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writingdesknashu · 2 months

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The Other Side of Myth Chapter 47 Conceptualization Post

Hello, welcome once again to Lord Nashu's writing desk. Where I shuffle the mess around and give you a look at the mind behind my creative process. It's been a couple of weeks since The Other Side of Myth Chapter 47 came out, and while I've been a little down in the dumps, I think it's long overdue time for a Writing Concept post about this chapter!

Starting this off...

A Strike Against the Seed of an Empire is just a great title. Back in the day, I couldn't write until I knew what the chapter title was. I don't think that changed, though I do change them later title if I don't like them after all. This was not one of those cases though. I needed a chapter title that said, "Diana's fighting in this one." but also one that said, "Things are kicking off." Rocwen is a new character from this draft, introduced to bridge the plot of Kiara's world with the rest of the story. As such he represents a shifting in the global space. The party isn't just fighting to stop the Yoshiki Sect in this arc, they're fighting to stop the birth of the Yoshiki Empire. But he also represents...

World Building

Because Rocwen is old. As the story goes on, readers will come to know that Magdalea and Nandaxia are pretty old worlds themselves, that have been through several phases before this current point. Rocwen comes from a phase when the Serpent Dynasty (now called the Orchid Triumvirate) had a strong chance of being one of the rulers of the world. He was essential to that too, serving as an ally that anti-demon magic and tools couldn't best. We got a bit of this from him in some of the previous chapters, establishing how demons were once the ruling body of the Dynasty, and how Jade Warden (the triumvirates demon slayers) were once one of the many forces trying to dismantle the dynasty.

In this chapter, we get more about how he lived during those times, sharing his bed with beautiful women and thinking about one beautiful man in particular. Ruelin, who is also new to this draft, was more a scholar at the time, and what he teaches Rocwen leans into an overarching narrative of how the stories magic system shaped the world. We also get mention of the Spirit Princess again, though don't pay too much attention to her. Make a note, but don't pay too much attention. The main focus of this chapter is what knowledge about magic can help you do, which brings us to Diana and...

Runic Magic

Runic magic is something I've been thinking about introducing since the second draft, but I didn't really know if I wanted to implement it heavily into the story. As I moved forward to this one, I got to thinking about how each culture formed their magic understanding differently, and for Diana's homeland of Nithellan (one part of the Greenlands.) magic was formed through runes. There's some deep lore to that, but on the surface of it, I knew I didn't want it to be an unknown language. Magic's earliest stage in the world was more wild, so I wanted runes to reflect that. I also wanted them to reflect that scholars in Nithellan thought they were a language. My decision was to lean into iconographic languages, rather than phonetic ones. The way runes are strung together as tunes or ballads is meant to invoke this idea that each rune is a picture that comes together to tell the story of a spell.

How do you tell that story? I implied it at best in this chapter, since Diana does her work then goes to the fight, but the idea is that each rune has to have some sort of narrative bond. Take these for example:

Carefully drawn with a mouse in paint, you see what I'll call the narrative principle of runic magic. The direction doesn't matter, but the order does. Diana tries writing the second runic tune first, but out of order. The top is medium growth the bottom is mountainous blast. Before the eureka hits her, she just knows what this runes do, not what they symbolize so she writes it as "mountain blast->medium growth." which can't form a narrative principle. As it's written here though it goes "medium growth->mountainous blast." and the principle can be read like, "Something grew into an strong blast." The "something" is usually energy, but that mostly goes without saying.

"Well, daring Lord Nashu, why couldn't it be read as "the blast grew into something strong?" Because the runes have to "capture" the energy first. Worth note, the first tune has a different narrative structure. "The sea launched a blast of lightning." Illustrating a principle of observing a storm. There's some meat in there about how tunes differ in their structure based on the period they were written in. The left being more primal while the right is more mechanical. But we could sit here and talk about runic principle all day! We shouldn't though, because we still haven't talked about...

The Fight

Having both thought about how their knowledge of magic can help them grow stronger, Diana encounters (Scarecrow Spirit) Rocwen and the battle starts. There's quite a bit of world building in the banter too. Like Rocwen calling Diana's homeland the "old Angel country." And how that tells her immediately how old he must be. There's also how he notes that mages nowadays don't need to use incantations, nor need someone to protect them. That leans into a central narrative of OSoM about how "Magic on Magdalea progressed like Technology on Nandaxia." Pulleys and levers go from being human powered to machine powered, but magic. I like it though, as well as how the fight itself plays out.

Rocwen shows how scary he is through how he effectively makes the scarcrow spirit's body his own. He has essentially become that spirit and can effectively use its fear magic against Diana. Diana for her part knows that fear magic is mostly in the mind and tries to calm herself, but also knows the fear is triggered by your perception. It doesn't do her a lot of good when the fear pollen gets into her system, but that strange detection ability of hers comes up again, letting her detect Rocwen without having to perceive him.

Combining her new runic knowledge with the sealing techinique Keigo taught her before, she uses Striker Drumming: Second Verse to overcome Rocwen's lesson in magic, but not quite stop his plans. Still, things are underway as she sends a note to the others. And Diana takes a step closer to being strong enough to find her older sister....

Overall?

I was satisfied with everything I did in this chapter, managing to check a lot of boxes that I wasn't even aware of. As I use Rocwen more I come to better establish parts of the world, and I like that this arc has changed from just a battle with demons (as it was in previous drafts) into a battle that fills in the blanks of the Serpent Dynasty/Orchid Triumvirate. More of those blanks will be filled in as the arc goes on. Meanwhile, Diana takes a step further in her journey, and considering what i have planned for her, I'm easily excited.

This post ended up being pretty hefty though...so let's close this off. When I clear things off on the writing desk, I would be delighted if you were to join me, once again.

#creative writing #webnovel #the other side of myth #world building #magic svstem #female lead

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iwantitiwriteit · 3 years

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Slow Burn: Book I - Part 7

The Lunch - Small Thank You’s

Pairing: Chris Evans x Famous!Reader

Summary: You and Chris get to know each other better over a flirty friendly lunch.

Warnings: Fluff, spinkle of Angst, Profanity, phonetic spelling of words said in a Boston accent because I needed a laugh

Notes: Hey loves! Hope you all are well! It’s been a while— praying I didn’t forget how to write too bad and y’all enjoy this installment lol. Little FYI: I’m basing the reader’s music off of that of Banks and SZA. Before you dive in, set the mood with the moodboard + music specially curated to go with this part! Read the previous part here.

The GPS said the drive from the museum to the restaurant would be… well, you were distracted from that bit of information. Not that it would matter. Chris keeps making turns against the suggested route, citing that this was “his city” and that he’s a “real Boston boy”.

What you do know is that the talking and laughing with Chris made the car ride seem all too short. Pointing out familiar streets and landmarks, he lit up telling you his childhood stories laced within the city. Pardon, his city. The glint in his eyes and excitement in his voice sent tiny sparks up your spine, but you did your best to ignore it.

Chris tried to guess where you had the two of you going for lunch. You, however, wouldn’t give in to his guesses. Eventually, you arrive at a market of sorts, a culture clash of small businesses and patrons. It’s in an area Chris is familiar with, but he never thought much of coming to.

“I thought we were going to a restaurant?” Chris inquires, not seeing a food establishment from his spot in the driver’s seat.

You puff out your jaw, squint your eyes, and proceed with your best ‘Godfather’-like impersonation as you tell Chris,“I thought you would’ve learned to stop asking me questions by now, hm.”

“That... was horrible.” Chris’ deadpan causes you to giggle in response.

“I know! Now c’mon; I’m starved!” You draw out as you reach to let yourself out of the car.

“Woah, woah, hold on,” Chris stops you with a gentle hand on your arm. You questioningly look over your shoulder at him. He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car. Settling back into your seat with a huff of delighted shock, you realize what he’s doing.

Chris jogs to your door, the returning drizzle giving him a sense of urgency. He opens the door for you then offers his upturned, open hand for you to choose to take. You hesitate for a millisecond before obliging, delicately placing your smaller hand in his large palm.

You’re unsure of the last time anyone was this... chivalrous to you. Trying not to dwell on it too long, you give him a soft-spoken ‘thank you’. Chris responds with an equally soft ‘of course’. You both find it difficult to meet each other's eyes, missing the shy smile the other is sporting.

“Lead the way,” Chris gently prompts with a hand extended in the market's direction.

Mildly busy, the market is livened by business people, college students, housewives and househusbands alike. Store fronts of small businesses ranging from sustainable fashion to high-end housewares line the long cobble stone path, accented by fairy lights for added whimsy. Chris curiously takes in the sights from beneath a low baseball cap and hoodie. He’s sure to not let his eyes linger too long for fear of locking with anyone.

Meanwhile, you’re walking with purpose, leaving a distracted Chris behind. He catches up when he notices you turn a corner in his periphery. When he follows the path you took, he finds you by a green, white, and red beaded archway.

You pause and look up at Chris, a playful grin on your lips that makes his heart skip a beat. He’s looking down at you, brows raised with utter anticipation. You think this might be your favorite expression on him. You pull back and step through the beaded entrance, Chris following suit closely behind you.

“Woah…” It was almost as if that small act of stepping over the threshold transported you both to Sicily. The faint notes of Italian standards play in the background as Chris gawks at the charming restaurant.

The mostly occupied dining area is quaint, housing about 10 tables max, including a couple of booths. The walls are decorated with floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves of libations from Italy. The alcohol display is interrupted by creeping vert vines that add that little bit of spice to the space.

As a waiter walked by, Chris breathed in deeply, the warm aroma of marinara sauce, freshly baked bread and Italian spices filled his nose and lungs.

“How’d you manage to find the one Italian restaurant in the greater Boston area I’ve never been to, much less heard of?”

“Hmmm… must not be as much of a Boston boy as you think,” you say with a wink, and Chris scoffs through his lopsided smirk.

“There she is!” a bellowing voice familiar to you draws yours and Chris’ attention away from each other. Chris looks on as the short, husky man pulls you in for a cheek-to-cheek kiss. “It’s been too long! Mi sei mancata la faccia!”

“Charlie, you know I have no idea what you’re saying, but I like the way you say it!” You share a laugh with your Uber driver-turned-friend. “And what do you mean ‘it’s been too long’! I was just here last week.”

“5 days ago to be exact. 5 days since you, ya castmates… most importantly ya directah,” Charlie stresses lustfully in his strong Boston accent, “have swarmed Ma’s restaurant. Whassup with that, huh?”

“The real question here is what’s up with your crush on Sonya, huh?” you tease him. Charlie’s smitteness with your director has not gone unnoticed.You can practically see the hearts forming in his eyes at this moment.

“I doan know what ya tawkin about.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

“Enough abowut it! Let’s get ya seated and you can tell me who’s ya new friend,” Charlie says, motioning to Chris.

When you’re seated in a corner booth by a rainy window, you introduce the two men.“ This is Chris, my, uh…um…” You hadn’t really thought about what to call your relationship with Chris. It’s been… rocky up until this point, and while you’ve been friendly, you’re certainly not friends. Not yet, at least.

Chris notices and understands your hesitance, a small part of him hoping it’s because you don’t want to friend-zone him. “It’s alright, don’t worry your pretty, little head about it,” he teases you, earning him an eye roll. “We’re… acquaintances, right?”

“Right! Acquaintances… I guess?” It didn’t feel right, a little too impersonal, but you’ll roll with it for now.

“‘Acquaintances’?” Charlie sizes Chris up, a comical sight considering the dramatically different statues of the two men. He tilts his head and squints at Chris’ face, his expression melting from intimidation to inquisition. Chris tenses, knowing the look he’s being given all to well. “Been here before, Chris? You look mighty familiah…”

“Umm… no... I don’t… don’t believe so,” Chris answers almost timidly. The avoidant gaze into the plastic covered menu, the heated cheeks that shone the same color as a tomato— you know that look all too well. You decide to do what you hoped someone would do for you.

“He’s just got one of those faces! But um, I’m ready to order if you are?” you try to deflect. Charlie doesn’t think much of it and takes down your meal decisions, but that small act means the world to Chris. He mouths ‘thank you’ from across the booth, and you smile and tip your head in a slight nod, sure he would’ve done the same for you.

You order your usual, spaghetti with vegan meatballs, and a glass of the house white wine. Chris has what you’re having except he’s ordered a “tonic”, which you learned the hard way the other night is Bostonian for soda. Charlie is back promptly with your drinks and breadsticks and ensures that your food will arrive shortly with a small smirk on his face that you don’t think too much of.

It’s quiet at your table for quite some time. Both you and Chris take small sips from your glasses, nibble at the garlic-y bread, look out the window and around the restaurant. As you do so, you run through a list of conversation starters in your head but you’ve deemed them all too dumb, too boring or too invasive. Why the hell do I care so much? You glance up at Chris and wonder if he’s going through the same irrational inner turmoil you are. Maybe he’s not, or maybe he’s overcome his when he finally breaks the silence.

“So, um… how long have you been a vegan?”

“Um… how long have we been shooting this movie? My character— she’s very, uh… power to the people— and plants,” You chuckle out. “Figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try myself. Go a little method,” you say with a shrug.

Chris waves his breadstick at you as he asks, “You believe in all that method stuff?”

“I don’t know… I’m really new to this whole acting thing, but I guess I just like the idea of really connecting with this character in every way I can. She reminds me so much of myself at that age.”

“How so?” Chris presses on.

“She’s… sure. She’s sure of herself… of her judgements and decisions. She’s sure of her hand in her own success. And that breeds this really un-fuck-with-able confidence in her that if I had an ounce of, it’d be over for you hoes,” you end with a slow nod and look off into the distance.

Chris laughs at your dramatics, but it dawns on him what you’ve shared. “Wait… you’re telling me that’s not you now? I mean, I know I’ve only known you a short time, but you seem pretty un-fuck-with-ably confident to me.”

“Ha! Guess I’m a better actress than I thought,” you mutter. Chris knows it’s meant to be a joke, but watching as you fiddled with the rings on your finger, his chest tightened. A look of sympathy must’ve shown on his face, because you start to wish you hadn’t said anything at all. Did I just overshare? God, I thought I outgrew that.

To save you from your minor embarrassment is Charlie with the same smirk from earlier. He gently places the order in the center of your table, and you finally understand what his face was trying to give away earlier.

“We’re, uh… runnin’ low on plates...” is Charlie’s half-baked explanation. “Buon appetito!” he offers before hastily leaving.

Sat between you and Chris was the meal you ordered, yes, but on the single largest plate you think you’ve ever seen. One plate of spaghetti for two people— two practical strangers— to share. The embarrassment just won’t stop, will it?

Elbow perched on the table, your hand acts as a visor of sorts on your forehead as you massage away the headache forming at your temple. You can’t see Chris, just hear him chuckling and breathing out an “oh man…” under his breath. His fork comes into view as he twirls the pasta onto it. You peek under your hand up at him.

“What? Not gonna just look at it!” Chris insists. “Now, let’s see what this vegan meatball is about… DAMN! That tastes legit!” You giggled at his enthusiasm and felt your tension melt away.

You began to dig in as well. It was fine, normal even, for a few moments. You could almost forget you’re sharing one big ass plate of pasta with one of Hollywood’s most sought after stars at a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant. Yep, very normal. As long as I keep from oversharing the rest of this afternoon, everything should be fine… you thought to yourself.

“Tell me… how are you liking Boston?” Chris asks.

“It’s fine.”

“‘Fine’?! Just fine.”

“It’s great Chris, no need to get your panties in a twist. But, ya know… It’s just not…”

“Home? Yeah, I get that. Where’s home for you?”

“Um… well I guess home has never been a single place for me. It’s with people I love, as cheesy as that sounds. Home is where my heart is…” you trail off as you remember you shouldn’t share too much.

“And your heart is with family, friends… a boyfriend…?” Chris slips in.

“What is this? 20 questions?” You quip as you sip on your white wine.

“Maybe... if you want. You can ask me something.”

“Hmm… Ok…” You ponder over what to ask him as you twirl your pasta around your fork. “What is… mm no. How about… nah, wait.” Chris huffs impatiently as he awaits your first question. “Ok! I got it!”

“Alright, lay it on me.” Your breath hitches at his word choice and you hope doesn’t notice. Why’d he have to say it like that?! You clear your throat and ask your question.

“What’s your favorite song of mine?”

“Really? That’s your question? So conceited…”

You giggle before explaining, “Well, I only ask ‘cos a little Scottie told me he saw you, and I quote, ‘full on rocking out’ to one of my songs. I’m just curious which one it was.” You sip on your straw and peer up at Chris, watching for his reaction.

Chris groans, covering his face while sinking down the booth seat. You can’t hear too much of what he's saying behind his hands and over your laughter, but it sounds like he’s cursing Scott’s name. When he finally restores some gumption, he places his hands on his napkin, eyes fixated on his fingertips picking at the dampened corners. Teeth sunk into your bottom lip, you try your best to bite back your amusement to not further Chris’s obvious embarrassment.

“Ok…” Chris sighs out, “ I’ll admit it! I’m man enough to own up to it,” he shrugs. “Yes, I was ‘full on rocking out’ to your music. You’re amazing at what you do.”

Your face heats up, not expecting the compliment. You don’t know what to say. It’s not like you’ve never heard it before. In fact you’ve heard it a lot the past couple of years, you’d thought you’d become numb to it. Yet, for some reason, sitting across from Chris, his eyes looking tenderly into yours, the compliment you’ve heard a million times before just… hits different. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

You clear your throat and break eye contact with Chris. “You still haven’t answered my question, though...”

“Right! Hold on…” Chris says as he fishes his phone from his front pocket. He scrolls through his music app to find the playlist he’s made of his favorite songs of yours. Your cheeks burn even more intensely as you watch. “‘Gemini Feed’ is my favorite to dance to; hands down! But I also really love ‘Drew Barrymore’; it’s fun… but sad, ya know? What am I saying; of course you know; it’s your song!”

You giggle in somewhat disbelief of watching Chris motherfucking Evans geek out over your songs!

“Well… this is a rare opportunity I have, to talk to the artist herself, that is. So, I have to ask, how did that song come about? From personal experience, I suppose?”

“Yeah… um, gosh. You want the full or abridged version of the story?”

“Full! Are you kidding me?!”

“Ok, ok! Well, it was right before my album was set to come out, and my boyfriend-at-the-time dumped me,” you laugh lightly at the now-funny memory. “After weeks of heated arguments and projecting his career insecurities on to me, he picked his final fight with me about how I was “acting too famous for him” and just ended things.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah... It completely caught me off guard. I couldn’t think straight in the studio that day, so I ended the session earlier and went to a party, per my best friend-slash-manager’s coercion. She’s a bad influence.”

“I like her style! Did the party help?” Chris asked.

“Well, it was on the higher-end of house parties, and I just wasn’t used to being around such an expensive lifestyle yet. But guess who was there because why wouldn’t he be?,” you exhale and roll your eyes as you reminisce.

Chris leaned in with intrigue. “The Ex?”

“Mm-hm. In my standard walk-in-the-party-scan of the room, I spot him. I should've known because that party was very much his scene, but what I wouldn't have guessed is that he'd be there with some other woman.”

“What?!”

You nod your head as you proceed to spill the tea to Chris. “This dude is there with another woman, after being out of a relationship for all of 8 hours. I think the worst part is that she looked nothing like me. Like, imagine the complete opposite of me to the hottest power, that was who was hanging all over that idiot.”

“He is a total idiot for letting you go.” You don’t know what to say to Chris’ statement and quite honestly forgot where you were, what you were talking about… “What happened next?”

“Right! We locked eyes for a moment and there wasn’t anything from him. No emotion at all. Like, he didn’t care that our relationship just ended. But then I had the thought that maybe we’d been over for a while and I had just been too distracted to realize and accept the party was over.”

“Jimi peeped what was up and got me out of there. I hoped that we could go home so that I could cry on her shoulder all night. Instead, she dragged me to a real house party. I so badly wanted to pity myself, but the energy there was too infectious to not enjoy; it felt like a 90s movie!”

“The next day, I went through my crazy ass camera roll, and I couldn’t help but... smile… and laugh! Then I thought about him, and how stupid he made me feel, and I don’t know… I kinda put all these weird, conflicting emotions into this one song, and felt better afterwards. Like I was turning a page.”

Chris didn’t immediately say anything, taking in the very personal story you shared. The somewhat unfortunate event that fueled his favorite lyrics. He looked at you carefully and quietly. However kind he looked in this moment, it didn't matter much to the creeping thoughts in your mind.

The silence made you self-conscious. You took inventory of your physical, how your face was hot, how your chest felt tight. Your left hand had somehow migrated into Chris’ right hand in the middle of the table. “I, uh— my bad…” you start as you take back your hand.

Chris quickly grabs your hand before it gets too far. “Thank you for sharing that story with me... and your music with the world. Your confidence in your vulnerability is really fucking inspiring. Thank you. Seriously, thank you,” he gives your hand a gentle squeeze for emphasis. He’s looking at you with a boyish smile and tilted head that makes you break down and smile at him, too.

“Thank you,” you return, just barely above a whisper.

——————————————————————————

You and Chris spent the rest of your time at L'amore Della Madre exchanging stories of love lost and life wins, sharing loud laughs and silent signs of admiration. To anyone on the outside looking in, it may have seemed like two had known each other longer than you actually have.

“I gotta say, I don’t like this,” Charlie whispers to you. He pulled you aside for a moment to say your goodbyes, while Chris waited for you outside. “Mostly becahse it was supposed to be my jahb to set you up with a nice Italian boy, but you’ve brought your own,” he says with a smirk.

“Oh, no! It’s not like that! Chris and I aren’t— wait… how’d you know he’s part Italian?“

“I have my sources… which may be the wait staff who are big fans of the guy. Here this is from them,” Charlie hands you a to-go box.”It’s tiramisu… for two,” he winks.

“Oh my god! I told you, we--”

“Will thank me at your wedding!” Charlie says as he waves you out of the door to the sidewalk where Chris is waiting.

“Wedding? Who’s getting married?” Chris asks.

You let out a sigh and shake your head. “Nobody. Want dessert?”

You and Chris small talk and walk and eat tiramisu on your way to the car. It was nice. It was normal. It felt… real. You didn’t realize how much you needed and missed small, yet meaningful moments like this until right now.

The pair of you stop in front of a pet shop window and watch the puppies play together for a moment. You pointed out a pair of snuggled up puppies to Chris. “Hey, they kinda look like us!”

Chris chuckles when he looks, “They do!” A chocolate brown puppy and a tannish-white one lie peacefully in one another’s presence without a care for the world on the other side of the glass. The tannish-white one starts to lick and nudge at the chocolate brown one, eliciting what you made out to be a sleepy smile from the brown pup. You don’t know why, but witnessing such intimacy causes you and Chris to straighten, fidgeting and giggling nervously.

“I had fun today.”

“As did I. You’re better company than I thought you’d be,” you joke.

“Uh… thanks?” He answers reluctantly, causing you to giggle. “Maybe we could… hang out again sometime…?”

“Maybe we could.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.” There’s a beat of silence as you and Chris hold each other’s gaze. “So… you wanna take my number down?” you prompt him.

“Right! Right. Yeah, I should probably do that…” Chris stammers as he pulls out his phone. You take it from him, replacing it with your phone. You put in your number along with taking a silly picture for your contact, and he does the same.

Chris laughs at your shared child-like humor, and you revel in the moment. It was nice. It was normal. It was the first time you’d felt unmistakably connected with someone without feeling anxious of their motives or what the world thought of it in a very long time.

Time moved slowly when you were with Chris, it seemed to good to real life. But just like that, a flash snaps you and Chris out of your daze and back to reality.

You both look in the direction of the camera flash to find a young woman trying to pretend she didn’t just take a picture of the two of you. Chris turns back to you but doesn’t meet your eyes. Instead his head is hung low as he says “I really… hate that shit.”

“Preaching to the choir.” Chris looks up to your face, your gaze steady in the general direction of the perpetrator. “Makes me feel like an animal in a cage.” You say.

This is why Chris doesn’t mind celebrity companionship. You get it. You understand this strange aspect of his life that not many other people truly do. You also get the value of normalcy and privacy… and leaving when the party’s over.

“Let’s get out of here.” You say coldly and walk in the direction of the car.

Chris was baffled, to say the least. This was usually the part where you talk about how “fans” will cross invisible boundaries just because they know your face and name. However, you seemed uninterested in trauma bonding.

You were already buckled in when Chris caught up to you in the car. The energy the entire drive to your sister’s brownstone was… off. Nothing like it was earlier in the day. A simple flash changed your mood, and Chris was aching for it to go back to before. But no joke, or crank of the radio volume seemed to work.

When Chris pulls up to the curb, you immediately hop out, mumbling a final thank you to him.

“Hey,” Chris grabs your wrist gently, halting you, “You get kinda used to it. Ya know... after a while,” he says hoping you’d find comfort in his words.

You look down at where his hand was wrapped around your wrist. “Yeah… that’s what I'm afraid of... but thanks anyway.” Taking back your wrist from Chris, you turn to walk to the front door.

Chris is calling after you. He doesn't want to be emotionally intrusive, but he hopes you'll give him a chance to understand you. Help you. Comfort you. If only she'd turn around. You can't bear to look back at Chris. It will only remind you of everything good today, and why you can't have it.

Part 8 coming soon! What’d you think?

#chris evans fanfiction #chris evans imagine #chris evans x female reader #chris evans x reader #chris evans x y/n #chris evans fluff #chris evans x black reader #chris evans x you #chris evans one shot #slow burn series

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catboymingi · 4 years

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if you’re reading this...

navi/masterlist

pairing: mingi x reader

genre: fluff, some crack maybe?; best friends to lovers

word count: 2.6k

warnings: literally not a single one. implied frozen hate (i‘m joking)

for evigt / måske for evigt / skal vi sammen samme vej / og når i morgen får øjne og natten hviler sig / skal vi for evigt måske den samme vej - forever / maybe forever / we’ll take the same road together / and when tomorrow comes and the night goes to rest / we’ll maybe take the same road forever

it had become a routine that after your classes you’d walk to the café mingi was working at, getting a hot chocolate (to which he added an extra large amount of whipped cream while giving you a wink) and settling on whatever chair was free in order to study some until he got off work. sometimes you’d spice it up and get a different drink, and sometimes he’d spice it up and bring you a mystery drink to wherever you were studying. today, however, you just got the regular while you waited for your best friend to have time to entertain you. you’d had an exam today and really just wanted to yell about the phonetic inconsistencies you’d had to deal with, but you knew no one but mingi was willing to listen. so you had to wait for him, sighing in annoyance every couple minutes as you looked through your study materials.

when his shift was finally over you grabbed your stuff, throwing away the receipt and napkins that he insisted on giving you even though you told him time and time again you didn’t need them. then you rushed over to him, an exaggerated sigh of annoyance leaving your lips in order to make him ask you what was up. the boy wrapped his arms around you and laughed when you dropped your bag from the sudden embrace.

“you had an exam today. how’d it go?” this was what you loved about him - he always remembered these details about you and your life, he knew your schedule well enough to get worried when you were late, and he genuinely wanted to hear about things that were on your mind.

“don’t ask. how can a single language have this many rules that literally no one cares about? studying for this was just like this is the rule. yes we use it. no we don’t. you’re welcome.” you said the last sentences with a fake cheery voice, making your contempt for the exceptions that seemed to be more than the words that adhered to the rules obvious. then you kept on ranting while mingi grabbed his stuff, and while you left the café, and you first got done when you were already halfway to your place, glad that you got to let out some frustration.

“that sounds… hard”, he said, unsure of what else to say since he had no idea what exactly you were talking about. languages were your thing while maths was his, but you both still supported the incomprehensible monologues of the other whenever one of you got either really excited or really frustrated about their subject.

“if it were me, i would simply make the language follow the rules.” you laughed at that - he said exactly what you’d thought countless times before.

“mingi for language council president”, you joked and he looked at you with big, excited eyes.

“that’s a thing? would you vote me in?” now you had to laugh even more. he really didn’t know anything at all about your subject, but the excitement was adorable.

“sorry to disappoint, i don’t think that’d work. you can be the ceo of choosing the movie though, if that mends your broken heart even a little bit.” you were at your place now, and you could feel mingi vibrate with excitement next to you at the prospect of getting to choose the movie. he acted like a giant baby sometimes, but that only made you like him more. this was much better than someone who never got excited about anything.

you let both of you in, getting out your laptop and placing it on your desk chair next to the bed (you were a student, so you had neither a sofa nor a decent table, your desk being cluttered to a point where it was an act of mental gymnastics to even figure out it was a desk at all), joining the boy who’d already settled on your bed.

“what’s the choice?”, you asked, cursor hovering over the search bar.

“frozen.”

“of course.” you laughed but complied with his request, sitting back and leaning into his chest as the movie started playing. you loved movie nights with him - when you were spending time with him like this you were able to relax, and knowing he enjoyed it just as much only made it better. by now you’d seen several movies upwards of five times because they were your go-to choices, but it didn’t matter. it was less about the plot than it was about being close to him and enjoying each other’s presence even when you didn’t say much.

the night continued like this, your best friend choosing silly movies only and the both of you trying to one-up each other with bad jokes until you got tired and went to bed. this was how it usually went, and you wouldn’t want to miss this for anything in the world. going to bed together, waking up together, making early mornings a little easier to stand.

days went on like this, meeting mingi at work, spending evenings and nights together, and to you everything was as usual. you continued to not pay attention to your receipt when you ordered from your best friend, which resulted in him sending his coworker to you one day when you were again studying while waiting for him to get off. you looked up surprised when it wasn’t your personal delivery guy bringing you your drink, and were even more confused when you were handed a plastic cup instead of the regular porcelain one. then you noticed that there was something written on it with a sharpie.

if you’re reading this i’m in love with you.

you looked up at yeosang in shock - you barely even knew him! but he grinned at you and pointed at where mingi was unsuccessfully trying to hide behind the counter, making you realise just who had written the little note. you didn’t really know how to react - his shift wasn’t over yet and surrounded by customers wasn’t exactly the best situation for a serious conversation. but, once more to your surprise, the boy who’d delivered the cup to you went up to your best friend and told him to end early.

“it’s only like half an hour left anyway, i’ll deal.” you smiled at him with gratitude in your eyes as the tall boy slowly made his way towards you.

“do you want a reply right away or do you want to go home first?” from what you knew about him you knew his anxiety was probably eating him alive right now, but you also didn’t really want to talk about this in the middle of the street.

“let’s just go”, he replied, though he was still avoiding your gaze. you wanted to grab his hand, but you had to carry your stuff in one and the other was holding on to the cup with his confession; no way in hell were you going to throw that away. but then you realised he had his bag hanging over his shoulder, which left both his hands empty, made obvious by his nervous fiddling.

“can you carry my bag for me?”, you asked, and he immediately did. this gave you the chance to grab his hand and you smiled up at him as you gave it a reassuring squeeze. for the first time since you left he looked at you, and you could see the fear in his eyes. so you decided to hurry, not wanting him to have to deal with the anxiety by himself much longer.

you finally reached your place, and you didn’t even bother to take off your shoes when you got in before you asked him: “you confessed on a cup?” you tried to give him an appreciative smile, but to him it seemed more like a teasing one.

“well, i tried on your receipts, but you always threw them away without looking, so i just… didn’t know how else to.” he sounded so nervous, his deep voice trembling slightly, and you felt so bad.

“i didn’t know you’d written something there! i’m sorry”, you apologised, remorse apparent in your words, and this time it was his turn to smile at you reassuringly, though it wasn’t very convincing, his own anxiety making it hard for him to have any expression other than one of heart-crushing fear of your reaction.

“it’s fine. i could’ve just said something, too.”

you looked at the cup again, and you could see he’d tried his best to write prettily, which was why you hadn’t even recognised the handwriting as his at first. he’d really put in effort. and you were about to cry at how cute he was and how long he’d probably been trying to get your attention with his little notes and at all the cute confessions that were now in the trash and never to be seen again. but you stopped yourself before you got too sad at that thought, eyes focusing back on the message he’d left you.

“you mean this?”

“mm. i thought i should tell you.” his gaze was glued to the floor. “sorry i did it stupid like this though.”

you stared at him in shock. “take that back right now.”

“huh?” this wasn’t what he’d expected. he’d thought you’d turn him down or laugh at him or something, but not that you’d tell him to take it back.

“this is the sweetest thing ever and if you say it’s stupid one more time i’ll have to reconsider my feelings.”

this day was just full of surprises for him.

“your feelings?”

you smiled, holding the cup in front of his face with the message clearly readable to him. if you’re reading this i’m in love with you. and even though this technically confirmed that you reciprocated his feelings, he wanted to be sure.

“you mean it?” you nodded, looking him right in the eyes as you did so, hoping he could see that you were serious.

“pinky promise?” now you couldn’t help but laugh - this was such a mingi thing to do, making you pinky promise everything that held some importance to him. but it was another thing about him that made you fall in love with this idiot.

“pinky promise. silly.” the insult was more of a pet name, your voice almost as soft as your expression as you linked your pinky with his. after this he wrapped his arms around your waist, picking you up with a lot more energy than you’d expected him to have after having just worked a full shift. but here he was, all but jumping up and down with you in his arms, and as much as you liked it you had to stop him.

“mingi! the cup!” too late. the rest of your hot chocolate had been emptied over him, serving as a rather unconventional hair treatment. you were both laughing as he let you down and you dragged him to your bathroom, insisting on washing his hair right there.

“it’s gonna get sticky if i don’t” was the reason you gave him, but really you just felt soft and affectionate and happy and wanted to be emotional without him being able to look at you while you said sappy things. so you had him take off his shirt (which had received some of the chocolate treatment as well) and kneel down in front of the shower while you rinsed his hair with warm water.

“is this temperature fine?” you’d checked it on your hand, but you knew that the scalp was always a different story.

“it’s nice. this is nice.” even though you couldn’t see it you knew he was smiling, and you smiled as well.

“you were actually scared i didn’t like you?”

“mm.” you laughed in disbelief.

“you’re incredible. i all but moved in at the café just to see you!”

“mm.”

“i let you choose the movies even though i know you’re gonna choose frozen for the fourth time this week!”

“it’s a good movie!”, he defended himself. but you weren’t done.

“i’ve had you over so much i might as well have you join me in the rent contract, you’ve become more essential for a good night’s sleep than my blanket, i regularly steal your clothes, i-”

he interrupted you, laughing. he knew that if you weren’t washing his hair right now, you’d be using your fingers to count just how many things you thought had been dead giveaways.

“okay, i get it. but you didn’t realise either, so we’re even.”

“mm.” you turned off the water and yelled at him not to move when he tried to get out the shower before you’d put a towel on his head.

“now you can move.”

“how generous”, he teased you before sitting up, making sure his shoulders were dry enough to not drip on the floor either.

“if you can’t appreciate this i don’t think you deserve the honour of dating me.” this time it was your turn to tease him, but you hadn’t anticipated the reaction you got. he turned around so quick that he almost fell on his butt, staring at you wide-eyed.

“dating you?” he sounded so shocked that you weren’t sure if he liked the idea or hated it. so you decided to keep joking just so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself if he didn’t want to.

“i was thinking about it, but now i don’t think i want to”, you said, pretending to be sulky. but it seemed like he was still so in shock that he didn’t catch on to the fact that you were joking.

“o-of course i appreciate this, and you! and you. i’m-” you hadn’t expected him to actually take you seriously, so it took a moment to realise that he did, but as soon as you did you interrupted him.

“i’m joking! i’m joking”, and as if to convince him you smiled at him, the smile you usually gave him when he’d forgotten to bring something you’d asked him to and felt guilty. the ‘it’s okay, you didn’t do anything wrong, don’t worry’ smile.

“oh. so you’ll date me?”

“mm. but can you ask again? this isn’t very, like… romantic.” this time your smile was apologetic, but his was so bright you were sure that if you turned off the light right now you’d still be able to see perfectly.

he was still on the floor and made use of that as he shifted to be on one knee, looking up at you who was looking at him with a mix of shock, adoration and a held back laugh at his silliness on your face.

“y/n, will you be my girlfriend, wash my hair whenever someone spills their beverage on it, be there to remind me to not make a mess, and make me smile for as long as you can stand me?” mingi was being goofy to make it less awkward for the two of you, but you knew he meant it anyway, and even though you almost burst out laughing at his proposal your heart was beating faster than it should, your stomach feeling tingly and weird but in a good way.

“yes. now get up, you’ll get cold.” and with that you grabbed his hand, dragging him to your bed as you set up your laptop. it was time to watch frozen for the fifth time this week, but as you settled against your now-boyfriends warm chest and felt him kiss the top of your head with water dripping from his still wet hair onto your nose, you realised that you’d watch frozen every day for the rest of your life if that meant you’d get these situations for the rest of your life.

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 4 years

Text

Chapter 49: Assembling and Dissembling

Becoming The Mask

Bold italics are trollish.

+=+

There were, Barbara learned, two possible meanings for the word 'troll', depending on the context.

A Brief Recapitulation of Troll Lore, Volume 1 of 47 sat open on the table, along with a dictionary, and a sheet of paper where Jim had written out the trollish alphabet and the phonetic equivalent of each letter's sound in English.

Blinky had offered to teach Barbara to read trollish, so they could set up a book swap. He was intrigued by her medical textbooks. She was keen to learn more about this strange magical world she had found herself tied to. Jim had volunteered to teach Barbara instead, since living together would make it easier to work lessons around Barbara's unfixed schedule.

Trolls had a mostly phonetic alphabet. They didn't seem to use capitalization, but did have accents that appeared around certain words to indicate significance. Jim and Barbara had gotten onto this tangent when she noticed 'troll' was written in two different ways.

There was 'troll' meaning 'a person, a member of the species', which was the kind of troll meant by Jim's title 'Troll-Who-Is-The-Hunter'.

And then there was 'troll', usually prefixed by a tribe name, which meant 'member of the tribe'.

"The pronunciation is the same for both," said Jim. "The second one is probably what most trolls mean when they say Changelings aren't trolls, since we've been disowned and the Gumm-Gumms don't acknowledge us as full tribe members. Up till we get a Familiar we can't exactly pass as being a different species."

"Disowned?" Barbara repeated. No one had mentioned that part when she'd asked where Changelings came from.

(It might explain what Jim had said about not having a name before getting a Familiar, though, if trollish disowning involved stripping the person of their entire name rather than just the family name.)

Jim made an uncertain noise and wiggled his hand. "Sort of disowned, sort of presumed dead. Basically, after we're taken and altered, we can't go back to our first families even if we do find out who they were."

… What?

"I'm going to need you explain all of that. Starting with the –" god, which bit to even start with? "– with the 'taken' part."

"Okay?"

Jim shrugged and turned in his chair to face her more directly.

"So, Gumm-Gumms used to raid other troll communities, and sometimes they would take babies who would then be adopted into the tribe and raised as Gumm-Gumms. That sort of thing's happened with humans, too, right? And after the Gumm-Gumms allied with Pale Lady, they started giving some of those whelps to her, and she'd turn us into Changelings and swear us back into Gumm-Gumm service."

"Who's the Pale Lady? And why babies?" What was it with trolls and stealing babies?!

"Our Creator. You don't just get Changelings naturally; you have to turn a troll into one. It's safer the younger we are but it's still really hard. She's the only one powerful enough to do it."

Jim sighed.

"She disappeared centuries ago. There probably aren't going to be anymore Changelings after my generation."

That didn't exactly sound like a bad thing, from Barbara's perspective. No more kidnapped children, magically mutated to a point where members of their own species hesitated to acknowledge them as being the same species, kidnapping and stealing the faces and lives of other children in order to blend in …

"Anyway," Jim continued, "after a raid, any parents who'd lost their kids would declare them dead, since the Gumm-Gumms were too strong to launch a rescue mission against, and 'my whelp is dead' was easier emotionally – you know, for closure – than dealing with, 'if I ever see my whelp again, it will be as an enemy'. Since we're not old enough to remember our first families clearly, we can't track them down later, and since we're enemy agents by that point, it isn't safe to try."

He hooked an arm over his chair's backrest, which was beside him with the way he was sitting.

"I mean, that doesn't stop everybody, but those stories all end badly."

Barbara felt her breathing get faster and shallower. Oh no. Oh no. Had she – she had – no wonder Jim hesitated to call her 'Mom' anymore – pushing him away like she did must've stomped right on that sense of rejection, that fear of a parent seeing him as an enemy.

"We're getting way off-topic, though," said Jim.

His tone had stayed light and casual the entire time. He turned back to the table and the book and the page of notes.

"So, when 'troll' is spelled with this accent, you can infer that the word right before it is a tribe name, but the tribe names can also appear on their own. They all seem to have this same accent by the first rune," pointing to it. "At first, I thought it translated as a Significant Capital Letter, and it probably does, but it only seems to be used in this context, so it probably means 'this is the name of a tribe'."

+=+

AAARRRGGHH tapped the wall of the tunnel leading into Vendel's workshop, a hollowed-out space just within the Heartstone.

He tried to smile reassuringly at the younglings he and Blinky escorting. Mary and Toby smiled back. Claire and Darci tried, but their smiles looked as strained as AAARRRGGHH's felt. Jim was looking the other way, keeping AAARRRGGHH and Blinky and the humans in his peripheral vision while he watched for anyone else approaching where they were.

"Enter."

Darci had her arms crossed over the book the younglings had been writing, with stories about their families. AAARRRGGHH and Blinky had read it already. AAARRRGGHH didn't think it would sway Vendel on letting more humans know trolls existed, but the humans wanted to try anyway.

AAARRRGGHH was ready to physically carry all five of them back out again if they started pushing Trollmarket's Elder too hard, before Vendel could outright ban further discussion of the matter.

(They didn't have the other Changeling with them this time, so if it came to that point, AAARRRGGHH would be able to put Jim on his shoulders with the rest. Jim seemed protective of his fellow Changelings, so AAARRRGGHH had figured last time that Jim would be more comfortable being carried where he could keep an eye on – Enrique? Not Enrique? – and ensure the smaller one was being well-treated, and AAARRRGGHH didn't think he couldn't keep that strange canopied rolling chair secure on his back.)

Vendel was standing in front of his favourite chair, with a drink and a book on the armrest. Uh-oh. This might not be the best time to start asking favours.

"This is – about – what we asked before," said Mary. "About telling our families where we go, and who we see, here."

"I am still against it," said Vendel flatly.

"We hoping – we hope you will be more – more open to think about it," said Toby, "if you know more about our families. To know they can be trusted. Trusting?"

"Trusted," said Blinky. "You had it right the first time."

The humans would also have to be trusting, to accept that their whelps were safe among trolls, but AAARRRGGHH didn't think this was the right time to say, 'both work'.

"So we made a book," said Darci, holding it out, "with family stories. For you to read. To know them without meeting."

Vendel made no move to take the book.

"It's in trollish," said Claire.

There was another awkward pause.

Claire took the book from Darci and put it on Vendel's workbench.

"Will you read it?" she pressed.

"If I agree to read your book," said Vendel slowly, looking at each youngling in turn, "and once I do, I still refuse to expose trollkind to additional humans, you will accept my decision and cease to push this issue."

It was not so much an offer as a declaration.

AAARRRGGHH probably should've scouted out what Vendel was doing in advance, or something. Or maybe Blinky should've officially set up a meeting. Or AAARRRGGHH should've pulled them all out of there as soon as he realized they were intruding on Vendel's rare leisure time and so Vendel was going into the conversation already irritated.

The humans exchanged looks between themselves. He couldn't read most human expressions easily. AAARRRGGHH could recognize 'distress' from sheer exposure, and there was some of that, but there was something else mixed in as well.

"We accept your terms," said Claire and Darci, not quite overlapping. Claire continued. "If you give our reasoning full consideration and still find it lacking, we will not keep asking for permission."

Vendel picked up the book. "Then I will read it."

"So, to be clear," said Jim, after they left the Heartstone, "when he says 'no', you're just going to tell them without permission."

"Yeah," said Mary easily. Blinky spluttered.

"Just making sure we're all on the same page." Jim's jaw was tense. The lines on his armour pulsed closer to blue than silver. AAARRRGGHH wanted to reach over and pat his back, but Daylight hung there, and AAARRRGGHH had no desire to burn his hand on the magical sword.

Moving slow, so the Changeling could see him coming, AAARRRGGHH nudged Jim's side. Jim veered away.

+=+

"And Jim, stop by my office after school, please," Mr Strickler had said when class ended that morning. It was now afternoon, and Jim was dutifully reporting in.

Stricklander opened his pen to reveal the hidden key, and opened the partition between the mundane and magical sides of his office.

"How does that not mess up everything on your shelves?" Jim asked, gesturing to where the wall had slid away, to be hidden inside a hollow wall on a different story.

"It moves smoothly, and most of my curios have wide bases. I also added a few stability enchantments when I set everything up, in case of earthquakes, and those take care of the rest … Ask Dr Lake if she'd like some around the house, along with those security spells on the tunnel."

Stricklander opened the front panel of a box with an ornate, glowing crystal on the lid. He murmured while stroking the air around the crystal. Jim might have thought it was an incantation to unlock to box if he didn't recognize the crystal as an antramonstrum shell.

"I'm with Nomura," Jim said when Stricklander stopped chanting. "That seems like a risky thing to have in a school."

"It's well-behaved and well-contained," said Stricklander. "And it's not why you're here. You're here for this."

He held a blue stone, faintly glowing, with a colder light than the Amulet gave off. It was shaped like a pyramid with spikes near the point. Jim accepted the crystal and looked at the pyramid's base.

It had a pupil. Hazy, but there. Jim gasped and closed his hand around it. Stricklander did say he had access to …

"The Eye?"

"His Eye."

"It's … still living stone." Definitely not a sphere; were trolls' eyes not eyeballs or was the shape distorted from how it had been cut out of his face? "Can he still see out of it?"

"That would take very specific enchantments, which would need to be planned and cast before the eye was removed."

"… Have you ever done that?"

"No."

Jim stole a tissue from the box on Stricklander's desk to wrap the crystal, got his pencil case out of his sweatshirt's stomach pocket, and zipped Gunmar's Eye inside.

"I'm going to be out of town for a short while," said Stricklander. "The school is under the impression a distant relative of mine has passed on and I'm needed for the reading of the will and so on; nothing so time sensitive I couldn't arrange lesson plans for the substitute, but also something that might drag on unexpectedly."

To a more experienced agent, this might sound condescending, but Jim appreciated when Stricklander explained the reasoning behind his chosen cover stories. It gave Jim a better understanding of how to craft his own.

"The Janus Order will be answerable to Jennifer Smith in my absence. She'll likely continue the lockdown of the main base. I expect to return within two weeks … hopefully having acquired something else of use."

Maybe he has a lead on the Birthstone, Jim thought hopefully.

+=+

The Trollhunter came to Vendel's workroom alone the following night.

"Vendel, Elder of Trollmarket," he greeted.

Vendel braced himself; the last time the Trollhunter had used that stilted, formal tone, Vendel had been presented with a severed head, and the boy seemed honestly surprised not to be praised for such … Gumm-Gumm-ish behaviour.

Vendel had done his best to accommodate him later – it was an important victory, after all – and ensure the rest of Trollmarket would not panic over what their Trollhunter had done.

"I have the first of the Triumbric Stones, the Eye of Gunmar."

At least he had it wrapped in some kind of satchel this time, rather than flaunting the severed body part.

"Blinky said you would know what to do with it."

Vendel considered this. It was a few decades early in the Trollhunter's training, but it would be apropos. He went to a shelf and retrieved a black leather box, which he placed on his worktable.

"The Triumbric Stones, once gathered, must be cleaved. Humans cleave stones to unlock their beauty. I presume you already have some concept of cleaving stones to unlock their power."

"How you groom the Heartstone for healthy growth," said Jim. "Or the body, symbolically." He touched his own arm, indicating where one of Vendel's carvings encircled his bicep. Or did the Changeling have a carving there, too, in his troll form? "Or the body, literally, when a troll is transgender. Glug told us about King Quag. Or like when a troll is made a Changeling."

Vendel scowled at that – that obscene, blasphemous comparison to a sacred skill – but held his tongue.

"I guess that one is more like metamorphosis," Jim added, more quietly. Vendel took it as a peace offering.

"There are exponentially more elements than the humans have yet discovered. Their properties account for much of how magic works. Merlin's Amulet is a relic of unfathomable power. It is said, when he forged it, he made it malleable, so that each Trollhunter could combat dangers that even its creator could not foresee. I have, under my guardianship, a few remaining stones that Trollhunters past have used to unlock their potential."

Vendel opened the box. Jim leaned in, eyes wide and gleaming in the reflected light from the crystals.

"Stones that will grant nimbleness," the Aequati Stone, used by Araknak the Agile to traverse any obstacle;"a glimpse into your enemy's mind," the Omniscien Stone, used by Deya the Deliverer to stop Merlin from being so damned cryptic all the time, according to what she'd told Vendel's father Rundle after returning from her quest to punch the wizard in the face;"even the power to walk in daylight."

"Wait, why isn't that one in the Amulet always?" Jim asked.

"The Umbra Stone is particularly temperamental and difficult to wield. Most Trollhunters do not have time to learn it."

"Shouldn't that one be first priority?"

"The Trollhunter is rarely aboveground during the day." The current one was, but he was an outlier to the pattern in every other respect as well.

"And when they are, they die. Kanjigar might still be alive if he'd had this stone with him." Jim looked away from the stones and up at Vendel. "Give me the Umbra Stone. I will make it part of the Amulet forever. No future Trollhunter will be killed by sunlight then."

Vendel closed the box.

"You should learn to properly cleave a stone before you start altering the Amulet. You do not need the Umbra Stone. Show me the Eye."

Jim glared. For a moment Vendel thought the boy would grab the box and try to steal the Umbra Stone from it, though he'd have to guess which one it was. Instead, Jim opened the satchel he still held, and extracted the Eye of Gunmar from its soft white wrapping. Some of the wrapping tore on the crystal's sharp protrusions.

Vendel put the box away, pretending he didn't notice the Changeling obviously making mental note of where he kept it. He led Jim over to his grindstone and picked up a stone about the size of the Eye with a set of tongs.

"You should be in troll form for this. The subtleties will be easier to observe."

Nothing he had read in human books suggested they had an understanding or interest in stone shaping for purposes other than aesthetics or building construction. Also, Vendel had some idea how squishy humans were – he'd feel less unnerved by a troll standing so close to the grindstone, where chips could fly.

Jim went rigid as stone without actually transforming.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

Vendel rolled his eyes. "Would you prefer to have Blinkous or Aarghaumont present as a chaperone?"

"It's not that I expect you would hurt me," though, from the way he was inching back, he obviously hadn't ruled it out either, "it's more, what if someone else comes in and sees?"

"Without your armour, there would be nothing to see. Trollmarket is highly populated and popular. I doubt you look so unusual that you stand out to a casual glance." Blending in was part of what the Changelings had been designed for, after all. "It would not be the first time I demonstrated proper cleaving techniques to a visiting student."

Jim instead closed the faceplate of his helmet and turned his head to the entrance of Vendel's workroom. The entire suit of armour flashed blue as he did, responding to its wearer's distress.

… No, Vendel realised a moment later, when Jim physically pulled the Amulet from his chest to dismiss the armour. That blue flash had been the Changeling's transformation.

He looked so young.

Too young, in fact – the Battle of Killahead had been just over 400 years ago, and the whelp standing before Vendel now couldn't be even 200 yet –

"How old are you?"

"What? Probably a bit less than 450, why?"

Jim's brow ridges crinkled adorably – a Changeling should not be cute, but whelps were without trying – and then he made a sound of realization.

"Oh – oh, the age distortion. You've never met a 'young Changeling', have you? This is how old my Familiar would be if we never swapped, not how old I am. I'll start aging like a troll again once I hit human adulthood. Or catch up to the age I would've been without the age pause. We don't exactly have ways of testing those theories."

"… This is how young your human friends are, then."

"16 for a human is about 240 for a troll if I've done the math right."

He hadn't – he looked about half that age – although maybe humans had a delayed puberty? That didn't make much sense, for creatures so short lived, but it could happen. If they hit puberty in their second century instead of it marking their first – or, the equivalent thereof – that would at least make Vendel feel better about how ridiculously young the Trollhunter looked, a child should never have been even considered by the Amulet –

"… Should I switch back?" Jim asked, in English. He was wearing a human-like style of clothing, too, Vendel noted, as he started to get over the initial shock and take in more of the boy's appearance.

"No," Vendel decided. He picked the sample stone back up, having dropped it from his tongs when he'd been startled. "This is important for your education and your duties. Watch closely."

Jim was attentive, asking intelligent questions about how Vendel decided which planes to smooth and which angles to cut. Despite the boy's illusion of youth, Vendel felt confident allowing Jim to cleave the Eye himself.

(Stones always worked best for the one who cleaved them, no matter how well they worked for anyone else.)

When the shaping was done, Jim opened the back of the Amulet to insert the new stone, and Vendel saw another stone already in it. He thought for a moment that Jim had stolen the Umbra Stone already.

"What is that?"

"Uh … Remember when you let me bring a Heartstone piece to Draal? When I got it home, I noticed this tiny piece had chipped off. I didn't think he would miss it. I read in one of Blinky's books about Trollhunters putting stones in the Amulet and wanted to try. It lets me summon a knife." Blatantly trying to distract Vendel, Jim asked, "What do you think the Eye will do?"

"It's impossible to know for sure. Properly cut gemstones work in ways one can never predict – only discover."

"There must be patterns. Mineral type? Crystal lattice structure? Colour, age … nutrition?"

"The trollish classification of stones is rather more complex than the human one," said Vendel. "Minute differences in composition or the environment in which the stone develops can result in vast differences between two crystals of the same size and overall type. It is astronomically rare for stones to be identical."

Jim turned into a human again before he summoned his armour.

"I'm going to train and unlock the potential of the Eye. I will be back for the Umbra Stone."

Vendel watched him go, and slowly opened the book the human whelps had given him.

If they were really that young, no wonder they wanted their parents.

Honestly, it was a wonder their parents hadn't wondered where their whelps were wandering off to and beaten down the market door already.

If Vendel wanted to head off a human invasion, he needed to know who he'd be dealing with.

+=+

Previous Chapter (Heartstone pieces? In the Janus Order base? It’s more likely than you think)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Various characters grapple with insecurity for various reasons)

So, how about that latest Tales of Arcadia news, eh? Wizards release date, August 7th? Exciting! I'm not expecting it to change much of what's planned for this fic, but I said that about Season 3 and about 3Below, too.

I do know some stuff expected to come up which I want to know for other stories but also plan to ignore for this one: when exactly the Battle of Killahead Bridge took place, when Deya trapped Gunmar in the Darklands.

In this fic, as Vendel says, that happened 400-odd years before the main storyline, in the late 1500s, shortly before the trolls stowed away on the Mayflower in 1620. (And after Angor Rot got his soul ripped out by Morgana in 1297, because why would he need to protect his people from Gunmar if Gunmar was already trapped in the Darklands, huh, novel spin-offs?!)

This was a number I came up with back when I thought trolls only lived 1500-1600 years, based on tweet from Guillermo del Toro; and that Blinky was around 600 years old, as opposed to just having actively studied humans for that amount of time, based on that line about the human dances he's witnessed; and that Draal, obviously younger than Blinky, was either a whelp during the Battle of Killahead Bridge or not born until afterwards (rather than fighting in the battle) and that was a factor in why Kanjigar didn't want him involved in Trollhunting, because Draal was part of the first generation to grow up 'in peace'; and likewise Bular was a whelp during that battle, which was why he was the only Gumm-Gumm not trapped in the Darklands, or he was born after and sent to the surface by Fetch because he was the only one small enough, and either way he was basically raised by the Janus Order; and that trolls had an approximate 15:1 ratio with humans for age, based on the line about bowel control.

However, I have altered troll aging rates a little, based on the idea of Blinky participating in the Battle of Killahead. If he's 600-ish in 2016, that would make him only 200-ish in the late 1500s/early 1600s – which would also, proportionately, be the same age or younger than the humans are. (16x15=240)

So, how to have Vendel be scandalized at how young Jim is when a troll that age is apparently fit for combat? Shuffle the stages of development.

I decided, in this universe, trolls reach their full size a century or so before they actually become adults. So, a mid-adolescent troll would actually be 120, translating in human terms to be about 8 years old – still a child rather than a 'young adult'.

In other lore, I made up the names for the Aequati Stone and the Umbra Stone, based on mangled Latin for 'balancing' and 'shade' respectively. The Omniscein Stone, and Deya going on a quest to punch Merlin for being cryptic, came from the spin-off comic The Felled. 'Omnisceinstone' was all one word in the comic but that doesn't fit the pattern set up by the Aspectus Stone, the only one named on-screen in the show.

#Changeling Jim #Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Becoming The Mask chapters #fanfiction #Dr Barbara Lake #Vendel #AAARRRGGHH #Mary Wang #Darci Scott #Tobias Domzalski #Claire Nuñez #Blinkous Galadrigal #Walter Strickler #My Fanfiction #Monday is fanfic day!

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tanadrin · 4 years

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A Sketch for a Modern Gothic Alphabet

Inspired by all the AOE2 I’ve been playing today, and the unfortunate lack of Gothic-language unit responses in said game, I sat down and started sketching out a Modern Gothic conlang: basically, what would happen if you gave the language of the Goths the Hebrew treatment, and tried to cobble together a functional language out of the attested bits we have.

Now, I don’t think this would be nearly as big a project as it might seem; even though the Gothic-language literature isn’t nearly as extensive as other ancient Germanic literatures, our goal is not some intangible lexicographic “purity.” Anything we do not have words for, and can’t plausibly calque, we’re going to borrow--but the existing vocabulary may prove surprisingly effective, e.g., a word like thius, thiwos, “servant” > “employee.” Bandi, bandjos means “band” as in “group of people,” but why can’t it also mean “band” as in “rock band”? If it works for English, it will work for Gothic, I say.

But I think the alphabet is an opportunity to get really creative. The Goths wrote in an alphabet adapted for their own language, which I’ve heard described as “basically Uncial Greek;” but it also seems to borrow liberally from the Latin alphabet and from Germanic runes in a couple of places, and it’s interesting and different enough on its own that I think simply squeezing the language into a Latin or Greek transcription wouldn’t do it justice aesthetically. Now, the attested Gothic alphabet did not make case distinctions; “majuscule” and “miniscule” script in the Early Middle Ages weren’t used to convey information as we use capitalization, they were simply stylistic variants. Some of the Gothic letters resemble capitals, and some resemble miniscules; and when a letter is the same in both Greek and Latin majuscule, whether we choose the Greek or Latin miniscule is going to be important. We have to make sure each letter is visually distinct in both forms, after all.

So this is how I would design a modern version of the Gothic alphabet.

Αα - ans. [a] or [a:], transliterated <a>. Pronounced as in father. Most of the letter names are the reconstructed reflex of the Proto-Germanic name for the corresponding rune; ans is no exception. Old--that is to say, real--Gothic has both long and short [a], and does not in writing distinguish the two. For our purposes, we will write long [a] doubled: <aa>

Ββ - bairkna. [b] or [v], but always transliterated [b]. [v] is the allophone of [b] immediately after a vowel, or between two vowels; as the sound doesn’t otherwise occur in Gothic, there’s no ambiguity here, and we don’t need to mark it. Loanwords with [v] in them will probably get borrowed as [b] or [v] depending on the environment the sound occurs in.

Γγ - giba. [g] or [ɣ], transliterated <g>. [ɣ] is a fricative, pronounced in the exact same spot as [g]; like [v], it’s just an allophone of <g>.

Δδ - dagz. [d] or [ð], as in English then. Transliterated <d>.

Εε - aihws. Represents [e:], which is similar to the first part of the diphthong in English “day,” or the Spanish e. Although the names of the Germanic rune-letters were originally acrostic (starting, or at least containing, the sound they represented), sound change in Gothic means that the <ai> in aihws is actually pronounced like the e in English let.

Uυ - qairna. [kʷ], transliterated <q>. This sound is a labialized [k], very close to the qu in English quern or quiz. Up until now, we have been rather slavishly following the Greek alphabet, in both order and names of our letters; however, in qairna, we have no Greek equivalent. At least, not in the age of the Bishop Wulfilas, who was responsible for first writing down the Gothic language--there is the archaic Greek letter qoppa, source of the Latin q; why Wulfilas did not use the Latin letter, I don’t know, and I don’t know why he chose a letter which was bound to cause confusion among Greek-speakers, resembling as it does a miniscule upsilon (had Greek miniscules even been developed by the 4th century?). But, much like the Turks turning dotted and dotless i into two different letters with distinct capitals, we’re going to split the difference and divide upsilon in two. The lowercase quairna is a u-shaped crescent, without the right-hand stem. The uppercase is a larger version of the same. Using U and its small capital variant would be an excellent typographical approximation.

Ζζ - aizo. [z], transliterated <z>. Identical to modern English. Gothic did not rhotacize [z] in the same way that the other Germanic languages did, retaining a clear distinction with [s]. There is no satisfactory rune-name for this letter; the name chosen is arbitrary, on the pattern of English phonetic names, with some consideration given to the fact that [z] did not occur at the beginning of words in Gothic.

Ηh - hagal. [h] or [χ], transliterated [h]. Attic Greek had no letter H, but the Latin letter H was based on a version of that alphabet where eta retained its original value, [h]. As the old Gothic <h> strongly resembles a miniscule Latin [h], we will simply borrow that letter. Alone or at the beginning of a word, <h> sounds as in English; in a consonant cluster, or in the final position, it is a fricative with the value of German or Scottish <ch>.

Ψψ - thaurnus. [θ], transliterated <th>. The question of why a literate churchman, whose best reference for the written word was Greek, would not simply use theta for the dental fricative continues to vex me; perhaps he thought psi was more like the runic thorn, whose name this letter shares.

Ιι - eis. [ɪ], transliterated <i>. Identical to iota, a dotless i. By the time the Goths encountered the Greek-speaking world, the spelling conventions of the tongue were centuries out of date. The diphthong originally represented by <ei> was now pronounced as a long [i] (the sound in “deep” or “scream”), and so that digraph was chosen for the long [i] sound. Its short equivalent--pronounced as in English “hit” or “bill”--got iota.

Κκ - konja. [k], transliterated <k>. Identical to Greek kappa.

Λλ - lagus. [l], transliterated <l>, in both cases as in “lake” (which is what lagus means). Identical to lambda.

Μμ - manna. [m], transliterated <m>. Although the small form of the Greek mu, with the compressed peaks and the left-hand stem is often confused by people familiar with only the Latin alphabet for “u” or a letter like it, and lowercase manna would seem already to be similar to two other letters (one of which we have not yet encountered), I have chosen to retain this form because it is the miniscule corresponding to the Greek letter. And I like descenders.

Nν - nauths. [n], transliterated <n>. Since there is no [v] in this alphabet, there’s no worry we’ll confuse the small form of nu with that letter.

Gg - jer. [j], transliterated <j>. Here we have our first real problem. You see, this isn’t a G. If you look at the letter as written in Gothic manuscripts, it looks a lot like a Latin G, but the hook is a right-hand descender only. It doesn’t go inside the body of the letter, as far as I can tell. What this really is is a C with a descending right stem or hook, like the IPA letter for the velar nasal... but that letter doesn’t exist in any font I’m aware of, and would look almost identical to a capital G. So here I’m approximating it with G, and approximating its miniscule form with a lowercase (but note, single-storey) g, because I expect the desired lowercase form (a small c with a slightly elongated descending right hook) would look very much like a g where the body of the letter was open.

Ƞn - uurus. [u] or [u:], transliterated <u>. As with <a>, a doubled <u> signifies a long vowel, not originally distinguished in written Gothic. The original letter looks like a small and large version of Latin miniscule n (where the capital does not descend below the line).

Ππ - pairtha. [p], transliterated <p>. Equivalent to pi. Not a very common sound in Gothic, due to Grimm’s Law, but found in lots of Greek loanwords like pascha, “Easter.”

ɥ - hjo. [dʒ], transliterated <hj>. Now we are really far off the beaten track. You see, the Gothic alphabet had two letters with no sound-values at all. The Greek alphabet gave numeric values to each letter; when set off with dots or an overline, it was intended that you should read them as a number, and not a word. Gothic retained that convention, and used similar values for each letter in the Gothic alphabet; but it had two more numerals than it had need of for letters, including one that looks like <h>, rotated 180 degrees. Rather than strike these letters from the alphabet, I’ve elected to keep them, and to arbitrarily reassign them to values I think will be useful for modern Gothic loanwords. To distinguish the affricate value of <j> from the (more common outside English) liquid version, I have prepended an arbitrary <h> in the transcription. This is also a handy ex-post-facto justification for why the name of my pseudo-Gothic kingdom on my minecraft server is spelled the same way, since originally it was spelled as “Hjairsil” only becaused that looked amusingly like Gothic. Unfortunately, I have no font on my computer that can render the rare capital form of this letter! As one of those IPA symbols that occasionally gets dragooned into service as a real honest-to-god letter, it does have a capital, at codepoint U+A79D--but my computer cannot render it, and I don’t know if yours can either. The name of this letter is arbitrary, chosen phonetically.

Ρρ - raida. [r], transliterated <r>. The old Gothic alphabet actually uses a symbol that looks like a Latin capital R, with a right-hand descender. If one desired to use a version of this letter more like that one, I would use Rʀ, as the open lowercase r feels rather out of place.

Ss or Σς - sojil. [s], transliterated <s>. The letter S is, after all, only a variant of sigma; I would not use the closed, medial form σ, due to its similarity to other letters, and the fact that the old Gothic letter resembles Latin S and final Greek ς, but not σ.

Ττ - tius. [t], transliterated <t>. Equivalent to Greek tau.

Yʏ - winja. [w] or [ɪ]; transliterated [w]. Wulfilas uses upsilon, whose majuscule is identical to English Y; the letter evidently retains its identity as upsilon specifically, because it transcribes that letter (originally pronounced [y], like German ü) in certain names when they appear in Gothic, though by that time it would have had the value of a short [i].

Ϝϝ - faihu. [f], transliterated <f>. Possibly a capital and small capital F would be better; but digamma is an authentic, though rare Greek letter, which is virtually identical.

Χχ - iggws. [k], transliterated <k>. Greek chi.

ʘ - hwair. [ʍ], transliterated [hw]. Another letter with a case problem: hwair resembles theta slightly, but also monocular o, or the IPA symbol for the bilabial click. I would prefer the distinct sizes of the monocular o, rather than theta (which looks very similar in both upper and lowercase forms) but my computer doesn’t support that character.

Ωω - othal. [o:], transliterated <o>. The Gothic letter strongly resembles both the Greek omega and the odal-rune, whose name it inherits; but it definitely denotes the long [o] sound only, the short [o] being a digraph.

Cc - tsho. [tʃ], transliterated <tsh>. Tsho replaces the final letter of the Gothic alphabet, which is either the tyr-rune, or or the Greek sampi. <c> with the affricate value pairs neatly with <g>, and will be of more use in loanwords.

The transcription scheme should ensure that Gothic spelling is unambiguously recoverable from a Latin transliteration.

Old Gothic had several digraphs, which modern Gothic will carry over intact. <gg> represented the nasal [ŋ] (ng in sing) in Greek, and does so in Gothic as well. The digraph <gw> represents [gʷ], parallel to <q>. Note that this introduces an ambiguity: the trigraph <ggw> can represent either [ŋw] or [ggʷ], an ambiguity present in the original orthography; but this is not an especially common sequence of letters. The trigraph <ddj> has an uncertain value according to historical linguistics; I have opted to abolish this uncertainty by assigning it the value of a geminate palatal stop [ɟː], in accordance with some reconstructions.

The two vowel digraphs <ai> and <au> present an irritating problem. Rather against the principle of parsimony, and the principle that ancient peoples tended to construct or adapt writing systems neither more nor less complicated than necessary for their tongues, I tend to be of the opinion that spelling should usually be considered to strongly reflect pronunciation. Yet these two digraphs appear in positions that have distinctive vowels in Proto-Germanic; and on that basis, it has usually been the custom in Gothic grammars and textbooks to distinguish three values for each. There is good reason for doing so on etymological grounds, if you wish to keep distinct the Proto-Germanic reflexes of each appearance of each digraph; but this seems improbable. Improbable, but not impossible--since there are cases where these digraphs must reflect true diphthongs, rather than the flattened values they otherwise would likely represent, especially in Greek proper nouns. By arbitrary fiat, modern Gothic will use <ai> to represent only long and short [ε]; and will use <au> to represent both long and short [ɔ], except in the aforementioned Greek names and modern loanwords.

<iu> is a falling diphthong, not two distinct vowels; double consonants are always pronounced as such (e.g., <nn> as in “unnamed”, not “unaimed”). Gothic has a stress-accent system like English, and like English does not mark stress. Punctuation follows the Greek norm, as used in modern times: guillemets or dashes set off quotations, a raised point substitutes for the semicolon (which is instead the question mark), the decimal point is the comma, and the digit separator is the full stop. Proper names, and the start of a sentence are capitalized, as is each word in a title.

#modern gothic #conlanging

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ever-searching · 4 years

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FFXIVWrite #26: When Pigs Fly

(Part of the FFXIV September writing challenge; takes place ca 1,5 years ago)

“I am not sure if I see any purpose in this, master.”

“It’s education,” G’ilas said and nodded sagely. He was willing to let Merces off the hook for calling him ‘master’ this once. “You need to learn the ways of the world, and besides, it will be fun.”

It might have been a nigh impossible task, but G’ilas was determined to do it.

He would make Merces laugh or tell a joke – or preferably both.

They were sitting at the Drowning Wench, G’ilas’s favourite bar in Limsa Lominsa. They had run into his acquaintance Brenda and invited the songster to join them for half a bell before duty would call them elsewhere. After introducing Brenda to Merces and the other way around as well as ordering drinks for everyone, G’ilas decided to give his mission a try.

“Brenda! You’re a minstrel and good with words, so you probably know quite a few jokes, too,” he started, looking at their new companion expectantly. “Can you help me come up with something for Merces here?”

Brenda looked up from their glass of sparkling water and rolanberry juice.

“Something... that would make him laugh, do you mean?” they asked, glancing between G’ilas and Merces.

“Master—I apologize, G’ilas, believes that I should learn to understand humour better for the sake of my work and interactions with other people,” Merces explained. G’ilas could already see Brenda getting bemused by the somewhat unusual reasoning. “Something that would be amusing enough for me to repeat would probably be the most likely choice.” Despite his calm voice, he didn’t look entirely convinced.

“I’m not sure if I’m the best person to help with that, unfortunately,” Brenda said and smiled a bit sheepishly. “My repertoire tends to lean towards wistful and heavy rather than bawdy or boisterous. I like word plays and puns, though. I’m not just very good at coming up with them. Or, ah, getting them straight away. I like the idea of them, but it can take me a while to actually understand what makes them so funny. I, well, I’ve been told that I’m not very much fun at parties...”

The further they continued, the more their speech started to turn into rambling, and they were fidgeting with the clasp of their cape so much that G’ilas feared it would fall off.

“Oh shush, I’ve never met a party which wouldn’t have loved a bard!” he said and gave Brenda’s shoulder pad a light, encouraging slap. “Tell us one of the jokes or puns you’ve managed pick up during your travels!”

The attention seemed to almost startle Brenda, and they got visibly nervous. Still, they straightened their back, cleared their throat and asked:

“Why does it never rain for two days in a row?”

There was a beat of awkward silence.

“Because there is a night between them,” Merces said but sounded somewhat dubious. “Isn’t that simply a statement of truth?”

“Ah, sorry, that wasn’t a very good one,” Brenda apologized, waving their hands frantically. “I should have known better. Can I try again?”

“Go ahead!” G’ilas urged. The initial attempt might have been a fairly poor one, but he didn’t want to make the poor minstrel any more flustered than they already were.

Brenda managed to collect themselves before the second try.

“What is a pirate mage’s favourite weapon?”

“Ooh, I don’t know this one,” G’ilas exclaimed, his tail tapping excitedly against the leg of his chair.

“I’m afraid that I have no idea,” Merces simply answered.

Brenda let them wait for another moment before saying – with a serious expression, perhaps to magnify the joke:

“Arr-cane.”

G’ilas burst in laughter.

“That was a good one!”

His comment earned a relieved smile from Brenda. Merces, however, seemed less convinced.

“I think I understand the logic,” he said, “but I’m not sure how to react to it.”

“Well, that’s at least one step closer, I’d say,” G’ilas said and nodded with a wide smile. “Let me try another one now. How do you spell ‘cow’ with thirteen letters?”

He was met with confused silence from both Brenda and Merces.

“I don’t think that I’ve heard that one before, but it... doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Brenda asked unsurely.

“I agree,” Merces said, frowning as he tried to wrap his mind around the riddle. “Why would you make a word longer than it originally is?”

“That’s kind of the gist of the joke! Don’t think about that too hard now and try to come up with an answer instead,” G’ilas told them. His ears were swiveling a bit.

Brenda rubbed their brow, apparently trying - and struggling – to come up with an answer. Merces closed his eyes and remained completely silent and still for a moment.

“A bovine animal,” he eventually stated.

G’ilas blinked. A nervous titter escaped from Brenda’s lips, and it made G’ilas unable to resist chuckling, too.

“Well, that does have thirteen letters,” he noted, “but it’s more like another definition of a cow.”

“What is the expected solution to that riddle, then?” Merces asked, looking puzzled.

G’ilas leaned in, smiling impishly.

“See-o-double-you,” he said slowly and dramatically before following up with a laugh.

Brenda buried their face into their hands before realizing how rude they might have looked and then straightened their back. Merces shifted on his seat.

“I have to admit that I fail to see the point of such a phonetic transliteration,” he commented, sounding a bit uncomfortable. “It doesn’t feel convenient.”

G’ilas heaved a sigh.

Maybe his “mission” would actually be as difficult as making pigs fly.

#FFXIVWrite #FFXIVWrite 2020 #G'ilas #Merces #Brenda #in which I show that I have a questionable sense of humour #(that pirate mage joke is my own creation)#I'm sorry I like overly serious characters a bit too much #or actually I'm not sure if I should be sorry #poor Merces #and poor G'ilas

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garazza · 4 years

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Action Comics #1022 Review

“The House of Kent: Part 1″

Starting off, we have the 9-panel grid. Because Tom King likes to use it to show off that he read Watchmen (before promptly abusing the layout to death), everyone and their mother has been scrambling to shove it somewhere in their work and try to get a useless amount of perceived street cred to show that they too had read Watchmen (killing the layout even more). Since it’s all the rage, Bendis does it here.

I actually like the third panel. As Stan Lee said, every comic is someone’s first comic (and this is the first chapter in a “highly” anticipated arc). Instead of an editor’s note, Bendis explains Kelex through dialogue that is expositional but not unnatural or clunky. But why explain Kelex of all things? My answer is well, why not? Supposedly, Conner is as unformed about a lot of things as is a potential new reader and Superman informs him in a manner that is not entirely out place, even to current readers.

Then Conner explains his origin and touches upon the fact that we’ve had a few different continuities since his creation in 1993. He is excited and curious in the first four panels and then immediately deflates in the last four. I think Bendis is trying to have the best of both worlds by writing both an excited Conner (something that fans are supposed to respond positively towards) and a depressed Conner (because he has been a victim of the discontinuity perpetuated by DC editorial and made no better by Bendis).

We get a double-page splash of the two Kents conversing that I like, especially the color of the Fortress. The conversation is very Bendis, but not offensively so. It serves its purpose, can’t be too upset about that. He tries to depict Conner as nervous, but I really hate how it’s done, it’s like reading an accent phonetically.

uwu what’s this? A fundamental misunderstanding and misinterpretation of a character? In my Bendis book? It’s more likely than you think.

Conner has literally never been little. He was created as a teenage clone of Superman and he stayed a teenage clone of Superman. He came out the test tube the punk Metropolis Kid, not the toddling Metropolis Tyke. A really big conceit of his character is that he will never look older or younger than a teenager. That’s why a lot of eyebrows were raised when in his first reappearance Bendis chose to depict him with stubble.

Another example of Bendis-speak that is fun and full of charm and character, but the characterization for the characters who are conversing is just…off. It’s a conversation these types of characters would have, just not these characters specifically.

You know, for a character that supposedly Bendis hates and wants to write off and make inaccessible to all other writers and artists, he sure writes about Jon a lot. Bendis forces Jon into the future, cutting him off not just from everything he knows and loves, but from, more importantly, the readers. This reinforces the gravity and seriousness of him being written off, but Bendis constantly undermines this hostage situation of his own creation by having him come back to the present quite often. You put characters on a bus to make them go away forever, but the bus keeps returning to the station. And the most baffling part? You’re the driver, Bendis! Commit to the fucking bit!

Jon and Braniac 5 are chumming it up, because they are toooooootally buddies, you can read alllllll about Jon’s actual, very real, and totally not non-existent friendships with the Legionnaires in Legion of Super-Heroes by Brian Michael Bendis and Ryan Sook, because Jon totally has finished watching the Legion orientation film that totally didn’t take more than 5 issues to even get him to watch and he wasn’t even interrupted once. The book is soooooo well developed and evenly paced and not at alllllll bloated behind belief.

Jon acts like he came home from college to do laundry and eat some home cooking and forgot to call ahead, like he totally isn’t supposed to stay in the future.

Me, too, Conner. I don’t know who this character is either.

We also get to see his new costume here, which I hate. The one positive thing I could say about this new character when he was first introduced in Bendis’ Superman run was that I really liked his costume. It had the cyber-armor look of the New 52 Superman suit, but wasn’t too over-designed. It worked, it looked cool. This new look is just kinda bleh. It has the ugliness of the New 52 with none of the intricacies that made it look cool and unique.

We were never going to any meeting between the two Superboys that can even remotely be called good or worthwhile. I appreciate the naiveté of certain fans who enjoy things at face value because, factually, they got what they wanted. Fans wanted this meeting and they got it, which will make the happy, but it is not at all satisfying, which is what they should care about.

Bendis has a firm understanding of Superman and his voice. The same cannot be for Jon Kent. This character is not Jon Kent. He is not written out of character because this is not his character. What we got here is not what we wanted. This is Bendis and DC editorial banking that fans will rationalize to themselves that the crumbs they deigned to give fans is actually a feast worthy of praise and exaltation (look no further than Superman #16).

Oh and by the way, this is all we get for the meeting. The rest of the issue is “wHaT’S ThE DeAl cOnNeR KeNt?”

I’m skipping over the Daily Planet stuff because I don’t care about it and it doesn’t piss me off.

Instead, I will quickly address this: “The rumor come out, does Jonathan Kent is gay?”

I want to say this came about because Jon called Conner’s leather jacket “fabulous”, but it seems this idea existed before this issue was even released. The most I can find in relation to Jon being gay is this article written 2016 and this funny little exchange in the comments of one of Bendis’ Instagram posts.

I knew I was not straight when I was in grade school and it would be amazing if such a high profile character like Jon came out. It would normalize the idea that being gay isn’t something exclusively sexual or adult, but that there is nothing wrong for kids to have feelings for someone their own age who is the same sex. But I don’t trust DC to even attempt this. If they can’t even make Dick Grayson bi, then it’s not likely for any other character to come out.

And just because he described something as “fabulous”, that doesn’t make him gay. It’s an odd choice of words, sure, but word choice is no real indication of sexuality. In an interview with ComicPOP, Todd McFarlane described a box for a figure as “sexy” and “sassy” that I might have instead referred to as “cool” or “awesome.” I think Todd’s word choice is oddly fitting, but it was not something I would have thought to use before hearing him use it in the interview, and it does not at all call into his sexuality. I have a similar sentiment about “fabulous.”

Back to the story, Superman takes Conner to meet some of the intellectual experts in the DC universe to help figure out his deal. They have some “fun” Bendis dialogue and touch upon the multiverse and continuity that Bendis has been helping shape even though he literally has never worked for DC until very recently, relatively speakingm and yet is being trusted with the word “crisis.” And what do you mean you’ve been rebooted at least three times, I thought it was seven times according to Young Justice #1, one of the first issues Bendis wrote for DC.

I saw a Reddit post a little while back that compiled clues and subtle hints that were spread out among several titles, including Tom King, Scott Snynder, and Bendis’ various books, that tied them all together with Doomsday Clock. It demonstrated a remarkable amount of coordination that I thought impossible given who it involved, but the evidence was pretty convincing. However, this was before Dan Didio was fired and they were able to avert 5G. Now that they’ve had time to regroup, I think this issue is sowing some more of those seeds that’ll eventually be dealt with by Synder’s Death Metal.

Here’s some more of that fundamental misunderstanding and misinterpretation of a character. Conner was not “raised” by the Kents. They cared for him, sure, but I wouldn’t call what they did raising.

What is being referred to here is Geoff Johns’ run with Conner Kent in Adventure Comics which took place in 2009. What that contributed to the character was only a relatively recent development in Conner’s history. It should be noted he started living with the Kents in 2002. His solo book was cancelled with Connor being dropped off by Clark at his parent’s house on the very last page. Any sort of “raising” would have occurred off panel during that time and is largely not expanded upon because there was literally no book to depict that kind of relationship until after he had died in 2006 and was brought back in 2009. They are not the sole contributors to his life like it is implied here. He lived in Hawaii and worked for Cadmus for far longer than he lived with the Kents.

And here we have Jon casually referring to Ma and Pa Kent as Grandma and Grandpa like he actually knew them instead of just knowing of them. For those of you don’t know, they were dead when Tomasi and Gleason were writing Superman and were only just recently brought back in Doomsday Clock which concluded well after Tomasi and Gleason had left the book, so Jon never met them. At the absolute most he’s heard stories, looked at pictures, and seen home movies of the Kents. You could say I’m nitpicking, but Bendis deserves it. You can feel his disregard for others’ work throughout his other books, and its panels like this that are the proof.

Jon literally has no reason to know that Ma and Pa Kent are alive. No reason. Jon’s smug face is Bendis’ way of say “Aren’t I a stinker?”

Fuck. You. Bendis.

You do not get to pretend that stories you made impossible to tell of Jon spending time with his grandparents actually did happen. Is this interaction cute and fun and a little bit wholesome? Yes. But is it genuine? Absolutely not. He’s just trying to cash in on what he thinks fans want to see with none of the heart and soul.

And now Clark is acting like Jon is visiting from college.

Piss your pants, Bendis. Jon would never refer to his best friend Damian Wayne like that. If someone else referred to Damian like that when Jon was around, he would correct them and say something along the lines of “He’s not so bad once you get to know him.” Stop pushing the narrative that Damian is some sort of demon hellspawn or psycho killer. He’s a flawed kid with a dark past that wants to be better but struggles with it and needs friends like Jon to support him. This continues to show that Bendis literally does not understand this character and why fans get upset when he writes him this way.

Another 9-panel grid, but this is not Tom King-inspired, but actually befitting the moment. Bendis still think Conner was literally raised by the Kents instead of just living with them, but I really have no skin the game of Conner being recognized as a part of the Kent family, so this doesn’t piss me off much.

I know this is supposed to be emotional because they just reunited, but the dialogue seems to suggest something more ominous and insidious is going on, something bigger than any one of them (Crisis, I know, but its kind of obnoxiously on the nose and yet unnecessarily vague).

The issue actually ends with the story I don’t really care about, so that’s the review.

Note: I realized about part way through writing this post how pissy and whiny I might sound, but I spent too much writing it to not post it.

#action comics #superman #conner kent #superboy #jon kent #legion of super-heroes #brian michael bendis #clark kent #brianiac 5

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bookenders · 5 years

Text

11/11/11 Tag Game: Round... uh... 5, 6, & 7?

I got tagged by a bunch of people ( @quilloftheclouds is this how your 77 question one felt??) so here are a bunch of answers! I think this is the most I’ve ever talked about myself in my life.

Good gracious, you’re all so nice and have such good questions.

Tagged by: @surroundedbypearls, @waterfallwritings, @bigmoodword, @sundaynightnovels

Rules: answer 11 questions, tag 11 people, give them 11 new questions!

[I’ve done this enough to be able to break the tag rules. Fight me.]

44 questions and answers below the cut!

But I’ll be nice and put my questions right here:

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

When do you title your WIPs? It is the first thing you do? The last? Does it come to you during drafting?

How many inside jokes do you put in your WIP(s)?

Your WIP’s antagonist is now The Riddler. How do your OCs handle that?

Do you use sticky notes?

Laptop or desktop?

Your OC is a wrestler. What’s their hype music?

Do you own any craft books/books on writing?

What’s your favorite book cover?

How many unread books do you have sitting around right now? Which are you most excited to maybe get to eventually some time?

How committed are you to your outline(s)?

Bilbo Taggins: Literally anyone, but also @francestroublr, @sahados-shadow, @a-story-im-writing, @bethkerring, @citruschickadee, @bos-ingit

If I’ve tagged you before, you can totally ignore this. In fact, I encourage you to.

From @surroundedbypearls:

What’s your favourite genre to write in and why? Literary fiction! It’s what I learned in university and the one that fits my themes best. Sci-fi is hard, I’m just getting into writing fantasy stuff, I can’t do thrillers, romance is hard for me, and historical is too much work.

Do you think you have a style/voice that you use more often in your writing? When did you develop that style? If you’ve read one of my stories, you know exactly how my writing voice sounds. It doesn’t change too much. I write like I talk, but if I had a lot more gravitas and charisma. Honestly, I’ve always had that kind of style, but it really developed in high school. It’s been getting stronger since then. It’s one of the things I always got comments about from my teachers and fellow workshop writers. “Your voice is so strong!” Yep. It’s mah thang.

Do you play video games? What’s your favourite? YES I DO. It’s hard to pick faves, but I’ve played Dragon Age: Origins too many times.

If you were going to do a WIP crossover, which OCs would be most interesting together? (If you’ve only got one WIP crossover with something else) A crossover between H2H and AOPC? Interesting. I think Mel and Keema would get along the best, Oz would have some fightin’ words for Elder Sanga, and Gemma and Teva would be a force to be reckoned with, my god. Two stubborn nerds who believe totally different things but are also very determined to be very good at what they want to do and love their communities to a fault? Fear them.

Do you prefer to plan WIPs in a document or through handwritten notes? I used to do it by hand but I couldn’t read it because my handwriting is terrible and I kept losing papers. I do it in docs now. Much easier to organize and incredibly legible.

Do you multiple languages exist in your WIP? If so how do you address that in the story? H2H is set in the “real world,” so yep. It hasn’t been addressed too much yet, but I have a way for tackling languages. I’ve written multilingual-ish stories before. I never write phonetically and use hella context clues so the reader knows the gist of what was said if another character doesn’t translate.

What’s your favourite animated film that’s not Disney or Pixar? AN AMERICAN TAIL. All of them. It’s on Netflix go watch it and marvel at the way a kids movie talks about Jewish immigration, poverty, and cultural oppression via mice. As a young Jewish child, this movie was my jam. It’s very dark, though.

Do your real-life surroundings influence your WIP’s settings? Nope! One time I tried to write a story set in the same area where I lived and I couldn’t do it. Too weird. Sometimes I’ll write in an item I see near me, or like, a painting or poster on the wall if I need some set decoration, but that’s about it.

Which OCs would be most likely to break the fourth wall? Oz. Lookin’ at the camera like he’s in The Office.

How do you work out your OCs’ personalities? Hm. I look at the story I’m trying to write and make a protagonist that would have the most interesting experience in that narrative. For H2H, I wanted someone who would be loyal as heck to the people they loved while still being experimental enough to try new things and get into shenanigans. The story called for someone like that, and there she was. Mel came about my thinking of someone who would compliment other characters in the story while still being their own person. If that makes sense. I think of dynamics and interactions with the story world in relation to the theme(s). Most of the time they just happen, though.

Do you prefer worldbuilding or character building? Character building! As much as I like making stories about places, making characters is more fun for me, and more interesting. You should see all the DnD character sheets I have.

From @waterfallwritings:

1. How do you come up with ideas for your WIPs?

At random. Seriously. It’s like my brain has to be running something in the background to function normally, and usually that something is whatever story I happen to be working on. Or I’ll look at a thing and go “huh.” My brain also likes to twist normal things to be a little bit different.

2. How do you get past gaps in the plot?

No idea, man. It’s like throwing spaghetti at a wall. I like to work backwards. If this is what I want to happen, what needs to happen before that to ensure that it occurs? I look at all the elements currently in the story and see if one can be manipulated to fill in the hole.

3. What motivates you to keep writing?

If I don’t, my brain gets all constipated and angry until I write something down. Like, seriously, I get grumpy and frustrated like I’m hangry or something. Aside from physical need, I love writing. I love word puzzles and feelings puzzles and figuring them out. Sometimes I think of how my stories could help someone, or make them feel something that they enjoy.

4. Do you do any other kind of creative writing?

Oh, man, I’ve done it all. Screenwriting, playwriting, poetry, video game-ish writing, interactive storytelling, short stories, flash fiction, proposals, essays, DnD campaigns, monologues... You name it, I’ve probably tried it. I tend to stick to prose and poetry these days.

5. Do you have any other creative hobbies besides writing?

I’ve gotten into graphic design a little bit. I kind of wanna learn how to knit again. I’m not really very crafty.

6. What do you do when you’re stuck on a scene and don’t know how to get it out / write it?

Write a different scene, stare at the screen in frustration until I give up and go to sleep, meditate for a few minutes, go do something else to get my mind off of it, clean, work on a different project.

7. How do you decide how to end your WIP?

I mean, see the next question for part of my answer. How did I decide to end H2H? My friend, that’s a big ‘ole spoiler. But I decided to end it at a place where everything, and everyone, comes together.

8. When in the process of writing do you decide how its going to end? Or do you kind of just wait til you get there?

Right at the beginning. If I don’t know where it’ll end, I have a hard time writing the arc. I work backwards: start with the idea, then think of where I want it to end up, then work back to the beginning until I know where its going, then start writing.

9. Why did you decide to join writeblr?

My reasons are pretty personal, but the least personal is that I needed some accountability and motivation. And I missed being in a good writing community.

10. What’s your favourite food?

Pasta! I’m eating spaghetti right now.

11. If you had to kill off a character in your WIP, who would it be and why?

Oz would be the most tragic. Treena would be the most logical.

From @bigmoodword:

1. using one sentence summaries, can you tell me about your wips?

Nerdy potion woman meets cute odd stranger who helps her solve magic mysteries in their quirky small town.

2. what inspired them?

I saw a zine accepting submissions for magic stories, then an open call for queer shifter stories, and thought “what if wholesome magical lesbians?”

3. which of your ocs do you most identify with?

Gemma!

4. if you’ve ever cried while reading, which book cued the waterworks?

THE SONG OF ACHILLES. My God, my soul was weeping. Honestly, it still is. Doesn’t matter that I knew the story from the Iliad. Madeline Miller is a feelings wizard.

5. how do you conduct research for your wips and what’s the most interesting thing you’ve discovered in said research?

On an as-needed basis. I used to do way too much research to avoid actually writing the damn thing, so now I only do it when I actually run into a problem that can be solved by Google.

6. thus far, which scene has been the most difficult to write?

The ones that aren’t hugely emotional. Which is... unfortunate.

7. which of your ocs do you like the least?

Rude. On a personal level, Jill. I love her, but I would not be friends with her. We wouldn’t mesh at all.

8. which pov and tense do you prefer to write in?

Third person limited present tense! To the bane of everyone who’s ever edited my work.

9. do you write poetry?

I do! Not often, though.

10. who is your writing role model?

My freakin’ writing professor from college. He is crazy disciplined.

11. if you could give your younger writer self some advice, what would it be?

Hey, you know those people who say your writing is too dark? Yeah, they suck and they’re wrong. They just want kids to live up to their expectations and write happy sunshiny stories about unicorns and dinosaurs having ice cream. And you’re not depressed because you wrote that one sad poem one time and someone asked if you were depressed. What you have is called feelings and they’re very useful for a writer, nay, a human, to have.

From @sundaynightnovels:

Who is your biggest role model? Okay, so I got crap all the time in grade school for never having a role model, and I still don’t have one. The teachers were concerned about me. But my reasoning was, “why should I want to live someone else’s life?” Yeah. They didn’t really know what to do with that...

What are your OCs favorite foods? Sort of answered here!

Which OC is most afraid of the dark? Oz and Mary!

What made you want to start a writing blog/participate in the writeblr community? Answered above!

Did you sleep with a stuffed animal as a kid? Do you still? I did, indeed. I don’t anymore, but I have two that I shuffle around my room when they get in the way. One is a highland cow I got in Scotland (he has a plaid hat), the other is a blue whale I got at the Museum of Natural History in NY.

Do you like donuts? I love donuts. Especially jelly filled ones. Mmm.

Do/would your OCs like donuts? All of my OCs like donuts. I don’t think Mel has ever had a modern one, though.

What is your least favorite food? Cauliflower? I’m the household taste-tester, so there’s been a lot of stuff I don’t like. ( @sundaynightnovels I hate sparkling water, too, you’re not alone!)

What is your ideal writing environment? Comfy seating, a chair with no arms (stupid elbows), alone, plenty of chosen beverage within reach, headphones.

Favorite line from your WIP? So far, it’s this one!

Favorite quote from a book? Oh, man. There are so many. From recent memory, here are a few: “’Give it time,’ she replies. ‘It won’t be a story forever.’“ and “Everyone has heard stories of women like us, and now we will make more of them.” (both from The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy) “When he smiled, the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled like a leaf held to flame.” and “I lean forward and our lips land clumsily on each other. They are like the fat bodies of bees, soft and round and giddy with pollen.” (I could write a goddamn essay about the imagery in this scene.) (It is quite possibly my favorite description of a kiss ever. And the metaphor extends through the rest of the scene so artfully ugh.) (both from The Song of Achilles) “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.” (from The Things They Carried)

#11/11/11 tag #about me #tag game #writer tag #oh my god so many questions #fun stuff below the cut #forgive my terrible jokes I am tired #writeblr #how I write #I guess #rec #book rec

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peonies-and-swords · 6 years

Text

Message- Loki x reader oneshot !

Hello guys! Enjoy this new fic ! Mostly angst and fluff !

Plot : The reader waits for Loki to come back but receives strange messages. What has happened to Loki?

Warning: None I believe

Words: 4200

Author’s note: This long fic takes place during Infinity War. Why would I do something like that? I honestly don’t now, it hurt so bad to write this story. But I think it’s kind of a catharsis for the pain that IW brought me. So get your tissues out and get ready !

Vocabulary : Y/N = your name

Loki Tag list : @lisalisa007 ( message me if you want to be added to a tag list ! )

Masterpost

ENJOY !

She waited, and waited. For hours, days, months, she had waited for his return. And suddenly a message.

"This is the Asgardian refugee vessel Statesman! We are under assault! I repeat, we are under assault!"

Loki had given her a radio receiver many years ago when they had first met. He said that if he needed to send her an information, she would magically receive it, even if he was on the other side of the universe, even if he wasn’t able to speak. The message would find a way to her through the little device.

That day, when she heard the first words, her heart skipped a beat

"Asgardian refugee vessel? What is going on?" She mumbled to herself.

She held the device hoping to hear some more. She often asked to Loki why she couldn’t send him message like he was sending her. He replied that when he would settle in Midgard he would teach her how to use the device. But since it dealt with quite a bit of magic he insisted that she would need some kind of training.

She wished he had listened to her, and took the time to teach her, at least she wouldn’t be so anxious if she could just ask him if he was okay.

“under assault”? Who ? Who was stupid enough to attack an Asgardian vessel?

Last time she heard about Loki, Ragnarok had just happened. He sent her a message to notify her that he would land on Earth in a few days.

"Y/N, my love, I’m coming home. We finally defeated Hela… I can’t really believe what happened in the last few hours. I mean… This morning I was still on Sakaar… Then I was back on Asgard but only to see it burn. Few years ago, I told you I wanted to see that place burn to ashes. But with its destruction… I can’t help to feel like I have just lost the place that reminded me the most of my few happy memories. I still remember Mother teaching me tricks in the palace. It’s… quite … Uhm… embarrassing to be that depressed over something I wished for, years ago… But let’s talk about something else… I long for the sight of you my dear. I cannot wait to feel you near me. Just feel your breath on my skin. Hear your voice. But I have great news… Soon I’ll be back. Soon. We believe we’re 5 or 6 days away from Midgard. I cannot wait. Maybe this time you’ll meet my brother. I really hope so. I talked to him about you, he was really exited knowing that someone cared about me other than him, and that I cared about some other than myself. I need to go now, we have things to figure out before we land on your planet. I love you Y/N. See you soon my love."

She remembered those last words and tried to think about anything but the message she received last. She switched on the TV, listen a bit to a show about famous criminals but turned it off when Loki’s name was brought up. She decided to call her friends to talk about what she heard and maybe try to find an explanation with them. Most of her friends didn’t know about Loki. Mostly because last time he was publicly on Earth he did try to rule over the entire planet. But she trusted her closest friend with that secret. They used to share an apartment during college, but Y/N had moved out few years ago when things got serious with Loki. Her two best friends still shared their old flat together. She called them, needing some mental support.

"Y/N?" Asked Rose

"Hi Rose! I kinda need you both right know…"

"Oh, are you okay ? Let me just get E real quick." She paused a second "E? Can I come in ? Y/N is calling, something doesn’t feel right"

"Sure … Hi Y/N! Is everything alright?"

"Hey… Well actually, no … I’m really sorry to bother you. I know you’re really busy but … I just can’t wrap my mind around some things"

"Don’t worry I was getting kinda fed up by that phonetic article anyway" replied E

"You two remember the device Loki uses to send me messages ?"

"Yeah we do"

"Well I received a strange one this afternoon… It was like a distress call?"

"Oh god" said both Rose and E at the same time

"Yeah … Hum well… Loki said some days ago that he was on a ship and the message today sounded like that ship was under assault." She paused a little, trying to calm down a bit. "But the worse is that I haven’t had any news since then… And that was 6 hours ago"

"Okay let’s stay calm" tried Rose" I mean once you received a part of a message and the second part 2 days later because the time goes by strangely on Sakator"

"Sakaar but yes…"

"Yeah well maybe it’s the same thing! Maybe they already beat the shit out of the idiots that attacked the ship !"

"Yeah but why would they even emit a distress call if it wasn’t something serious? " asked Elena.

"Not helping E." replied Rose

"No but she’s right! From what I understood Thor was also on the ship. Why two fricking gods would be sending a distress call if it wasn’t actually for something bad? I don’t feel so good girls… I just can’t understand what’s happening ? What that message means and more importantly why Loki wanted me to hear it?"

"Listen Y/N I won’t even try to lie and say that I know what’s happening and that all will be okay. This sounds fucking scary. I think we better go to yours and just… I don’t know … wait together for a bit?" Said E

"Yeah that’s a great idea, we’ll get some pizza while we’re getting there, we may wait for a bit" added Rose.

"Thank you girls… I don’t think I can be alone right now…"

She didn’t have to wait long before her two friends arrived at her house. She had been sitting on her couch and staring at the little transmitter. They ate and tried to find explanations. Loki had never send her a message from someone else. This was the first time another voice than his resonated from the device. Something in Y/N was telling her that he was in danger. Her friends tried to distract her, putting on the first Jurassic Park. But with all the emotions of that day, Y/N fell asleep almost immediately.

She was woken up by a buzz in her hand. She opened her eyes and the light on the transmitter was blinking.

"Girls ?" She said with a trembling voice.

"Does that mean?" Asked E

"I think you should listen to it Y/N"

Y/N pressed a little button and suddenly the group could hear a the new message

"Hear me and rejoice. You have had the privilege of being saved by the great Thanos. You may think this is suffering, no. It is salvation. The universal scale tips toward balance because of your sacrifice. Smile. For even in death, you have become children of Thanos."

A strange voice filled the room. Y/N’s eyes filled with tears.

"What does he mean death ? What is going on? Y/N? Do you know a Thanos?" Asked E.

"Did Loki ever told you about a Thanos?" Added Rose.

Y/N just stayed silent. What could she say more? Why did she receive this message and nothing else? Was Loki injured ? Was he … No she couldn’t think about this. She felt sick, got up and headed to the bathroom. Quickly, she was fully crying, sitting on her floor. She felt Rose sit next to her while E was silently crying and leant against the doorframe. They stayed like that for a bit. Y/N tried to speak, say what was going on inside her. But nothing came out. Every time she tried she only cried louder or felt like she couldn’t breathe at all anymore.

Her eyes still filled with tears she decided to head to her room. She couldn’t even look at the picture of her and Loki that was taped to the wall. She laid on her bed not knowing what else to do and holding the transmitter close to her chest. Again her friends had followed her and just sat next to her, slowly trying to comfort her petting her head.

Her mind wandered off almost immediately to the day she met Loki. Five years had passed since that day but she still remembered it like if it was yesterday.

It was a cold autumn morning when she arrived at uni. She headed directly to the coffee machine like she always did. Her face still muffled in her scarf, she noticed a tall man dressed in a all black suit talking to another man near the vending machines. His black hair was a little wavy and he stood very upright. When she approached the two men, she saw the black haired man looking at her. His blue eyes locked with Y/N’s for a moment. She bought a cup of coffee and decided to go to her class. She walked back in front of the two men but this time didn’t meet the gaze of the mysterious man. Y/N had been slowly sipping out of her cup waiting outside the auditorium when she spotted the tall man again. He looked around a bit, turned to her direction and walked up to her.

"Hello I believe we have not been introduced." He began.

"Well I don’t believe we have either" she smiled a bit. "I’m Y/N. I study English literature. And you ? With that suit you must be a witch trying to get his witching degree"

"Not far from that… I’m Loki" he said while holding out a hand.

"Loki? I believe I heard that name before…"

"It comes from the norse mythology so maybe you read it somewhere? Also I have a homophone that almost made kneel the entire planet so …"

"Oh yes I remember that guy! He wore that kind of strange helmet of some sort… Sounds kinky if you ask me" she stopped a bit and realized what she had just said "Oh god that sounded so creepy I’m so sorry! I just don’t really have a filter when I’m tired and I haven’t yet drank my morning coffee… I’m really sorry"

"Actually … That was pretty funny" he replied smirking.

"I’m really flattered, but lying won’t get you anywhere with me." She said laughing.

"Be careful I’m pretty good at that."

"Uh, so mischievous"

"Well…" he winked and changed subject. "Actually, I was here only to talk to an old friend, Dr. Hiprat."

"I believe I heard about him…"

"He is pretty well known in the mythology study field."

"Yes, I think I read something about his new researches on the links between the different mythologies around the world"

"Yes, well I do not agree with part of his thesis and as a caring old friend I thought I’d pop in France to have a few words with him"

"That’s really nice of you"

"It indeed is" he responded with a devilish look in his eyes.

"Well, I need to go right now." she said looking at her watch and at the other students who were getting inside the auditorium. "And I think we should probably talk about something else… As Nietzsche would have said "God is dead" "

"And you let me like that? Alone ? Then I shall wait for you here until your lecture ends so that I can prove to you that Nietzsche was wrong."

"Oh would you look at that! Am I already one of your old friends that you care for, and give lectures to?"

"Oh no, don’t worry love, I have other plans for you."

She spent the lecture without being able to focus on the matter discussed that day, clearly only focusing on the man that could be waiting for her just outside the room. When she came out of the auditorium Loki was patiently reading a book, waiting for her.

"I don’t recall seeing this book before… What are you reading?" She asked.

"Oh nothing… Just…" He stopped when she took the book from his hands.

"Vian… Froth on the daydream… I love Vian! You should read I spit on your graves next… A little trashy but each time I re-read it it’s just…"

"Like you read it for the first time but from a different perspective? Yeah, that’s what I like in Vian’s writing…" he interrupted her.

"Wow, handsome and with good tastes in literature… Are you even real? No illusion ?" She pinched a little his arm "No, clearly you’re here" they laughed in unisson.

"So apart from our shared love for Vian … Tell me a little more about you, I’d like to know you." He asked smiling a little.

"Well…"

Y/N shifted in her bed, getting out of her daydream. She looked to her side and saw her two friend lying on her bed too. She looked at the metallic device in her hands. No new message. As she got up, Rose and Elena looked at her.

"I think … I think I should be alone now…"

"Are you sure? We could just stay with you" responded Elena.

"Yeah, we could sleep here tonight if…"

"No" interrupted Y/N "I need to be alone, if I receive a new message … I’ll keep you updated…"

She thanked them for being there for her. Even if she needed to be alone, she was thankful to have such great friends.

When they left, she went back in her room and decided to sit on the edge of her bed. She thought about the time Loki told her about his real identity.

They had spent the evening at Y/N’s place. They had known each other for few months and been dating for a little while. They were eating some Chinese takeaway from the restaurant nearby. Loki had been really silent the whole time.

"Are you okay Loki? You didn’t even say a word since we got back."

"Yes, love, I’m alright… I just … I can’t stop thinking about something."

"Well, maybe if you talk about it you’ll feel better?"

"Do you love me Y/N? Really love me?"

"I think by now you would have gathered that from the 70 times a day I tell you I love you."

"Please. Answer me."

"Yes, I love you. Really love you."

"Would you still love me if you knew that I lied to you about something important?"

"How important are we talking?"

"Like who I am …"

"I’m not sure I’m following what you’re saying…" said Y/N moving back a little.

"You remember the first time we met … I told you I had a homophone that tried to make the entire planet kneel… Well I lied… I tried to rule Midgard."

"You what?"

"I know, I should have told you everything before. But I was scared… I just-"

"Did you really kill all these people ?"

"I did, yes." He stopped seing Y/N almost crying. "I did, but I was forced to do it, I was manipulated. I was told that if I did what they told me, the torture would end."

"You were tortured? Oh my god ! Loki…"

"Yes… Mentally and physically… I was tortured, they used every single good memory I had to hurt me."

"Who ? What-"

"Let’s just say it was some kind of big-purple-toe-nail-looking guy… I won’t say his name. Mostly because it still hurts to talk about it. But also because I’m a bit scared that he might have put a spell on his name… Like in Harry Potter with You-Know-Who."

"All jokes aside… Why didn’t you tell me before? I mean… You killed people. Even under torture… I’m still dating a murderer."

"Well exactly. Listen. I’m- I’m not sure I’m even worthy of your love. But that day. I just felt something I never did. You left a mark on my heart. Just with one glance I was yours. And I couldn’t risk to never see you again because of my past. I knew I couldn’t live without you. So I thought that if you didn’t recognize me, I’d just lie about my identity. But I can’t anymore. I love you too much to lie to you."

"Loki… I understand why you did that… and even if I think I’ll need some time to really process what this means… I love you. And you’re worthy of my love, I assure you."

"I love you too Y/N"

"So … if you are the Loki… you’re not human right? You’re … A…"

"A god, the god of mischief. But also a Frost Giant."

"A what now?"

"Please don’t be scared" Loki said while a green halo moved across his hand.

"Wow … You’re turning blue! Oh my God! That’s so cool!"

"Please call me Loki"

"You cocky bastard!" Y/N laughed as Loki relaxed seeing that she wasn’t going to leave him after all these revelations.

Once again Y/N got out of her daydream. This time it was the transmitter that brought her back to reality. A new message. She pressed the button and listened carefully.

"Almighty Thanos... I, Loki, prince of Asgard... Odinson... the rightful king of the Jotunheim... god of mischief... do hereby pledge to you... my undying fidelity.

-Undying? You should chose your words more carefully.

-You… will never be... a god

-No resurrections this time."

No…. The first voice was clearly Loki. He seemed strange, afraid. The second one… That was the Thanos from before? Trying to understand what this message meant, suddenly the realization came to Y/N. No resurrection. Loki was dead. She felt her heart skip a beat. She stopped breathing. She felt tears running down her face, she hadn’t even noticed she was crying at first. How was it possible. Where was his brother? He wouldn’t have let Loki die now that they were together again. Was he dead too ? How could a God die?

No. It was impossible. Loki couldn’t be dead. Couldn’t leave her like that alone. She loved him and now he was gone? No. Simply impossible.

Maybe after all he wasn’t dead… No resurrection? He faked his death multiple times, this one was just another one. He could not leave her. No.

Maybe … She had heard about Valhalla. Maybe Loki was just there. Maybe there was a way for her to bring him back. He was a magic being after all! Why should death apply to him? She felt a rush of anger all throughout her body. She threw the transmitter across the room, screaming.

She fell to her knees, crying louder and louder. How could he leave her?

Something in her clicked, she would never see him again. Even if she loved him with all of her soul, this wouldn’t matter.

Loki was dead.

She was lying on the floor, tears slowly falling down.

Some time passed, Y/N didn’t even know for how long she had been lying on the floor when she heard a loud bang. Thunder. She got up and looked out of the window nearby. No rain to be seen, the storm was near but hadn’t reached her apartment yet. She turned her back to the window and tried to think. Obviously Loki wanted her to hear this … Why ? Was there a hidden message for her to decipher ? Or was it really his last words ? She felt her throat closing and tears falling down her cheeks again.

Suddenly someone knocked at her door. She looked at the clock, it was 2 AM. Before going to the door she checked her phone to see if it was the girls who were back. No message, nothing on the transmitter neither. Another knock, this time way louder. She didn’t dare moving.

"Y/N? I know you’re here! Please open the door!" Said a familiar voice

"Who is it?"

"It’s Thor, open please"

She got to the door and opened it. There stood the god, very different from what she remember and how Loki described him. He had short hair and was missing an eye. He was out of breath, Y/N welcomed him inside her flat. She noticed that he was holding a small metallic thing, that sort of looked like her transmitter but only bigger.

"Where is Loki?" She asked

"Y/N… I believe you know…"

"No."

"Loki… He died. He was killed by Thanos. I don’t even know what I should say. It’s the first time I meet the person that last made my brother truly happy and I’m here to announce you his death. I just-" he paused a little. " I don’t know what to say. I tried to save him. But I wasn’t able to. I wanted to die there with him, but I couldn’t. See, I promised to do something for him. He sacrificed himself for our people. It’s the least I can do for him."

"How? How could you let him die?" Said Y/N crying.

"I know, I blame myself too. With Loki gone, I’ve lost everything. I had the last few days to think about everything I did wrong. I hope I’ll get to meet him again in Valhalla just to tell him how sorry I am."

"Few days ? But… But I just got the last message?"

"I believe that time travels strangely when associated to this transmitter, sometimes a little late." He said while pointing at Y/N’s transmitter lying on the ground. "Listen Y/N, Loki gave me this and made me swear to bring it to you. I don’t know what is in it, but it must be very important as he gave it to me just before sacrificing himself."

"Are you sure it wasn’t an illusion? I just-"

"Sadly, I believe this time it’s true" he responded as she nodded slightly. "I need to go know, here take the transmitter, I need to find a way to kill the monster responsible for his death."

"Thank you Thor."

"Thank you Y/N. I know he was happy with you, I wished you had more time with him. He deserved to be happy."

She waited for the god to get out of her apartment before inspecting the device she was handed. It looked almost identical to hers. Only bigger and with 4 buttons. Almost like an old cassette tape player. She pushed what looked the most like a play-button. Suddenly a hologram was standing in front of her. Loki was standing in front of her. She almost fell backwards, and just sit down on the floor as the image began speaking.

"Y/N, my love. I am terribly sorry for what happened. If you are seeing this message, I’m dead. I believe I need to explain what must have happened. You remember I’ve told you about some purple guy who tortured me. Well his name is Thanos and I believe that if we meet again, I won’t make it alive. Unfortunately, an hour ago, a ship was spotted getting closer to ours. Seeing its size on our radar I’m almost sure it’s Thanos’s. So I’m taking the few moments I have left to tell how much I loved you. How much you meant me. And how happy I am to have been able to share a little of my life with you. Don’t be sad for me, I know what is coming and I’m waiting for it peacefully knowing that for now you are safe. The five years we have spent together have been the best of my long life. You helped tame my demons and calm the rage inside me. You saved me." The hologram stopped for a bit, Y/N could see through her own tears, that Loki was also crying. "I cherish every memory I have with you, Y/N. I would go through torture again if it mean being able to kiss you one more time. To feel your heart beat close to mine… I will give this transmitter to Thor and make him swear to bring it to you. I want you to meet him. Maybe you can support each other now that I’m gone. I need to go now. Y/N please remember that you made me the happiest I’ve ever been. I’ve always loved you and always will. I’m so sorry for leaving you now. I love you Y/N."

Y/N felt her heart racing, she stopped breathing for a bit, not being able to process what she just heard. Her finger moved without she even realizing it. She pressed a button and heard Loki’s last words again as the hologram reappeared.

" I love you Y/N."

Tears were forming little creeks on her cheeks. Outside the storm was raging, thunder and lightening were mixed with a heavy rain. But nothing seemed to match the intensity of Y/N’s pain.

#loki #Loki Laufeyson #loki odinson #loki fanfic #Loki Angst #loki fluff #loki (marvel)#marvel #loki x reader #loki x you #mcu #Thor Odinson #thor #loki oneshot

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sonnets-and-snowdrops · 5 years

Text

春のしろ; or, the Snows of Springtime

Fandom: Bleach Pairing: Kyōraku Shunsui / Ukitake Jūshirō Genre: Angst / Hurt / Think Piece / I love torturing my faves Rating: G Word Count: 1,097 Warnings: N/A Summary: Ukitake probably should have been a Pisces. Instead, he’s a Sagittarius. Here’s a fic about that, sorta. More concretely, it’s about wanting and deserving springtime, but being perpetually stuck in winter. In my opinion, that isn’t an inapt metaphor for Jū-chan’s life and service - and even, perhaps, for his friendship with Shunsui. Author’s Note: I’m late as heck to this party, but here’s a little fic in response to @bleachbigbang’s first bing prompt. (Figured I’d @ you guys regardless; I do want to give credit where it’s due, and I know wouldn’t have written this without the prompt.) Also, this fic is unedited. I’m not, like, especially proud of it or anything - it’s just been such a long damn time since I’ve written and shared anything, so I figured now was as good a time to take the plunge as any.

...also, I know that the English version of the title isn’t a direct translation. I also also know that 白 is how you typically write white - but it made more sense, I thought, to spell it out phonetically rather than in kanji. Just uh, take a quick look at the way Shun-kun and Jū-chan write their names, if you’re curious :))

Thanks for reading, friends!

Springtime came late that year.

Springtime came late, and Jūshirō tried his very best not to shiver. It was spring, after all, and spring was supposed to mean birth and rebirth and new life and sunshine and fresh, bright flowers cascading downwards, riding the gentle crests of tender breezes and landing softly upon the thawing ground.

But this year, springtime still saw snow.

Jūshirō woke before dawn, but it wasn’t because sleep had left him sated. His eyes were red and crusted, and his hands trembled and his shoulders shook as he pulled his blankets closer, and then closer still. He clamped his jaw together to keep it from quivering, and he gazed with as much fondness as he could muster out across the still-frozen pond upon which he made his home.

He was happy here.

He was.

He had to be.

Didn’t he?

***

“…not the best I’ve ever had,” Shunsui was saying, “but worth a try. Even if a person’s not that into sake. Seriously, Jū-chan, I think you’ll like this one. You’ll appreciate the lightness of it. C’mon – give it a shot!”

Jūshirō eyed the little ceramic mug as skeptically as he could without seeming rude. “You mean it?” he tried, doing his damnedest to forestall the inevitable for as long as possible.

“ ‘Course I do,” Shunsui replied, a broad smile stretching across his flushed cheeks. “What?” he added, dropping his voice low and leaning across the table so that he could look Jūshirō dead in the eye and waggle his eyebrows oh-so-seductively. “You don’t think I’m trying to get you drunk, do you?”

Jūshirō smiled and rolled his eyes. “No,” he admitted. “Those days are long gone, aren’t they?”

“Damn straight.”

“You really think I’ll like it, do you?”

“Told ya once, didn’t I?”

“Very well, then.” Jūshirō reached across the table and took up the tiny cup in his graceful, long-fingered hand. He brought it to his lips, and said, “To friendship,” and downed it in one.

It was too sharp for his liking, but he didn’t say as much to Shunsui.

***

Jūshirō’s naked back was pressed to Shunsui’s naked chest. Behind him, Shunsui snored. Before him, the world was stark and white.

At times like these, Jūshirō sometimes wondered whether he’d chosen well, or very, very poorly indeed.

He swallowed hard, and he clutched Shunsui’s hand even tighter in his own. Shunsui stirred behind him, but he did not wake. What dreams ran rampant in his unconscious mind, Jūshirō did not know – did not want to know, in truth – but whatever they were, they were kind enough to let Shunsui drowse soundly for the time being.

Jūshirō suppressed a shiver.

Even here in Shunsui’s arms, he felt helplessly cold.

***

The next morning saw snow again.

Jūshirō’s pond froze anew, and Jūshirō’s heart froze when he thought of his poor koi fish, trapped beneath the unyielding surface. Jūshirō couldn’t drop breadcrumbs and small sweets for them, like he usually did at this time of year. Welcome back, those small offerings always said – at least in Jūshirō’s mind. You survived the winter. Well done! And for those that didn’t, we say our prayers, and we celebrate the lives they led.

Shunsui, of course, only ever regarded this practice as sweet, childlike, charming. He didn’t understand the sadness that rent Jūshirō’s heart when familiar faces did not return, and when still more familiar faces returned seeming older, sadder, more jaded somehow. To Shunsui, all life was futile and fleeting. Flower petals were beautiful, but they were dead things. The sun rose and set each day, but it took no interest in the comings and goings of men and souls. Even Jūshirō himself, friend and fixture though he was in Shunsui’s life, was destined for death just like the rest. They didn’t talk about that very often, but when they did, Shunsui always assured Jūshirō that, yes, he’d accepted Jūshirō’s destiny, and that yes, this was surely the way things were meant to be. And so, Jūshirō became a warm body to hold in the evenings, and a smiling face to keep Shunsui moving forward during the daytime.

And warm bodies and smiling faces had no use for mourning.

Especially, Jūshirō remarked sadly as he gazed at his frozen pond, not for the deaths of creatures as small and insignificant as fish.

***

Weeks later, the first blossoms pushed their tentative way through the branches of cold, barren trees.

The air was still cold and crisp, but the snow had long since melted, turning the ground beneath Jūshirō’s shoes to mud. He leaned heavily on Shunsui as he walked – he was still unsteady on his feet after a stubborn bout of sickness that had only relented days ago – but he smiled as he blinked up at the little buds of pink and purple and fresh green.

In the distance, the clash of wood on wood and steel on steel sounded. His men were training, even without their Captain to oversee them. They followed Jūshirō with unflinching loyalty, and they always had, despite Jūshirō’s copious and conspicuous shortcomings. To this day, Jūshirō didn’t truly understand it, never mind how many reassurances he received from his friends and comrades. What good, he always wondered at times like these, was a leader who often found himself too sick to lead?

He let his red-rimmed gaze soften, and he let the sounds of swordplay float sweetly into his ears.

He was a lucky man, and he knew it.

All of a cruel sudden, Jūshirō’s chest tightened. His steps faltered, and his fingers dug sharply into Shunsui’s arm. He squeezed his eyes shut, closing himself off from the budding springtime for the space of several rapid heartbeats. “Easy, Jū-chan,” came Shunsui’s voice beside him. “I’ve gotcha. Don’t worry.”

With an effort, Jūshirō straightened his back and opened his eyes again. “…I’m all right,” he managed, his words coarse and quiet with fatigue.

Shunsui raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

Jūshirō didn’t have the heart to answer Shunsui directly. He could have said yes, but that would have been a lie, and Jūshirō had never been a talented liar. He could have said no, but that would have meant admitting his pain to his friend. Jūshirō never wanted to do that, if he could avoid it. Shunsui shouldered enough of his own pain already. He didn’t need to shoulder Jūshirō’s, too.

And so, Jūshirō did the only thing he could think of – what he nearly always did, when situations like this arose.

He smiled.

“Let’s keep waking, shall we?”

#bleach #bleach fanfic #shunuki #ukitake #kyouraku #shunsui #ukitake jushiro #ukitake juushirou #kyoraku shunsui #kyouraku shunsui #bleach big bang #bring back bleach #del writes things #agaiN FINALLY #dear lord wut even is my life

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mpmwrites · 5 years

Text

Maybe, Maybe

Here’s my fic for Day 3 of Hankvin week (A Day late...) It’s Secret Admirer Au, also At Work! Enjoy some awkward fluff!

Gavin's never called himself happy. He's content, he figures, and that's plenty good enough. He shows up to work, does his job, goes home. He pays his bills on time and watches TV in the evenings and eats decently. He, at 32 years old, is doing everything correctly at least, and that was more than he probably deserves. Maybe he was lucky. He got to hang out with his best friend every day, he and Tina working beat and getting shit done, proving their worth one arrest at a time.

About eight months after he's earned his uniform, he brings in some asshole that was mugging a teenager on Griffin Street, and it turns out to be the lead suspect in one of the precinct's major cases, albeit one he's not involved in. It earns him more than a few claps on the shoulder, and the following day there's a small folded paper taped to his locker.

Nice job bringing Ivers in. You're an asset to the precinct. Keep it up.

There's a little smile at the bottom of it in way of a signature, and that's it. He stuffs it into his pocket and changes without thinking on it too hard. A few days later, there's another note.

Look up.

Gavin does so, and sees a cup from the donut shop down the street with a paper bag next to it perched atop his locker. He has to stand on the bench to reach it. He muses over that same little smiley as he eats the sprinkled donut in four bites.

A month later he gets the bug that’s going around and leaves early with the constant vomiting and all. He wasn't getting any work done anyway. The next day sees another note. He's exhausted and dehydrated as hell, but at least he isn't sick anymore.

They taste like ass, but will kick the rest of the nausea to hell.

Taped next to the smiley are five yellow-wrapped chewy candies with some kind of non-phonetic writing on them, and in English said the word 'Ginger' with little lemons depicted. Gavin pocketed the gift and tossed the note on the shelf in his locker with the others.

He tells Tina about the notes when she asks what he's eating and why he looks like he wants to cry about it. She probes him on who he thinks it is, and he really has no idea. She starts calling them his secret admirer, and the term annoys him more than it should. It does pose the question though, as to why they'd stay anonymous even though they left him a note at least once weekly.

Secret admirer is it then. He tries not to let it take his focus away. He's good at his job, and is proud of that, and doesn't need a distraction. He tries not to lean to heavily on Thursday mornings, and, when, the week after his birthday, there's nothing taped to his locker, he pretends not to be disappointed.

Tina notices anyway, pokes at him for moping around and barely even faking interest in pulling over some asshole that cuts them off on the highway. He tells her what happened and she rolls her eyes. He didn't even know who it was, she says, so there's no use feeling a loss over someone that practically didn't exist.

Still, he holds out hope for the following week, and when the radio silence stretches over months he barely offers the scraps in his locker a passing thought. It was fin while it lasted; made his days a little bit better, but it was done. In April, he's told he's going to be moving to detective, something he's wanted since before he even started at the DPD. Since Anderson's been unreliable (at best), they need more officers to step up, and Tina's already turned down the offer.

So he steps right into missing persons. When he's not on cases he helps out with the CPS stuff he always made time for, his degree in social work padding his capability. Tina always said it one of his few redeeming traits, that he likes kids, and he always played it off as a dream deferred. He pours himself headlong into work and putters away through cases as the world moves on around him and scrawled notes turn yellow in his locker.

As his birthday passes again, he pulls them out and tosses them in the recycling bin on his way home for the night. It was nice, to have been wanted, but whoever it was had clearly lost interest, and the knowledge had soured him. He was too old to be pining over some handwriting that occasionally accompanied donuts.

By the time another note appears, it's close to Christmas. The sight takes him by surprise, and the contents are nothing even similar to their predecessors.

It's hardest at Christmas, I think. You seem to like Christmas plenty enough though.

There's no smiley this time, but there is an arrow pointing above his locker, where there's a cup of coffee steaming away. Upon inspection, it's a peppermint mocha. Someone's noticed that that's what he'd been drinking for the past month or so. The cryptic words gave him pause, but had him leaving the note in his locker and moving on for the day. Tina probes him as to why he didn't bring her coffee, and he doesn't have the balls to tell her how he really got it.

It just seems silly. Something for highschoolers and romantic comedies. He fights the smile that each correspondence brings. They're more personal, more intimate, as time passes, more fitting into the true concept of a Secret Admirer. Gavin isn't about to admit just how much he likes it.

Do you have a resolution for the new year? You should try to smile more, I like seeing you smile.

It's supposed to snow this weekend, please be safe. It would suck not seeing you around.

New Jacket? It suits you.

Looks like your case is struggling. It's nice seeing you around the bullpen more, but I hope you get a lead soon.

Valentine's Day is coming up. Big plans?

It's the first time the note as really invited a response. A single red rose is laid atop his locker and he picks at the thorns that hadn't been removed, like it had been cut from a rosebush rather than pulled from a bouquet. It's the first time Gavin really needs to know who's been leaving the notes. Because, he wanted to say No, in hopes of them finally revealing themselves, but the urge to say Yes was just as strong. He was afraid of the possibility. What if he hated them? What if he like them too much? What if he had it all wrong, and they were just being friendly?

No plans.

He tapes the piece of paper back to his locker and makes a quick escape. He doesn't sleep much that night, counting the hours until he can get up and head back to work. He's exhausted enough the next day that he dozes off on the rhythmic rock of the bus and nearly misses his stop. Thankfully, one of the other usual passengers jostles him awake and he stumbles onto the sidewalk, rubbing his eyes as he enters the building.

He tries to muster energy from the few fits of sleep he'd gotten so he doesn't look so beat. He almost misses the note in his focus to remember his locker code and doesn't think to take it down until he's sitting and changing his shoes.

Will you let me change that? I get it if not, this whole thing is

I don't know.

He takes the note back to his desk to muse over as he fills out paper work and drowns himself in the mediocre break room coffee. It's distracting, but he leaves the paper on his desk, there for anyone to see, for someone to see. He never figures out what he wants to answer, and when he's on his way out there's a new note.

Yeah. Sorry. Too forward, I guess. I guess maybe you're not sure who I am. Maybe that's better. Save myself the embarrassment and our coworkers from having to deal with the awkward stuff.

He leaves both notes from the day in his locker again, rubbing over his eyes and not even trying to process. Was he disappointed? Guilty, maybe.

Self sabotage, probably. He settles on that as he heads in the next day, and isn't expecting anything more. Having slept on it, he figures he should have at least said something. But, they were probably right, it was better this way, even if it felt exponentially shitty for the moment.

Thank you, for indulging me for a while, I guess. I'm glad you liked the coffees; I would have liked to take you out for one, maybe.

There wasn't supposed to be a note there. The one from the previous night had felt final, should have been final. Maybe this one was posed as a second chance. Maybe it was one last plea.

I usually like to go to Starbucks on lunch. The one on 17th St has the best baristas.

He hesitates, staring at his own handwriting before taping it back on his locker. Now or never, Gavin. He glances back at it again before heading to his desk.

He taps his fingers on the back of his portable from his place on the bench seat at a small table. He tries to focus on getting a little more work done. Tries to check his damn email, or do anything other than watch the door. It's not working. During a lull in business, Reagan calls to him from behind the counter and jokes about him just coming for the company, he laughs, timidly offers that he's waiting for someone. He hopes he actually is.

Nearly twenty minutes of sitting there has him ready to leave, but he has an hour for lunch and really should eat at least. He makes his way to the counter, knowing that if he gets his lunch, then he's resigning himself to the knowledge of nobody showing up. He orders an egg white wrap and his usual mocha. She gives the total and he pulls out his wallet, dropping a dollar bill into her tip jar to a cheery 'Thank you'. He glances at the door one more time before extracting his bank card to wave over the credit card machine; it beeps. She promises it'll be ready in just a minute and she'll brig it over to him, no she doesn't mind.

He doesn’t want to be upset. Doesn't want to feel rejected. He focuses on eating, dripping sriracha from the packet over the wrap as he eats in large bites, relishing in the way it fills him up. He texts Tina and tells her what's been going on, and why he didn't invite her to lunch.

"When I said I wanted to take you for coffee, I figured I'd buy it for you." comes an almost familiar voice. Gavin snaps away from his phone.

"Anderson?" Gavin's astonished, thumbs held mid-text

"Yeah." Hank shrugs from across the table.

"It was fucking you, all this time?" Hank winces frowns,

"Sorry to disappoint." He looks away, hands in his pockets. There's a long beat of quiet.

"What took you so long?" Gavin pushes the chair out for Hank to sit down, all aggression gone.

Hank sits, and offers a small smile across the table.

#hankvinweek 2018 #hankvin #hankvinweek #dbh #dbh fanfic #hank x gavin #fanfiction

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voidingintotheshout · 3 years

Text

I am just going to rant.

Note: I will not edit this until tomorrow. All mistakes are phonetic and easily rectified.

I am Muslim, but I am drunk. My best friend‘s mother just died and he was drunk and it shocked me because he never drinks. He tends to have an addictive personality and so it freaked me out that my friend who hasn’t drank any alcohol at all in five years is slurry and stumbling around his deceased mother‘s trailer in South Carolina trying to keep it together.

I am worried about my friend, but more worried, like the rideshare driver that I am about being a good steward to people and reminding him to set his alarm now so that he doesn’t oversleep for the appointment with the funeral director tomorrow. I have the high holy day Muslim prayer tomorrow at the mosque and it is very difficult and or unlikely for me to get there on time. I’m feeling very guilty because I haven’t drank almost anything in nearly a year and yet I am drinking tonight, in the wee hours of the morning before the holy Muslim prayer of Jumah; now, I sit here with my head moving further than my body does, feeling out of it and disoriented after my second large glass of Arak.

It’s been such a strange day, I sit here feeling drunk. I woke up and I had a car with a nearly flat tire and a dead battery. The kindness of a stranger helped jumpstart my battery and give me some very good advice. I pushed back my physical therapy appointment for my bad shoulder and drove across the city to the one reputable used tire place to refill my tire. Now, I have a car with a working battery and a tire that is not leaking air and, after doing my laundry I call my friend, expecting it to be more of the same with his mother, circling the drain having more days of sleeplessness only to be thrown out of my universe and be told that no, she’s dead. She died this morning. I didn’t tell you earlier because I knew you would call. Some thing that I almost forgot to do.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t care. Only three people will ever fucking re-blog this. No one will even read this far. Anyway, I was in a completely different headspace for most of his hour and a half call. I wanted to crack jokes and cheer him up but how do you crack jokes about someone having their mother die in his arms? How do you make a funny joke about a woman peeing herself and then having hospice rush her to the funeral home? What witty one-liners do you use for that? How do you feel of use in a situation where you were 600 miles away from someone and you can’t do any goddamn thing to actually help them other than just feel impotent and powerless on the other end of a phone line. What the fuck do you do? Seeing your friend who has always struggled with addictions get drunk off of a concoction of very delicious sounding margaritas in the trailer that had here too for been occupied by his mother, the last surviving parent. Now here I am dealing with the fact that he is living some thing I will have to live through very soon enough when my second biological parent dies and I am left with virtually no family outside of an aunt who I talk to once every two or three years. I feel like he is living my future. His future is filled with drunkenly stumbling around a trailer that is not his, feeling impotent and powerless trying to focus on anything else other than the fact that his mother is never going to have a conversation with him again. I am trying to have a conversation with him try not to remind myself that I will once again have to prepare myself for some thing that no one can prepare themselves for: the death of someone you truly love. In this case, my mom. He starts getting drunk, and so do I. I just want to feel numb.

I don’t want to think about how I needed to get new clothes yesterday because I got too fat for most of my T-shirts. I don’t want to think about the fact that the people at the physical therapy place think I’m weird because I like obscure Russian movies and I don’t have anything in common with normal people. I don’t wanna think about the fact that my friends think that I am irritating every once in a while because I have ADHD and severe depression and anxiety which are comorbidities with ADHD. I don’t wanna think of myself as a burden to my friends. I don’t like thinking about myself as an annoyance to people who I love, but that haunting Spectre in the back of my brain reminds me that that may be exactly what it is. I may be ultimately just a burden who stays a burden, alone, and then dies. That may be all I accomplish, outside of worthless posts on here that few people will ever read, like this one.

I’m laying on my bed at 2:40 in the morning and one of the bits of clothing I got yesterday today. A new T-shirt that ironically says kindness matters but, what can I say? I’ve always been a person who felt like that slogan was about how I should treat other people but I could never figure out how to treat myself that way. With other people I can always give them the benefit of the doubt that they have their own shit to work through and that they are doing their best but I know myself too well. I know I’m not doing my best. Might be kind someone who is ultimately not trying hard enough to do their best? It seems like a waste of time to try to support someone who you know is going to fail. Someone who you know isn’t giving everything they have. Someone who is in hustling enough to actually reach the finish line. You feel like you’re just pumping someone up that you know he’s not gonna actually make it. Someone who you know you’re gonna have to be there telling them that they tried their best. Again. That’s how I feel like it is like to cheer myself up to pep myself up. I know it’s just proceeding telling myself that I’m gonna get them next time. Next time my story will be published. Next time I’ll have enough confidence to actually set up the profile on the dating app. Next time, the date with a nice guy is going to be a reality instead of just some kind of daydream fantasy that I entertain myself with while I shuttle people around who could care less about my existence.

Here I am, at nearly 3 o’clock in the morning with a phone that is nearly dead, my friend is probably getting ready for bed, too drunk to really think much about his mother who is going to need to make funeral plans at the funeral parlor tomorrow. My life will be completely uneventful. It is always uneventful. That is a blessing, I realize, but it is the stagnation that makes me feel like what is the pointing going on living when I am just going to spend it in nothingness? Why bother doing anything when it’s just gonna end up being made siphoning resources away from the poor and taking up space until eventually I just disappear and nothingness, forgotten buried somewhere, wherever.

What is life but just a waystation on the way to death, trying to build up enough supporters and memories and accomplishments so that the sting of death doesn’t hurt as much. It’s like running for class president. You’re trying, in the limited time you have to garner as much accomplishments and support as you can before you run out of time and you’ll be judged as either good enough or not good enough. That’s life. At least that’s how it seems to me at nearly 3 o’clock in the morning right before I’m supposed to do Muslim prayer, and I still have a little bit left on my second glass of Arak.

What am I even doing? I’m a gay Muslim. Why even bother? I feel so pathetic every single time I find another Muslim. Like I found a Muslim lady in my building from the United Arab Emirates. She seems so nice! She like to read! Something in common! I didn’t even bother to tell her where I lived or to introduce myself because I knew, but I didn’t know, but I assumed, that when she found out I was gay she would think of me is disgusting and an idiot for ever thinking I belong at the Muslim table and that I should just stop wasting my time trying to appeal to a God who I would never be good enough for. I like writing this year because I know that most of the people reading this are either non-religious, non-Muslims, or gay and so all of you reading this also think I’m stupid for ever trying to appeal to a God who I believe in but who probably will never be satisfied with me. Some of you reading this will probably feel, rightly so, that it is hubris for me to imply that I know the will of God and therefore I should just try to be the best version of myself that I can. That is probably the helpful advice. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like helpful advice right now.

That’s the problem. I feel like I want to punish myself for the piss poor excuse for life I have created even though, I don’t know what I was expecting? I guess I was expecting to have it all. I wanted to be surrounded by friends and a gorgeous caring boyfriend and a wildly successful riding career. I wanted my ADHD to not be an issue so that I could’ve accomplished all of those things with all of the silent work in the background that those goals actually require. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be satisfied. I wanted to be able to throw my money around buying useless garbage like expensive meals that I could’ve made at home and not even thought about how much they cost. I wanted to have enough money to be one of those wasteful gay people they can throw their money on garbage on Etsy that they don’t really need, expensive bespoke clothes that they could get cheaper elsewhere, and restaurant quality meals that are going to provide fleeting joy and are ultimately just expensive fuel for the body. I want to be that kind of a person. I want to be someone wasteful. Burns the money that could feed the poor on their on alter to themselves. I want to be that kind of person, but I have always somehow fucked it up. I want to be that type of person, who can create this world about making themselves the best and most beautiful and amazing thing in the world and insisting that everyone else treat them as this beautiful jewel even though they’re really just some random fucking asshole who will live, and then die. I could never do it. I mean there are people Who devote their entire lives to helping the poor. People who Sean the television and the Internet and spend their free time writing because they are actually writers and they love writing, even if they never publish anything and their contribution to the world is thousands of pages of glorious fanfiction on AO3. They are more writers than I will ever be with my stories that no one reads. The pain of being jealous of a couple in what is clearly an unhappy marriage because at least they were in love once, some thing I can never claim.

I take another sip of the alcohol, almost wishing that I could be videotaped and have this monologue in this pathetic scene where a 40 year old fat lonely man records a drunken monologue in his studio apartment at 3 AM. I wish they could show that at the mosque right before I arrive so everyone would be able to see that I am unworthy. Why do I want this? Is it sadism? Masochism? No. It’s a more toxic reason. I want everyone else to know so I can justify my own feelings of self hatred that are ultimately self created. It’s easier for me to imagine that the whole world sees me as terrible and pathetic than to imagine and except the terrible, terrible truth that I am actually a really great guy who is accomplished a lot. The terrible truth that I am totally fine and accomplishing a lot I just have depression that doesn’t let me see it. It’s so much more horrible to know that all of those negative self feelings are just in your head, you know? It’s so much harder to except that they are all in your head then to except that they are true. You almost want all of those negative self feelings to be true so it’s not just you being cruel to yourself for no goddamn reason. That’s the motherfucking horrible thing about being alive sometimes. Being a person with all of the advantages in a prosperous society like America and still having the nerve to not be happy. It’s like an insult to all of the people in the world that are struggling with not enough.

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tangled-headphone-cord · 6 years

Note

5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

Linguasks

5: What is the prettiest language?

There’s so many languages and many ways in which one can be pretty, so this is a hard question… I really like the Celtic ones though. (I haven’t yet managed to actually try learning one so idk which I’d like best)

Russian sounds so beautiful

I love Polish language a LOT whenever I hear it I get real happy

Also Finnish?

this is all phonetically (though for Polish I can’t seem to define exactly WHAT I love about it so much or if it’s just the language or also the memories I have associated with it)

Also you know what? 19th century Slovene is RAD. Like, I-was-reading-and-paused-just-to-marvel-at-it rad.

6: What is the ugliest language?

ahhh idk I don’t really want to see languages as ugly you know?

7: Have you ever made up your own language?

I have actually, or better said I tried doing something a few times when I was younger than 10 and didn’t know anything about linguistics or how language works. I’d just make up random words and assign random meanings to them.

10: Have you ever tried to learn sign language?

I tried a little bit, but didn’t stick to it. I’d like to learn it still someday but idk what to chose? Like people seem to use “sign language” to refer to American sign language - does each spoken language have its own sign variant?? Then I’d rather learn whatever is used in my countries, but idk what it is? can I just make up my own

12: Choose a Scandinavian language you’d like to learn.

Icelandic

14. Choose an Asian language you’d like to learn.

I was gonna put the most cliché weaboo option and say Japanese bc of the anime but then I remembered Hebrew is an Asian language too (idk my brain filed it under african for some reason ok)

also guess what I actually AM learning in college now lol

18. Name a dead language that you wish to make a come back.

amm idk that much about dead languages, maybe Old Prussian?

but also if you count Latin then yes, absolutely bring back Latin. With proper accent. (Latin technically doesn’t count as a dead language bc French, Italian and other Romance languages are a thing but shhh)

also, Russenorsk. (I don’t really think it’s a language of its own bc it’s pidgin but it’s rad)

20. What language is overrated?

English

21. What language do you think is too intimidating to learn?

Celtic languages.. phonetics/pronounciation… but idk if it’s really that hard or is it only hard bc I can’t find resources for it that do NOT adapt their explanations to the phonetics of English (ie. no“pronounce like in ”). English is really the worst language through which to learn another one…

22. What language should more people speak?

just have everyone speak more languages in general

but proper Latin, really. Not “I know 1 sentence and 3 other words I speak Latin uwu”, not “I speak Latin but the accent of my native language is showing so bad that anyone who doesn’t speak my native language would have trouble understanding it”, not “I speak Latin but with the syntax of my native language” you know?

also every Christian should learn biblical Hebrew/Greek tbh. At least the basics.. and i guess Aramaic too since some parts of the Bible are written in that

Like I’m not putting up trilingual heresy or anything, I don’t think we should just ditch any translations and say “it’s not sacred if it’s translated” the way Muslims do with the Qur’an but fact is things get lost in translation and being able to read things in the original should be something anyone who’s serious about their faith should strive for.

Old Church Slavonic (emphasis on the OLD) for Slavic folks and bring back glagolitic

23. What language uses the prettiest alphabet?

Quenya (Tengwar/tehtar) nothing beats that tbh.

Then Old Church Slavonic (round glagolitic) is a close second because? ⰾⰹⰽⰵ ⰾⱁⱁⰽ ⰰⱅ ⱈⱁⱆ ⱂⱃⰵⱅⱅⱏⰻ ⱅⱈⰹⱄ ⰹⱄ??? (ⱆⱄⰹⱀⰳ ⰹⱅ ⱇⱁⱃ ⰵⱀⰳⰾⰹⱄⱈ ⱇⰵⰵⰾⱄ ⰾⰹⰽⰵ ⰰ ⱌⱃⰹⰿⰵ ⱅⱈⱁ Ⰹ ⱄⱈⱁⱆⰾⰴ ⱄⱅⱁⱂ)

24. What language uses the weirdest alphabet?

Hebrew.

This probably applies to several other Semitic languages too, but this is so WILD like:

1) write from right to left (not so bad in itself except when your notes are in a language that doesn’t do that and you have to do transcription)

2) who needs to spell out vowels lol (tengwar is like that too, but in Hebrew, the word root isn’t a syllable or group of syllables but a group of consonants. So you see a word and just have to GUESS the vocals in it, but getting it wrong can change the word’s meaning.. idk if Elvish did THAT too)

there IS a system for writing vowels, similar to tehtar, but only used in texts meant for learners.

3) a different, more calligraphy-like (Rashi) script is used in books. It’s not the one you’re supposed to write in. While the letters in this script do look like simply calligraphic versions of the “regular” ones, they’re still harder to read.

4) some letters look different if they’re at the end of the word than if they’re anywhere else. There is no historical reason for that AFAIK (if someone knows the reason please tell me), literally just “it’s at the end of the word so let’s write it differently”. The final version is pronounced and transcribed the same as the non-final one.

and while I don’t mind #1 (you get used to it) and quite like #2 actually (would have liked it better if they were consistent about actually writing out the niqqud…. which btw works similar as in Elvish except it’s usually below the consonant, not above, and pronounced after said consonant. I forgot how that latter part is in Elvish languages, but IIRC one of them pronounced the vowel before the consonant it was written with and the other after), I just don’t get why there’s a need for #3 and #4.

#ewa jednak chce spac #answered #langblr #thank you for asking!!! <3

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preservationandruin · 6 years

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Oathbringer Liveblog, Interludes 1

Our spread here is Puuli, Ellista, and Venli. This will be interesting. Also, I’d just like to specify--any question I ask in these liveblogs is meant to be rhetorical, more me musing than actually looking for an answer. I want to accurately chart the questions I have, but I also want to discover the answers as the book goes, not get the answers handed to me. I realize that might have been confusing.

I also want to note that I don’t read ahead of these liveblogs, so please don’t tell me anything that happens after the point I’m at. You’re getting my first reactions to everything and I want to keep it that way, for my own enjoyment and for the posterity of these records.

With that housekeeping out of the way, onward to the interludes! We talk about some local legends, romance novels show up, we get some interesting linguistic history, Brandon Pokes Fun At The Massive Size Of This Book, and then he chucks my heart down into a chasm where it shatters into a million tiny fragments because of course we can’t have nice things now can we.

Puuli is a lighthouse keeper, looking forward to the coming highstorm. We get a nice local legend:

Puuli’s grandfather had been able to remember when those cliffs hadn’t been there. Kelek himself had broken apart the land in the middle of a storm, making a new prime spot for homes.

Of course, given that the Radiants are real, this could have happened--but it also reminds me of how every colonial-era house is a house George Washington slept in, or all the places King Arthur was supposed to have sat/slept in England. I love local legends like that. My town’s version of one was that Dairy Queen got the idea for the Blizzard from the Blizzards that one of the local ice cream shops, the Chocolate Moose, made. True? Probably not, but does it matter?

They’re in Natanatan, I think--Puuli is mentioned as having blue skin, thinking that tan skin is strange. Puuli is apparently excited for the storm because of another thing from his grandfather:

Had the time finally come, that his grandfather had warned of? The time of changes, when the men from the hidden island of the Origin at last came to reclaim Natanatan?

So that’s an interesting snippet. In any case, he agrees externally with everyone else that the storm was a tragedy, but internally doesn’t really believe it. He named his lighthouse Defiance, and he sacrifices fruit to Kelek for the storm. And one last bit about the men from the Origin:

They’ll come with Light in their pockets, Grandfather had said. They’ll come to destroy, but you should watch for them anyway. Because they’ll come from the Origin. The sailors lost on an infinite sea. You keep that fire high at night, Puuli. You burn it bright until the day they come. They’ll arrive when the night is darkest.

One might say they’ll come during the night of sorrows, something we’re still waiting for a fuller explanation of. It seems like it’s just another name for the Final Desolation, but that’s what it seemed the Everstorm was, too. Also, Light in their pockets seems to imply that they’re Radiants--but Radiants, ideally, are not coming to destroy things.

Over to Ellista, an ardent. I think I’ve heard this interlude, too--it was another one that a reading was done of. She’s just trying to find somewhere to read, but everyone has to keep arguing about what this new storm means!

And, of course, what she’s reading isn’t a scholarly text but a romance novel. Also, props to Sanderson for taking what is a fairly stock romance-novel scene and giving it enough Rosharisms to be hilarious (not that romance novels aren’t well-written; honestly, good romance novel writers have mastered the art of reworking a genre to make it both new and what readers are looking for and I deeply respect that). And, in the grand tradition of any book you’re reading, Ellista is angrily critiquing the characters’ actions.

I love that this bit so accurately captures what reading a book is like when the characters are doing something so in-character...but so stupid. So far Ellista has yelled at the main character for turning down a guy, cursed at her, said “damn right you better wait” (basically) at another character, gets really into the characters about to kiss aaaand--

Gets interrupted by Ardent Urv, another of the Ardents.

The young Siln ardent was tall, gangly, and obnoxiously loud at times. Except, apparently, when sneaking up on colleagues in the forest. “What was that you were studying?” he asked. “Important works,” Ellista said, then sat on the book.

Anyway, what she was supposed to be doing was working on the Dawnchant, now that Navani--in the last book--cracked it. She doesn’t believe Navani’s story about how, of course. We get some interesting notes about language:

-The Dawnchant wasn’t a primarily spoken language, it was a primarily written one that spread across Roshar as a unified scholarly language -A desolation hit, wiping out knowledge of where/how the Dawnchant had spread -People tried to use it to phonetically transcribe their languages; didn’t work well -Glyphs and modern writing developed

So the reason the Dawnchant was lost was because it was mostly written--there were no native speakers. It would be like if the Catholic mass was still said in Latin, then all the priests got wiped out, or something. People would be like how did they forget the words to their own mass but it would be because those words were in a dead language.

And then Urv notices the book she’s reading, admits he’s read it too (it’s an “Alethi epic,” and I love the possible implication here that the Alethi just are huge suckers for romance novels. I’m not even surprised you cannot tell me that like, Adolin hasn’t gotten emotional over dramatic romance novels. Alethkar is Extra; Romance novels are dramatic. it’s a match made in the tranquiline halls). But...Urv disagrees which guy in the love triangle the main heroine should go with.

Bugs Bunny voice: of course you realize, this means war.

“She really should have picked Vadam though. Sterling was a flatterer and a cadger.” “Sterling is a noble and upright officer!” She narrowed her eyes. “And you are just trying to get a rise out of me, ardent Urv.” “Maybe.”

And, of course, he’s got the sequel--with three love interests this time--and offers it to her in return for her help translating the Dawnchant. Also, Brandon is making fun of himself:

“Sequels always have to be bigger,” he said.

I’m looking directly at the page count of this book. I’m glaring at it. I see you, Sanderson. I know what your game is.

And now to Venli, in stormform. We get more of the changed rhythms--the Rhythm of Craving is mentioned here, and the Rhythm of Command. Venli is confirmed to no longer even hear the normal rhythms. She’s descending into a chasm with some of her fellow Voidbringer soldiers.

There’s a real difference between the Voidbringers--the Fused--and the ordinary Parshmen now returned to autonomy. Every Voidbringer perspective reinforces that. Venli’s spren, which looks like rolilng lightning, is named Ulim, but he takes a humanoid form sometimes, “with odd eyes” and long hair. Venli notes that it’s weird that a spren of Odium would look human--but Odium wasn’t ever really of the Parshendi, was he? He used them, but do we know what Rayse actually was?

Given that his spren look human, probably human. Although the unmade sure didn’t look human.

Anyway, Venli is starting to get irritated at having to obey Ulim. It also seems like even Venli--in the moments where Odium and the new rhythms are less present--has doubts and regrets about what she did, how many of the Listeners were lost to summon the Everstorm and how little they’ve gotten in return.

Anyway, it’s confirmed that Ulim isn’t a spren she’s bonded; instead, “lesser spren” are used for changing forms.

They...they find Eshonai. And she’s dead. Venli thought that when Ulim said they needed to find her sister, he meant find her alive--but he was only ever looking for the Plate and the Blade. Eshonai probably drowned in the floodwaters.

Eshonai can’t be dead. She can’t be.

Well, if anyone would recognize her, it would be Venli. Venli manages--somehow--to go back to one of the old rhythms. The Rhythm of the Lost. And she touches Eshonai’s body.

Venli stared into Eshonai’s dead eyes. You were the voice of reason, Venli thought. You were the one who argued with me. You...you were supposed to keep me grounded. What do I do without you? “Well, let’s get that Plate off, kids,” Ulim said. “Show respect!” Venli snapped. “Respect for what? It’s for the best that this one died.” “For the best?” Venli said. “For the best?” She stood, confronting the little spren on Demid’s outstretched palm. “That is my sister. She is one of our greatest warriors. An inspiration, and a martyr.”

And Ulim brushes her off, pointing out that Eshonai never really transformed properly, that she resisted. God, I can’t believe Eshonai’s dead. Ulim and Venli get in a full argument--Ulim calls himself “the one who escaped, the spren of redemption” and reveals that he still blames Eshonai for trying to prevent them from returning--and the Parshendi as a whole for being traitors. And then an alarming line:

“We must be away and see what your ancestors need us to do.” “Our ancestors?” Demid said. “What do the dead have to do with this?” “Everything,” Ulim replied, “seeing as they’re the ones in charge.”

And it’s noted that the small, cometlike spren is still with Eshonai. Eshonai’s body.

She can’t be dead. She can’t be. I don’t care that we’ve seen the body. Eshonai can’t be dead.

I’m going to be in denial for the next 48 hours at least. Eshonai is fine and that’s a convincing body double. Or she learned lightweaving. Or something. Anything.

#oathbringer spoilers #stormlight archive liveblog #interesting myths #i love eshonai

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mypoorfaves · 7 years

Text

More Than Words Can Say

Summary: Yuuri gets sick with a cold in Hasetsu and loses his voice! How will he and Victor be able to communicate? How will Victor care for Yuuri? Takes place somewhere between episodes 5 and 6.

I’ve been harboring this idea of a sickie who entirely loses their voice for a long time (which I guess is why it ended up being so damn long. I tried to shorten it, I really did try!). This was supposed to be a bit crack-like but surprisingly ended up containing a lot more fluff. In fact, there's barely even any whump in here. Oh well! Without further ado, please enjoy!

3400~ words

Real quick in case you don't already know because the story will make more sense if you do:

Kanji: Japanese picture-word(s), essentially Hiragana: symbol(s) used to represent a single phonetic Katakana: like hiragana, but used for foreign words and names Cyrillic: Russian writing system Romaji: Japanese written using the English alphabet. (Will be italicized)

～～～

Victor wears a concerned frown while he rubs Yuuri's back as the latest coughing fit forces its way out of Yuuri's throat. They sound dry and unproductive, not to mention painful. He's been dealing with them the whole day ever since he woke up; it came with the cold that hit him like a ton of bricks, no warning whatsoever.

When Yuuri at last catches his breath, his inhales have become shallow so as not to start another fit and he has tears forming at the edges of his eyes. His hand which had been balled into a fist over his chest is now rubbing at his sore throat. “Hurts,” Yuuri rasps, then winces at the pain that the talking caused him.

“Try not to talk. You'll only make it worse,” Victor advises. He rubs Yuuri's back again, noting the heat his body is giving off even though the shirt. For such a sudden cold, it's not too bad; his fever is low, but the coughs are worrisome.

“I'm going to get you sick if you're not careful,” Yuuri warns. His voice is cracking and broken and he coughs again, but thankfully it doesn't turn into another fit.

“Nonsense! I have a good immune system! Plus I want to look after my sweet Yuuri!” Victor gushes. “I'm going to pamper you and provide the utmost level of TLC until you get better!”

Yuuri just gives a moan and dramatically flops onto his back and closes his eyes. “Tired,” he mumbles.

“It's getting late. You should get some more sleep. Although you shouldn't be laying flat with how much you're coughing.”

With much reluctance, Yuuri hauls himself up to a seated position. Victor takes the time to fluff the numerous pillows and place them between Yuuri and the headboard, then he tucks the blanket around Yuuri as he leans back. “Hopefully you'll feel better by tomorrow morning,” Victor says and places a gentle kiss on Yuuri's warm forehead.

Yuuri hardly even blushes, already grown used to Victor’s many displays of affection. The two have been getting much closer, both as student and coach and also as something more. Even without words, they both know they have a deeper bond developing. Just the thought makes Victor's heart swell.

As Yuuri's eyes begin to droop, Victor gets up from the bed and heads to the door to let him rest in peace. “Sleep well, my Yuuri,” he whispers and softly closes the door.

～

The next morning comes and Victor is marching through the hallways of the onsen with a tray in hand. He reaches Yuuri’s door and knocks three times in succession with his free hand. Upon hearing no response, he assumes Yuuri is sleeping. Just to be safe, he knocks again, gently calling Yuuri’s name as he slowly opens the door and peers inside where he finds his patient still propped up against the pillows, already awake.

“Good morning, Yuuri!” Victor greets and Yuuri meet Victor’s eyes and gives a small wave. “I brought you some stuff!” he says, placing the tray down on the table beside the bed. He dutifully takes Yuuri's temperature and gets him to swallow some pills, much to Yuuri's discomfort. Once done, a tangible silence fills the room.

“You're even more quiet than usual today, Yuuri,” Victor notes with mingling teasing and concern as he notices Yuuri fidgeting uncomfortably. “You haven't said a word all morning.” The fidgeting stops and he freezes. “Are you feeling okay?” Victor asks. Yuuri nods quickly and Victor only frowns. He’s obviously hiding something. “You know you can tell me anything. I'll get you whatever you need. It's really no problem. Your word is my command.”

Yuuri remains silent and Victor is patient. If Yuuri has something to say, there's no use in forcing him to talk right away. He'll tell Victor when he's ready. They've been together long enough to know that's what works best.

Sure enough, Yuuri finally meets Victor’s eyes. He opens his mouth and moves his lips but no sound comes out, then he points at his throat and makes an x-formation with his arms in front of his body.

He holds the position while Victor stares, trying to decode what Yuuri could possibly mean. Why doesn't he just come out and tell Victor what's wrong using words?

A moment passes and Victor understands.

“Yuuri, have you lost your voice?” Victor asks and Yuuri nods. “Oh, you poor thing!” Victor coos. “How adorable!” Yuuri gapes at him, blushes and scowls. “Just what are we going to do with you?” Victor muses joyfully, then his expression suddenly falls. How is he going to care for Yuuri if he doesn't know what he needs? This might end up being troublesome…

“Okay, Yuuri!” Victor declares and Yuuri focuses his attention on him. “Because you can't talk, we're going to have to figure something out so you can communicate what you need,” he says seriously. “Any ideas?”

Yuuri puts a hand on his chin in thought, face focused and determined, then he abruptly snaps his fingers and looks up with an accomplished smile on his face. He waves his finger in the air, likely trying to imitate an action of some kind or spell out a word, but Victor can't decipher it. Yuuri stops, but he doesn't give up. He changes the action, holding his left palm towards himself and uses his other hand like a pen.

“Writing! Of course!” Victor exclaims. “I’ll ask your parents if they have anything we can use!” Victor says before rushing out of the room.

By the time he's halfway to his destination, he realizes he could have easily checked Yuuri's room for pen and paper. But then again, he should let the Katsuki’s know their son is sick. The onsen was so busy yesterday that Victor had spent the entire day caring for Yuuri on his own, barely able to leave the bedroom as the young skater struggled to catch his breath through his fierce coughs. It's unlikely anyone else even knows he's caught a cold.

Victor spots Yuuri's mother and calls her over, but it's only once she starts approaching him that he realizes his problem with communicating doesn't stop at Yuuri's missing voice; Yuuri's parents know about as much English as Victor knows Japanese.

He and Yuuri talk in English for the most part as it's the language the two are most comfortable in. Yuuri teaches him small words and phrases of his language when he can, but Victor is nowhere near fluent yet. Plus, it's a lot harder to put his own thoughts into adequately formed sentences compared to simply listening.

“Vicchan!” Hiroko greets. “What's the matter?” she asks in lightly accented English.

Victor’s eyebrows crease in hard thought. Cold, cold… What's the Japanese word for cold? “Ah! Samui! Yuuri wa samui desu!” Victor exclaims triumphantly. He remembers Yuuri muttering the words sometimes while rubbing his crossed arms to keep them warm on the ice, so it has to be right! Okay, half down, half to go. Now he just needs to tell her Yuuri has lost his voice.

“Samui? Ah, kaze wo hiita no?” Hiroko asks.

Kaze means wind, Victor manages to recall, and he frowns as he curses the language barrier. Wind has nothing to do with this! Yuuri has a cold, not is cold. Although he might have chills from his fever, now that Victor thinks about it.

“Umm...sick? Yuuri wa sick desu!” Victor tries once more, accepting that's about as close as he's going to get. Just for good measure, he mimics the actions that Yuuri demonstrated to Victor to get his message across.

Thankfully, understanding seems to dawns on her and she heads in the direction of Yuuri's bedroom. Victor trails behind her as she reaches the door and opens it up to reveal Yuuri in the same position Victor had left him.

Hiroko embraces her son and asks him a number of questions in Japanese and Yuuri nods or shakes his head in response while Victor stands rather awkwardly to the side of the room, trying to listen to the conversation. He catches the words kaze and samui again as well as his name. Hiroko must have said something funny because Yuuri laughs, albeit soundlessly, then casts a glance over at him.

Yuuri turns back to his mother and acts out pen and paper and she rummages through some drawers in Yuuri's desk and emerges with a small whiteboard and a marker which she hands to him.

The first thing he writes is “hungry” in English plus what Victor can only assume is the Japanese translation written underneath it. At that, Hiroko says something to Yuuri who nods then she skips out of the room, leaving Yuuri and Victor alone.

“I really need to start learning more Japanese,” Victor muses mostly to himself. “That aside, how are you feeling, Yuuri?” he asks his patient, “On a scale from 1-10. 10 being ‘I can run a marathon right now’ and 1 is ‘take me to the hospital’.” Yuuri ponders for a moment, scribbles on his board and holds it up revealing a solid 6. Not too bad.

“How is your fever? Too hot? Too cold?” Yuuri just shakes his head and jots down “okay”. “Headache?” Victor asks, getting a so-so gesture of his hand in response. When asked if he has a sore throat, Yuuri nods immediately. “Can I get you anything?” Victor offers.

He looks down to his whiteboard again and writes, “Mom is bringing tea.”

Victor smiles. “That's good. Your mom is a great caretaker. And she was smart enough to understand what I was trying to say despite my obviously eloquent Japanese,” he jokes, eliciting another silent laugh from Yuuri. “I really do wish I knew more…” he sighs.

Yuuri scoots over on the bed and invitingly pats the spot next to him. Victor’s heart swells fondly and he accepts, sitting as close to Yuuri as the man will let him, which turns out to be hip to hip. Victor is grateful Yuuri has been more open and comfortable with him. They really have come a long way in the past number of months they've been living and training together. Yuuri flashes him a warm smile then turns his attention back to his lap where he writes, “Want me to teach you Japanese?”

“Yes! Of course! I would love that!” Victor exclaims. Despite having lived in Japan surrounded by the language, he hasn't put muchーif anyーeffort into learning it. He simply hasn't had the time or motivation. Having Yuuri as a teacher, though, is the best motivation Victor could possibly ask for. Having him teach Victor his native language, it's special, almost intimate.

At Victor’s enthusiasm, Yuuri wipes the board clean then writes out in diligent strokes: 勝生勇利. “I know that one! That's your name!” Victor says.

Yuuri nods and adds the pronunciation on top before writing, “Do you know what my name means?”

“No, I don't. Tell me,” he asks, voice equal parts soft and intrigued. He sees Yuuri write in English “win, life, courage.”

“Yuuri. Courage,” Victor tries, as if testing the name and its new meaning on his tongue. “I like it. It suits you,” he compliments. “Teach me more,” he requests, and Yuuri obliges.

The next hour or so consists of just that: Yuuri teaching Victor any kanji he thinks would be important or that he finds interesting, while Victor occasionally asks how he would write a particular word. At one point, Victor recalls his communication mishap with Yuuri's mother and asks for the Japanese word for cold. Yuuri thinks for a moment, then writes two different words: 寒い and 風邪, writing “samuiーfeeling” under the first set of characters and “kazeーillness” under the other two.

“Oh,” Victor laughs, finally understanding. “I told your mom you were cold, not had a cold. And then she mentioned something about the wind.”

At this, Yuuri circles the first of the two partnered characters in the second word and writes, “This on its own means wind. Both pronounced kaze.”

“Japanese is so confusing!” Victor bemoans while running a hand through his hair. He suddenly gets an idea. “Hey, I know! How about I teach you a bit of Russian?”

Yuuri nods excitedly and hands the whiteboard over. Victor ponders what to write for a moment, overjoyed at the feel of Yuuri's expectant gaze on him. He smiles and writes out “Виктор Никифоров.” Beside him, Yuuri gives another silent laugh before taking back the pen and writing “I already know your name.”

“Okay then, Mr. Number One Fanboy,” he teases while writing out some simple vocabulary, “try reading this one.”

Yuuri studies the symbols before he gives up and writes, “Can't read Cyrillic,” with an added frowny face.

“Here, I'll teach you,” Victor says. “Just like you taught me.”

They pass more time like that, Yuuri picking up on the writing system surprisingly quick while Victor teaches him some more words. Yuuri seems to be doing better in terms of his health. He hasn't complained about being too hot or cold, although his fever had been quite mild to begin with. He's no longer coughing and he doesn't seem uncomfortable. All in all, he appears well. The only real sign he's even sick is the barely-visible red tinting his cheeks and his inability to talk.

While Victor may miss Yuuri's voice and the music that is his laughter, he can't help but savour the peace found in the sound of both of their quiet breathing, interrupted only by the soft squeak of the marker on the whiteboard and Victor's voice, kept at a low volume.

“You skate like your body is creating music, and your hand has art flowing from your fingertips,” he muses aloud, utterly transfixed on Yuuri's elegant handwriting. “Everything about you is beautiful, Yuuri. Breathtakingly so.”

Yuuri blushes and ducks his head and Victor smiles, knowing that while Yuuri may not be totally used to accepting praise, he has already gained much more confidence and love for himself.

Yuuri hands off the marker and Victor hums in thought, debating over what to write next. He has an idea, but isn't sure how Yuuri will react to that. He knows they've been getting closer and developing a much deeper relationship, but what if it's too soon? What if Yuuri doesn't feel the same way? The tip of the marker hovers in midair about a centimetre off the board.

“Okay, how about this one?” Victor asks with more confidence than he feels. He carefully carves out the letters as if carving out his own heart and presenting it to Yuuri. He may as well be, given what he just wrote: я люблю тебя. To both his excitement and anxiety, Yuuri freezes as he reads the words. “Do you know what it means?” Victor asks. He's not sure how he managed to get the words out since his throat suddenly feels so tight and dry. His heart has yet to slow down, pounding rapidly in his chest.

Yuuri doesn't react to Victor’s question; he doesn't shake or nod his head. He takes the marker from Victor’s hand, their warm fingers brushing. Victor keeps his eyes glued on Yuuri's work, watching stroke by stroke as the image comes into being. It's a character Victor recognizes, the theme of Yuuri's Grand Prix series: 愛

Love.

Yuuri understands what Victor wrote. But does he understand what he feels?

To the bursting of his heart, Yuuri continues to write. There's some hiragana which Victor still struggles to read, but there's also some Cyrillic that Victor can definitely understandーhis own name. It makes the rest of the sentence click. “Виктор を愛してる.” As if Yuuri was unsure if Victor would understand, he writes Victor’s name in katakana next to the Cyrillic Victor himself had previously written.

Victor regards the masterpiece, a heartfelt mixture of Japanese and Russian and a dash of English, all spelling out love. Victor’s love for Yuuri and Yuuri’s love for Victor.

Yuuri puts the cap on the marker and looks up at Victor, locking eyes with him. There's a prominent blush on Yuuri's cheeks that Victor is certain has nothing to do with his fever, and his eyes hold a passionate spark that makes his heart jump.

Victor is sure he's blushing too. He feels uncharacteristically nervous, staring deep into Yuuri's beautiful eyes as Yuuri does the same to him. “Do you...do you really mean it?” Victor asks, more accurately breathes out. He has to be sure. He can't live without the knowledge that Yuuri for sure loves him, just like he said. Just like he wrote.

Yuuri nods affirmatively, and Victor’s heart blooms inside his chest as he embraces him, pulling him into a tight hug that Yuuri returns. When they pull away, Yuuri's lips are curved upwards in a smile. Victor stares, so utterly captivated by his beauty, until he can’t help but lean forward to capture Yuuri's lips with his own. It barely lasts a second and Victor is the first to pull away, desperately hoping he didn't cross a line with Yuuri. To his relief, Yuuri is smiling even brighter than before.

His beaming grin is suddenly lost as shock instead crosses his features. He tears the cap off the marker and scribbles in quick and messy English, “You're going to get sick now!”

Victor just laughs. “If I'm already going to get sick, then can I have another kiss?” Victor teases. To his joy, Yuuri complies, initiating the kiss himself this time. It's a bit longer than the first, but still too short. It's soft and gentle and oh so sweet, and Victor lips are still tingling with warmth long after Yuuri has pulled away.

～

“Victor?” Yuuri asks, rousing Victor from his sleep. He smiles at the sound of Yuuri’s voice. It's come back at last, but not in full. It still sounds rather weak.

Still half-asleep, Victor gives a happy sigh, relishing in the plush feel of the bed and the blanket, the comforting warmth of the body next to him and the gorgeous eyes staring into his own. “Good morning, Yuuri,” he tries to say, except no words come out, and he and Yuuri both realize at the same time and with a start that he has no voice.

“I told you I was going to get you sick,” Yuuri says as Victor once again tries and fails to talk. All that comes out is a humiliating squeak and Victor flushes a dark red at the sound.

“Here. Write down what you need,” Yuuri instructs while handing him the whiteboard and marker. “And open up,” he adds. Victor complies and holds the thermometer under his tongue with a pout as he writes on the board. By the time the device beeps, Victor has finished writing: “headache, feel hot, tired. Want Yuuri.”

Yuuri gives a sympathetic smile at Victor's work, then his expression shifts to slightly more serious upon reading the thermometer. “I’m going to get you a cold facecloth for your fever. I'll be back soon.”

Victor tugs on his sleeve to prevent him from leaving and quickly scrawls out: “Aren't you still sick?”

“I get sick quickly and get over it quickly. That's how it's always been for me,” Yuuri tells him simply. His tone then changes, sounding more sad. “I guess you did too much talking yesterday, huh? You used up your voice. All for my sake too…” Yuuri trails off and Victor can tell he's feeling guilty and thinking it's his fault.

Victor quickly and firmly shakes his head at the self-doubting words. Yuuri gives him a small smile, but just that isn't enough for Victor. He erases the board and writes in English, “I love you! More than words can say,” and proudly holds it up to Yuuri. The words are surrounded with many hearts and happy faces and also his and Yuuri's name in both their native languages.

“I love you, too,” Yuuri says, his face breaking into a dazzling grin. Victor mirrors it, almost crying with happiness upon hearing the words in Yuuri's beautiful (albeit still fairly weak) voice. “Get some rest,” Yuuri adds with a gentle kiss upon Victor’s heated forehead.

Content, Victor puts the whiteboard down and settles into the blankets again, closes his eyes and falls asleep to the sound of Yuuri's light footsteps leaving the room.

～～～

(End)

Translations:

“Samui! Yuuri wa samui desu!”: Cold! Yuuri is cold!

“Samui? Ah, kaze wo hiita no?”: Cold? Ah, he caught a cold?

“Yuuri wa sick desu!”: Yuuri is sick!

To reiterate, 風 kaze means wind, 風邪 kaze means cold as in the illness, and 寒い samui is used if you're feeling cold.

勝生勇利: Katsuki Yuuri

Виктор Никифоров: Victor Nikiforov

я люблю тебя: I love you

愛: love

Виктор を愛してる: I love (you) Victor

(я люблю тебя, ヴィクトル is what Yuuri would have written after: I love you, Victor)

I'm sorry if Victor’s Japanese sounds cringey and unnatural because that was literally exactly what I was going for (so don't go spamming my inbox and calling me a weeb just because I threw desu on the end of every sentence. It was intentional.)

I've been studying Japanese since highschool, so about 4ish years now, so the Japanese used here (is not google translated and) should be correct! As for Russian, I (sadly) don't know the language, but @feverflushed was thankfully able to help me out with that!

Anyways, thank you for reading! :)

#w!oi #illness #sick!yuuri #cold #coughing #lost voice #contagion #fanfic #sickfic #mpf writing #i >could< always write a sequel to this with a sick victor #i mean i >did< tease (and deliver on) contagion #not to mention this was more fluff than whump #and i do love to whump me some victor #lemme know if you'd be interested and I might just do it!

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