family regularly attended as one of Obelia's Diplomats. She was thrown into a jail cell until the Marquess returned and was deemed to be mad from the grief of her sister's death. The family was pardoned, and she was found dead by hanging, but the Marquess believed that it was the former Emperor's scheme of painting his sister as crazy."

If anything, Felix didn't seem to be reassured by his answer.

"I believe you, Your Highness."

"You do?" Autumn blurts out, gasping out a squeak as she covers her mouth with her hand as if she had yet to say anything. "I beg your pardon, Sir Felix, but is it true?"

Felix nodded, frowning. "Everyone in noble society now thinks that Lady Lizbeth killed herself due to grief of Lady Ariella's death and was unable to bear with the knowledge that nobody believed her. While he isn't happy, Marquess Milford is happy that his younger sister is no longer considered a shame to the family name and that she's no longer seen as a madwoman. Seeing how close His Highness, Prince Athanasios, is with Marquess Milford, I'd imagine that it's possible they would have an honest conversation about such a thing years from now, given that it's still a sensitive topic for him."

Huh. That really was convenient. Well, it is a story that came to life, so it was only natural for the world to fill in the gaps.

Still, Felix believed that pretty easily...

Not that he's complaining.

"Father doesn't know, of course," he shifts, awkwardly adding to the conversation. "Autumn remembers too, and she would know more than me because she lived longer than me."

'Don't throw me under the bus!' she screeched in his mind. "You give me too much credit, Your Highness. I didn't live for nearly as long as you believe," Autumn shook her head, giving him a pointed stare. The switch between her mind and actuality were as jarring as ever. 'Verena died in the same year as Athanasios. Usually execution, other times suicide.'

"...Autumn?" Felix looked at Autumn curiously.

"Shit," he thought. 'Was that supposed to be a secret?'

"Well shit," Autumn sighed. 'I wanted to keep that a secret.'

Out of everything he's heard tonight, hearing two "children" swear had startled Felix the most.

——————————

Since he successfully convinced Felix, they were free to speak more openly around him. Of course, they had to wait until they returned to the castle since they would be staying at the estate for a few days until he regained his strength — Athan also didn't want a repeat of someone overhearing a conversation between him and Autumn, especially when he wasn't in his right mind...

Even though it would be better to share the information with Autumn, his dream was very personal.

("If this love is a curse, then I would gladly be scorned and burned in hell.")

Recalling his own words, he knew he had lived that very moment. He had felt anguish for his dying lover that it had brought him to physical tears when he awoke. He felt warmth in his heart, a fluttering warmth when she smiled just for him and him alone.

Athan knew a love between friends, a love so strong that they were family. He knew of a toxic love between two romantic partners — he's seen and read of it, he's lived through it even if he remembers nothing.

But he's never been in love, he was sure of it until now.

Love, he learns, is both a beautiful and ugly thing. It's painfully heart wrenching, it's rough around the edges, and it's filled with complications. But it's also delightful elation, it's easier to fall than expected, and it's... it's simple.

Athanase was in love with this girl at one point in his life, and now he's left with vague memories. It was as simple as that.

But why? Wasn't he curious? How did they fall in love? What made him fall to begin with?

("Would you leave me... if you saw the real me?"

. . .

"I don't know.")

He doesn't want to know.

(Oh, but he does.)

——————————

"Autumn was really surprised that you believed me," he admits into the quiet of the guest room, with Felix sitting in the armchair at his side. It was just the two of them this time. "She didn't think anyone else would — apart from her — and that's only because we both lived the same experience."

Felix stared at him for a moment, his gaze softening as his frown became more neutral. It wasn't quite a smile, but it could've been.

"You're not the type to lie for no reason, Your Highness," Felix stated. "And it does explain the close relationship Your Highness has with Lady Verena — Autumn. A lot of nobles believed that you are both infatuated with one another."

Athan immediately wrinkled his nose at the thought. "She's like a sister to me."

Felix hadn't responded to that right away, as if he were contemplating on whether or not he ought to say something.

"Pardon my asking, but when did Lady Autumn regain her... memories?"

"On the day of my collapse."

"I see..."

"We were both engaged and she wasn't a Saintess. Father didn't care about my sister and I, so he let us do as we pleased as long as we didn't bother him. From what I can remember, Lady Verena's love became a form of obsession which worsened our relationship. Now that we both... remember the past, that will no longer be an issue. She had a somewhat poor relationship with our peers in the past. It's why she wants to be called Autumn, and why she wants to show me that she's not the same person she used to be."

"Is that so?" Felix frowned. "That's... a bit concerning, Your Highness."

"I know, but Lady Verena is no longer the same person she once was," Athan stated. "After losing me, Autumn's trying to atone for the past."

It wasn't the most inaccurate lie he's ever said. Autumn was distraught and regretful after he died, and even now he could see traces of how desperate she wanted him to confide in her. Clearly, she thinks that it was her fault for not being there for him when he died, and so explains the reason why she's trying to make up for it.

"Does Her Highness, your sister, know about this?" Felix hesitated.

"Partially," he shook his head. "She knows about me, but not about Lady Verena."

"That certainly explains a bit. Perhaps you should talk to Crown Princess Athanasia? It seems that she doesn't wish to speak to Lady Autumn at all..."

"I can't force them to get along," he shook his head. "And she avoids me left and right for no good reason."

Felix is silent for a long moment, his face pale as if a horrid thought had come to mind.

"Please reconsider."

"What?" Athanase blinked, looking at Felix.

"Your Highness, please reconsider mending your relationship with Her Highness."

"Why are you suddenly insistent on this?" Athan blinked.

"I don't want history to repeat itself," Felix quietly stated. "Especially with Emperor Claude and Lady Diana's children."

'Oh,' he thinks. 'Oh.'

Felix didn't want a repeat of Anastasius and Claude.

Maybe that was the possible reason why Athanase died in Toska? He doesn't know how he died in his first life. Maybe Athanasia was the catalyst.

He had mixed feelings about that thought, in all honesty.

Maybe he'll talk to Autumn first...

#fic: in the back of my mind #wmmap #who made me a princess #wynter writes

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