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wordynerdygurl · 4 years

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Echoes of You

Author’s Note: This is from a request sent in to my 500 Followers Challenge. I’ve included it below... I did have fun with it! As always, please feel free to re-blog, share, and comment! Also, I’m accepting tag list requests and story requests! *The GIF is perfect and I want to thank the original creator/ poster!* Pairing: Loki x Female Reader Summary/ Request: “Loki is badly hurt on a mission and the reader has to make some sort of deal with a dark magical entity to save him. The price she has to pay is that everyone she knows is going to forget she ever existed. She takes the deal and tries to build a new life away from the avengers, however she and Loki keep running into each other and he's very drawn to her. After a lot of pestering, she agrees to go on a date with him on the condition that he is going to leave her alone after that. Their date goes great and they're almost about to have sex, but she stops him because she thinks he would've never wanted her if he actually had his memories. Obviously he knows though, they both confess their feelings and it ends on passionate, rough smut. Hope that's not too much and you have fun with it :)” Warnings: Battle scenes of the MCU variety, talk of blood/ death, angst and SMUT

"LOKI!"

Time freezes in that screamed second.

You feel yourself running, feet sliding in the gritty sand beneath your boots, desperate. He is impossibly far away but you can make it. You have to.

Skidding into the gravel on your knees, you shout his name as you watch him crumple. He's gone pale, limp, boneless in your arms. There's blood, lots of it, too much to stop on your own. It flows freely, drenching you down to your skin, warm and sticky. There’s no way to stem the flood.

In your dreams you always catch him in time. Keeping him off the cold ground, hugging his lean body to yours, ignoring the others as they fight around you. His twinkling eyes flutter but they stay open, struggling to focus on you. You watch his soft lips part, they form words, sounds that never reach you in the vacuum of your panic.

"Hush… it's ok… I'm here. I got you." Gurgling platitudes gush from you but there's no way to know if he hears them. A smile, young and sweet spreads across his unbearably handsome face. Using his last measure of strength, Loki strokes your cheek as you press your hot lips to his too cool skin.

You wake up wailing, the pillow beneath you wet. Honestly, it's never dry, not anymore. Because every night you try to save Loki. Every night he speaks soundlessly to you. And every morning you wake up to reality.

Dawn's dark hides you and your pain. You let the loss of Loki roll over you. Pulling you under in a rip tide of shuddering sobs, drowning you with memories of what you had before and what you have now. Swallowing that hard knot of agony, bitter and jagged, your crying steadied then dried out after a few minutes.

This new existence, this new life, was lonely. Awake now, well before the sun, you pushed out of bed and geared up for a run without much enthusiasm. When you couldn't ease your mind you took it out on your body.

Stepping onto the dim sidewalk you stretched just a little. You wanted to punish your subconscious, your wayward brain, not tear a hamstring. Setting off with a sigh, your feet slapping the pavement in an even staccato, you tried to turn your mind off.

On the quiet streets of your new city, one you were struggling to make feel like home, you wanted to outrun the past. Eager to put distance between you and all that had come before, forcing your legs to go further, faster, you ran by yourself in the shadows. There was no one to disturb you, not at this ungodly hour. Not that anyone would. You used to be a SHIELD agent, one who looked mad at the world, which you were. So you ran on, giving no thought to direction or neighborhood, welcoming any and all risk if it meant peace of mind.

Most days the sweat and strain were enough to calm your demons. By running your body down, your mind would let go too. Not today. Today, your dream, like a well directed film, played on a loop in your head. Each scene was vivid, real, raw. And not true.

---

"You come here freely?"

Hitching your chin defiantly, "Yes."

The ethereal being before you seemed to float on a crimson cloud, too beautiful to be benevolent, the aura around her dusky skin crackling violet. Part sorceress, part dark queen, she was your last hope. A final step you might take to keep Loki alive.

Slinking snake like, she sidled to your side, "I know what brings you here, mortal. I know what you want."

"Then you know I need help. Your help." You weren't begging. At least not yet, anyway. But the smell of desperation curled around you, black and rotten, regardless.

"You are not the one in need. Odin's adopted boy… the prince. He is dying. Is it not so?"

Her voice was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Strong, soft and sweet, the witch's words echoed in the close quarters of her stony temple. Swirling around you in the rouge red ribbons of her eternal energy, she did not wait for your reply. "What is it to you, child? The death of a Jotun foundling can mean but little to a human. And yet, you come to me willingly. Why?"

Hot tears formed, threatening to splash, scalding your cheeks. Your breath left your body as a gutted groan tore the words from your deepest soul, "I love him."

"Love. Such a human emotion." You felt her then, the physicality of her form, as she brushed an errant tear from your face. The enchantress stilled, her beautiful dark skinned face emerging in front of you, scrutinizing your expression, reading your pain.

Questioning you quietly, "You say that you love the youngest of Odin's sons."

"I do."

"The magic you ask for, it carries a hefty price."

Hope at the thought of her assistance made you boisterous. "Anything! I will pay any price. Twice over, if it keeps Loki alive."

Glowing plum colored, her gaze took you in, measuring you and your resolve. "Your sacrifice will be great, make no mistake. It will test the love you claim to feel for this demi-god."

What did you care of sacrifices if it kept Loki alive? Was there a price too high for the life of your love? Anger flashed through you, frustrated and flustered, "I heard you the first time. Will you aid me or not?"

"So cross, so eager." Silver laughter filled the cavernous space but was short lived. "You do not know the full cost of your desires and yet... you are in a rush to see them come to fruition. Child, I can do what you ask. I will do it, if you agree. In return... no one will remember you. Only this will purchase Loki's life."

"What?"

The Sorceress took your hand, testing its weight, turning your palm up. "You heard me. If this is truly what you want… to keep Loki alive, then your life… your history will be erased."

Gulping hard, understanding hitting you like a freight train, "My life for his? Is that it?"

Violet eyes bore into yours, purple orbs that fill your vision, unblinking. "No… you will not die, little mortal. It is far worse than that. You will live, but you will live in isolation. You will be forgotten by Loki… by your family… by your friends. You will meet them as strangers. They will carry on without you."

"But Loki will live?" He had to, you had come too far to fail your God now.

"Yes. Will you be able to?"

"Me? I don't understand what you're asking me."

"Will you be able to have a life without the man you say you love?"

Could you? There had been no one like Loki in your life before. Smart and strong, sarcastic and cutting, tender and kind. Loki was all the things you needed in a partner and he made you better at the same time. Taming you, just a little, being loved by Loki had softened some of your rough edges. Would it be easy to know he was walking around, enjoying life, but not be a part of it? No. But how else could you honor the man who had given you so much?

With a straining voice, "Loving him, having been loved by him, will have to be enough to satisfy my soul. There is no other option for me."

Nodding solemnly, content at your knowledge of the bargain, the crimson conjurer drew a symbol on the pad of your hand. Watching her with widening eyes, she pulled a gossamer green thread from the center of your palm. A string of memories erasing you in order to allow Loki to survive.

"It is longer than I would've thought, deeper too." And you knew what she meant instinctively because your heart pinched as her hands gathered more and more of your time with Loki to her. Dragging him out of your life with a sharp throb. When it was over the witch had a skein of your history, emerald green and glossy, which she evaporated into a wisp of smoke.

You had a small six pointed star shaped scar in the center of your hand. It was your sole token of the life you and Loki had shared. That and the memories that you alone carried.

"It is done." There was finality in her words, a dismissive quality, and for the first time in her presence you were frightened. Not of her, but of the new world you were facing.

Solemnly, you bowed your head, "Thank you."

"We shall see, human. We shall see."

---

By the time you return home, soaked with sweat, you're tired but feeling more like yourself. It's a relief to feel the night's pain fade enough for you to shower and dress for work. It's not a career. But it is just enough to almost pay rent and buy food.

Working with people, although frustrating at times, really does keep the white light of your emptiness away. Besides, the store offered a discount on clothes, which helped, and there was always something physical to be done. Lifting boxes, moving racks, hauling trash. Anything to keep you thoughtlessly busy. Like you did everyday, you threw yourself into the job, mindlessly. It was a life raft of sorts, a buoy keeping you afloat, a thing to cling to while trying not to let the weight of your past drag you down.

Listening to the consumer safe playlist, getting into a rhythm, you bobbed your head as your folded t-shirts. Your co-workers hated restocking, rehanging, straightening the racks. So, naturally that's what you were doing, lost in your own little world.

"I really don't see why we have to be here, brother." Something about that voice made you pause. Haughty and high handed, you could swear that it was…

"Jane has a birthday, brother. I will not forget it."

"Then, for the love of Odin, bring her some lovely Asgardian silks. Jewelry in gold or silver. Or better yet, take her home, seduce her soundly. Do anything but buy that hideous sweater."

"It's not hideous. You know nothing of Midgardian fashion."

"Me? I know nothing? Dear brother, this suit is Armani. That is designer. That means something."

"It means you spent way too much coin, Loki."

Turning quickly you moved closer to the men, still listening, still in disbelief. Peeking at the mismatched pair through a clothing rack, pushing two furry sweaters apart, your heart was racing. Stunned, you recognized the strong back of the tall, broad blonde. When he moved toward another display of shits your jaw fell open. Loki was here! Not five feet away!

"Bah! I don't see her size." Thor sighed in frustration, the offending rack of clothes wobbling with the force of his displeasure.

Loki, picking lint from his sleeve, "Find a clerk… ask for the awful thing in Jane's size so we can get out of this place." Lifting his piercing blue eyes, he spied you, trying to slip away unnoticed, "You! Hello? Yes… can you help us?"

It takes you a second to register that Loki, your Loki, is addressing you. Stiffly, you straighten up, your eyes rising to his inquisitive azure ones. They snap with a vitality that was missing when you saw him last.

A cloud passes over his gaze. Shadows of recognition, maybe? Or is that just what you want to see?

"Um… sure. What… uh, what do you need, sir?" You sound like a robot. Cringing at the put on voice you're using, awkward and uncomfortable, you smile at Thor.

Loki steps closer, brushing past his brother, not quite in your space but close enough for you to smell his skin. A familiar combination of leather and vanilla, sugar and spice, reaches out to you. Your breath hitches at the nearness of him. Memories on the tip of your tongue.

He's holding a fuzzy sweater, one the color of spicy mustard, about to hand it to you when his head tilts. "Do… do I know you?"

Heat climbs your face. Yes. Yes, Loki. You know me. You know me in a way no one else could ever know me. You know the sound of my sobs and the sigh of my satisfaction. Why I love the smell of the snow and hate lima beans. You know me.

And I know you. I know the strength of your character. The depth of your love. Which thoughts haunt you, songs your mother sang over your crib, poems written for no one else to read. Oh yes, I know you.

But what you say is, "Me? No… nope. No. We've… I mean, no. You don't know me." Kicking yourself mentally, the verbal diarrhea couldn't be stopped, and now Loki's surveying you even more closely.

"Are you certain? It's just… I could swear that I know you." For the first time since meeting Loki you hear uncertainty in his voice. It's almost enough to weaken your resolve, tell him all of it, even if it's in the middle of The Loft.

"Have… have you been in the shop before? I uh, I work a lot." Looking anywhere but at the handsome man from your nightmares, you settle on the offending sweater, trying to seem like an eager employee not a stuttering mess.

"No." His smile widened, the natural flirt in him coming out to play, "We have never set foot in this place."

Your thoughts jumbled. Unprepared for facing Loki, unsure of how to handle seeing him again, you focused on the top Thor wanted to give Jane. "Oh… well, maybe I just look like someone you used to know? Um… what size did you say?"

Thor, watching the interaction between you and Loki, was just happy to get back into the conversation. "Yes. Size 2 please, my good woman."

Casting Loki a side eyed glance, chuckling at Thor, you made your way to the stockroom. Stay calm, you willed yourself. Keeping your back straight, your head level and your breathing even, you walked towards the back. Your heart? That jerk was pumping overtime. As soon as you are gone, Thor rounds on his younger brother, "She likes you, Loki! And, she is rather cute."

Rolling his eyes with a groan, "Cute? She is far more beautiful than that, brother."

Wagging his golden brows playfully, the God of Thunder teased, "You should take her on a date. To dinner. She might actually say yes!"

"It's creepy. No woman wants to be courted while they're at work. Although…" Looking longingly at the “Employees Only” sign on the door you had disappeared into, Loki sighed.

"Yes, brother?"

"Although, she does remind me of someone."

"I have never seen her before. And she is certainly Midgardian. There's no other-worldly influence in her." Thor was sliding through hangers, evaluating gift options for Jane, talking in what he thought was a whisper.

"Yes. Yes… it's just so strange. She is so familiar… too familiar." Loki left his sentence hanging in the air. You were striding his way, a soft, down turned expression on your face. The urge to kiss the corners of your mouth overwhelmed him.

"Hi again." Exhaling, you risked a full look at Loki. He was scrutinizing you, closer than before, needing to solve the mystery of your connection.

"Hello."

God, you missed his eyes. The serious way they took in every detail. How they lit up with Loki's laughing or glowed with mischief when he got up to no good.

Swallowing dryly, you remembered his eyes darkening with passion. Appraising you through dusky lashes, half closed in pleasure as you hugged his body snugly to your own. His heavy heat inside of you, both finding release, breathing hard, holding onto each other while the world around you faded away.

"I'm… I'm sorry?"

Loki, peering at you, smirked. "I said, thank you for the hideous sweater. My brother's fiancee will hate it but she will, inevitably, appreciate the oaf's effort."

Giggling, your body temperature rose a few degrees, unable to resist Loki. It was so easy to be around him. It always had been.

"My lady, thank you! Brother, I am off to find the cashier. I shall meet you outside…" Thor nodded your way, encouraging Loki, failing at being discreet.

Sharing a laugh with your former lover, Loki risked taking your hand. You didn't shrug him off. Instead, your breath caught, frozen in the familiar feeling of his fingers.

"Hmm… you say we are strangers but your body tells another story, little one. Do you know who I am?"

You could answer that honestly. Loki wasn't as popular as Thor or Captain America but his name was known publicly. His reputation was a bit tarnished, surely, but that had always been part of your attraction to him.

Finding your voice, "Yea… I do."

"Uh huh. Then you know I am not some mortal man, held to the rules and restrictions of this planet. You understand that I am a God. One who makes mischief." Dropping his voice into that silky predatory tone had made your insides go liquid.

He was too close now, his spearmint breath fanning your face, "Yes, I know where your… skills lie."

Watching your chest heave, your want apparent, Loki licked over his bottom lip, certain he could taste phantom strawberry bubblegum and grapefruit lip gloss. An odd, yet enticing, combination. One his mouth knew even if his memory couldn't recall why.

"Then you know I suss out falsehoods. It's part of the deal, dove. To lie you must spot lies. And you…", pressed into a wall mirror, hidden by a rack of wool pea coats, "aren't being truthful."

What could you say to that? “I… I am too. Like I said, You don’t know me.” Leaning into you, not touching your begging skin, but still so near, “Little liar. I think that there might be a way to solve our problem. Over dinner, tonight. My treat, assuming there’s a restaurant in this town that is not part of a chain.”

“A date? With you?” A date was not a good idea. Too much time to talk might lead to trouble. Either you’d say too much or, and this was possibly worse, do too much with Loki. Could you resist his charms? You weren’t able to the first time around. Now, knowing just how much you missed him, how lonely your nights were without him, would you be able to stop things from going too far? What if Loki learned the truth? That you had sacrificed your past together so that he might have a future, would he still want you then? Could he?

Loki, seeing all these thoughts pass over your face, “Yes. With me.” “No.” “No?” “Yes.” “So, yes then?” “No. Yes to the no.” “I don’t think you know what you want little mortal. Join me for dinner tonight and I won’t bother you ever again.” Always tricky, this could be another of Loki’s pranks, ready to backfire on you at the drop of a hat. If he kept his word, walked away after your night out, then it would be worth it. You could do one evening and not lose your head or your heart. “You won’t bother me ever again? You promise?” That sinister smile spread over Loki’s face, lifting his sharp cheekbones in triumph, “Oh, I promise. One date. Tonight.”

--- Years ago, when you and Loki enjoyed the first full flush of blossoming love, dating wasn’t always possible or convenient. With missions to go on, HYDRA cells to investigate, and near constant alien invasions of one kind or another, dinners and movies weren’t a priority. Staying alive was the rule of the day. In the moments when relaxation was possible, you and Loki found yourselves drawn to each other. Bonding over take out containers and warm beers in the early morning hours, sleep elusive, sitting on the counter tops. Sharing great music, digital from you, vinyl from Loki, led to dancing on the cool tile of the rooftop patio. Cherished books, personal poetry and moving works of art passed between you at a rate that alarmed the rest of the team.

You favorite times? Watching films and must see TV from the comfort of Tony’s leather couches. Snuggled under soft blankets, touching each other gently, testing and teasing. Letting the connection you shared grow naturally was what made it so special. Tonight though, this was different. Loki arrived at your door in full on romantic leading man mode. His suit was jet with a shirt and tie to match, making him look long and lethal, but undeniably sexy. There were flowers, an affectation that nonetheless made your heart swell. Holding your door, pulling out your chair, effortlessly making all the right moves was just Loki’s style. Why did it make your heart ache in equal measure? Because it was so different from your first time around. The love that led you here, to a place where no one knew you, had been so organic. Not forced or formulaic.

“I fear I’m boring you.” Loki’s bright eyes glittered as he swirled his fork through the rich sauce skillfully. Dabbing your mouth, “No, not at all. I just… I…” You were lost in remembering. Loki was telling a story that you had lived, but where you should have been was a hole. A gap, created when you had made your deal with the purple eyed sorceress, brought reality crashing into the conversation. It was a distracting detail. “Lost in your thoughts. You do that frequently, don’t you, dove.” Dove. Oh god, you hadn’t heard his endearments in ages. It made your stomach tense from need. Being Loki’s dove had meant something to you then. It meant more now. “My past is never far. It creeps up on me all the time. But I’m sure you know nothing about that.” Deliberately leading him to talk more about himself, you let the timbre of his voice take over, listening intently to the man who once was yours. The long night was over too soon. You had been on eggshells, carefully choosing your words, the entire time. As much as you wanted to keep him near, you knew that one night was already a calculated risk, and it couldn’t happen again. If Loki kept his promise, tomorrow you would be back to your routine, the missing him would still be there but so would running and the store. “Uh… thank you for the lovely dinner. I really enjoyed it.” “I believe you used to be a better liar.” Freezing, your key in the lock, you turned to face Loki. “What was that?” Panic rose in your throat tasting of bile and bucatini. Leaning his shoulder against your door frame, “You heard me perfectly well. Like I said, you were better at this once. At least, I think you were.”

“I don’t know what you think, but I’ve… we’ve…” “Never met? Yes, that line is familiar. But then again, so are you.” “Loki…” Pleading with him to drop it, to let it go, would never work. Besides, you hadn’t been able to.

And what would happen if you did come clean? Would the spell be reversed? You couldn’t risk that. Not after all that you’d already gone through to keep Loki alive. At the sound of his name on your lips, Loki stepped into your personal space. His long finger rested over your parted mouth, effectively silencing you, as he whispered in your ear, “No more lies. Not tonight.” Reaching around you, Loki turned your key, opening the door to your place. Clicking on your lamp, the circle of light small in the shadows of your apartment, you move towards the kitchen. “I need a drink. Do you want one?” Nodding, “I think I might need one.” Barking out a hard laugh, you lifted two glasses down from the rarely opened cabinet. Tossing in ice cubes, you quickly cover them with the amber liquid of bourbon, swirling the two ingredients together as you walk back to the man pacing in your living room. “Good stuff, right?” Ruefully chuckling at the harsh burn of the booze, you looked at your date motioning for him to take a seat on your beat up sofa next to you. Folding himself gracefully, Loki perched on the couch, his knee just barely grazing your own. The contact was electric, shorting out your speech center for a second, and you moaned softly. Moving your drink to the table, Loki’s digits circled your wrist, "Now tell me, why do I know these hands? Soft but strong, with a scar across the middle knuckle…"

Turning your palm down, brushing over that exact imperfection, Loki searched your eyes for answers. "Why am I drawn to you across space and time? You are a ghost that haunts me. The echo of a dream that is real and warm… and here."

"Loki…" Chin quivering, "There are things you don't know. Things about me… about us…"

Tilting his head, studying you, "Ah. Us. We, that is, you and I have history, do we not? I… I know that is true. Yet," Swallowing thickly, Loki struggled to control the swell of emotion bubbling through him, "Yet, I have no memory of you. Tell me why that is."

A wild sob ripped through you making your shoulders heave. "I don't think I can!"

Twining his arms around you, the smell of his skin surrounding you, comforting you, "Why is that?"

Eyes brimming with tears, you murmured, "Because… it might reverse everything. I… I don't know what would happen if I told you the truth. All of it."

"So, dark magic then. Strong… but perhaps not strong enough. Not nearly capable of keeping you and I apart." Petting your knee, savoring the nearness of Loki, you parted your thighs in anticipation of his touch. Loki, unable to resist any longer, pressed a kiss to the corner of your mouth. One of his palms skated under the hem of your dress while his other hand cupped your cheek. Tracing over your jawline with his thumb, Loki deepened the kiss, his tongue tasting you in tiny sips. Pulling away from you, “We… We were lovers.” His voice rose at the revelation no longer concealed by magic. “Yes, Loki.” Swallowing hard, the raw truth finally said out loud. “But you, you erased yourself from my mind… My life. Why did you do it? Why would you take our… happiness from me?” It was enough to break your heart all over again. Loki’s voice, trembling, unsure, and clearly hurting.

Whispering more for yourself than him, "I couldn’t let you go, Loki. I… I can't, even now. I watched you almost die. I won't do it again!" “And this? This is life? Dove. You know better than this.” “I saved your life!” Needing to defend yourself, you nearly bellowed in frustration, struggling to make Loki understand. Standing suddenly, Loki turned from you, “What kind of life have I had without you?” “I don’t know the answer to that…” Rising yourself, a hand to Loki’s chest, “But my life without you… you have no idea how hard it’s been. I dream of you every night, Loki. And in those dreams, I don’t rescue you. You die in my arms. Every night, Loki. I saved you once with the help of dark magic. But I’ve lost you every single day since.”

Crying in earnest now, you felt Loki wrap his iron arms around you, “Hush now. Hush, darling. Somehow, some way, I found you again. I’m not letting you go.” Sagging into his warmth, letting Loki comfort you, felt like home. Without realizing, you were swaying in each other's arms, dancing to the music in your souls. You curled your arms around Loki's waist, his solid figure reassuring, hugging him closer.

Loki's hands drifted down, cupping your bottom, squeezing your curves firmly. "I missed you, little minx."

Giggling at his pet name for you, one you never expected to hear again, you smiled up at your dark hued God. Standing on your toes you touched your lips to Loki's. Anticipating your move, Loki opened his mouth, capturing yours in a kiss.

Loki's grip, tugging you tightly to his firm form, became needy. His mouth plundered yours, taking your breath, absorbing your moan. A hand tangled in your hair, pulling your hungry lips from his own, giving Loki unchecked access to the column of your throat.

Closing your eyes, lost in intimate sensations that were both routine and refreshing, you lost yourself in Loki. Stepping out of his grasp, you pulled the hem of your dress up, shrugging it over your head and tossing it to the floor. "Loki, I love you. I never stopped loving you."

Watching your nearly nude form, Loki shared his sweet, secret smile with you. "I love you. And even wizardry could prevent us from finding each other."

"Please, help me remember. Let me forget." He knew what you were asking. Remember what you had shared, what you could have again. Forget this time apart, this lapse in love.

"With pleasure, little dove."

---

Your bed, usually so lonely, was suddenly too small. Loki's long body stretched across the mattress, reaching for you, impatient to relearn the things that made you melt. And you? You couldn't stop touching his satin skin.

First your fingers fluttered over his thighs, up his torso, over his chest. But that wasn't enough to satisfy. So you followed the same trail with your mouth. Licking lovingly over Loki's abdominals, nipping at his tiny nipples, sucking against his Adam's Apple.

Straddling Loki, his hands on your hips drag you against his rigid rod. Feeling his driving desire made your core quiver. When he caught your nipple in his mouth, sucking forcefully, you howled like a wild woman.

"Oh, Loki! Ah!" Your hands tangled in his hair, encouraging the exquisite agony of his teeth biting into your tender bud.

With a growl, Loki flipped you to your back, settling himself between your spread thighs. Removing your panties with a swift tug, Loki spread your lower lips, licking into your luscious folds. His tongue thrust into you, lapping at your liquid, drinking you down.

Convulsing when Loki's tactile tongue circled your clit, your core clenched in pleasure, your release is close. When you announce that to the man pleasuring you, Loki nips at your inner thigh, kissing his way over your mound. "Not yet. I'm not through with you or your bountiful body."

As his lips closed over your own, Loki shifted your hips higher, your cleft cuddling his steel length. Teasing your entrance with his wide tower, drawing a shivery moan from you, Loki slowly sunk into your yielding sheath. Inch by inch, Loki claimed more of you as you impatiently waited to be filled by his hard heat.

Stretched by his searing shaft, Loki bent your knees, bringing them closer to your chest. Rocking into you, his hips pressing your legs apart, Loki enjoyed the feeling of your velvet vice gripping his with each push. He was slow, methodically moving inside of you, taking his time.

Your body responded with slick skin, soft sighs, melting into a mewling mess. "Faster Loki! Please!"

"No. I never want to forget you again." Loki's words sparked your internal fire. Plunging into your pulsing pocket, picking up speed, Loki pursued your pleasure.

You couldn't keep your hands off of him. His neck, his shoulders, his firm bottom, the cut of his hip. Scratching your nails over his arms, along his back, across his chest, Loki grunted in delight.

"Cum with me, little dove." It wasn't a command or a request. It was a plea.

"Always, Loki!" Locking your arms behind his neck, Loki dug his fingers into the back of your thighs, your tongues tangling together. Panting through your pleasure together, clinging to each other, determined to hang onto the only other person who mattered, you pressed your forehead to Loki's.

That night you slept curled around Loki, deeply and uninterrupted. Tomorrow would bring a new dawn, a new day. And everything before today would be an echo, losing distinction over time, replaced by the new life you would build together. ---

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moony221b · 4 years

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Statement of Jayme Lemker

audio version

I used to be a sewage worker. I guess technically I still am a sewage worker, but I think of it as less of a job now and more of a devotion to the things that love me.

Personally I didn’t mind most aspects of my job; I could deal with the smells and the dark. But what I couldn’t stand were the rats. Do you know how many rats are under your house everyday without you even knowing? Because I do, and it’s a lot. People have tried to get me to have the mindset of “out of sight, out of mind”, but that doesn’t help when you work in the sewers.

Rats are disgusting. They carry so many diseases and their fleshy little feet and tails are disturbing. Not to mention that they can chew and squeeze through almost anything! I hate them! Well, I used to at least.

As you can probably guess, sewage wasn’t my first choice in a career. I never really enjoyed school because I was never good at it. I had a hard time focusing and understanding the lessons and my teachers weren’t very patient with me, which didn’t help. Despite how many days I skipped class I was able to graduate high school, but my parents told me they weren’t going to send me to college if I wasn’t going to work hard, so I didn’t go. Which was fine by me! Until they told me I had to move out and find a job.

I never had a fear of rats until I started working in sewage. Those sneaky bastards are everywhere. Everyone who works with me knows I will drop everything and run when I see a rat, and I won’t come back until I know it’s gone. One day I was working with a new hire, an older guy, I think his name was John Amherst, to check out and clear a possible clog in the systems under a restaurant on Rivington. It was a pretty tight space, so we had to crawl, meaning that when I saw the rat, there was nowhere for me to run. I screamed, startling the rat, which then crawled up me and bit my side before scampering away. I started panicking, so John suggested I turn back and ask for the rest of the day off. He said he could handle the job alone and I was not about to spend one more second down there. When I got home I checked the spot where the rat had bitten me; it didn’t look infected, so I slapped a bandage on it and went to bed early. The next morning I woke up feverish and vomiting. The rat bite was now surrounded by an enormous rash that was almost a purple color. This is gonna sound stupid, but I had already missed too many days of work and was just a few warnings from being fired, so I went in. This was an even worse idea the. I originally thought because apparently John had botched the job and hadn’t shown up for work again that morning. And since I was the only person present to blame, I had to go finish the job by myself. Surprisingly I didn’t see any rats the whole time I was doing the job. It was on the way back that it happened. I had to stop to vomit and when I stood back up I realized I was surrounded by thousands of rats. There was nowhere I could go that there weren’t rats. Then I blacked out.

While I was out I had a fever dream. I don’t remember most of it, but by the time I woke I had come to a revelation. The rats are not something I should fear. They want to know me and love me, all I have to do is let them. What they infected me with, what they wish to infect the world with, it’s not a disease... it’s love. The rash is merely a symbol of that love. People tell me I should see a doctor about it, but doctors will only try to contain it and I want it to cover me so that everyone can know the love I am shown by the rats. It covers almost half my body at this point, and it will continue to spread for as long as I let it. I enjoy my job now. I understand it. Through my work the rats can continue to pass their love through every home in London. You can receive this love too.

You just have to let the rats in.

I hope you liked this statement from my oc Jayme Lemker! I will be answering asks on my tape recorder in the character’s voice, so send them in!

Thank you!

#jayme lemker #oc #tma #tma oc

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coolgirl · 4 years

Note

Jason expert rate Jason’s designs

sorry for being late i was busy with school but now i’m free so to celebrate. jason indulgence.

pre-crisis not robin

very cute. i like that it has a lil more of flair to it? the collar and the lines on the gloves and the shorter cape.. also love it has pants. king rlly king. wonder if they already knew he was gonna be robin anyways or if they were still considering nightbird. anyways, 8/10 bc its cute

pre & post-crisis robin (bc its basically the same)

i mean its a classic.. however it reminds me jason was the only robin who was simply given dick’s clothes rather than like. have an unique look? which sucks. 7/10 middle child syndrome is REAL

post-crisis robin (winter edition)

OKAY NOW THIS. i absolutely love. is it tacky? oh yes without a doubt. i still love the pants and the sleeves. finally winter clothes for this child, especially considering his new titans scene where he was bitching about the costume not being snow proof. he got what he wanted! 9/10

new 52/rebirth costume by

EPIC. IDC I LOVE IT.the circles on his arms and his boots.. the lines on his legs.. i just love it. i love the red mask too… it feels.. not more unique, but feels more jason-y than the other costume. 10/10

NOW. onto older stuff

hush

as u can see im VERY confusion about the pouches and the straps?? why??? whats the purpose.. generally its fine. the white strand moved a nation and i think the chest piece is cool, but everything else.. uglee. like the long as hell jacket and him looking 40 years old like why r u 19 looking like fifty? ugly white man. 5/10

winicks/utrh version

LITERALLY A CLASSIC. i love this costume sooo much. like jason obviously grew out of it, as in it wouldnt make sense for him anymore to go with something like this as his main costume because i feel like this fit the utrh mood (him not veing a vigilante/hero/villain whatver but trying to be a mob boss n shit) and it just. fucks. i love the helmet just being plain with no stupid mouth or nose shape. i simply love it. 10/10

nigthwing

its just. its just the nightwing costume. didnt even try he just stole that from dick. he still rocks it and looks better than dick, and u gotta give him points for accessorizing with his dagger. 7/10

red robin

im not. a big fan of this costume.. i think the cowl is ugly, it just does not work for someone as big as jason… however i do like why he took this mantle and what it meant.. 6/10 no words head empty.

oh brother. furryman

ITS SUCH AN UGLY COSTUME. muzzle batman walked so muzzle red hood could run. its just. ugly like ugly. i dont like the ears or again the muzzle or whatever the hell is going on in the arms.. its just so edgy. 5/10

WANNA KNOW WHAT A SEXY EVIL BATMAN COSTUME LOOK LIKE?

Injustice 2 batman

I2 HAD IT IN THE BAG BABY. i like that its like classic batman costume but again! with some jason touches! the red eyes, the electric tiddies making a comeback.. epic genuinely epic. 10/10

and if ur not into evil jason

100% dad ‘i have my life figured out’ batman jason

just like the nightwing costume this is just. batman costume. nothing special or different from it so its like did u even try? BUT in this scenario it actually means smth that he stuck to bruces costume.. sweet.. but boring. 7/10

speaking of. evil ugly designs. ugh i hate this.

this motherfucker

ive never. ever. felt as humiliated by a costume than thetime jason wore this. like MORTIFYING RLLY. its DISGUSTINGGG. the helmet shape. the fucking WHITE. the SKULL PLEASE WHO DESIGNED THIS WHO HATES ME IN PARTICULAR SO MUCH??? THIS MAN DOES NOT FUCK! HES UGLY! HE STINKS!!!! the red guns are epic that much i can say. LOOK AT THOSE PANS GOD ITS SO HUMILLIATING. 0/10 WORST COSTUME EVER.

HOWEVER. winick and the artist spun GOLD from it, because next time jason wore possibly my favorite costume to date

this motherfucker…2!

like look how much better it looks with a little of swag.. the helmet without eyes.. the belts.. the fucking leather jacket.. keeping the red guns/gloves.. like seriously i dont know a better man. the skull is still awful and i wouldve replaced the white for black and MWAH best costume. like the black part at the top make it all red and the white make it black.. god this jason fucks massively i love him. 11/10 my favorite by a landslide perhaps

new 52/rebirth red hood

OKAY I KNOW theyre slightly different (rebirth has shorter sleeves and a more padded look) but to me its like. same thing. okay i think its.. fine. its not phenomenal but its not ugly.. i like the brown jacket more than the black jacket i have to admit, its more distinctive and i simply like the color more, however i do not.. like jason having the bat symbol.. but thats also a me thing about how badly written this is. anyways. the helmet with the mouth disgusts me and everytime its drawn like that its humilliating. like. 7/10. maybe 7+. when it has the mouth or like nose ANY FACIAL EXPRESSION RLLY its a 5.

wingman

oh i absolutely despise that helmet. he looks like fucking. terminator. its the ugliest shape ive ever seen and the visor is.. huge. i dont like the shoulder pads either idk what the fuck its going on with the thing around his neck either.. like hes. knockout batman and i HATEEE IT. damians costume slaps tho. i just… its… ugly. like.. 3/10.

get damian back arc red hood costume

oh im a HUGE fan of this design.i love how his costume is designed in a way thats like. if jason was a dnd character he absolutely would be a tank. the padding, the red undertones everywhere, i just.. love it. i like how all the costumes were done to reflect their personalities you know.. i like this robin red hood hybrid. 9/10 would even say 10/10 bc i just enjoy how gleason draws jason.

red hood/arsenal costume

its like. i dont hate it completely (i love the way the hood+helmet looks) and thats.. yeah thats pretty much all i like about it. i HATEEEE the vest i hate it fr.i hate how huge the sumbol is and idk this costume just does not spark joy. 5/10

outlaw costume

okay this one. this one drives me insane. because like. okay i dig parts of it. i like the lack of sleeves. i like the gloves thingies. i like the hood. i could get aboard him ditching the helmet - it breaks all the damn time anyways. i like the stripes on his pants in the boots. ALL SEPARATE? NEAT. now i hate. hate. the muzzle. like WHY IT LOOKS SO UGLYYY LIKE SO UGLY like unless the artist GETS IT and is SEXY it looks awful. look at this

AWFUL. also like it made sense for when he was on the run and he had to make do and assemble a costume from what he had but like now hes sponsored by lex, get that man a goddamn new suit already please. anyways. 6/10.. like i said i like many elements from it but its still.. kinda ugly all together and depends A LOT on the artist.

three jokers

im torn on this one.. i think its a bit boring.. i dont rlly like the top part, it reminds me SOO much of that one tt issue where he beat the fuck out of tim while wearing a robin costume like i understad the implications of him wearing a costume thats similar to the robin blouse but im not a big fan.. also i prefer the brown leather jacket. its like not his worst costume by far but not the best.. like pretty basic? i would say 6/10

NOW SOME AUS.

tiny titans & lil gotham

okay these two are like. pretty much the canon versions of robin and red hood HOWEVER they both have details that are different from the original version and DESERVE a mention. the curls on robin jason and jasons red gloves/belt are ICONIC. whoever designed them knew what they were about, so 10/10 best bapy jason.

arkham knight

does the person who designed this know how much theyve done for the lgbt community? i hope they do. i love.. a lot about this costume. i love the ears, i love how techno it is, i love the layers to it.. im.. not a big fan of the whole military thingy but i have to admit that applying it to the design itself is kind of neat.. i love the colors too and how.. practical it is while being. well. kinda dramatic? the whole bat aesthetic.. yeah. i love it. 9/10

arkham red hood

this one.. when u think about it the outlaw version is VEEERY similar to this one: the pants, the hood, the jacket eve. however i like this helmet so much more, i have a weakness for eyeless (??) helmets.. i like the little details of it as well, i remember that pic going around of it being held together with like. fuckign stitches and bandaids. legendary. i love this look, i would say 9+/10

injustice 2 jason

okay gonna go ahead and say it: not a big fan of the helmet. it looks like.. a bug? the lenses do not spark joy. this bitch has many styles and like toners etc and i will no rate them all. i think its a pretty basic design, not the best but not the worst either. like if it was an exam i would make them pass but make faces at what im reading like eeehhhgh. 7/10.

hag jason

middle one is like literally, on the outside and superficial level, just. his usual costume. the jacket and the grey kevlar and the bat. now the gloves are sexy as hell.. and in the whit ebackground one u can appreciate the under costume better and i really like it?? i just.. like the design. I HATE HOWEVER the bat helmet. WHY IS IT HOLLOW?? BITCH HELLO?? AND THE BATMAN SYMBOL DOES NOT MAKE SENSE! and i like things making sense!!!. we will not talk about jason in this book. like.. 8/10. maybe 9 if im feeling it.

hag jason 2: the hagger and the furious

hes just.. a little old man.. he cannot change this.. i like this design. i like seeing jason grow old. wish it wasnt in this context. my father rlly. 8/10

—-

am i forgetting any jays.. i wont do all animated robins because they all look the same and the one that doesnt i do not like. SO HERES my thoughts..

#Anon #jason todd #jason.txt #THIS has been my weekly jason rant. come back next week for more

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toothpastecanyon · 5 years

Text

We Walk Like Humans Do, Chapter 1

The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures... for the ones that walked on two legs and fit in doorways, at least. Lacie has other problems to overcome before she can live in the big city.

Inspired by @marshmellowextract‘s ideas on the TAU Discord.

See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.

________________________________________________________________

The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures. True, there’s been no shortage of misunderstandings and pro-nat sentiments over the years, but all those centuries of hiding away from humans had been just as harmful.

Humans are everywhere, after all. Avoiding them means avoiding most places on Earth, holing yourself away in dwindling forests and as-of-yet unexplored cave systems. Some could pass as human and live in their cities, but pre-Transcendence accounts of disguised elves or vampires often spoke of the burden of carrying such an immense secret, the disconnect they felt with any humans they befriended. They could never truly live as themselves.

For some magical creatures, the Transcendence changed that. The Transcendence let them live freely amongst the humans, let them attend their schools and work alongside them to better the world.

For some magical creatures, the Transcendence was the single best thing that had ever happened to them.

For others?

Well… for the less humanoid ones, they didn’t notice so much of a difference. For Lacie, she was still hanging out in the same old sewers she’d been hatched in.

After all, when you’re a giant basilisk several bus-lengths long and capable of killing a man with a single glance, there are more obstacles to living in the city than ‘not feeling like you can be true to yourself.’

________________________________________________________________

A snore rumbles through the depths of London’s sewers. Deep, deep underground, somewhere in a maze of rank-smelling tunnels sloshing with wastewater, there lies a hidden door, and behind that door slumbers a vicious, terrible monster guarding a tome of forbidden knowledge.

That’s how the treasure hunters always describe Lacie’s home on the forums, and honestly, she finds it a little insulting. They’ll go on and on about how much the place stinks and how loudly she snores; it’s like they expect her to fix it or something, and… no? This is a sewer, it’s going to smell bad. And she needs to sleep, so it’s going to be noisy, too.

If they’re gonna come down here to try and slay her and steal her shit, the least they can do is stop being so goddamn whiny about it.

Like, look at these bozos coming in now. Lacie was having such a peaceful nap until they started messing around with the hidden door.

She cracks a tired eye open, and glares at the sound of their voices.

“No, it’s this one!” A rock shudders on the wall. “Didn’t you read the riddle? You touch the symbols clockwise!”

“How did you get clockwise from the riddle? It’s way more complicated than that; the cipher clearly states-”

“A-B-C-D. Clockwise.”

“No, that’s- ABCD? Where on earth did you get ABCD?”

Lacie lets out a rumbling sigh. Incompetent treasure hunters, oh joy. She shifts a little bit on her pile of gold, and waits for them to bumble their way into a solution so she can go back to sleep.

“Look, I don’t know how you’re getting ABCD, so why don’t we try my way first, and if mine doesn’t work-”

“It’s absolutely not going to work.”

“It will! I took a class in cryptography once, I know how this works.”

“Ooo, aren’t you special.”

“Look, just let me work, will you?”

“Do it fast. Ugh, it smells like death down here.”

At least it’s more bearable than your voice, Lacie thinks. She snorts at her own joke before hooking her tail around a wooden sign and dragging it in closer. She’ll need this later - quite a while later, most likely, but it’s good to be prepared.

“That didn’t work?”

“Of course it didn’t work, you idiot. I’ll open it-”

“Hey, wait, maybe I did that wrong! Let me try that again!”

“No, you had your chance!”

“Just let- hey, get off me!”

“No, you get off me!”

“Come on dude, just let me try-”

After listening to the treasure hunters scuffle and shout at each other for what felt like forever, Lacie hears a click in the door’s opening mechanism. The whole thing starts to rumble and dust loosens from the ceiling as it opens inwards, revealing… well, she doesn’t look at them directly in case they’re dumb enough not to bring basilisk protection, but she makes out two human figures with rifle-shaped sticks, which they immediately point at her face.

“There it is!” The first man ushers the other back. “Stay behind me!”

“Stay behind you? Dude, I’m a way better shot.”

“What? No way, you are not!”

“I totally am. Don’t you remember back at the range-”

Lacie lets out a hiss before they can get into another stupid argument. She points the end of her tail at the sign, and it takes them a second to notice.

“It’s doing something weird.”

“Quick, let’s shoot it!”

“No, look, that’s a sign it’s holding!” The second guy peers at the message. “Says ‘Fighting not needed, can’t let you take the physical book but am posting all chapters online at https- wait, you have a website?”

She nods. A blog, actually.

“Don’t be stupid.” The other guy gives him a shove. “There’s no way it has a website; this is some sort of trick!”

“Yeah… yeah, you’re right! Wait, how is it a trick?”

“Obviously it’s to confuse us and distract us from getting the treasure!” He cocks his rifle. “We have to stay focused! Stay behind me, I’ll get this thing right between the eyes-”

Lacie finally looks down at the guy. Their gazes meet, the guy’s eyes widen; he yelps and staggers back, dropping his rifle and slapping a hand over his face… but he doesn’t drop dead. A second later, he peeks out behind his fingers.

“I’m… still alive!” He cackles. “These contact lenses really do work!” Ha! Take that, you dumb lizard!”

The other guy high fives him. “Yeah, take that! Now let’s kill this thing!”

Huh, they’re slightly more prepared than she thought. Lacie stares at his smug smile a moment longer, then swings her tail around and dashes both of them against the right wall.

There are no contact lenses that protect against blunt force trauma. They let out short-lived screams, cut off as soon as their bodies crash against stone; there’s a chorus of splintering cracks, then silence as they crumple to the ground amongst a pile of other shattered skeletons.

Lacie looks at them now. Listens to all the familiar noises that could be heard in the absence of their voices - the dull roar of running water, the drips that fall from the ceiling and splash in puddles, the tinkling of gold coins as she shifts her weight.

All the things she could hear, now that they were dead.

Does she feel bad?

Eh… sort of.

She feels... more frustrated than anything else, these days. It’s not like she doesn’t give them a chance to escape, and they are trying to kill her… but still. It’s such a senseless loss of life - especially for such young, stupid humans - and over what? Some useless book?

She turns and glares at it now, sitting on its little lecturn at the far end of the room. Stupid thing.

One day, she will be free of it.

But for now, she’s tired. She lays her head on glittering gold, closes her eyes, and falls asleep to all the quiet, comforting sounds of her home.

She probably starts snoring, too… fuck, they’ve made her self conscious about it.

________________________________________________________________

Chapter 7 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - His Shitty Death Spells and Why They’re Not to Die For, Seriously

Hey everyone, this is 18Lacie5 back with another chapter overview. I know it’s been a year since I last posted, sorry about that. I’m usually way too tired to work on one of these - the joys of being cold blooded in England. Annnnnyyyyywwwwaaaayyyy, here is the much-anticipated chapter on ol’ Animago’s secret death spells!

Spoiler alert: it’s gonna disappoint you.

Now, for anybody new reading this, Sironus Animago was a 19th century English wizard that specialised in the study of animal transmogrification. If you don’t know who he is, that’s because he was a recluse who hated humanity so much he spent half his life trying to turn himself into literally anything else. The only time anybody hears about him is generally in treasure hunting circles, concerning a riddle he left behind for ‘any man worthy enough to learn his secrets.’ It is said that he wrote a spellbook containing all the knowledge he had accumulated over his lifetime, and considered it so dangerous he bound a basilisk into guarding it after his passing.

Well, I am that basilisk, and I’m here to tell you why Animago’s spellbook is stupid and absolutely not worth dying for.

This chapter’s an easy one: his death spells suck. Even by pre-Transcendence standards, they suck. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in offensive magic, and I’m pretty sure he threw these ones in here because hey, every spellbook’s gotta have a spooky scary dark magic section, right?

Let’s examine the first spell of Chapter 7: ‘Planis fugere a mortalis huius’ (a moment of silence for that Latin.) So ‘fly away from this mortal plane(s?)’ sounds pretty and all, but it’s way too poetic to be a reliable spell. Unlike the standard modern equivalent, which is, you know, just ‘Die’, your magic’s gonna have to figure out a whole lot about this sentence before it puts it into action. Fly away, how? Where are they flying to? What could count as our ‘planis’ here? The ground?

You see how easily this could result in something like giving your enemy a pair of wings instead of killing them. Great. That’s totally what you’d want to happen in battle, right?

This issue would have come up immediately in testing, which leads me to believe it was a purely theoretical spell of Animago’s, and not a particularly good one (but hey, at least it’s original this time, right?) As with all of them it does come with the minorly unique addition of alternate pronounciations in five different animal forms, but again, unless you’re turning yourself into a chicken, a dog, a hawk, a bear or a snake on a regular basis, when are you ever going to need this?

All in all, probably the worst chapter in the entire spellbook, with sloppy, overly complex incantations I’d toss away in a heartbeat if not for the fact that I’ve been bound into protecting them. Next post, we tackle chapter 11: turning your furniture into animals!

(Because that’s what your couch is missing. Teeth and claws and an ability to run away from you.)

Do s both a favour, and don’t make me kill you over these shitty spells.

Curled around her favourite pile of gold, Lacie scrolls down her blog, reading its contents with drooping eyes. She uses her tail to move a laptop’s trackpad, which makes it a little difficult to navigate - the frustration she feels whenever the clicker shoots off in random directions is the main reason she’s still awake - but not as much as one might be expecting, as the laptop is not an ordinary laptop.

It’s gigantic. The screen is bigger than her, and the top almost scratches against the ceiling. Carefully balanced above the wet stone on four smaller gold piles, the charging port is wired up to a truly massive, glowing purple power strip. It hums with magical energy, charging her laptop as she gets to the end of the blog post.

‘Do s both a favour ’... ah, typo. Lacie shoves her mouse in the general direction of the edit button for a few seconds before landing on it; now she clicks, adds a u, and struggles her way back to the main page.

Fixed. That was totally worth the effort.

She lets out a snort, which turns into a great big yawn and leaves her head resting on top of the laptop. The metal’s got some warmth to it; she feels that against her cheek, and almost immediately starts struggling to keep her eyes open.

This was a mistake, she thinks. Come on, she literally just got up! She can’t go right back to sleep!

Just a little more time… to herself… without any… any humans… she was supposed to... to...

The distant whoosh of water overhead and the steady hum of the power strip lulls her closer and closer to sleep, and she tries one last time to lift up her eyelids-

And plop.

A little water droplet lands right in her eye, and she jumps. Rises up, blinks rapidly - first to get the blurriness out of her vision, then to get rid of the sleepiness already creeping its way back in.

She shakes her head to clear it. Once she’s mostly awake again, she lets out a triumphant little puff of air: not today, sleep! Not when she’s got shit to do!

With that, Lacie turns back to her laptop and mouses over to another tab, titled ‘List of Craig’ and next to it, ‘(1)’ for one new message. She’s been waiting for that (1) to show up - hopefully she hasn’t taken too long to respond back.

The tab opens after she jabs left click a couple times, revealing a short chatbox:

L at 20:25: [is that double length chalk shipment still available?]

M at 20:35: [yes]

L at 20:36: [would be very interested in buying that, are you are ok with teleswitch methods of payment? you don’t have to wheel it anywhere, just let me know where it is in the house]

Fifteen whole minutes later at 20:51, there’s the much-anticipated reply:

[k]

Lacie reads this, and has a sudden urge to smack her head against the keyboard. With a growl rumbling in her throat, she gets typing

L at 20:52: [okay, where is the shipment in your house? what room? the spell i use needs this.]

She sends it off… and waits, scowling at the chatbox.

And waits...

And is still waiting. Stars, maybe she could’ve taken a nap.

Speaking of that, her eyelids are starting to droop again. She huffs and shakes her head in a couple quick, flicking movements; that jolts her back awake, and she clicks back to her blog page.

The latest post on chapter 7 stares back at her. In the dim-lit room, it’s glaring down on her, almost accusingly.

Next post, it reads, we tackle chapter 11: turning your furniture into animals!

Post updated: less than two minutes ago

Post uploaded: more than two years ago

Lacie sighs. This is what happens now when she takes a nap.

Years, they’ve begun to pass her by like nothing . All she remembers of the past two are groggy hazes, half-recalled dreams; the only times she’d wake would be to fend off the occasional treasure hunter, then back to her slumber she’d go, like that was her only purpose in life.

It didn’t used to be this way. She didn’t used to feel so tired all the time. Why?

...She’s getting too big for her home. The magic that sustains her, it isn’t enough anymore.

That’s got to be the explanation.

Which means she’s got to get out of here. She’s got to break that damn binding that tethers her to the spellbook…

Lacie shoots a look at it now. Glares at the stony grey lectern it rests on, and everything piled around the base of that. The wax candles. The incense burners. The unholy artefacts. The tomes upon tomes of academic research, summoning circle references, nonstandard incantation guides…

She has to break it.

By any means necessary.

…

She’s got a new message from the human.

M at 21:13: [I put it outside for you. Its in the back yard. Your welcome.]

With an eyeroll, Lacie wraps her tail around the lectern’s pole and brings it in closer. The spellbook slides precariously around the surface it’s resting on, but with a bit of care she places it down in front of her without anything falling off the edges.

Now, the book - she peers at it now.

As always, it looks like a mess; its leather binding had been handmade by Wizard Animago himself, but only because the guy was too paranoid to have anybody else do it. He did a sloppy job, and over the centuries it had fallen to pieces until the only thing holding it together anymore was a couple remaining strings and a headache-inducing cocktail of protection charms.

For Lacie, it’s tiny, making it incredibly hard to flip through. She can’t help but wonder if it had seemed this tiny the last time she’d opened it… maybe she’d grown a little bigger since then.

Stuffing that thought down, she keeps flipping; past Chapter 2 on transfiguration, past Chapter 3 on general transmutation, Chapter 4 on alchemy… Chapter 5, there it is.

And bingo bongo, there’s the spell she wants: ‘Sironus Animago’s Telekinetic Switch’... and Lacie can’t help but snort at that name, because it isn’t actually a spell he invented.

Like many less-than-reputable wizards of his time, he had a habit of stealing spells from contemporaries in other fields of magic, slapping his name in front of them and trying to pass them off as his own to pad out the number of chapters in his spellbook.

(The internet was a terrible invention for guys like him. Lacie had a lot of fun ripping into this practice when she wrote about Chapter 5.)

Anyway, while she could find the original spell anywhere on the internet, there is something Animago added to every entry he wrote down in his book - that something is off to the far right, almost obscured by the yellowing and curling of the page.

Here, next to five simple illustrations of a chicken, a dog, a hawk, a bear, and a snake, are the alternate pronounciations of the spell.

Lacie squints at the last line - her mouth moves as she refamiliarises herself with the incantation - then she nods to herself, and scoops up a generous portion of gold coins, and closes her eyes.

Pictures a backyard, with a crate full of summoning chalk, just waiting for her to pick them up.

And with that in mind, she speaks.

Not in words. Not in a language. She speaks in hisses and spits, in a string of meaningless noises that fit better in her mouth than any human tongue. At the end of it, though, that specific arrangement of sounds triggers an enchantment, which triggers the telekinetic switch.

The coins in her grasp blink out of existence. A second later, they’re replaced by a crate of summoning chalk. It rattles when she picks it up; the sound echoes around her room until she puts it down by the rest of her demon supplies.

There’s a lot piled up there now, Lacie thinks. Enough to summon a demon, and at that, she grimaces. Suppresses a yawn.

She’d better get on with it, then.

________________________________________________________________

Lacie is starting to think that maybe demons don’t design their summoning rituals with basilisks in mind.

She’s cleared a space in her room for the circle - has shrunk her laptop back down to normal size with one of Animago’s spells - and now that it’s time to draw the thing, she’s encountered a problem.

Have you ever tried to draw a chalk circle on wet stone tiles? Have you ever tried to do it without hands?

It is, in a word, difficult.

Fortunately, she’d seen this issue coming from day one. She bought a shape template from some website selling school supplies, and blew it up with the same sizing spell she uses on her laptop. She put that over a stone slab she pulled off a drier part of the wall, traced the circle, and voila! A summoning circle.

(She still needed to decorate it, but she’d rather intentionally chosen a demon with a simpler design. It didn’t take too long to replicate, all things considered.)

Now onto the candles. To Lacie’s eternal disappointment, there’s no spell on the books for fire, or heat, or anything like that; she has to get creative. While rifling through the backpacks of some ex-treasure hunters, she comes across a portable gas cooker. The ignition is a simple switch she can flip - tick tick tick fwoom , it goes, then fire.

She keeps that close to her, ready to use.

After that… The incantation. She physically can’t pronounce the Latin chants needed to perform a sufficiently compelling summoning, which is a big problem. Most powerful demons - ones powerful enough to break bindings - tend to be rather picky about how they’re summoned. Unless it’s done exactly right, they won’t bother showing up for her.

She needs a demon that’ll be a little more forgiving, and after pouring through textbooks, how-to guides, summoning lists, there’s only one name that seems to fit the bill.

Lacie lights the candles, one by one, and watches as the circle of Alcor the Dreambender begins to glow.

Strange things begin to happen. Shadows lengthen. The air gets colder - she feels that like a punch in the gut. In the centre of the chalk lines, a wispy black smoke forms, and golden eyes open from within the darkness.

Those eyes… Lacie isn’t used to being scared of things, but she stares into those eyes and knows, suddenly, definitively, that she isn’t the monster in the room anymore.

They turn to look at her now, and-

“Ow!” The void-black being winces back, rubbing its forehead. “What the heck? It’s like a migraine… what is this?”

She blinks. Huh, her stare works on demons. They didn’t mention that the summoning guides.

The demon’s straightening again. “Is this a binding? Because guys, I’m gonna be real annoyed if you tried… to… to bind me with..? Guys?”

It looks around the circle in confusion… then up, up, following the line of her body to meet her eyes again.

�� “Oh.” It gives a hard blink. “Ow, okay. You know you’re supposed to give me a sacrifice before you sic me on the big scary snake monster, right?”

Shit, it doesn’t see the sign. She holds it up higher.

“Like, at least a little bit of candy for starters, y’know? Just to be like ‘Hey, I appreciate you for coming all this way’ and I’ll be like ‘Thanks! Now I actually feel motivated to save you from-’” It notices the sign, and pauses. “Um. Hang on a second, I’m missing something.”

Lacie watches the demon read over the sign: BOUND TO SPELLBOOK, it reads, DEAL TO BREAK BINDING IN EXCHANGE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICES? Its glowing eyes steadily widen, and it glances back up at her.

“Wait, you summoned- agh!” It blocks her stare with a hand. “You summoned me?”

She nods.

“Okay, that’s… new. What did you want again… spellbook... break binding to spellbook- human sacrifice?” Its eyes narrow. “Where are these humans you’re talking about?”

Putting down the sign, she points at the pile next to the door. Most of them are bones by now, but hey, apparently some demons like that. She watches this one inspect them.

“Oh, they’re… not fresh. Where did they all come fr- ow ! Okay, please stop with the staring, that’s not gonna work for me!” When she obligingly averts her gaze, he lets out a sigh. “Thank you. Now, uh, I kinda wanna know where you got all these bones from?”

He sounds way more bothered about that than Lacie thought he would. A little panic fluttering in her chest, she flips the sign over and grabs her carving rock.

“What are you…? Oh, you can’t talk, can you. Alright.” It shuffles its feet. “You wanted me to break a binding… I can see it now. Connected to that book over there?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Alcor float closer to it. Closer, closer, too close - it tiggers something in her, and she has to stop writing to block it with her tail. Has to let out a hiss at the literal demon; thank the stars its eyes widen in understanding instead of darkening in anger.

“Oh, you’ve been bound to guard it,” it says, stepping back. “I see. Sorry. So, those bones - they’re from people who tried to take it, right?”

Thank the stars again that it realises, because she isn’t even halfway done with the message. She nods.

“That makes sense. Wow, that must be some important spellbook you’re guarding, huh?”

An important spellbook - Lacie can’t muffle a snort as she shakes her head. Alcor laughs too, though he sounds a little bit uncomfortable.

“Oh, that, that’s gotta suck. I’m sorry, uh… What’s your name? If you have one- oh stars what am I saying, ‘if you have one’ that sounds so rude -”

With another snort, she points at a welcome mat she’s carved just in front of the hidden door.

“‘Welcome to Lacie’s home. You found the way in, now’ - heh - ‘find the way out.’ I like that, it’s funny!” He grins up at her. “I guess these guys didn’t- ow . Agh, sorry, I was gonna say, I guess these guys didn’t see the sign when they came in, huh?”

A head shake; they did not. They certainly didn’t laugh at it either.

(To be fair, they were generally too busy gaping at the giant basilisk in the room to give an opinion on her decorations, but it was nice to finally get a little validation. She is funny sometimes, isn’t she?)

“Didn’t think so.” Alcor straightens his cufflinks. “Well, Lacie, while I don’t think I can technically count this as a human sacrifice, it should still be more than enough to break any basic bond. So ,”

She watches him extend a hand wreathed in blue fire, hears him speak with a voice that brings back a little of that initial fear, reminds her that as friendly as he may seem…

“D̵̜͍͖̘o̱͖̙̰̪̥̹͜ w̹͖̝̩͢e ̵̲͓̖h͇̹͖̞̦̠̮͘a̤̰v̹͔͚̭̦͜e̻ ̻̘̭̫a̩ ͈̳̯̯̰̣̪d̕e͇̪͍̜̻̪͘a̙̻̬̦͔ͅl̲̝͓͔?”

She’s still dealing with a demon.

“Wait, uh… you don’t have to shake.” He retracts his hand, demonic reverb gone as suddenly as it showed up, but the memory of it is hard to shake. “You can just, you know, nod or something, that’s fine.”

Lacie thinks hard on that for a moment. She glances back at the spellbook, the stupid, useless spellbook she’s been bound to, sitting on a lecturn in a room she’s been trapped in her whole life, a room that’s getting smaller and smaller as the years go by.

She’s outgrown this, she thinks. It’s time to move on.

“Hang on a second.”

Alcor’s voice makes her turn. He’s closed his eyes, and there’s a frown on his face that Lacie doesn’t like the look of. She leans in closer, listening to him mutter to himself.

“This isn’t- now how did he do this…? Oh. Oh , that’s not… dammit, that’s not good.” He opens his eyes. “Uh, Lacie? Got some bad news: I, uh, can’t break the binding.”

...What? Why not?

She blinks, watches him struggle to explain.

“I-I mean I can, technically! But not with this deal - not that I don’t want to help you, but… it’s complicated. Demon deals are complicated, there’s got to be a give and a take and it sucks, it’s...”

She watches him sigh. Frowns, as he looks away.

“Look, uh, I was going on the impression that this was a simple guardian bond, but it’s not. I didn’t think - you know, you were laughing when I said it was an important spellbook or something - I didn’t think it was gonna be some high-level magic… but it is.” He clenches his fists. “He’s managed to bind it to your soul , and that gets tricky for demons. There’s got to be a give and a take, right? And if I give a soul freedom…”

… he has to take another’s , Lacie thinks, and narrows her eyes. Is this heading where she thinks this is heading?

“I have to take freedom too, which… well, you don’t feel like selling your soul to me, do you?”

No no no, that’s the one thing all the manuals said never ever to do! She shakes her head vigourously, and he gives a quiet chuckle.

“Yeah, didn’t think so… I really did want to help you with the binding, but I can’t. Not without enough payment in return.” The most powerful demon in the world just shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry. It’s a stupid rule and I’m always trying to bend it if I can, but I can’t outright break it.”

Lacie looks back at the spellbook. She knows a thing or two about stupid rules she can’t break. She really can’t, apparently.

Apparently, she’s going to be stuck with this thing for the rest of her life. Well. This… this sucks.

What is she going to do now?

“Um, listen,” Alcor clears his throat. “I can’t- uh, I may not be able to break the binding, but if there’s anything else I can do… well, you’ve got a lot of stuff you can sacrifice to me, I can probably do just about anything - anything that’s not soul-related, anyway.”

Lacie blinks. Just about anything... she could still get out of this room before it starves her. Yes, if he was able to teleport both her and the book outside-

But what would she do after that? The book’s tiny ; she’d need some way to lug it around, and she’d need to do that while finding food for herself, and oh stars all the guides on demon deals were screaming at her to be specific right now-

“Do you need some time to decide?”

She looks down at Alcor, and nods. He floats back towards the summoning circle.

“Alright, well, call me up again when you’ve got a deal in mind...” Glancing around the circle, at the crispy candles and the shaky drawings of his symbols, he blinks, then he glances back at her. “Uh… how long did this take you to do?”

A while, Lacie thinks, and snorts. He seems to get the message.

“Right, well, I’ll leave my calling card with you, so you don’t have to do that all over again.” He fishes the card out of his pocket; somehow, it comes out almost as big as him. “When you’re ready to make a deal, just prick your fing… uh, just hold it, okay? I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

She takes it, and nods. Tries for a smile, like the humans do to show gratitude.

“What are you-? Ow.” He squints away from her stare. “Um, well, it was nice meeting you, Lacie! I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.”

Alcor seems like he wants to say more, but after a moment of hesitation he gives a quick wave and disappears in a puff of smoke. The candles go out with him - remembering the sheer effort it took to light them in the first place, she cringes at that.

Well, at least she doesn’t have to summon him again. She looks from the smoke wisping off the wicks, down to the business card in her grasp.

It’s glossy and black; on one side, there’s a white circle around Alcor’s golden symbol; presumably that’s the place you’re supposed to prick your finger on. There’s a little note up top that says, ‘Need help? Summon Alcor the Dreambender today!’ and she snorts at that.

What a strange little creature… strangely endearing. She can hear how crazy she sounds thinking about it, but that demon was actually kind of a decent guy? She isn’t about to go selling her soul to him any time soon, but it felt like he genuinely wanted to help and that’s… refreshing.

It’s certainly a change of pace from the treasure hunters she usually encounters.

With that in mind, Lacie grips the card. It feels sturdier than it looks, but she still takes care tucking it underneath her. Once she’s done that, she turns back to face the circle again.

She sighs. Blinks, slowly. After something like that, all she wants to do is take a nice long nap, but...

Well, she’d better get cracking with that deal.

________________________________________________________________

Showing comments for Chapter 7 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - His Shitty Death Spells and Why They’re Not to Die For, Seriously

EdgyTwedgy666: [fake lol]

Sometimes, Lacie really doesn’t like humanity. She likes reading their writings, she likes looking at the photos they take of their world, she even likes the occasional specific human, but as a whole?

Rey_hunter: [can you tell me how to solve animagos riddle?? plz]

JarrSlayer8: [I dont get it. Author keeps calling himself a battlisk? Is this a joke account, because he needs to say its a joke so people don’t get confused.]

Foundit_56: [hehe nice try dude… im coming for that spellbook even if your to scared to…]

If this is what humans are like, she can understand why Animago hated being one so much. I mean seriously, she’s telling people what’s in the spellbook so they’ll leave her alone, and these are the kind of comments she gets?

Pyrocandro: [ummm, you know planis fugere a mortalis huius doesn’t translate to fly away from this mortal plane right? It looks more like go away to me… jus sayin. Maybe you should take a latin class? ;)]

Lacie narrows her eyes.

Maybe the non-treasure hunting humans are nicer.

Maybe up on the surface, humans are actually cool and not smugly correcting her Latin on every post.

Maybe, but it’s a shame a human trapped her down here to guard his shitty book, so she might never find out.

A sigh, long and tired. She’s been brainstorming deals ever since Alcor left, but with her still lugging around the spellbook they all seemed… unfeasible. The thing is falling apart already - how’s she supposed to keep it safe out there? Call it a lack of imagination, but she’s exhausted and the only thing she can think of is to keep holing up in her room, ask Alcor to boost the energy of Animago’s old sustaining spells so it can support her again.

That would work. It would, but it feels…

Lacie grimaces.

It feels like there’s more than this. There’s a whole world out there beyond her room, beyond guarding some spellbook; she’s been looking at it ever since she took a laptop off a treasure hunter’s body. She’s been looking, she’s been reading, she’s been writing, and, just as she was about to make that deal with Alcor, she suddenly realised she’s been wanting .

Wanting to go out there. Wanting to explore, wanting to leave this place. She’s outgrown it, in more ways than one, and now the thought of staying here, forever...

It feels like she’ll regret not making a better deal when she had the chance.

But what is a better deal? Maybe she’s just too tired to think, but her mind is blank and now she’s just scrolling through stupid human comments, thinking this is what I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life...

woodzarcor4lyfe: [how does a bastlisk type lol theyve got no arms]

Oh, god. Oh, no.

SheldonHunts: [Actually, basilisks are classified as supernatural BEASTS instead of supernatural BEINGS. They’re non-sentient, so I’m preeetty sure you’re not a basilisk dude... cool post tho, was fun to read :)]

Fucking. Humans. Why are they like this?

Epicbl00dhound: [looooool i bet there’s so many dumbasses in the comments fallin for this………. your not a bastlicks buddy i bet you made this up to feel special……… i bet your just some guy in your moms basement pretending…… dont pretend cuz humans are THE BEST we beat all other spacies (watch pronatpat he has the TRUTH) so get out of there….. be a human!]

Ugggghhhhhhhh, why is this her life? Why can’t she-

Wait.

Lacie reads that last comment again. Through all the weird grammar and the pro-nat grossness and everything else she doesn’t even want to unpack… it’s giving her an idea.

Be a human...

A strange, strange idea - but it might just actually work.

#transcendence au #toothwrites

43 notes · View notes

zenonaa · 5 years

Photo

Read here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444209

Comments: Commissioned by @matrioshka a while back. Thank you for your patience!

***

Aloysius Pennyworth came from a family of butlers. His father had been a butler, and his father’s father had been a butler, and so on, back through generations upon generations. Though Aloysius had admittedly been somewhat unruly in his early years, mixing with the wrong crowds and at one point getting acquitted of a double murder, he didn’t regret returning to his roots and dedicating the rest of his life to assisting others as a butler.

In any case, being a butler could be just as eventful as being a gang member, especially when one was the head butler of a fourteen year old billionaire.

The door to Byakuya Togami’s bedroom opened, leading into a space that could fit a bungalow inside of it. Such a large room was necessary, after all, as Byakuya required a place that could accommodate all of his possessions, like his piano, violin, pool table, king-sized bed, computers and books upon books upon books, just as a few examples. Everything was neatly arranged on a dark wood laminate flooring bordered by off-white walls. Byakuya’s mother had instructed that the room be furnished with warm hues and wooden accents, but the potted plant in one corner had been Aloysius’s idea. A nice splash of green.

On the other side of the room, Byakuya sat at his desk, and on hearing the door, he turned around on his swivel chair with his hands steepled. Aloysius approached, revealing his withered face to the other, and strode forward with his pale blue eyes fixed on Byakuya.

He stopped a short distance away.

“You wanted me?” asked Aloysius, holding his hands down in front of himself.

Byakuya gave a nod and turned his chair back around so he faced his computer again.

“I need you to sign up for an eBay account so I can buy something from it,” Byakuya told him.

Here lay a pause.

“e...Bay?” repeated Aloysius slowly, drawing his face into a frown that added more wrinkles. “I think I’ve heard of that. It’s a dating website, is it not?”

“What? No. It’s not.” Byakuya’s brow creased, and talking matter-of-factly, he explained, “It’s a website that deals with auctions and consumer to consumer sales. I wish to purchase something on the website that someone is selling.”

Aloysius raised his eyebrows a little.

“What is stopping you?” he asked.

Byakuya pursed his lips.

“Age,” he replied.

At his young age, barely in his teens, Byakuya had amassed a vast amount of money, not just from his family but from his own ventures too. It couldn’t, however, buy some things, such as years that he could add to his age right now so he could legally sign up to an American multinational corporation.

Aloysius studied Byakuya’s earnest face.

“This sounds important,” said Aloysius seriously. “What is it that you wish to buy?”

Byakuya didn’t hesitate for even a second.

“Genocider Syo’s scissors,” said Byakuya.

Ah, yes. That unidentified serial killer murdering all those men. Their scissors. Aloysius stooped down and pulled out his reading glasses from his shirt pocket. He put them on and squinted at the screen.

“You may need to assist me in signing up,” said Aloysius, resting a hand on the back of Byakuya’s chair.

“Fine. Let’s do it now, before someone else buys it,” Byakuya demanded, and Aloysius watched him open up the necessary tabs on his internet browser.

Now, Aloysius wasn’t the most tech-savvy person but he could work a computer, and he had an email address, though he let Byakuya fill in a form using Aloysius’s personal details. Besides, Byakuya could type faster anyway, and Byakuya only paused when he came to a box asking for a password for the account.

“You choose something,” said Aloysius. “I don’t think I will be using the site for myself, so it’s not important that I remember it.”

Byakuya flexed his fingers. A multitude of passwords were available, yet that abundance of choice made it harder to choose just one. He scraped his teeth against his lips in thought and after some deliberation, he typed in a certain star from a constellation, with various symbols and numbers thrown in that would only mean something to him... and Aloysius.

With a final click on the mouse, the page on the screen changed, now showing a lot less text, and Byakuya straightened up.

“You will have a confirmation email in your inbox,” Byakuya informed him. “You need to click a link in it. Then I can start using the account to shop.”

“I shall open it swiftly,” said Aloysius. He stepped back and asked, “Would you like a snack?”

“Coffee and kołacz,” said Byakuya, still facing his computer.

“As you wish.”

Aloysius bowed then left the room. Byakuya opened the tab with the auction page again and stared at the photograph of the scissors. There had been a few bids placed on it, but he planned to forego that tedious process and purchase them at a certain high price. After he bought them, all he had to do was wait for them to arrive.

And that he did.

They took four weeks to be delivered to this mansion. Not ‘his’. ‘This’. The Togami Conglomerate owned several around the world, of course, and the mansion he currently lived at was the one closest to his private school. While he waited for it, Byakuya went about his usual things. Attending classes, participating in extra lessons at home, reading through cold cases, playing on the stock market, attending meetings with other billionaires and listening to aspiring businessmen pitch him possible investments... the usual sort of thing.

Hearing someone rap on his door, Byakuya uttered a curt, “enter,” and the door to his room opened. Aloysius came in with a box. It was paper brown with a sticker slapped onto it.

“I assume that this is your order,” said Aloysius, walking over. “For the past week, I have had emails from the eBay website telling me to leave feedback. It has been quite persistent.”

Aloysius handed the package to Byakuya, who picked away at it until he got it open. He extracted the contents slowly. Swathed in thin layers of foam paper were the scissors, presumably, though he could only feel the general shape of them for now, and he pried the wrapping apart to get to what was inside.

His eyes widened a bit. They looked like scissors. Custom-made scissors, to be precise, with large, curved finger rests. At some point, they must have been cleaned, because there weren’t any blood stains on them. None that he could see, at least.

While Byakuya examined the scissors, Aloysius spoke again.

“I know I said that I doubted I would be using the website for myself, but I was looking at it today and there is a seller who stocks doilies enmasse that have taken my fancy,” confessed Aloysius.

Byakuya didn’t reply, still inspecting the scissors. Aloysius tilted his head to one side.

“Young master?” he said curiously.

“Capital P, Polaris, exclamation mark, hash, lower case B.T. comma, the number thirteen,” said Byakuya in monotone without lifting his gaze. He heard Aloyisus’s footfalls gradually recede until the door shut as Aloysius made his exit.

As for Byakuya, he leaned back in his chair and turned the scissors over in his hands.

Somewhere, in the world, was the original owner. A serial killer who eluded authorities, time and time again. Even the prestigious Kirigiri family of detectives failed to identify who Genocider was. Byakuya thought, if he had access to all the information that the police had about that killer, he would have been able to solve the mystery. Yet, despite being heir to the Togami family, he had been denied access, and when he made a request to his father, his father sent a message demanding that ‘the heir’ not waste time on such matters.

He stroked the scissors with his thumb gently, having only seen them before now in the photo on the seller’s page and in grainy images that he managed to obtain of the crime scene from the dark web.

G.S. was engraved into the upper blade of the scissors.

“Genocider Syo,” he said to himself quietly, and he promised himself that he would be the one to unmask the killer.

It would start with these scissors.

***

The scissors remained in his possession for the next several years. Most of the time, they stayed in a sliding drawer storage box with a matte laminate surface, black and sleek, which Aloysius bought him for one of his birthdays. When he pulled the scissors out, he would study them for a while, trying to imagine their owner. Some internet sleuths theorised that the killer was a ‘he’ and either a high school student or a college student, and they would post photographs of people they thought Syo could possibly be, some dead, some not.

All of them turned out to be wrong.

Byakuya found that out personally.

“Those ain’t mine!”

He flinched. The girl standing opposite him, a head shorter, pierced him with her bright eyes. She grinned as she waved the scissors bought all those years ago that turned out to be fake. Fraudulent. Counterfeit. Never having once belonged to Genocider Syo, or even a lesser known serial killer.

And this girl would know... after all, she was Genocider Syo.

Keeping to his word, and though it took him years, Byakuya learned the identity of the murderer dubbed Genocider Syo. However, the discovery had not turned out like he anticipated. He hadn’t expected to be locked up in a school with fourteen other students, and he hadn’t expected a visitor, a stuttering girl with owl-eye glasses, a shifty gaze and a hunched posture, to come into his room and tell him that she had an alter who was the person who had captured Byakuya’s attention for many, many, many hours.

Her coming to his room? Understandable. That girl followed him around everywhere. But to tell him that she shared a body with a serial killer? Even he felt like she wrenched a rug from beneath him.

The aforementioned alter stood in front of him and flicked her long tongue that always seemed to hang out of her mouth. She tossed the fake scissors that he presented to her over her shoulder. They landed on her bed.

Syo had shown off her actual scissors earlier, during the last trial orchestrated by their captor, an anthropomorphic bear, and she did so again now, taking a set from the leather pouch affixed to her thigh. Her eyes gleamed as she brandished the scissors, her scissors, a thumb and a finger tucked through the metal rings.

“I told you, but in case you don’t want to look up the exact quote, to summarise, all my scissors are handmade,” said Syo. She tipped her head to one side, leaving a beat of silence, and furrowed her brow. “Except the first set. I stole those from a store the same night I murdered that bit character in Shikoku, only for Gloomy to hide them. So I had to make my own from then on, right?”

Byakuya let her continue uninterrupted.

“I didn’t want to keep stealing them,” Syo explained, and she folded her arms over her chest, suddenly sombre. “I’d be like Bobby Leach, doing all that crazy shit and then slipping on an orange peel and dying. If I’m gonna hit the big house, it’ll be for murder, not for stealing, so I made my own, yeah? Like Akina Nakamori has her huskiness, I have my cute trademark too!”

A wide grin lit up her face and obnoxious laughter burst out of her. Byakuya’s eardrums twinged and he shot a glare at her. The first person she mentioned was a British stunt artist from the early twentieth century and the latter person, Byakuya didn’t know, but he assumed she was a celebrity. An idol or an actress. That kind of person.

He slowly pushed up his glasses, not breaking eye contact. After so long, he had Genocider Syo in front of him, and this opportunity to talk to her wouldn’t last. In this mutual killings scenario, there would only be one winner, and so she would perish along with the rest of their supposed classmates. Either she would be killed, or she would kill.

With this in mind, he had come to her room. She wouldn’t be able to get away with murdering him if he was killed here, where she would be the first suspect.

Well, she could still kill him, but he liked a little danger sometimes.

Byakuya just wished she would stop getting sidetracked.

“They’re fake, but those scissors you got are initialled... That’s real corny!” Syo threw her head back and laughed again, clutching her sides. When she flushed that out of her system, she fixed her eyes on him, smirking. “I didn’t come up with the name. Saw it in the papers first and it struck a chord. Until then, I didn’t have a name and had to use Gloomy’s.”

“The police were under the assumption that you were male,” Byakuya told her, watching as Syo swayed restlessly.

He wished she would keep still too. Everything about her gave him a headache.

“That’s because the police are morons, but can you blame them?” she said. “My parents and even the doctor who held me up like I was a cartoon lion when I was shit out of someone’s vagina thought I was a boy.”

She stopped rocking from side to side and eyed him.

“But Gloomy’s a girl, wouldn’t you say?” she added.

“Undeniably,” said Byakuya without having to think.

Syo studied him some more.

“Seems like you’re a real big fan of me,” she said. She raised her scissors, opened them, then shut them again. Her grin broadened, full of teeth. “I can imagine you bent over your desk, pictures of my work all around you, one of your hands on the edge of your desk and your other hand underneath it, blanking your blank!”

Byakuya felt a jolt. His chest clenched. This woman had no filter at all. He glowered and spoke through his teeth. “Whatever you’re insinuating is incorrect.”

“Never said it happened! Just that I can imagine it,” she chirped as she wiggled her chin at him. She smacked her hands onto her cheeks. “Gloomy’s not the only one with a boundless imagination! How about instead of this stuffy interview, we get to the chase! You want to know about my crimes? How about we reenact it? You would look so cute on my wall! I don’t normally do this, but I could even give you a BJ! It’s the stuff of fanfictions!”

His face grew hotter. “We will not do that at all,” he said, his voice cracking as he raised it despite his efforts to not show any heightened emotion around her.

Only she could get under his skin like that. Not even the mastermind managed it like Syo did. And oh how he hated it. The difference between Touko and Syo was stark. While Touko mumbled and fidgetted and had a passion for novels, romance and classics in particular, Syo squawked and danced about and seemed like the sort of person who spurned novels and drooled over trashy yaoi.

“Saving yourself for marriage?” she said, simpering, and she flumped back onto the bed. “Or did no one ever teach you how to get dirty? I guess because your dad’s seed got planted up your lady in a lab, he never learned. Bet he was a virgin.”

Byakuya hesitated. It was true that his mother had been artificially inseminated with his father’s sperm in a private Togami-owned clinic. This was something that he didn’t go around telling anyone, even her, as if that would have deterred her from her advances.

But she also used past tense, like he stopped being a virgin, or he died.

He pinched his lips together. Whatever. Most could have come to the same conclusion as her.

“You’re so hot even when you’re pulling faces!” she crowed in delight, and she drummed her heels against her bed. “Argh, do me do me do me, Byakuya-sama!”

Syo hugged herself, shuddering. He refused to dignify any of that. She settled down a bit. Her eyes flitted to him.

“You got any other questions for me, Byakuya-sama?” she asked.

“Why did you start killing people?” he said, peering over at her and not approaching the bed. “Your victims are all men. You said they were attractive, but is that really it?”

“Eh? Why does an artist paint? Why does a singer perform?” she retorted, like talking about the weather or something equally mundane. “Why does a sister dedicate herself to her twin sister even if she’ll get stabbed in the back or skewered by spears in the end? It’s a feeling. Passion.”

Byakuya tried to speak, to request her to elaborate, but Syo sat up and talked over him.

“Hey, hey. You’re an interviewer. A sexy interviewer, but an interviewer all the same, not a freaking psychiatrist,” she said firmly. “It’s who I am, okay? Some people are born with red hair, and some are like me, killers.”

Syo motioned toward herself. He stared at her.

“There is no one like you,” he told her plainly.

She didn’t react at first. Then she snorted and flailed happily.

“Aw, you’re making me blush! You’re overthinking it, Darling.” Syo steadied herself, and while she still grinned, there was an edge to it. “Listen, if I wanted to tell my life story, I’d go to that sister of yours, Shinaboo-boo the bear.”

He inhaled through his nose but otherwise betrayed nothing. To name his half-sister like that... a half-sister that he didn’t make public knowledge... how could she...?

“Though, she’d probably change some facts, right?” remarked Syo thoughtfully, tapping herself on the chin. “It’s not beneath her. Whatever it takes to uphold the family name. Skip over all the killing, and maybe not mention you being Polaris. Some people would get real mad, trust me.”

Byakuya widened his eyes and let slip a small gasp.

“How do you know that?” he asked. He never told anyone about that. He never would. Especially not someone he had only read about, otherwise a near stranger. A serial killer.

She laughed.

“Tell me!” he demanded, louder.

Syo laughed more, shaking, then tipped her head forward with that same, same grin.

“You think I’m in a glass case on display,” she said. It could have been a question, but he doubted she meant it to be one. “Maybe I am. And you can see in, but I can see out, y’know?”

“What?” he said heatedly, raising his fists. “I don’t have time for your inane metaphors. How do you know this about me?”

“You don’t remember?” she asked, and he really did not. She resumed her laughter and realising he wouldn’t get anything more out of her, he left her room, feeling like he knew less than he did before.

***

How she knew about what she said to him became clear within the next few weeks. Painfully clear. The whole Togami Conglomerate... had been wiped out. Murdered. Byakuya didn’t feel emotional loss from that. Never had. For people with families, he supposed, they might feel saddened, and while the conglomerate had his surname and people he shared DNA with, like his father, he didn’t consider any of them family. Just business associates. People would call him heartless for only being concerned that a group he considered strong, the strongest, had been annihilated, and not because his father begged for his life on live television before being shot by an imposter dressed as his biological son.

Byakuya’s fiancée put it best when the conversation once came up during lunch and Aoi Asahina asked him about his lack of emotion. He wasn’t the one who was heartless - everyone around him while he grew up had been.

At that point, Byakuya and his now soon-to-be wife hadn’t been dating. Back then, Byakuya wouldn’t have believed that he would plan to marry someone not chosen for him by someone else, like his mother had been chosen to marry his father because of Byakuya’s accomplishments. Had someone told him years ago that he would have chosen his own wife because he cared for her in a way that he, at the time, mocked and scoffed and considered to be a weakness beneath him, he would have blanked out their existence for the rest of his life as they clearly had nothing of worth to say.

How things changed.

He adjusted his tie, staring at his full length mirror, and heard the door open.

“There you are! I knew if I followed the scent of sex, I’d find you!” came a voice behind him.

His reflection grimaced.

And how some things didn’t change. He held in a sigh and looked over his shoulder. Just as expected, there was Syo, dressed in a satin purple nightdress. She sat down heavily on their bed, one leg crossed over the other, vibrating with energy.

Byakuya regarded her coolly.

“Is the stove on?” he asked.

“Dunno!” she said with a shrug. “Didn’t check. I think Gloomy was adding pepper to breakfast and got a whiff of it, or something. So here I am! Da, da, da!”

She threw out her arms, beaming.

It had probably been switched off then. Syo focused on him.

“What’s with the suit? It’s even sexier than usual,” she said playfully as she stretched out her legs.

He frowned and turned around completely to face her.

“Did you think to check the calendar? It’s the day of the wedding,” he said.

The amused glow on Syo’s face dimmed. Surely, she must have known. In the past, Syo and Touko hadn’t shared memories, but with support and therapy, they had learned to do something called co-fronting, or they could be aware of what was going on while the other fronted at the least.

“That thing,” she stated in monotone, and Byakuya had a suspicion that she had known the whole time. She forced herself to perk up, but it was like she had two lights in her and only one was turned on. “Why don’t we bail on that stuffy show and have some fun? Just you and me... and maybe Hiro-kun. God, you need to get hotter friends.”

His expression didn’t soften.

“I’m not skipping the wedding,” said Byakuya. “You know that.”

Syo groaned and flung her head back.

“Bor-ring!” she said loudly. “Weddings are boring!”

“I’m aware of your feelings, but you’re not getting married,” he said. “I’m marrying Touko.”

She kept her head angled back and pouted.

“You’re going to want me to switch out, aren’t you?” she asked, and he didn’t answer. Her head snapped forward and she beckoned to him with her hand, her lips twisted tightly. It could have been a smile, but Byakuya doubted it. “Well, if you give me a good fuck, I might consider it!”

He narrowed his eyes. “Syo.”

Her face sobered. She clicked her tongue and hunched her shoulders, turning her head away.

“I can see you’re not gonna be swayed,” she grumbled, and she slouched even more. “Ugh, you’re lucky that Gloomy loves you so much, because I’d have killed you by now otherwise.”

Byakuya inclined his head to one side. Syo’s eyes were averted away from him.

“You have claimed that you and her share feelings,” he noted. “But... I wonder, if that’s really it?”

She tensed, still not looking. “Eh?”

He cupped his chin.

“I’m wondering if you have come to care about Touko,” he said. Syo twitched and shot him a cold look.

“Care? Listen, I’ve never hated Gloomy, even though she barely tolerates me. Most of the time, she hated my guts...” She slapped a hand against her cheek, pretending to swoon, but she spoke harshly. “Oh, Genocider has killed my crush, oh woe, woe... Can I really be blamed though? I’m a ruthless stone cold killer! It’s like telling a baby not to cry!”

“You’ll probably find that a lot of people blame you,” he deadpanned.

Her brow quirked.

“You’re arguing back?” she said. His face didn’t quiver.

“I’m just saying,” he told her, and she lowered her gaze.

The room fell silent. Syo twiddled her thumbs, kicking her legs gently over the side of the bed. Seeing her like this, contemplative and reserved, reminded him more of Touko than of Syo, though Touko’s confidence had improved a lot since they first met. She hadn’t styled her hair this morning and it was unruly around her, not yet tamed into one or two braids, but her signature glasses sat on her nose.

Usually, Syo wasn’t hard to read, blurting any and all thoughts as they entered her head, but right now, Byakuya could only guess what thoughts passed through her mind as she stared intently into space.

“Tell me,” said Byakuya, watching her closely, “did you hate yourself?”

Syo blinked. Wavered. Looked at him. “What?”

“If you share emotions, such as your love for me, then when she hated you, did that mean you hated yourself?” asked Byakuya.

She looked away again. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Why not?”

“It just doesn’t!” Syo snarled, stomping a foot. Byakuya’s features gave a calm tremble like someone blew gently on his face. “I love being me! Why wouldn’t I?”

Her eyes blazed with an inner fire.

“Anyway, I thought I was the cute ditz!” Syo hissed, thrusting out her chin. “You’re getting sidetracked. I said I was going to let you get married. That’s what’s convenient, right? I’m sticking around for plot points, and then - ”

She trailed off. Some of her fervour ebbed away, and she balled her hands into fists.

Byakuya frowned.

“You know, you don’t have to be ashamed of caring for someone,” said Byakuya quietly.

Syo went slack, then cringed. Obviously, she heard what he said, but she abstained from answering him. That didn’t stop him from talking though.

“I was of a similar mind to you,” he told her. “I thought caring for someone was a weakness to be exploited...”

Byakuya walked over to her. He tucked his fingers under her chin and pushed up. Syo’s brow puckered as their eyes met.

“... but thanks to your alter, I know it doesn’t have to be that way,” he finished. “And I can’t say that you don’t get some strength from your feelings either. I heard that it gave you strength to back down from your chase of Monaka Towa, not just your love for me but your friendship with Naegi’s sister too.”

The tension in her face didn’t subside. Byakuya lowered his hand and stepped back. She touched her chin, feeling where he had held her. A faint blush dusted her cheeks.

“Tch,” clucked Syo, and she dropped her hand from her face. Very pointedly, she trained her eyes on her lap. “You’ve lost your edge, Darling.”

“Judging by your sudden meekness, I think I’ve still got it,” he said, feeling a smirk rise to his face.

“I should kill you,” she said in a light tone, still not making eye contact.

His eyes widened a bit.

“Do it,” he said, just as hushed.

With lightning reflexes, she whipped out a pair of scissors from the holster she still wore on her thigh. Before he could apprehend what was happening, she had him pinned to a wall and she held the blades of her scissors to his neck.

Byakuya breathed slowly, staring, and she stared back. With a tiny bit more pressure, she could nick him. Get him to bleed a little. Squirm.

Time crawled by. The scissors declined and eventually fell to her side without making a single mark on him. Syo aimed her gaze at his chest. Not at his eyes.

“Do you want to see the dress?” he asked casually, like she hadn’t tried to kill him. Because she hadn’t. They both knew that.

Syo gave a stiff nod and shrugged. He stepped past her and crossed over to the wardrobe, feeling her eyes burn into the back of his neck as opened it and revealed the dress. The white textured bodice had a sweetheart neckline with ruffled off-shoulder sleeves and a lace cape decorated with silhouettes of butterflies, and the same fabric as the cape was used for the outer layers of the skirts, reaching far enough to end at the feet.

“Western, eh...?” said Syo, craning her neck a little. “Just like in movies. I knew it. Gloomy’s so predictable.”

“Do you want to try it on?” he asked.

She recoiled. Hard. Jerked her head back.

“W-What?” she barked, and she couldn’t even pretend to laugh. Her shoulders shook like she was laughing though. “Aren’t you worried I’ll get blood on it? Though, it could do with a bit of colour, don’t you think?”

Syo ended her question with a grin. He didn’t reply, waiting for her to answer his offer properly, and she noticed. Her smile slid off.

“I told you, marriage ain’t my thing!” she huffed. “It’s Gloomy’s!”

Byakuya didn’t respond still. She rolled her eyes and exhaled loudly.

“Alright, I’ll humour you,” she groused. “Geez.”

Neither laughed though. He helped her into the dress and once it was on her, he stepped back and let her examine herself in the mirror. Syo didn’t speak, barely moving save for pushing back a bit of hair, adjusting her glasses, wringing her hands. Little restless fidgets like that. They shared the same body, but for the first time, Syo’s mannerisms were like that of Touko. For the first time, Syo looked like Touko.

“It’s girly...” Syo muttered.

“That’s your gender, isn’t it?” he said, unable to take his eyes off her.

“Hell if I know.”

Syo scrutinised her reflection for a while longer, strangely quiet, until finally she turned to Byakuya and hiked up her skirts. He knew what she was searching for, and indeed, she found the leather pouch of scissors like he expected, but then she fiddled and removed the pouch completely.

Then, stranger still, she held it out to him, as if she wanted him to -

“ - take them,” she said.

Byakuya peered at the pouch, at a loss for words.

“Listen,” said Syo, strengthening her grip. The pouch creaked in her hand. “A long time ago, I made a promise to Naegi. I said that I wouldn’t kill again if I could be with you. You’ve always been different, Darling. Gloomy has had her fair share of crushes on boys and girls, but you... her feelings go deep.”

Therefore, Syo’s ran deep.

“Like the chocolate coating at the bottom of a glass that held ice cream milkshake,” she added, whatever that meant, but Byakuya thought he understood.

She jiggled the pouch, as if reminding him to take them from her, but he didn’t budge.

“I mean, who can blame her?” said Syo, trying not to smile but failing. A thin one oozed out. “You’re fit. Hot. You’re really smart, but other times, you’re really dumb but it’s always in a cute way. You’re fun to tease, especially when you scowl, and...”

He grabbed her shoulder suddenly. Syo tensed, and before she had chance to process what was happening, he leaned in.

Her breathing suspended as he pecked her lips. Their glasses clacked together.

“If you just shared feelings with Touko, you wouldn’t have been able to say that,” he said as he straightened, feeling his face burn.

Unlike when she said lewd things, however, it wasn’t so bad this time. Syo had her own unique charm that excited him like no other, unpredictable and captivating even now. His heart skipped as he gazed at her.

“Also... thank you for taking care of Touko, all this time,” he said, hollowing his cheeks as he tried not to smile. He failed, much like she had.

She blinked, then laughed that grating laugh of hers and rubbed her knuckles against her eyes.

“Wow, you worried about stinking or something?” she said. “You’ve put on enough deodorant for both of us. It’s making my eyes sting.”

A snort escaped her.

“Yep, I definitely hate weddings. Too mushy. I think I’ll let Gloomy take over,” she said, almost babbling. “You shouldn’t see the bride in her dress before the wedding, you know. I better go take it off.”

Before he could reply, Syo hurried into the bathroom and shut the door behind herself. Byakuya stayed where he was.

There was a sneeze from inside.

“W-What’s going on?” asked Touko, rustling. “Why am I crying?”

Apparently, Syo had chosen to front by herself.

“You’re getting changed. Our friends should be here soon to do your makeup and hair,” he said calmly, used to having to fill in blanks for them.

“Oh, okay,” she said, faltering a bit, still confused. “Thank you, Darling.”

He smiled, adjusted his glasses and left the bedroom. Once through the door, he gave his eyes a quick wipe and headed for the stairs.

They had a wedding to prepare for, after all.

#syogami #togafuka #danganronpa #byakuya togami #genocider syo #syotogafuka #sfw #fanfiction #touko fukawa #aloysius pennyworth #one shot #i actually had most of this written some time ago #but i took a break to focus on tofu week

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ashphoenix06 · 5 years

Text

The Magic Show Part 2 (jse ego universe)

Marvin turned his head slightly to see the dark presence out of the corner of his eyes. Vision blurred with tears, he could only make out black and brown mist steaming off a hooded figure. His grip on Jackie’s shirt tightened.

“Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?”

He tried to sound menacing but failed, everything physically and mentally overridden by sorrow and guilt. His shoulders quivered and he dropped his face back down to Jackie; as still as the death that took him.

He heard the figure move closer towards them and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

“I am the creator of the book,” the thing hissed, pointing to the book that laid in the middle of Marvin’s bloody symbol. “I am also the one who has gifted you with what you desired...”

Marvin’s spine straighten up from the figures words, his hands finally releasing from his dead brother’s bloody shirt. He slowly turned to the figure to get a better look at it. There was not much else to go by, it was still hooded and it still emanated that sickly black/brown mist around it. He could feel his rage building inside of him as he grinded his teeth.

“I don’t want it anymore,” he growled at the figure, fists clenching. “Take it away! I don’t want it anymore!”

The hooded figure laughed a sickening chuckle as it pointed a long, bony finger towards Marvin.

“I dont think you actually do...”

Marvin was taken back a bit by this statement and immediately looked at his fists. Both of them were consumed in a bright green flame, burning yet his hands were perfectly unharmed.

Mesmerized by this energy for a bit, he barely registered the next thing the figure said.

“Besides, the deal has already been made. Not only did you spill your blood to signal me, you clenched the spell with a immediate sacrifice,” it pointed to Jackie as Marvin’s attention snapped back to it. He could feel the heat of the energy increasing around his hands and burst out of his eyes.

“The fuck you talking about?”

“You didn’t read all the way through, did you?” The figure actually sounded confused, tilting its hooded face to the side as it regarded Marvin. “The gift of magic is blood magic, a dark spell. Blood of the willing must be spilled as well as the life of another robbed. I thought you had made it easier for me to take his soul when he fell on that piece of glass earlier.”

Marvin felt himself go rigid at the hooded creatures words. Made it easier? When he fell? Oh fuck! When Marvin stopped Jackie from getting to the book. He... must of fallen right on that piece of glass when he tripped him...

New tears formed in his eyes as the realization of his actions sunk in. He had killed Jackie... he had killed... oh god!

“You morher fucker,” he yelled out in rage. He could feel the flames energy building up inside him. “I didn’t ask for this... not like this!” He pointed a flame infused finger at Jackie’s body. “He doesn’t deserve this... because of my fuck up! You took his soul? Bring it back! Give. It. BACK!”

The figure gave him another curious regard, shrugging it’s shoulders.

“That’s not how this works. The spell is done, whether you intended it or not. I gifted you with my powers, including on reviving someone who is mere inches away from death... but... he’s mine now. He is one person that you will never be able to bring back.”

Marvin saw red and attacked! Energy shot out of his hands at the creature but it kept dodging every blow he attempted. He could feel his body rapidly draining with each attack, but he wasn’t going to give up. Not until this thing was dead. He had to kill him. At least it would resolve a little of his guilt.

The creature sigh as Marvin kept throwing one powerful spell after another.

“This is pointless. You will never be able to hit me. All you’re doing is hurting yourself, using up all the energy you ha...”

At one final attempt, Marvin focused all his rage, guilt, and sorrow into his last attack. As the magic shot out, he felt himself becoming light headed and fell hard on his knees. Hands gripping the grass and sweat pouring from his forehead, he gulped in as much air as he could to make the ringing headache that had just started go away. He heard a startling hiss and looked up.

The creature was looking at it’s right hip, where Marvin’s attack had grazed him. It’s robe and the blanched skin were black and sizzling. There it stood, mesmerized for why seemed like an eternity before it’s attention focused back on Marvin.

“You.... you mangaged to hit me,” it stated in bewilderment.

“Just give me a bit, and then I’ll show you what I can really do,” Marvin snarled.

“You’re... you’re the one I’ve been searching for,” it exclaimed, totally ignoring Marvin’s retort as it because excited. The mist surrounding it intensified.

“You’ll be the one to carry out my plans for this world! I’ve waited thousands of years for a magician like you! The world can finally me mine, if you let me work through you to accomplish....”

“Fuck you.”

This took the creature back a bit. Guess he wasn’t expecting a no, Marvin thought. Good.

“What makes you think I would ever want to serve someone like you? Even if you hadn’t of stolen Jackie’s soul, the answer still would of been no! But since you won’t give him back.... I’m going to fucking kill you!”

Marvin got to one knee, not completely recharged of energy but willing to use what little had built up. But when he looked back up the creature had vanished.

Where the fuck did he go? Marvin’s mind was racing, looking everywhere in the backyard for that creature. When he turned to where Jackie laid, his heart froze. The creature was bending over his dead brother, one hand resting on his forehead and the other gripped around the shard of glass that killed him.

“You really care for this person? You really want him back that much?”

“GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF OF HIM!”

Marvin stood on shaking legs and started charging towards the creature, pain shooting from his mind as he formed another flow of energy from his hand.

The creature never flinched as Marvin got closer. It just look at him and hissed from it’s hood.

“Perhaps... you actually can save him. I only said that earlier to get your attention, but... made you’re strong enough to do it.”

That stopped Marvin dead in his tracks. He felt his eyes widen with surprise at what the thing said, but the energy never dissipated from his hand.

“Wh... what do you mean,” he stammered, not totally believing what was being told to him. “If I serve you... you’ll bring him back?”

It turned it’s attention back to Jackie, closing in on his lifeless eyes.

“This one is as noble as you... he just wants to help the world through good deeds, whereas you want to help by distraction and illusions. Physical and mental... the balance of one human.”

As soon as it was done, it yanked the glass shard out of Jackie’s chest, making his body flinch due to the fast moment of the pull. Marvin started to see red again but before he could strike, the creature held out it’s hand towards him. He felt invisible tentacles wrap around his body and was immediately thrusted toward the thing. The creature wrapped its cold, bony hang around Marvin’s right wrist.

“You fucker! What the hell are you do...” but before Marvin could finish his statement, the creature thrusted his gashed hand onto Jackie’s stab wound and began to mutter an incantation. Marvin began to panic, struggling to get away from this whole situation. But for a wisp of a monster, the creature was highly strong.

A bright light leaked through the cracks between Jackie’s chest and Marvin’s hand as he felt a burning sensation flare up. He screamed as he tried harder to jerk away, but the creatures hold on him stayed true. The burning pain intensified, rapidly increasing to the point that Marvin went blind from the agony. It felt like a torturous lifetime before the creature finally let go. Marvin dropped to the ground, twitching as sharp jabs raced through his body. His gasped in pain as the creature grabbed him by the shirt, hauled him up and slapped its hand right on his forehead. Marvin heard it begin to mutter as it’s eyes finally shown from beneath the hood... they were bright red and full of curious evil.

But the magician found himself not fretting as much as he should. Whatever the creature was casting on his mind was making Marvin’s thoughts blend together and float away. He tried very hard to stay coherent but failed with each attempt. Finally, he just gave up and gave in.

When the creature saw this in his eyes, it’s hand fell from Marvin’s forehead and he let him go. Marvin found that he couldn’t move, he was frozen in place. Oh well, his mind hiccuped, better this than whatever the hell that last spell was.

The creature walked back over to Jackie and began pulling something from the folds of his cloak. Marvin’s warning bells went off in his head but the spell on him made them sound so far off to even notice.

“I put a trance on you to calm you down,” the creature hissed, pulling it’s clinched fist out of its robes. “These next few things I’m about to instruct to you are vital and you need a clear head to remember any of it. Do you understand?”

“Y... yeah... I... understand,” Marvin slurred.

“Good,” the creature said, holding out its fist in front of Marvin. It opened it up slowly, revealing a floating electric blue mist hovering barely above the pad of its hand. Marvin blinked as he felt a familiarity with this orb.

“This is your brothers soul,” it started, taking one of its fingers and lightly tapping the mist. It turned a dark navy blue for just a second before fading back to its original bright blue.

“I’ve just laid a curse on it. Once I put this back into his body, the curse will activate. This curse taints his heroic nature... it gives him a ‘corrupted’ side that can be triggered at any possible moment. When this is activated, he’ll finally feel the need for vengeance... the need to kill...”

The creature walked over to Marvin and put its face so close to his that Marvin could barely make out its face. But he wasn’t worried, though he felt he should be.

“When he wakes back up, he won’t remember what happened. How you tripped him to get to the book or that he died. All he’ll remember is that you managed to finish the spell that gifted BOTH of you with magical powers. You are NOT to tell him otherwise or this little ‘game’ will be forfeit and you’ll both me mine.”

It point over to Jackie and Marvin finally noticed that the stab wound that had killed his little brother was gone. In fact, if he could look at his own hand, he wouldn’t be surprised to see the cut from earlier had completely vanished.

“I enacted a blood spell between you two. His blood mixed with your inhanced blood, morphing his dna just like the spell did to you. You two are officially magical blood brothers. You two will feel a pull towards each other far stronger than with anyone else due to this blood bond. You’re his big brother, now... and he’s you little brother.”

Marvin sluggishly nodded his head. He saw something flash in the creatures other hand but wasn’t too worried about what it was.

“So, let’s make this into a little game... I haven’t had the chance to play with human souls in years. Once the curse is activated, he’ll want to kill... YOU must try to prevent him from doing this, if you really care for him. Because if he kills someone intentionally, his soul will forever change... he’ll become evil and corrupted. Anything close to him that is drawn by this can consume him, myself included.”

He clutched Jackie’s soul back into his fist and pointed a finger into Marvin’s chest.

“Also, any time before the curse wakes up, you must not allow him to die. If he dies, then I’ll let his soul go, but you will become mine! You will serve me and you will obey anything I instruct you to do! My plans to wreak havoc on these miserable people will come to pass, whether I use your brother or you...”

It bared it’s black, rotting teeth at Marvin’s face. He didn’t even bat an eye.

“........ but..... I. Still. Want. You.”

It pressed its finger to Marvin’s head and he felt the fog lifting some, his thoughts swimming back into his mind. He blinked for a bit with the creature still baring it’s teeth at him and recoiled, though he still couldn’t move. It cackled in delight as it hissed our with rancid breath, “Do we have a deal?”

Marvin thought this over very carefully. He had already cost Jackie his life once for being impulsive, but to agree to put both their souls on the line? And for what? Yeah, Jackie would be alive and have powers of his own, but at any given moment, he could become completely lost again, all because of a bet from a bored old creature.

But Marvin knew that his mind was already made up... as soon as the thought of Jackie being alive crossed his mind.

He’ll be able to protect him.... and stop him, when the time came.

Marvin gulped and started at the creature’s hidden face. “.............. deal.......”

“Excellent,” it cackled, releasing Jackie’s soul from it’s bony claws. With a wave of its hand, the electric blue ball floated slowly down onto Jackie’s chest, melting into the hero until it was completely gone. In an instant, his eyes brighten back up and rolled into the back of his head as he gasped for breath. Marvin heard himself cry out in joy. His little brother was alive!

“Now then,” the creature giggled, grabbing Marvin and yanking him real close. The world was already starting to come back into focus, the stars returning one by one to the sky. He could hear Jackie groan from where he laid, but Marvin’s attention was torn to something else. Something the creature held up high above his head... the glass shard that had killed Jackie. It was still wet from his blood.

Before the creature swung down, he cackled again and hissed in Marvin’s face.

“When I make deals, they’re sealed with a offering of a body part.... you’re left eye will do just nicely....”

The last thing Marvin remembered before he passed out was sheer pain from where the glass shard stabbed him.

*******

Jackie opened his eyes and squinted in the dark. Crap, he thought to himself, nighttime already? How in the fuck... wait... Marvin! Where’s Marvin?

He quickly jumped to his feet and scanned the backyard until his eyes landed on the quivering heap lying right next to the book. Jackie swore and ran over to his big brother.

“Fucking hell! Marv, I told you not to mess with that book! What the fuck did you..... JESUS CHRIST!”

Jackie had pulled Marvin into a sitting position and was taken back by what he saw. Marv was clutching his left eye, blood oozing from between the cracks of his fingers. He didn’t know how he knew, but Jackie could tell that Marvin’s eye was gone.

“Marv... oh shit, man! How... how the fuck did this happen?”

Marv looked up at him with his good eye, the pupil dilated. Jackie could barely see any of the blue iris.

“I... hhh...h... aaaddd.... ad t... t.... t.... tooo...”

“Shit! You’re in shock! Henrick! Chase! Someone help me!”

Jackie felt the panic in him rise as Marvin’s head fell forward, his bloodied hand dropping with him. He shook his big brother as he heard footsteps rushing towards him, trying to get him to wake back up.

“Fucking Jesus,” he heard Chase swore behind him. “What the fuck happened to Marv?”

“No time for that,” Jackie snapped, “he went into shock... we... we need to get Henrick and...”

“Jackie, relax. I’m right here,” Schneep reassured him, bending down next to Jackie to lift Marvin’s head up. He hissed through his teeth as Chase gasped.

“Holy fucking shit balls...”

“Jackie, you go get JJ and tell him what happened. You’re too shook up to help me. Chase, help me get Marvin inside. He’s lost a lot of blood and has gone into shock. I need to get him to my home equipment and fast...”

As he was making orders, he and Chase had already lifted Marvin from the ground and was heading into the house. Before they disappeared into the kitchen, Schneep turned to Jackie and was about to say something when he saw something that totally stopped him. This scared Jackie shitless.

“Henrick?”

“Jackie... you’re hands...”

Jackie lifted his hands and uttered out a yell of surprise. Both were crackling with electric blue energy, snapping apart and forming back together like an electric ball.

Jackie gulped and looked at Henrick. Holy fucking shit, he thought. M.... Marv did it....

I have powers!!!

*********

Part 2 of prompt 3 requested by @glitchbicth. I found this one a bit harder to type, for some reason, but I hope I did a good job and you guys enjoy it. ☺️☺️💚💚

@honestlyitsjustkenna @nekob00

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye community #jacksepticeye fandom #jse community #jacksepticeye fanfiction #fanfic #jacksepticegos #jse egos #jse fandom #jse fanfiction #marvin the magnificent #jackieboy man #dr henrik von schneeplestein #chase brody #fanfiction #writing prompt

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spartanguard · 6 years

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a different kind of catch

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, @word-bug!!!!!!!! I’d hoped to have this up on your actual bday, but hope it was absolutely amazing and as wonderful and sweet as you are!!! This little CS ficlet was inspired by our mutual continuing love of Pokémon Go; hope you like it! Love you!!! | 1.9k, rated PG

Emma wasn’t going to let this one go, not this time; she’d come way too close to give up now. She hurried to the spot where her phone told her she’d find her mark, constantly glancing down at the screen to make sure she wasn’t too late.

Everything seemed fine, but she picked up her pace to a jog, impatient to get there as she ran past people on the streets of Boston.

She was almost there—to the Starbucks on the corner—and so close to her prize that she could almost taste it (though that might also have just been the scent of coffee in the air).

Until she collided with something warm and solid just feet from her goal. “Oof—what the hell?”

“Uuh; bloody hell!” the other body shouted out as they both hit the pavement, phones clattering from their hands. Shit, her screen better not be cracked.

“Watch where you’re going, buddy!” she yelled, not looking at the man who ran into her as she scrambled to standing and grabbed her phone. Thank God, not broken—and better yet, there it was!

“Where I’m going?” he protested; she vaguely noticed he had an accent but was too caught up to really care. “Maybe get your head out of your damned phone and you wouldn’t knock over unsuspecting civilians!”

She just waved him off; she had to focus. She’d already missed on her first try, so she threw a berry this time and tried again. It caught...but it broke out. It didn’t run, though.

“Oh, is that the Lapras?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s the Lapras!” she hissed back, not taking her attention off her screen. “I’ve been waiting to catch one of these since the damn game started!” She didn’t have to defend her playing of Pokémon Go as a full-grown adult to some random asshole—not she was finally going to catch one of her favorite Pokémon.

“No, me too; good luck,” he told her, then went silent.

That kind of surprised her, but not enough to distract her from choosing an Ultra Ball. “You too,” she muttered as she wound up a curve ball.

She let go, and the message on the screen said “Great!” as the animation of the ball clasping around the Lapras played. Then she held her breath, waiting—one...two...three!

“Freaking finally!” she shouted; it may have taken two years, but she’d finally got it! (And it was high CP, too!)

“There it is, yes!” the guy echoed moments later. Caught up in the high of the catch, she turned around to give him a high five in celebration of their shared victory.

Without thinking, their hands slapped together, and then she got a look at him—and, woah, he was a catch, too: dark, disheveled hair hung over his forehead, just above his bright blue eyes, sparkling with happiness; a grin was playing at his lips and his sharp jaw was dusted with gingery scruff; and he may as well have been dressed like a modern Pokémon trainer because who honestly wore waistcoats anymore? (Though she didn’t recall anyone from the anime with that much chest hair...not that she was complaining.)

He seemed just as taken aback as she was, and their hands kind of hung in the air after their high five until they realized what they were doing and dropped them, both suddenly aware of how awkward they were being—not that it really mattered when they were celebrating a video game based on a television show that was originally targeted at children.

“Congratulations, love,” he offered, nodding toward her phone. “Is it a good one?”

“Yeah,” she answered, kind of shyly. “Yours?”

“Pretty good.” They stood there for another moment, unsure what to do; she should probably keep walking, considering she had an egg close to hatching, but then he spoke up again. “I do apologize for the collision; I believe I was just as focused as you were on catching that. Let me buy you a drink to make up for it?” he said, tilting his head at the Starbucks. “Maybe a Pokémon Go frappuccino?” he suggested, winking poorly.

She just scrunched her nose and giggled; she’d had that once and it was way too sweet for her. “Nah, that’s too much,” she replied. “But I guess I could go for a hot chocolate?”

“Sounds perfect.” He gestured toward the door, but then raced ahead to open it before she got to it.

“So now you’re a gentleman?” she teased.

“I’m always a gentleman,” he answered smoothly.

She shivered a bit; damn, this guy had an effect on her, and that almost never happened. But most guys weren’t as unashamed about Pokémon Go as he was. “Does the gentleman have a name?” she enquired.

“Killian.”

“Emma.”

They got in line and both busied themselves with their phones while waiting to place their orders. “You know,” she started. “That’s probably a good name for a Lapras.”

“What is?” he wondered.

“Killian.” She liked saying his name; it was unique, and her Lapras was male, after all.

He grinned—a real one this time, and brilliant. “I suppose I could say that Emma is, too.” Oh, and she liked how he said her name, too.

“Seems like a pretty good way to honor the moment,” she decided.

“Aye,” he agreed, and they placed their drink order.

While they were waiting for their beverages at the other end of the counter, she couldn’t help but glance over as he scrolled through his collection. “Damn, how’d you get all those Mr. Mimes?” He had a ton, whereas she would likely never even get one—stupid geo-locked Pokémon!

“I just moved here from the UK,” he explained. “They’re everywhere over there. But I’ve yet to see any Tauros now that I’m here.”

“Yeah, you don’t see too many in the city; but out of town—tons. Actually, I have a couple strong ones, if you wanna trade?” Technically she’d been saving those for her brother—one of the only other people she knew who played and was amassing a Tauros army, for some reason—but she could totally spare one to a good, mutually beneficial cause.

“I'd love that!” he gushed. Their drinks were up, so they grabbed them and found a little table in the corner. “Pardon the awful line,” he started after they sat, “but what’s your number?”

She snorted, but it was probably the first time in ages she was happy to give someone her “number”. “It’s 1022 0206 0620.”

He typed it in and then proclaimed “sent! To SwanGirl83.”

“That’s me,” she confirmed, and she got the notification on her end a few seconds later. “xJollyxRogerx24?”

“Aye,” he replied. She took a moment to observe his avatar; it was a pretty close representation, though dressed as close as possible to being a pirate, complete with eye patch. “I take it you’re a Captain Hook fan?” she quipped.

“Ha, yeah,” he laughed. “It’s not quite a hook, but same idea,” he added, holding up his left hand—which she suddenly realized wasn’t a hand, but rather a gloved prosthesis that matched the ones his avatar wore.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean—I didn’t even see…” she stammered; of course she’d put her foot in her mouth with the hottest player she’d ever come across; she could feel a Golem-like rock forming in her stomach.

To her surprise, though, he just waved her off. “No, no—you’re fine, lass; I’m the one making fun of it in the first place,” he assured her. Then his eyes bounced between her and his screen for a second, before stating, “I hope this isn’t too forward of me, but I daresay I prefer the actual Emma. Though that’s quite the fetching romper.”

She blushed a little, both at the compliment and the fact that she hadn’t changed her avatar’s outfit since the game started. There was just something so...Pokémon about that one-piece and leggings. “What can I say? I like to be comfy.”

“That implies you actually own a romper, then.”

“Ha, I wish!”

He replied with an almost goofy leer, eyebrow arched in amusement; she just shook her head, laughed, and promptly hid her embarrassment at walking into that by hiding in her hot chocolate.

“So, Pikachu as your companion?” he continued, apparently studying her via whatever symbolism could be found by her choices within the game.

“Yeah,” she said after she swallowed. “Can’t go wrong with a classic. And I like yellow.”

“I can see that, with you being yellow team and all.” He had her there.

“I’m guessing you like red, then, being Team Valor and with that shiny Gyarados there?” she guessed.

“Oy, he’s badass!” he protested, but then relented. “But yes, that’s part of it.”

They processed the trade, both finally adding another to their almost-completed Pokédexes, and then she sent him the most Boston gift she had on hand: Fenway Park. And he apparently sent her the most London one he still had: Big Ben. They shared giggles over that, and continued to chat—a bit about the game, comparing each others’ current stashes of Pokémon, but then it went onto work, family, friends, all that normal stuff, though it turned out neither of them really had much in that department.

Usually, she avoided romance altogether; she’d only found heartbreak there, and something told her Killian had, too. But what were the odds that she’d literally run into someone who shared so much with her, in addition to one of her favorite hobbies? For the first time in ages, she actually allowed herself to hope for something like that; hopefully he couldn’t see the Luvdiscs swimming in her eyes.

“Hey, there’s a raid a block over; I need to beat one for a research task.” His voice pulled her from her daydreaming. “Would you care to join me?”

She glanced at her screen; it was just a Ninetails, but she could always use another one. “Sure!”

They left the Starbucks—both hitting the Poké Stop there one more time for good measure, as well as a couple more on the way—and found the “gym” (actually just an ugly statue; it never ceased to amaze her the sorts of things that were considered “monuments” in this game). To the casual passerby, it probably looked like they were just two strangers immersed in their phones, but partnering up with Killian to takedown a foe was actually bringing them closer; seeing that red Gyarados in action was incredible, even if she was focused on what her Vaporeon was doing, too.

In no time at all, they’d knocked out the Ninetails and had both caught it. “I apologize if this is forward, Swan,” Killian said, “but we make quite the team.”

She couldn’t refute it. “Yeah, we do.”

Battling in raids together became a regular thing, and he was the first person she reached Best Friends level with (much to David’s chagrin). She jokingly bought him an eye patch for Christmas; he seriously bought her a romper.

And then, a couple years later, he proposed to her with a diamond ring nestled inside a Poké ball. People could rag on the game all they wanted; for Emma and Killian, it had been the best thing ever.

Hope you liked it and that maybe you got a birthday Lapras! also tagging a few others who I think still play/like it: @initiala @killian-morelike-killingme @distant-rose @queen-mabs-revenge @forestiyari @kat2609 @optomisticgirl @xpumpkindumplingx @wingedlioness @biancaros3

#cs ff #cs modern au #pokémon go #ouat x pokemon

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dalekofchaos · 6 years

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What I love and hate About Moffat’s Doctor Who

Much like I did for RTD’s Era, I will be listing my What I love and hate about Moffat’s Doctor Who.

What I love

Eleven. Ten will forever be my Doctor but Eleven has a special place in my heart! I will always remember him in my heart, I will cherish the memories I had that he was The Eleventh Doctor, I will always remember his epic sense of fashion, his triumphs and sad moments, his eccentric childishness both as him and as a way to trick you and then you realize Eleven is truly terrifying. I will always remember Eleven as The Doctor!

Twelve. I love Twelve. He may have had some poorly written episodes given to him, but Capaldi still handled it like the professional he is. Twelve brought back the sternness of One and the dark manipulator of SevenI Capaldi’s ability to portray the extremes of human emotion make him, perhaps, one of the most skilled and diversely talented actors to take on the role. One of the most joyously mesmerising facets of Capaldi's interpretation of the role is the level of sincerity and gravitas with which he approaches every scene - it doesn't matter if the Doctor is being funny, Capaldi plays the Doctor with a sense of naturalism and realism which has breathed new life into the part. While Smith and Tennant each had a wonderful sense of humour in the role, Peter has taken the opportunity to play the straight-man when it comes to scenes involving a degree of comedy, making the Doctor all the more funny for it. I also love Twelve because I liked the fact that his sheer introduction brought back the idea that older actors (and now actresses) can play the character. Having been a lifelong fan himself, Capaldi would have accepted the role knowing full well that his life would never be the same again. Aside from this willing acceptance of the renown that comes with the role, Peter seems to be one of the warmest and most genuine actors to adopt the guise of the Time Lord. He regularly speaks warmly and at length of the entire history of the programme, not just the series since he joined. His knowledge and passion for the shown and it's fans is truly moving as Capaldi is regularly warm and inviting to those fans that speak to him in the street. Some actors can be somewhat short with their fans, especially if they're having a tough day, but Peter seems to be welcoming and charming regardless of the circumstances. In short, he's nothing shy of the perfect ambassador for the show. The Doctor was indeed in safe hands and we will miss Peter dearly.

Moments like The end scene of Vincent And The Doctor and Twelve’s brilliant anti-war speech in The Zygon Inversion.

Amy Pond and Rory Williams I loved Amy and Rory. Amy Pond is an incredibly layered, wonderful, and flawed character. She is brave and independent, she is scared of abandonment and commitment, she is rude and yet compassionate. She has a knack for creative problem-solving and can make connections other people can’t, whether it is realising the truth about the star whale or figuring out how to defeat the Weeping Angel.She has had a difficult life, but Amy is always changing and growing, as she holds onto the contradictory pieces that make up her own histoy. We watch her learn to love and to trust. We see her struggling with keeping up with both her travels with the Doctor and the normal life she comes to value. She experiences joy and loss and she just lives, passionately.What is so exceptional about Amy’s ending isn’t that she chooses Rory; she likely would have made the same choice two seasons earlier. But for the first time it feels like a decision that she can be happy with. Because she no longer is “the girl who waited” - and the Doctor didn’t keep her from growing up, he just became part of her story to get there. Rory is awesome. He’s one of my favorite companions ever, despite being on and off at times because of small things like being dead. Rory is smart, cool, actual husband material, and he keeps The Doctor humble. I adore their relationship. Amy and Rory loved each other. Their relationship is what made series 5 and 6 great. Beautiful soulmates and The Ponds are beautiful. I think my favorite part about the Eleventh Doctor, Amy, and Rory’s time together was the fact that most of the other companions in New Who were always talked down to. Not that the Doctor didn’t respect them. He did, immensely. But he was always the one to explain something, always the one looking smart, always the leader, always the one saving the day. But in the case with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, the Ponds were the ones figuring things out and saving the day while the Doctor tripped as he tried to simultaneously put on a bowtie and eat a fishstick. And that’s beautiful.

Clara Oswald Clara Oswald is a perfectly ordinary sweet natured girl, who’s compassionate and caring, who has shown herself to be quite independent on several occasions, who takes care of children simply because she knows perfectly well what they are going through, and saved the Doctor on so many occasions just out of the goodness of her heart. Clara Oswald is a scared but very clever girl, who becomes very good at playing the most dangerous of situations to get advantage and gets addicted to that thrill. From the beginning, she parallels the Doctor, with her whole era basically being a female Doctor origin story.

Bill Potts. Bill was wonderful. Finally, a companion who is not a forced plot device, Bill is finally a companion who is special just because The Doctor considers her special cause she’s The Doctor’s friend. Bill is a proud gay woman of color. Her introduction is brilliant, hella adorkable, Has immense respect for the Doctor without ever defining herself around him like so many other companions, strong and stands up to him without ever seeming condescending or ‘you may be the Doctor but I know you better than you know yourself’ and all the slapping him. The Doctor and Bill have the healthiest Doctor/Companion dynamic. Has a clear inferiority complex but never takes it out on the people around her. Her first reaction to seeing depressed Heather is to sit down and ask her what’s wrong, because that’s what she feels is right. Basically so incredibly kind and selfless to everybody. I love Bill so much

The Paternoster Gang. Anytime Vastra, Jenny and Strax are on screen, it’s instantly gold. A trio of associates to the Time Lord who didn't have hokey origins or contrived resurrections. They emerged fully formed and unexplained; Vastra was a lizard serial killer, Jenny was her servant/lover and Drax made some funny jokes about not being able to understand human biology.

Missy Michelle Gomez was so deliciously and hammy evil. I loved every moment she was on screen, it’s a shame The Doctor Falls ruins it. In her first two appearances she was firmly established herself as a force to be reckoned with. Suffice to say, you wouldn't want to meet this renegade Time Lord in a dark alley. She'd sing "Oh Missy you're so fine" and then obliterate you on sight. After taking a selfie with you, of course. Plus Missy always looks her best when she’s ready to destroy the world! When she gets her lipstick out, you know that something rather unfavourable is about to hit the timey-wimey fan. Anyone can kill someone but it takes a special sort of person to do it with as much attitude as Missy. After all, if you're not going to zap someone to death looking your best, you might as well not do it at all. It's rule one, guys. Though I do wish they just called her The Master. If Moffat doesn’t think she couldn’t keep calling herself The Master, I’m pretty sure he’d rename Thirteen The Nurse.

Simm!Master’s glorious return! Simm!Master returned and it was perfect! It was both what the fans of Classic Master wanted and what Simm wanted. John Simm always wanted to play a dark and evil Master, it was RTD who wanted Simm to play a dancing and giggling lunatic who acted like Frank Gorshin’s Riddler on crack. Pure and utter hatred for The Doctor and no regard for anyone but himself. Absolutely glorious. It’s just a shame that Simm!Master will not return and an even bigger shame that the surprise of Simm!Master’s return was spoiled by the trailer and bad make up and inability to hide Simm’s voice.

The Guest episodes in RTD’s era and the new monsters. All the guest episodes are great. Moffat is good at writing monsters. Moffat is responsible for creating the best monsters in New Who. The Weeping Angels, The Empty Child, Vashtra Narada and The Silence were all good. The sad part is Moffat is good at writing guest episodes.

What I hate

Plots that go nowhere and abandoning established ideas for his plots and just making up as he goes along. Moffat tends to introduce plots and either never intends to go back or explain them or abandons them altogether. In series 5, it’s introduced that Th Alliance, a group of The Doctor’s worst enemies all worked together to put The Doctor in the Pandorica, who brought them altogether, when and how are they joined together and when are they gonna return? Never brought up again....Okay? When we all heard “Silence Will Fall” it gave us a sense of wanting more. And in the series 5 when River went to Amy’s house in The Pandorica part 1 ending, I saw Omega symbols everywhere. This led me to believe that Omega is tied into the cracks in the universe and The Silence and maybe we would see Omega in series 6 and maybe The Silence were created by Omega. It never happens. The Silence are a religious order. It STILL could’ve worked because there were STILL Omega symbols all over in A Good Man Goes To War. And once again, nothing, I don’t know if Omega was ever planned to return but something was dropped. Moving on. I thought that the reason why The Doctor’s name was shown to be this terrible thing in New Who is because The Doctor used his real name to Timelock The Time War and saying it would unleash The Time War on the universe and...his name is dropped like it’s nothing. The Silence with a flip of a hat decide to join The Doctor despite it being their goal to kill him because...reasons. So glad that was resolved so easily. How did The Doctor and Clara escape The Doctor’s timestream? Never addressed. John Hurt’s character. I always thought he was gonna be The Other considering the 50th was coming up and it might be the Cartmel Masterplan. He’s a Doctor between 8 and 9 and was the one who fought in the Time War? Okay. Okay when Missy started appearing and when she talked about Clara “I chose you well” I got the hint that who this big bad was, that she created Clara to use against The Doctor, this led me to believe that Missy was The Rani. “Oh she’s the Master, but instead of calling her The Master we call her Missy now”....kay? The Master chose their name like The Doctor, I’m pretty sure they would not change it because The Master changed genders, but whatever. The Hybrid. Something so horrible that The Doctor left Gallifrey “it was The Doctor and Clara” are you fucking kidding me? Oh it gets better, The Doctor doesn’t even care that he found Gallifrey, all he wanted was Clara back despite Clara being content with dying. No seriously you fucking asshole, you wasted my fucking time with either dropped storylines or shit you made up cause we all fucking know you did not know what you were doing.

River Song The issue with River Song is she is simply an awful character. River stokes The Doctor’s PTSD really bad. She is a character forced upon both the audience and The Doctor. River is a character who kills at the drop of the hat and makes a Dalek scream for mercy. Yeah, call me old fashioned but showing mercy to a Dalek is more compelling. She encourages The Doctor to kill, and reveres him as some untouchable genocidal god, and constantly pushes herself onto him sexually, even though he pulls away. River Song is Steven Moffat’s Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. And there’s the fact that River is predatory. If it was a male character constantly coming on to the much physically younger female character, and being naked and doing so despite being asked not to do that like.... people would have freaked out and called River out for being a predator and had a fit, but because she's an older female and he's a younger bodied male this is... somehow badass and empowered? Oh and let’s not forget the fact that River is somehow part Time Lord? Being born in the fucking TARDIS does not make you part Time Lord. Jesus fucking christ, JENNY is more Time Lord, at least that makes more sense. And the revelation that River is Amy and Rory’s daughter makes no sense. Rory was erased from existence. How can River still be their daughter if Rory died at that point? But moving on. I hate that she is used as a plot device. Oh, by the way she can fly the TARDIS, and oh by the way, she can flipping regenerate. I’m sorry, but River Song should, by NO means, be able to regenerate. She pops in to get the Doctor in and out of trouble and then disappears to who-knows-where/sometimes prison. And fixed points in time? Excuse me? No. I mean, really. That was absurd. Special rules do not apply to her. Moffat is just trying to make her look cool and I am not sacrificing good writing for image. River Song is a sociopath whose entire life revolves around The Doctor, there is not ONE SINGLE decision she has made for herself. She goes around with a gun, shooting things, causing genociide and we’re meant to believe the Doctor is actually ok with that? Giving her a gun does not make her a strong, independent woman. It makes her a sociopath with a gun. Her smugness annoys me to no end. Fucking spoilers. Fucking hello sweetie. Her sensuality is forced. She has no chemistry with Matt Smith. Her line in the wedding of River Song. I’ll suffer if I kill you-more than the entire universe-yes. How selfish can she get? She is constantly rubbing in her knowledge in not only the Doctor’s face but the companions. It’s like when Moffat took over he wanted to one up RTD so he made River who lets everyone know how awesome she is, how well she knows the doctor, how she can fly the Tardis so well (you turned the “handbrake” off, congratulations) She has no reactions to her parents dying. And finally she is meant to be this brainwashed sociopath who exists to kill the doctor and in the space of literally 30 seconds she changes her mind. A lifetime of brainwashing and trauma and pain and she gets over it in 30 seconds. Like I said, I shit you fucking not River Song is Moffat’s Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. And yes, the marriage. It was forced. The Doctor flat out states that he doesn’t want to marry her and she pressures him into it because it’s the only way she’ll let him touch her. If there is any kind of pressure, blackmail or abuse to get someone to marry another person, the marriage is forced. The Doctor was absolutely pressured into participating because not participating would’ve ended the universe. Here’s the difference between Rose Tyler and River Song. Rose Tyler was a character who existed and had a romance with the Doctor. There was NO love at first sight. it was not Predestined, or anything like that; it was just some crazy old alien being like “oi, you wanna go and see all of time and space?” and rose was all, “yeah, why not!” and they were BEST MATES FIRST. they were just two best mates flying around in their stolen TARDIS, having a laugh, and then when the Stakes Were Raised rose kind of went - oh fuck. i love him. and the doctor went - oh fuck. i love her. it was just a natural, mutual caring and it was just two nerds, both of whom would raise HELL for the safety of the other while saving the universe together. River Song was a character who existed TO have a romance with the Doctor. We are instantly told, not shown by the first meeting that River is important to The Doctor. Someone The Doctor would give his screwdriver to and tells her his name. And eventually they meet again and she kills and The Doctor is okay with it...for reasons. No one ever bats an eye that another genocide happens, but whatever. “Never be cruel or cowardly” apparently The Doctor overlooks why he chose his title when River is around. Honestly, The Doctor would never fall in love with someone who would risk THE ENTIRETY OF SPACE AND TIME because she didn’t want to kill him, i.e. river. he would NOT love someone like that, much less he would certainly not marry her because of it. Okay. Why is River the only one who knows The Doctor’s name? You might say that River does have a life outside The Doctor cause she’s an archaeologist, yes, but that is barely shown. What do we really know about River? Even though she’s not consistently characterized, we do see that she’s violent, crazy, arrogant, overly sexual, sassy, and even bossy. Not much is known about her that makes us actually love her except that we are supposed to love her because of the Doctor. If I could change River’s character, it would be this. River should have been like a future companion who was mentored by The Doctor. Like Seven mentored Ace. In which he becomes like a father to River. She is hateful to him at first because of the conditioning done to her by The Silence. The Doctor saves her from herself and makes her a better person and slowly mentors her, I kind of got that impression when she told Rory about herself in The Impossible Astronaut. I would have prefered a father/daughter relationship more than a romantic one. And River getting over trying to kill the doctor in just one episode (Let’s Kill Hitler) didn’t really take advantage of the weapon turned companion plot, and it was such a waste! It’s so frustrating how much potential there was there to really tell a story, and instead they just rushed it and made it into a nonsensical mess, rushed into a mystery and rushed into a forced romance. And we will never be free of River, as long as Moffat guest writes for Doctor Who, River will always be there. Even when she is being sent to her death, River Song’s presence is forced upon us in series 10 and no matter how much we want her to go away, River will never leave. Fuck Moffat for forcing River on us.

Moffat’s perception of The Doctor. Moffat sees The Doctor as this angsty vengeful authoritarian god. The Doctor is important because They are the one being trying to make a positive impact in the universe not because they’re a god/angel/cosmic authority/vengeful deity

The Doctor’s Name. Since when does the Doctor’s name matter so much? He chose his own name, Doctor, for a reason. It stands for everything he believes in. and that’s what matters, not his birth name, they weren’t gonna do the Carmel Masterplan, so it really doesn’t matter. Furthermore, how could the Doctor’s name bring about the end of the universe? I just…I don’t understand? I’m really trying to and I can’t, because it makes no sense. Before Steven Moffat took over, The Doctor wasn’t this prophesied space messiah that all the evil beings in the universe were hell-bent on destroying because they knew that his name had catastrophic properties. Never explained why and all mentions of why his real name is important is thrown away, thus once making something built up entirely pointless.

The Silence Genocide. Here’s the difference between how genocide is presented with the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. The Ninth Doctor has the opportunity to destroy the Dalek Emperor’s fleet with the delta wave generator, but it would be at the cost of the humans and Jack on the game station. He couldn’t bring himself to commit genocide a second time, he would choose to be coward over a killer anyday. With Ten, he had no choice but to destroy the Racnoss and commit genocide, but he was ashamed of himself. The Silence had been on earth for thousands of years and had influenced human history and helped get humanity to the moon. One of them killed a human. The Doctor sanctioned a genocide of an entire race with a smile on his face and turned on by his psychopathic future forced wife(jesus I wish I was making this up) and the humans just go along with it, The Doctor might as well have just told Cletus to burn a cross on The Silence’s yard. What was The Silence’s crime exactly? furthering Man's achievements? I can only assume that no one knows about the killing of Joy in the toilets, but if the Doctor did its a bit harsh to wipe out a whole race because of the actions of one. I mean, holy shit we have a jail that is capable of holding aliens established in the beginning of the episode and apparently killing them all instead of holding them all away is preferable.

Apparently sexual assault is funny if a woman forces herself on a man. If someone forces themselves on you without your consent, it is assault. It happened with Amy(while she was on her way to being married), it happened with River, it happened with Clara, it happened with Tasha Lem, and it happened with Missy. It was not funny in absolutely any time, yet this immature fucking jackass always plays assault for laughs. If this were an older man forcing himself on a younger woman, there would be outrage. and the creepery of women who meet fully grown men as little girls falling hopelessly in love with that same grown man, usually throwing themselves at him and forcibly advancing on him. And him sexualizing them when they're adults when literally like 5 minutes ago for him they were children, it’s really vile.

Moffat’s inability to break the New Who companion formula with Clara. When we were first introduced to Oswin Oswald, I sincerely thought we were finally getting a new type of companion, FINALLY a companion from the future and not just another modern girl from the UK. Then Oswin was revealed to be a Dalek and she died. Sad but I thought she was a great character and I really wanted her to start traveling with The Doctor, Oswin and Eleven had great chemistry and unfortunately it was wasted potential. Next, we get Victorian Clara. Finally, a companion from the past. Her story was so great and once again good chemistry with Eleven and once again I wanted Victorian Clara to travel with The Doctor and she dies. What happens next? We are once again forced to have a “the companion must be special to travel with The Doctor plot device” and we have Clara Oswald from modern UK. Okay, fuck you. You complete and utter fucking moron. Not every goddamn companion needs to be from the modern UK. The Doctor has traveled with companions from the past, from the future and even aliens, hell, two of his companions were Cybermen. The Doctor traveling with a companion from the past or future works.

Moffat believes companions should only be female. Gee, it’s not like Ian Chesterton, Steven Taylor, Ben Jackson, Jamie McCrimmon, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, Mike Yates, John Benton, Harry Sullivan Adric, Vislor Turlough, Mickey Smith, Captain Jack Harkness, Rory Williams and Danny Pink don’t exist or are important. Seriously fuck you, the male companions are just as important as the female companions.

Death always being teased but never executed upon and made ultimately pointless in the end. Rory has been dying in three fucking seasons until he actually dies in series 7. His death in series 5 was actually great. Then, when Amy and Rory ACTUALLY die in Series 7, it makes absolutely no sense and there are so many plot holes around it, it can be avoidable and The Doctor could simply just travel to a different part of the country in the TARDIS and just go back to New York on plane or car. Their death is completely avoidable and comes off as Moffat saying “He can’t save them because shut up” The Doctor let Amy and Rory go at the end of series 6. That is all you had to do. LET THEM GO, their deaths were avoidable and if you wanted to write them off, let them go. The most interesting Claras died and the last Clara died but was stupidly brought back despite the fact that Clara was content with dying. Ashildr had a great death protecting her people and of course deus ex machina technology makes her immortal. Even Heather, a girl from one episode had a good emotional death, is brought back in the finale. Bill Potts had possibly the worst possible fate. Bill was shot and everyone was shocked. Like damn, Bill is dying and the next thing we know is she is being converted into a Cybermen and who knows The Doctor is being forced to deal with the fact that he led his friend to a fate far worse than death. The emotional pain is there...and it’s ruined. Bill is fine and gets a happy ending like Clara and Ashildr. River is dead AND WE ARE STILL NOT FUCKING FREE FROM RIVER SONG! I don’t know why the fandom perceives Moffat as bad as George R.R. Martin, Moffat is a coward when it comes to death and never sticks with death, everyone HAS to come back and the deaths for every companion is undone and makes their deaths and sacrifice completely pointless. The reason Adric dying worked SO WELL is because he stayed dead and Adric’s death was a sacrifice and it worked. If Moffat was headwriter for Earthshock, I’m pretty damn sure he would find a way to undo Adric’s death. Death has no consequences in Moffat’s Who.

Until Bill Potts, every companion ALWAYS had to be special because the plot demanded it. Amy was “the girl who waited” River was River and Clara was “The Impossible Girl” no one could be special cause they are special to The Doctor, they had to be related to the plot

Day Of The Doctor was not celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who. It celebrated New Who and The Time War. It only celebrates The Time War and Moffat’s Who. It makes Not only that, it makes it black and white, it makes The Daleks the true evil of The Time War and erases the culpability of The Time Lords. Remember it wasn’t just the Daleks who were the cause of The War, it was The Time Lords themselves who started The Time War when they convinced Four to try and stop the Dalek creation in Genesis Of The Daleks, it’s very important to understand that it wasn’t black and white and make the Time Lords the innocent party. And Day Of The Doctor ignores that and ignores that Rassilon wanted to erase all life and make The Time Lords beings of higher consciousness at the cost of all life in the universe.

Mishandling The Time War itself. Throughout series 1-4 The Time War was built up as this horrible war that was so horrible that if it did not end, it would’ve destroyed life itself. The Time War NEEDED to be more than a generic Sci-Fi battle. in the novelization of the episode Rose,

The Time War was meant to be bigger and more horrifying.“this wasn’t a fight like laser guns and spaceships and explosions, this was a filthy, stinking war that changed reality itself.” Instead, it became a generic Sci-Fi action movie. Instead of the enormous time-traveling, inconceivable concept that was painted. The Time War prior to the 50th was something that we COULD NOT CONCEPTUALIZE because it was not fight like a normal war, it spanned galaxies and time. The true tragedy of it wasn’t that the Daleks were going to destroy Gallifrey or Arcadia, it was that THE DALEKS AND TIME LORDS BOTH WERE RIPPING THE UNIVERSE APART WITH THEIR WEAPONS. You cannot show that. So instead, we got shitty action movie explosions. When I got real interested about the Time War before series 6, a fan trailer showed a concept that The Daleks wanted to capture the Eye Of Harmony and insinuated that the Daleks went to war with the Time Lords to gain Gallifrey’s resources so they can gain mastery over space and time. That alone is more compelling than “Daleks just wanna exterminate the Time Lords” it was lazy writing, even more so by portraying the Time Lords as the innocent party. The Time Lords tried to get The Fourth Doctor to stop their creation and The Seventh Doctor manipulated Davros into destroying Skaro. There is no innocent Time Lords, retconning their actions throughout classic who and ignoring Rassilon and the High Council’s plans was complete and utter lazy writing. Rassilon and the High Council were as scary and menacing as the Time Lords from War Games and Rassilon was a fearsome genocidal demigod. Choosing to ignore that was seriously dumb. Let’s go over Moffat’s depiction of children of Gallifrey and how he portrays the Time Lords waging War. Ignoring the concept of looming is dumb. “children of Gallifrey” I was just so mad when I heard about this. looming made Time Lords more alien and it is an interesting portrayal of Time Lords being asexual. Ignoring that, the concept of Time Lord Children is really dumb, Time Lord children carry stuffed rabbits. Because Time Lords children = Human children. Oh wait. Then Moffat’s concept of how The Time Lords would wage war. Time Lord soldiers have helmets. Time Lord soldiers have helmets to protect them from the rubble. There is rubble. Things are burning. No, I mean things are literally burning. Things are burning because the Daleks are shooting ray guns and the Time Lords are shooting back using their super advanced … ray MACHINE guns!!!! Just to remind the audience, the Time Lords are a superior race with power over time itself. The Time Lord soldiers have walky-talkies. No really, they do. When Time Lords make art, they make it in 3 dimensions. When Time Lords make war, they make it in 3 dimensions. “Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension?” Masters of time and you decide to make them have ray-guns? This isn’t the fucking Terminator. And also, it ignores the fact that The Doctor witnessed Gallifrey burned. The way The Time Lords were portrayed in DOTD, was just lazy.

Sonic Sunglasses. I believe that the sonic screwdriver needed a long break. It worked for Five-Seven so it would work for Twelve. I like the sonic screwdriver but I hate how they constantly made Ten and Eleven dependent on it and turned it from a time lord device that can open any door to a magic wand that can perform a deus ex machina. What happens instead of Twelve relying on his intelligence and wit? He gets a downgrade and gets himself Sonic Shades. It worked like the screwdriver, with a few added bells and whistles to justify this downgrade. One of the most noticeable problems with the glasses was that, unlike the screwdriver, their effects weren’t visible. Doctor Who is ordinarily a visual program that has always drawn attention to its colorful sci-fi/fantasy moments. Also, unlike the screwdriver they weren’t exclusive used by The Doctor, making them far less special. Clara, Ashildr and Osgood all donned the specs during the limited number of episodes in which they appeared. In series 10, the glasses committed their greatest sin. After the events in Oxygen rendered The Doctor blind, instead of having him deal with the extent of losing one’s vision, he popped on his magic glasses, thus cheapening the experience. While they didn’t restore his vision, the tech provided him with enough guidance to dramatically lessen the full extent of his blindness. Sadly, if the writers had allowed The Doctor to go 100% blind, the sheer vulnerability of such a powerful character could've made the Monk Trilogy a much stronger arc.

Hell Bent undid Clara’s sacrifice and made Day Of The Doctor completely pointless. Hell Bent STILL leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. All this mystery around The Hybrid and it was completely pointless. Gallifrey was completely wasted. We were given hope that The Doctor would see his home and his people again, but instead of The Doctor restoring Gallifrey, finding Susan, Romana, Leela and Ace again, Gallifrey is reduced to background noise and The Doctor doesn’t even care that he’s home. It was all just to bring back Clara. Clara was content on dying to save Rigsy. Clara paid for her mistakes by trying to emulate and be The Doctor. Heaven Sent was brilliant, it showed The Doctor trying to struggle without Clara, it was emotional and brilliant. Not only is her death undone and Gallifrey is reduced to background noises, Clara is rewarded by her actions by becoming a faux Doctor with a TARDIS and her own companion in Ashildr. This is the complete opposite of what should have happened. She gets rewarded for trying to become The Doctor when she shouldn’t be. She should be paying for it, that’s the whole point. Clara isn’t The Doctor, what makes her different is her primary strength and that’s why they need each other. Clara dying was the only good way to end this character and it ended up as a copout. It took her agency away and because Moffat could not let her go he had to bring her back, thus making Face The Raven and Day Of The Doctor completely pointless

Because Moffat STILL will not let River go, he has a portrait bigger than his own granddaughter’s Susan Foreman. There is no way within time and space that The Doctor will never believe River Song is more important than his own granddaughter. In my opinion, he should have picture frames of Rose, Jackie, Mickiem Jack, Martha and Donna, The Ponds and Clara along with Susan, but only River gets the big special picture. Fuck Moffat and his petty favoritism

Nardole For the majority of series 10, The Doctor was followed around by a cue-balled whiny crying cyborg known as Nardole. He first appeared in the 2015 Christmas episode with a purpose and then proceeded to just sort of hang out afterward with no discerning purpose. Then midway through series 10 in the episode Extremis, his purpose was explained. He was just a reminder that River Song is still there. We can’t be free of River no matter what and because of that we have to sit through this unbearable, annoying screaming robot. Kamelion is better than him and that should show you how bad Nardole is, but unlike Kamelion who had issues cause the robot malfunctioned and only lasted a few episodes, we suffered through the entirety of series 10 because of Nardole.

Bad make up and giving away Simm!Master in the teaser ruined the reveal. The series 10 trailer spoiled that John Simm would return as The Master at some point. However, since he didn’t appear in the first ten episodes, it became a given that’s he’d appear sometime during the two-part series finale. And while they might have been saving him for part two, it was likely they’d want to utilize him for the entire story arc. So with all that in mind, a character that looked and sounded like John Simm in heavy makeup appeared about 15 minutes into the penultimate episode, The World Enough and Time. Some viewers may have been as shocked as The Doctor and Missy were by the reveal, but it could’ve been handled better. Simm did his part by disguising his voice and mannerisms. Yet it feels like a lost opportunity with an easy enough fix, if anybody had cared. The whole thing could’ve been avoided by either not including The Master in the trailer, or by disguising Simm in even more makeup and prosthetics.

Ignoring Simm!Master’s character arc in End Of Time. I don’t like End Of Time for a majority of reasons, but even I understand that Simm!Master had an arc in End Of Time. Sure, he mostly wanted revenge for what Rassilon’s done to him, but he still saved The Doctor, he considered The Doctor’s offer and had a realization that maybe he doesn’t have to be bad. Simm!Master had sane moments in his insanity which all had in some way the Doctor involved, showing him listening, with tears in his eyes. And in The Doctor Falls, he is completely unchanged. Acts as if the character arc never happened, Simm!Master is sexist for no reason. Time Lords have no real concept of gender inequality. The Master had respect for Jo Grant, Nyssa, Tegan and Martha Jones and never harbored sexist attitude for them, he had ill feelings as an enemy, that’s it. Made to hate the Doctor so much he’d rather die than standing with him - Ignoring the fact that’s exactly what he did in The End of Time Part 2 and also the fact that the Master’s main goal over everything else was always his own survival. So he dies unredeemable, learns nothing, uncaring asshole, and completely disregards his character development in "The End of Time and all just to make Missy look good.

Missy had no reason for wanting to change and my annoyance at the name change. I don’t see or understand why Missy wanted to change. Obviously they are gonna give her a redemption story for...reasons. What are the reasons you might ask?...Shut up. Well, we obviously need her to fight her demons so why not give her absolutely no reason to want to change (except “I want my friend back” which apparently wasn’t enough reason for any other Master) I seriously do not understand why Missy would want to change. Missy/Master would want to fight a common foe with The Doctor and later betray The Doctor later and their game would go on as it always goes. Missy had no motivation, every chance The Doctor gave her, she always went back to her old ways. Missy’s “change” simply comes off as “let’s praise Missy She’s changed!! Why? Who cares. Motivation? Character development? Nuances? I can’t do that, I can only create a contrast between new and old so crass, everyone will see the change! Shut up and stop asking questions!” If Missy returns, I want them to stop calling her Missy. Call her The Master. The Master chose their name like The Doctor, I’m pretty sure they would not change it because The Master changed genders. You don’t just change that name. She can very well still call herself The Master, there is no reason why, they cannot call her The Master. Changing gender is not a reason to change the title The Master chose to be called as such as they believe they can rule and subjugate the universe. But The Master should at the very least return as a villain, despite the forced change.

The Daleks and Cybermen are misused and overpowered. The problem with the Daleks is that Moffat has no idea what he wants to do with them. This video explains it perfectly. When the Daleks returned in series 5, they returned with an awful new look but they are still the biggest threat in the universe and the emotional trauma and hatred with the Doctor is there. Then, The Daleks go away and nothing is done with them. In series 7, Asylum Of The Daleks they return. They are not treated like the unstoppable force they were once in Classic Who or in Davies’ Who or even in Victory Of The Daleks. They are instead treated like another monster of the week. It’s not a big deal for The Doctor to face them anymore, he doesn’t seem to have any kind of reaction to them still operating or prospering in the universe. So now with no explanation Skaro is apart of the universe again despite the fact that it was destroyed in Remembrance of the Daleks, there is a Dalek parliament, thousands of them exist, they have their own asylum(apparently the Daleks are too scared of their own malfunctioning Daleks) and they have death camps. Dalek death camps and The Doctor doesn’t care. Dalek death camps and The Doctor has no reaction to nor does he want to help anyone in the camps. While the execution of Evolution of The Daleks wasn’t very good, Dalek Sec was right that the purity of the Daleks would always destroy them in the end and must change if they are to survive, but that is no longer relevant. The tone of the Dalek appearances after Victory Of The Daleks shows their menace is no longer there. The Doctor goes from being enraged and consumed by grief by seeing The Daleks, to not feeling anything nor caring that the Daleks having death camps across the universe. The Rusty thing just didn’t work. The only thing that did work was the “you are a good Dalek” line. The Daleks have lost their menace and if The Doctor doesn’t care or show any fear or hatred towards them, then why should we as an audience care? As for the Cybermen. The problem is they are just the Cybus Cybermen with the symbol removed, the same monotone “DELETE” the only difference is they are too overpowered and well they are apparently Iron Man now thanks to the Nightmare In Silver all rocket boots and detachable limbs and superspeed. In Dark Water/Death in Heaven they are nothing but Missy’s slaves with no autonomy of their own rather than a true force to be feared. It hasn’t helped that more often than not, modern Doctor Who has repeatedly decided the only way to beat the Cybermen is to overwhelm them with the power of love, a trope the show falls back on far too often. What made the Cybermen scary in Classic Who is when they were first envisioned, they were meant to be a chilling extrapolation of what creators Dr. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis saw as the future of prosthetics and cosmetic surgery, humankind chopping bits of itself until what was left was more machine than man. Only their very first incarnation, the Mondasian Cybermen has ever tangibly captured the gruesome, tragic roots that sit at the heart of the concept behind them as monsters. Tomb Of The Cybermen also showed them as a true threatening monstrosities. So when the Mondasian Cybermen do return, Bill is converted and what happens? Bill retains consciousness and apparently it’s not enough to have the Mondasian Cybermen, Moffat just HAS to bring back his overpowered Iron Man knock off Cybermen. No true and utterly terrifying new designs, just the overpowered Metallic Gary Stu Iron Man Cybus Cybermen. So as usual Moffat has a genius idea and manages to ruin it in the end.

Moffat’’s sexist garbage ruined The First Doctor in Twice Upon A Time. I have seen EVERY First Doctor serial and One is not sexist at all. I get it, the sixties were a different time, Since the First Doctor was of that era, he wanted the audience to laugh at how different things were back then. Especially with the constantly horrified reactions of Twelve at his former’s self’s behavior. So what’s the problem? Short answer, it’s because the First Doctor wasn’t like that. Not even remotely. And this is the story that takes place before One’s regeneration, apparently Moffat doesn’t care about all the character development One went through with Ian and Barbara, he just wanted bad humor that goes against One’s character just so he can appear as the better party “see? My Doctor is better than Classic Who” no, asshole, The First Doctor was not at all like that One wasn’t a walking ball of sexism, he was a curmudgeonly grumpy old space grandpa who lightened up with his first human contact, grew warmer and closer to them and learned to help rather than… eh.. smash people’s skulls with rocks.

The real problem with Moffat is that Moffat is a good writer, capable of being a great one at times, but a terrible showrunner. Steven Moffat was a man who in the beginning had some marvelous ideas, and much like another BBC writer Terry Nation. When writing scripts once or twice a year were completely brilliant, but when stretched to almost write an entire series single handed, the outcome suffered. Doctor Who used to be a show full of heart, courage, emotion, character driven, cared more about the heart of the show and character than the concept of the over-complicated plot that will eventually be dropped at the end of the series. And honestly sometimes Moffat’s fans sound like Rick And Morty fans “To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Moffat’s Doctor Who." that’s what most of y'all sound like. After watching the teaser for series 11, I am finally really excited for Doctor Who. It feels like everything it used to be, everything that made Classic and Davies’ Who great. 13 and her new friends I cannot wait and finally it feels like Doctor Who

#Doctor Who #New Who #Anti Moffat #Anti River Song #Eleventh Doctor #Twelfth Doctor #Amy Pond #Rory Williams #Clara Oswald #Missy #Simm!Master #First Doctor #Bill Potts

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makistar2018 · 5 years

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10 Years Later, Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless’ Still Slaps

When it was released in 2008, Swift’s sophomore album launched a thousand takes. Today, it’s best remembered as a simple time capsule

By LAUREN M. JACKSON November 12, 2018

Taylor Swift during the "Fearless" tour at Madison Square Garden on August 27, 2009 in New York City.

Theo Wargo/WireImage for New York Post

Like Propel water, The Scarlet Letter and mechanical pencils, Taylor Swift’s Fearless pairs well with the sporadic squeak of team-issued sneakers, overpriced hot lunches and the kind of angst that defines comfortably suburb-bound teenage years. Sliding open the album on Spotify with my iPhone 8, I can still feel my limbs stretched in all directions, hear the snap-crackle-pop of a dozen adolescent girls’ joints going through the motions of yet another warm-up to what would become the soundtrack of my high school varsity dance team’s inner and outer lives, as well as leave poptimism forever changed.

I am 27 now, still anxious but inflexible, no longer clinging (as) tightly to singular albums to tell the emotional landscape of my life — but back then, Fearless was god. Swift was barely into legal teenagedom when compiling her sophomore album’s original 13 tracks, but more than the happenstance near-synonymy of our ages (I’m younger by 1 year, 6 months, 27 days), the four-walled, high school claustrophobia induced by the album is a matter of skilled musical mood setting. From the first downbeat of the inaugural title track to the last flippantly rebellious “hallelujah” on “Change,” Swift traps us in the mind of an ungainly teen as she was once trapped, as I was, as so many others wading the ambiguity between comportment and desire that doesn’t quite end when gowns come on and caps fly up.

Like so many notebook pages on the golden screen, Fearless is filled with boys. Stans and haters have their theories, but I like to think of each song as an archetype, less true stories of relationships gone sour than a young woman’s true to life hetero-ethnography. There are the boys who do good — the “Fearless,” “Love Story,” “Hey Stephen,” “The Best Day” boys (the last a tribute to Dad) — the boys who nurture and love intensely. They do all the usual country boy things, all the usual cinematic things: driving slow, kissing in the rain, flouting archaic inter-familial squabbles. They honor their promises and, most of all, leave the narrator better changed for her affection.

These boys who do good are short-lived. By Track 2, “Fifteen,” we’re already checking in to Heartbreak Hotel for the upteenth time with an account of that age generic enough to warrant a fan-made montage of clips from Degrassi: The Next Generation. The song tells an allegedly universal story of freshman year woes, complete with riding in cars with senior boys who also play football (because of course). It’s saccharine, sung in the vernacular of normative coupling that would become Swift’s enemy in the gossip pages. But the limited lexicon is not necessarily untruthful. “Fifteen” has aged about as well as anyone would expect, but some of those refrains make me yearn for arms long enough to slap all the powers that be responsible for belittling the whims of young girls. And according to the greater duration of Fearless — tracks like “White Horse,” “Breathe,” “Tell Me Why,” “You’re Not Sorry,” “The Way I Loved You,” and “Forever & Always” — the greatest threat to the happiness of teen girls are boys.

November 2008 looks rosy from here. America had just elected its first black president, the man who promised too much hope and change to possibly be true, but faith felt good back then. Men had committed just five mass shootings over the past year with one more on the way in December (2018 has 307 mass shootings to its name so far). The nation boasted just under 150 recognized active white supremacist groups (that number would climb to over 1,000 during Obama’s presidency). Global finance was in crisis but cable networks were still winning Emmys. Amy Winehouse was alive. Kanye still made sense and a bright-eyed, hair-tousled new country darling was exclusively concerned with dating, rather than local politics.

Like any celebrity who is also a woman, but also in a lane quite her own, Swift’s relation to mainstream feminism wanes and waxes with the season. A female artist beloved by the girls for whom her songs are written, Swift and her music are therefore more scrutinized, more rigorously excavated for signs of harmful messaging than her male singer-songwriter peers. Fearless frayed Swift’s reputation in a way that wouldn’t let up for years, if ever, largely because of its critical success. Swift took home four Grammys at the 2010 awards, including Album of the Year, beating the Dave Matthews Band’s Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, The Black Eyed Peas’ The E.N.D., Beyoncé’s I Am… Sasha Fierceand, most egregiously, Lady Gaga’s debut studio album, The Fame. The perceived slight invited robust inquiry into this supposed album of the year, and the aesthetic discrepancy between the two quickly turned to politics.

Autostraddle’s Riese called Swift “a feminist’s nightmare,” the enemy of “brave, creative, inventive, envelope-pushing little monsters” everywhere. An accompanying infographic, “a symbolic analysis” of Swift’s works to date, cataloged her most damning motifs, including “virginal” imagery, “the stars,” “crying,” and the 2AM hour. At Jezebel, Dodai Stewart agreed that Gaga was the rightful winner, speculating that in a race between “Gaga the liberal versus Taylor the conservative,” the latter “makes the Academy feel more comfortable.” One joy of pop culture is the revelation of how melodramatically things can change. Last month, Swift announced her endorsement of Tennessee Democrats Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper for the midterm elections; meanwhile, Lady Gaga hews the path of glamorous respectability on her lengthy A Star Is Born Oscar campaign.

Feminist readings of Fearless weren’t wrong, exactly. Allies on the album come in strictly male form, while other girls are competition for Swift’s persecuted first person. Even the red-headed bestie Abigail becomes a lesson in chastity, losing her virginity — “everything”! —to the boy who broke her heart (the foil to Swift’s main character, whose dreams of living in a big ole city protect her from such a fate). The charting single “You Belong With Me” is a bouncy jaunt through the valley of me versus those other girls. The video that won Best Female Video at the MTV Video Music Awards over Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” — to seismic effect — stars Swift as both the frizzy blonde, bespectacled weirdo in band and the sleek brunette cheerleader with the man (Lucas Till who now plays MacGyver on CBS). In true romantic comedy fashion, Good Swift, clothed in white, ends up with the guy in the end, defeating Bad Swift, whose only crimes it seems are great taste in footwear and not appreciating her high school boyfriend’s likely moronic sense of humor. Both the song and video became emblematic of a kind of Swiftian all-for-one girl power. Her 2017 video for “Look What You Made Me Do” resurrects and buries all sorts of Swiftisms, including the iconography of the uncool girl who features so heavily in the Fearless-era of her oeuvre.

Pop music exists not to elevate our souls or our politics, but to safely wade in the muck of our pettiest appetites, whether they come with trap drums or in serenades. Pop music deserves interrogation, but it will never exceed us. Fearless was a diary, sounding like the selfishness that bubbles up regardless of one’s intellectual or political guards against it. The debate it ignited wouldn’t happen were it released today, amidst all this. It’s a relic of a time when determining exactly what an album meant, culturally and aesthetically, was a crucial discussion to have in public, when nuance had stakes. Compared to the basic moral tenets we now expend so much of our energy defending, such communal acts of criticism feel small and regretfully scarce. Fearless was a moment, now relegated to a time capsule, no longer a prompt.

Rolling Stone

#taylor swift #fearless #rolling stone #2018.11.12

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cuthaliondaethin · 3 years

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Short story I wrote in... 2011? I never gave it a name.

He walked the quiet streets alone, most of the city still waiting for the dawn to awaken. He was surprised the guards let him in without question, but he figured it was due to the insignia he wore as a clasp on his cloak: blade through chakram, dragons adorning hilt and inner ring; A blade-dancer's servant's symbol. The fine clothes were comfortable, a light blue hue that brought out his eyes. The cloak was fur-lined, a little joke at his expense regarding his desert origins when he found everywhere else cold. She was right about him gawking, of course. So he'd decided not to send a messenger ahead to her to meet her outside the city. He was happy to gawk alone, and he got a detailed map so he wouldn't get lost. The early dawn light played on the marble and alabaster towers and spires of the city, casting a salmon pink glow on the walls. The sweet scent of morning glories as they opened to greet the sun permeated the air, mingling with the salty air of the ocean. The scent of freshly baked bread replaced the flowers, and he bought a bun filled with a sweet bean paste from a bakery. Everywhere around him, stalls were starting to open, their brightly coloured banners and signs drawing attention to their equally interesting goods. He finished his bun and fought the urge to explore. He knew she would be awake soon, and he wanted to surprise her. There was enough time to explore later on. He was at her door soon, vaguely aware of how he got there. The feelings hit him suddenly. Nervousness, mild terror. How would she react? Would she be happy to see him? He could never really tell with women; happy one day and angry the next. He knocked on her door once, then hesitated, nerves getting the better of him. Maybe she hadn't heard? Was he ready for this? Maybe he should leave and send her a message like she instructed. Before he could walk away, the door opened and he saw her face for the first time in a long time. She looked the same as when he left, and he realised that he had been an elf hanging around humans too long if he thought she would change in such a comparatively short time. Her hair still looked like silken honey. Her perfect face framed with her elegantly-tapered ears. Her slender, willowy form. All just as beautiful as he remembered. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of him standing there. Disbelief, anger and sadness all warred in her eyes. She mouthed his name and reached out to touch him, as though unsure if he was a dream. He couldn't bear to look at the tears that fell. His attempt at a cheerful greeting died in his throat, and he looked at the ground, unable to meet her eyes. Time seemed to halt, the noise of the waking city fading to nothing. His heart pounded so loudly it made his ears twitch. There was a pause as her hand reached his face, and he prepared himself for a slap. Then her lips pressed against his, her hand tilting his head back up, pulling his gaze away from her dainty feet. He melted into the kiss, then pulled her closer. They all but tumbled into her house, her door still wide open and forgotten. Soon, too soon, she broke away from him. She stroked his face again, still looking like she couldn't believe he was standing there in front of her. She whispered his name, as though saying it aloud would wake her from a dream. He smiled then and took her delicate but strong hands into his. "I'm home."

#elves #story

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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WAR DAY 7️⃣1️⃣2️⃣2️⃣ 🍐 "Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the Biden White House (and its friends in the Pentagon) are considering postponing the scheduled May 1, 2021 withdrawal of most US military forces from Afghanistan. This is not only wrong, it’s foolish. The US will not get its way in Afghanistan more than any other invading nation has. Twenty years of war and close to fifty years of armed meddling should prove that. Although only 2500 troops officially remain in Afghanistan, the symbolism of their leaving without a victory seems to be too much for some to take. Indeed, last month Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said US military forces 'will not undertake a hasty or disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan that puts [its] forces or the alliance’s reputation at risk.' When all other reasons to occupy a nation with foreign forces have proven false, Washington is never afraid to bring up the face-saving argument.

"After all, if one truly takes a moment to consider it, what reputation is General Austin referring to? Would it be the reputation of NATO as a tool of the world’s bloodiest imperial nation? Or perhaps he meant the United States’ reputation as the nation whose promises at peace talks were referred to by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce in this manner: 'White man speak with forked tongue?' Maybe he was referring to the reputation of the US/NATO weapons industry’s claim that its products are designed to make and keep the peace; a claim brutally exposed in Afghanistan.

"If one looks at the history of Afghanistan over the past fifty years, it becomes clear that the primary reason for its current situation is the meddling of the United States. The US involvement in Afghanistan that began under Jimmy Carter was not an accident. Led by neocons Zbiegniew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes and aided by liberals like Barney Frank and Paul Tsongas, this ultimately successful effort represented a resurgence of the pro-militarist wing of the policy establishment as the primary architect of US foreign policy. What this meant for Afghanistan was that Washington was going after the progressive government in Kabul by backing a class of socially and politically reactionary mullahs and landowners opposed to any social reform for generations. This mujaheddin war and what followed destroyed the social progress made under previous Afghan governments. Women and girls were relegated to second-class status and fundamentalist intolerance became the order of the day. Ultimately, these forces won thanks to the support of Washington and Saudi Arabia. The strongest of these reactionary mujaheddin groups were called the Taliban. It was they who claimed victory in 1996. It was the Taliban the United States said they were going after when it attacked Afghanistan in 2001.

"One can not be certain why the United States is still in Afghanistan. It could be to control the opium business or it could be for alleged mineral resources. It could be for strategic reasons or it could be to force a US-style regime on the nation. It could be all these and more. The original intent to exact revenge for the events known as 9-11 is long gone, along with most of the original players in that episode. In fact, it seems fair to say the only players present back in October 2001 when the first attacks occurred are the arms manufacturers the US military and the CIA. The phenomenon known as Al Queda is not the same as it was, nor are the Taliban and other resistance forces. The US mercenary forces once known as Blackwater are not only operating under a new corporate name, but also different directorships.

"The failure of the US to impose an effective client government in Afghanistan is not a good reason to remain in that country until one is established. Instead, it is real proof of the failure of any policy that requires a military occupation in that nation and region. Keeping US forces there to support the US-funded regime in Kabul is an admission that Washington’s policy has failed. It’s time to accept that and get out, lock stock and barrel."

- 🍐 Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch

*****

"There are at least two main sets of problems standing in Biden’s way, assuming he did actually want to ditch this 19+ year disaster.

"First, expect the Pentagon, and the civilian Washington-wing of the 'defense watcher' expert analyst class to either obfuscate or exaggerate — maybe even fabricate, given past track records — the existence or extent of current al-Qaeda-Taliban ties.

"In fact, the [wishful] think tankers — civil and military alike — have been pushing such alarmism for a hot minute now already. Yet such fear-mongering masquerading as objective analysis rarely offers satisfactory evidence, place what evidence they do have in proper context, or provides any real sense of proportion — i.e., even if they’re right about the Taliban-al-Qaeda nexus: what’s the actual, comparative, threat to the U.S. Homeland of leaving Afghanistan?

"Second, it seems the Taliban feels, and may in fact be, strong enough — they now control or contest half the country — to scoff at such stipulations. And they’ve no motive to quit attriting an Afghan National Security Force that’s long been on life support, and can’t recruit replacements as fast as the Taliban offs them — to say nothing of their army of AWOL 'ghost soldiers,' who don’t so much man the battle lines as line the pockets of the corrupt officers who continue collecting their paychecks.

"Problem is, the Taliban’s understandable propensity to escalate — and maybe even talk to a few al-Qaeda capos to boot — may offer Washington’s war-hawks just the justification they need to settle U.S. troops in for an even longer haul. They may even try to escalate — with some calling for 2,000 extra troops to bring the count of hopeless crusaders back to 4,500, thereby undoing Trump’s late-stage reductions. That oughta do it!

"The most recent, and mainstream-amenable, energy behind the 'Stay-the-course, Joe' crowd, comes from the congressionally-appointed Afghanistan Study Group, a bipartisan panel whose recent report essentially argued 'that withdrawing troops based on a strict timeline, rather than how well the Taliban adheres to the agreement to reduce violence and improve security, risked the stability of the country and a potential civil war once international forces withdraw.'

"Sound familiar? Yep — it’s the exact same line these exact same people have peddled for years. It even burnishes the same old buzzwords!

"Next comes the exaggerated alarmism, encouraging you to be afraid, be-very-afraid, because: 'A withdrawal would not only leave America more vulnerable to terrorist threats; it would also have catastrophic effects in Afghanistan and the region that would not be in the interest of any of the key actors, including the Taliban.'

"Strange though, these scare-tactics always seem — and always have been — laced with way more ominous lingo than actual empirical evidence of credible threats to the homeland, or clearly-defined vital interests that the United States actually has over in the Afghan imperial graveyard. Perhaps that’s by design.

"For example, nowhere in Steve Coll’s New Yorker piece — which was a hardcore hedge job — did he so much as mention a vital U.S. interest, or a realistically assessed threat to the homeland. He, like the Study Group authors — and mainline pundits everywhere — speaks instead of 'Kabul’s fortunes,' Afghanistan’s (admittedly in-for-it) 'working women,' and the foreboding fortunes of that country’s 'globalized urbanites,' and 'democracy dreamers.'

"Anyone else notice that there’s no calls for invasion, occupation, and a societal makeover on behalf of those same groups — including the near chattel-status of women, sometimes beheaded for 'witchcraft' and 'sorcery' — in the Saudi Kingdom we’ve propped up for nearly a cruelty-complicit century?

"So just who’s in this here group study in the bureaucratic banality of evil? I mean, since they’re charged by Congress to submit sweeping recommendations for the new president’s profound policy decision in America’s longest-ever war — it’s probably a pretty diverse sample of U.S. foreign policy thought, right? Wrong again!

"Sure enough, the Afghanistan Study Group is a full house of failed militarists — a crew Rep. Ro Khanna poignantly dubbed 'the people who got us into this mess.' These folks are all tainted by war industry-ties and their past policy positions. In fact, they’re so overtly hawkish and awash in defense contractor blood money, it’s frankly embarrassing — and a slap in an apathetic public’s face. Consider the highlights:

-Former Senator Kelly A. Ayotte, co-chair: a leading voice in the hawkish wing of the Senate Republican Conference; opposed Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and closing Guantanamo Bay; and is on the board of BAE Systems – a prominent defense corporation.

-General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. (Ret), co-chair: former four-star general who once commanded – and failed to win when had a crack at that hopelessness – America’s Afghan War; these days he’s on the board of Lockheed Martin.

-Oh, and you may recognize a few others: Nisha Biswal (senior adviser with the [Madeleine] Albright Stonebridge Group); James Dobbins (RAND Corporation); Michèle Flournoy (WestExec Advisers and Center for a New American Security); Stephen Hadley (one of the key architects of George W. Bush’s absurd – and failed – Iraq surge); Meghan O’Sullivan (Raytheon and WestExec Advisors); and retired General Curtis 'Mike' Scaparrotti (another former Afghan War commander and now of the Cohen Consulting Group)

"These are the pyromaniacs — if mostly polite pyros — who lit wildfires from West Africa to Central Asia since 9/11, and are now studiously dancing on the torched region’s blackened graves. Think these Congress-members might revive and hire John Wayne Gacy to perform at their children’s next birthday parties?

"Steve Coll did get one thing basically right — in his column’s closing line: 'Now, as then, there are no good or easy options — only less bad ones.'

"True, but after 20 years of less-bad-strategies that never stuck or meaningfully moved the Afghan needle — maybe, for once, it’s Band-Aid time, baby! That’s right, ditch all the arguments to stay and fail — whilst only maintaining the fiction of not-yet-losing — and head home. Bring the boys and girls back, and fast. Consider it the Seinfeld solution to pain-management and forever war loss-cutting: one move, right off!

"Pity we didn’t do it back in 2016, 2009 — or 2003, for that matter. Nothing would have meaningfully changed — in the long-term, at least — on the ground if we had … and thousands of the troops Americans pretend-to-adore might be alive today."

- 🍐 Maj. Danny Sjursen (USA, Ret.), Antiwar.com

*****

"The governments of Albania, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mongolia, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, UK, and US all still have troops in Afghanistan and need to remove them.

"These troops range in number from Slovenia’s 6 to the United States’ 2,500. Most countries have fewer that 100. Apart from the United States, only Germany has over 1,000. Only five other countries have more than 300.

"Governments that used to have troops in this war but have removed them include New Zealand, France, Jordan, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Ireland."

- 🍐 David Swanson, Antiwar.com

_____

🍐 Washington in Afghanistan: How Long Must This Go On? By Ron Jacobs, CounterPunch, Mar. 16, 2021.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/03/16/washington-in-afghanistan-how-long-must-this-go-on/

🍐 Will Biden Finally Bring Troops Home from Afghanistan? By Danny Sjursen, AntiWar.com, republished in Consortium News, Feb. 22, 2021.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/02/22/will-biden-finally-bring-troops-home-from-afghanistan/

🍐 A GLOBAL DEMAND TO 35 GOVERNMENTS: GET YOUR TROOPS OUT OF AFGHANISTAN. By David Swanson, Antiwar.com, republished in Popular Resistance, Feb. 22, 2021.

https://popularresistance.org/a-global-demand-to-35-governments-get-your-troops-out-of-afghanistan/

🍐 Intersectional Imperialism: A Wholesome Menace.

The empire claps back. By Alex Rubinstein, Mar. 15, 2021.

https://realalexrubi.substack.com/p/intersectional-imperialism-a-wholesome?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2YmHJGw7RV2ZzLdsyhpvODf7lUD2qhag6RRa9e6IgWRPtZIE_v5jr5k-U

🍐 CNN is pushing for permanent occupation of Afghanistan: What Biden and Blinken don't want to tell Americans about Afghanistan. Opinion by David A. Andelman, Capitalist News Network, Mar. 16, 2021.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/16/opinions/afghanistan-us-troop-withdrawal-andelman/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2ie4dIqDoO-5fL5S8GpB6lNT5B1YzhLgS6qAa7S3xr8q2gkDLU6dfbXk8

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