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tarisilmarwen · 10 months

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Rebels Rewatch: "Twin Suns"

In which the end of the Malachor arc is profoundly beautiful.

First off, obligatory live reaction version from 2017.

Second, I would be remiss if I did not link back to this close read of "Twin Suns" (by greenreticule here on Tumblr), from which I draw quite a bit of my own analysis and opinions about the themes and messages of the episode. Check it out sometime, there's ten parts (technically eleven but the last post in the series is more of a memoir/personal reflection by the author and therefore not as relevant to our meta purposes) and it is a loooooong read but worth it, in my opinion. I don't always agree with every single point of the analysis (the stuff about the Sequel Trilogy, for example) but there's a lot of things that resonate and that I incorporate into my own interpretation of the episode so I figured I'd mention the source.

Onwards!

Rather appropriately we open on a shot of the titular twin suns themselves.

The next series of shots are stark and empty, nothing but the vast white desert, emphasizing the loneliness and isolation of both Tatooine itself, and Maul in particular.

And he is not, ah... taking Ezra's rejection or the long wanderings out in the desert well. To say the least.

From this first opening monologue we can already tell that Maul is fraying. He spent ten years in the depths of madness and it seems like he's descending into madness once again. Even his clothing reflects this, sandblasted and torn, a ragged hood recalling the one he wore at the beginning of Malachor as he feigned being weak and decrepit, and uneven wrappings circling his arms, asymmetrically.

His mood swings from "Visions and Voices" are more pronounced, one moment warbling pitifully about being lost, about being so close to his target, the next shrieking Obi-Wan's name skyward like an obscenity.

Obi-Wan has managed to elude him all this time since Dathomir, and Maul is beginning to get desperate.

RIGHT, SO THIS IS THE PART WHERE I GET BACK INTO MY BLUBBERING KENOBI SHOW FEELINGS BECAUSE "JEDI CANNOT HELP WHAT THEY ARE. THEIR COMPASSION LEAVES A TRAIL. THE JEDI CODE IS LIKE AN ITCH. [THEY] CANNOT HELP IT." AND SOB FOREVER ABOUT HOW WHOEVER IT WAS ON THE WRITING TEAM THAT CAME UP WITH THAT RAW-ASS LINE, THEY UNDERSTOOD THE ASSIGNMENT.

So not only is this a callback to the previous times Maul lured Obi-Wan out to him in TCW, this now also a call-forward to Kenobi and I just want y'all to appreciate for a moment that Maul is using the exact same tactic on two different Jedi, simultaneously.

Maul is luring Ezra and taking advantage of Ezra's compassion, hero complex, guilt complex, and sense of hyper-responsibility, in order to then exploit Obi-Wan's compassion and protector-guardian streak, so that he can kill Obi-Wan when Obi-Wan comes to Ezra's rescue.

Because that's what Jedi do, that's what Jedi are, the Jedi Code is like an itch they cannot help it--frick man, I'm already emotional and we're not even two minutes in.

A general overview of the music this episode, and I'll comment on specific cues as they happen, but I mostly want to point out the frequent lack of music, actually. This episode is very stripped down in terms of theme and instrumentation and there are long stretches of utter silence, to help us absorb the atmosphere. It's very effective in making Tatooine feel utterly desolate, like we're alone on this journey with the characters.

This episode had originally been very ambitious, we've been told from behind-the-scenes commentary, longer, more complex, a lot more plot points, but as it was coming together they very wisely pared it way down to the barebone tacks, cutting out all the excesses and stripping things down to a simple character journey narrative, making the resulting story that much more profound and intimate.

(Plus the saved budget allowed us to get some absolutely gorgeous animation and new pajamas for Ezra. XD)

He looks so comfy in them.

This sequence is heavily styled after the cold open in "Legacy", camera movement and shot choice almost exactly matching. This is not a coincidence, as the basic premise of both episodes is the same: Ezra receives a vision through the Force, and it moves him to action.

Unlike in "Legacy", however, when the Force itself was moving to comfort Ezra and connect him to the voices and images of his parents one last time before their death, this vision is artificially constructed, sent to him by Maul--like the ones in "Visions and Voices"--to deliberately manipulate him, pull him away from his support network, make him act out of fear.

A false Call To Action, in an artificial Hero's Journey narrative that Maul has constructed for Ezra to follow. (More on that later.)

Side note, completely unrelated to all this meta, but an observation I just want to point out: It's the middle of the night and Kanan is not in his room on the Ghost. Where exactly was he eh? Perhaps a certain Twi'lek pilot's room? *eyebrow waggle*

Anyway, after Ezra's Weird Force Tele-Distance Holocron Call we move to a scene that is a bit heavy in the exposition department, by virtue of it having to hold the burden of the extra plotlines they pared down. It's maybe not quite as effective as it could have been but it serves its purpose: It establishes that they identified the "desert planet with two suns" as Tatooine sometime offscreen, and that they asked about Obi-Wan and Bail Organa lied through his teeth about the man being dead. So therefore they must have decided to give the matter up, and let Maul chase ghosts in the Tatooine sands.

Rex being clearly distraught at Obi-Wan's assumed death. :(

Kanan also reminds Ezra that the last visions he got from and about Maul were a trick designed to manipulate him.

Ezra's insistent though, as he always tends to be whenever the notion of being able to obtain "the key to destroying the Sith" pops up. So Hera takes him aside for a moment.

Her face and how often she touches Ezra's arms and shoulders in this scene hurts. :( And the strain in her voice when she asserts that if Obi-Wan were alive he wouldn't be hiding in the desert, he'd be helping them, Hera understands Jedi nature too, she just hasn't gotten the full picture, doesn't know the reason why Obi-Wan is doing... well... exactly that.

This is where the story beat parallels to "Legacy" end, because this time, Ezra does not receive Hera's blessing to go. Instead she reminds him, rather sternly, that he is supposed to be there with them, planning the attack on Lothal, she needs him and his focus here.

Recall Yoda's line about Luke: "Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing." Since all the way back in Season Two, when his mere presence started to become a danger to the safety of his friends, Ezra has been growing more and more obsessed with finding a way to kill the Sith, whenever Maul turns up more distracted. It ties straight back into his motivation for becoming a Jedi in the first place that he told Yoda in "Path of the Jedi".

"I just want to protect myself and my friends. And not just them, everyone. I'll protect everyone."

Ezra has an abundance of that natural Jedi urge to protect (planted by his parents, nurtured by Hera), the itch inside him intermingles with his clingyness and attachment to his Ghost family in particular. When everything went wrong on Malachor he internalized that failure severely, and his natural Jedi compulsions went overdrive into a crippling sense of hyper-responsibility, magnified by his guilt and leading him down the same path Anakin walked--seeking more power, from dubious and deceitful sources, in order to prevent another personal tragedy from happening to him again.

His desire to protect got twisted into attachment, into a clingy possessiveness, into a fear of more potential loss. In this way his flirtations with the Dark Side mirrored Anakin's, though ultimately Ezra never went far enough that he wasn't able to come back, the disaster at Reklam and his reconciliation with Kanan enough of a kick in the head from the Force for him to be all, "NOPE, I REGRET EVERYTHING, I'M NOT DOING THAT AGAIN."

But even though Ezra came to his senses and rejected the Dark Side, he was still not on the right path. The aftereffects of Malachor remained and he kept letting that Sisyphean unattainable goal of defeating the Sith--himself, personally, or else personally enabling it to happen--pull him away. Kept letting it move him out of place in the narrative.

He was supposed to be here, Hera needed him here. "You're in the wrong place, Ezra Bridger," Obi-Wan tells him gently, later. Ezra lets Maul, lets his obsession with destroying the Sith, yank him out of order in the cosmic destiny of things.

The Force has a place for him. But it is here and not there.

But he kind of has to go on this perilous journey for it to finally kick in.

(One of the scenes I do kind of wish they had kept from the original extended plot is the one where Hera and Kanan and Zeb all kind of commiserate about how "the kids", meaning Ezra and Sabine, are growing up and leaving home, and how they have to let them go, even if they might make bad choices, really playing into that whole parental angle and explaining why they didn't immediately rush off after Ezra.)

Despite Ezra's half-hearted assurance to Hera, it's clear he has no intention of obeying her order to stay put. His sense of impulsive hyper-responsibility is too strong, he's following the same instincts that led him to obsess over and misinterpret his other two major Force visions.

So he swipes a training A-wing.

He's such a little shit I love him. <3

This is the point of no return and Ezra is unwittingly drawn into Maul's trap, which mimics the beats of a classic Campbell Hero's Journey.

Joseph Campbell, for reference, is a writer and philosopher who purported the idea of the monomyth, that in all stories and all mythologies across cultures there are similar patterns and cycles. His Hero's Journey is often styled as a closed circle ("It ends where it began."), with a dividing line between the Known and Unknown worlds and various stops and characters and plot elements mentioned along the sides. The Hero's Journey monomyth, incidentally, was one of George Lucas's major inspirations for writing Star Wars, wanting to create one such classic mythological narrative.

So we have all the elements in place here. We have the Call To Adventure (the distorted holocron message). We have the Refusal Of The Call (Hera ordering Ezra to stay and him initially not fighting her). We have the Supernatural Aid (the pieces of the holocron that function as some kind of magic compass). We've outmaneuvered the Threshold Guardian and crossed over into the Unknown (Ezra swiping the A-wing from under the technician's nose). Along the way we'll pick up the Ally or Helper (it's revealed Chopper snuck along and went with him). And we will be facing Trials, Tests, and Tribulations (everything from the initial Tusken attack to braving the harsh elements of Tatooine's unforgiving sand and heat).

...But it's all wrong.

See, Ezra has already answered the Call to his own Hero's Journey, the one that started for him all the way back in the pilot, when he returned Kanan's lightsaber and crossed the Threshold into the Unknown world of being a Rebel and a Jedi Padawan. This falsely constructed cycle Maul has drawn him into is not his narrative. It was never intended to bring him enlightenment, never intended to complete, only to be used to further Maul's selfish ends.

That Ezra manages to find enlightenment and complete the cycle anyway is something that happens in spite of Maul, and not because of him, and takes some severe course-correcting from Obi-Wan. Over and over this episode we'll hear this idea repeated, that this was not where Ezra was supposed to be in the story, it's not his job or responsibility to deal with Maul, he is where "[he] should never have been".

We'll table that for now and come back to it, have a moment to enjoy some pretty caps.

Thus far, music-wise, we've had a couple ominous cues, and a bouncy jaunt full of Rebellion flutes and brass as Ezra made his escape, in between a couple of the aforementioned long bouts of silence. There's a bubbly little bit when Chopper is discovered. (And I can't even tell you how much I love the touch with Ezra startling so bad he smacks the A-wing cockpit window and bumps the steering column so that the ship swerves out of place--PART OF THE METAPHOR MUCH?) Soft vocals filter in as Ezra consults the holocron shards, holding in long, mystical notes. A lone viola sounds, mournfully. Higher strings sound with spiritual reverence as Ezra gets out of the A-wing, as if to suggest his goal, his enlightenment, is just up ahead.

Then, darker notes like a pulsing heartbeat. The voices go discordant.

Then the Tuskens attack and hell breaks loose.

One of the underlying threads this episode is Ezra and Chopper's devotion and loyalty to each other so I really like how, even though Ezra told him to find cover, Chopper doesn't and charges in to get a Tusken off Ezra instead. Ezra in turn shields him with his own body when the Tuskens score hits that make the A-wing explode.

And that's Ezra's, "I'm in so much trouble." look lol.

Maul, meanwhile, decides to go ahead and murder all the Tuskens and I would not fault you for thinking back to another lightsaber-fueled Tusken massacre.

In fact, probably any parallel or allusion you think of during this episode is in all likelihood deliberate. Frankly I'd argue that this is one of the most important episodes of the show, with how integral it is to Ezra's character arc.

Which is why it was so annoying and asinine that people complained that Ezra took up most of the episode's focus and whined that it should have been only about Maul. Hello, do you understand the concept of a protagonist?!

Speaking of allusions though, we get some lovely call backs to "Visions And Voices" with Maul once again letting Ezra hear him inside his head and catch fleeting glimpses of him, this time in order to lure him further out into the desert. Maul is still trying to keep him in the false cycle, tempting him away from escape.

And Ezra's sense of hyper-responsibility, of This is all my fault and I have to fix it, leads him right down Maul's preordained path.

"I have to help Master Kenobi, if I can." As if Obi-Wan needs any help dealing with Maul, ha ha.

Another moment of pure heartwarming loyalty from Chopper here, he has the opportunity to keep going along the path to safety, but begrudgingly chooses instead to stay with Ezra, through thick and thin.

Ezra once again returns the favor by refusing to leave his side when he runs out of power.

Subtle animation appreciation moment: The way Ezra staggers, looking completely exhausted. Also the sandblasting in his hair and clothes kjhfkasjfha.

Taylor's acting here is heartbreaking, he makes Ezra sound SO lost and scared. :(((((((

Maul decides to rub things in a bit and oh hey some mirror dialogue here, eerily similar to a certain exchange in "Gathering Forces". :D

Grand Inquisitor: The Darkness is too strong for you, orphan. It'll swallow you up even now. Ezra: No. Grand Inquisitor: Your master will die. Ezra: No! Grand Inquisitor: Your friends will die, and everything you've hoped for will be lost. This is the way the story ends. Ezra: NO!

And in comparison:

Maul: He is dead... He is dead. Ezra: No... Maul: You led me to him. Ezra: No. Maul: You failed your friends. Ezra: No! Maul: You will DIE!" Ezra: NOOOO!

~It's like poetry, it rhymes.~

Also this is terrifying.

So I've legitimately teared up like... twice watching this show. This was one of the times. This moment right here where Obi-Wan's feet step softly into frame.

Yeah it got me.

Cut to... Night. A quiet campfire. Ezra comes to and things are suddenly put into perspective.

"You're in the wrong place, Ezra Bridger."

(The voice they got for Obi-Wan is perfect btw, sounds just like Alec Guinness.)

Obi-Wan explains gently that he is not "the key to defeating the Sith". He never was. Maul's desires muddied the holocron vision, he used Ezra to get his own answers and left Ezra with only partial answers. Because Obi-Wan is associated with the key to defeating the Sith but he's not the Chosen One.

And neither is Ezra.

He is a narrative "chosen one", a key player picked by the Force, imbued with purpose, but defeating Vader, killing the Emperor... that was never his task to take. After the loss he suffered in "Legacy" Ezra had been letting himself get obsessed with the idea that he could fix that problem--the problem of the Sith--himself.

But that is not his role in the story.

It is not yet sunrise (Luke and Leia). So the moon (Ezra) must endure.

"You win by killing an Inquisitor." "No, you win by surviving."

Ever since before Malachor, Ezra has been stepping outside his station, trying to do things he was never meant to do, instead of what he was supposed to do, which was to help the people in front of him, right now, do what good he can in the moment. (Something that he'd gain clarity on via a falling out with Saw in Season Four.)

"What you need, you already have."

Ezra lost sight of that in the grief over his parents, in his guilt over Malachor. He was never going to be the one to defeat the Sith. Yoda and Obi-Wan both knew the only ones who even stood a chance... would be Vader's children. Maybe Ahsoka. Perhaps that was even why Yoda advised going to Malachor, to test and see if Vader could be saved, or killed, by his former padawan. Someone who he might have had a strong enough attachment to that it would cloud his judgement. (Just as Obi-Wan's mere presence would drive Vader mad with irrational murderous rage and yet, paradoxically, a cloying need to have him back.)

"We asked for a chance to destroy the Sith... and we failed."

Vader has no connection to Ezra, therefore Ezra will not be the one to end him.

His task is to endure, keep the darkness back, and hold the line until the narrative chosen one who will do that task (Luke) is ready to take up the sword. This is not Ezra's role in the story. He has his own destiny, his own part to play in the Rebellion.

And he needs to return to it.

Obi-Wan closes the broken cycle for Ezra, rescuing him from The Ordeal or Abyss, and sending him back to the Known world with the Boon (his sage wisdom) irregardless of how false the path there to him was. Ezra is freed from the obligations, responsibilities, and burdens he wrongly took on himself... to return home, and rejoin his own Hero Cycle.

And then all that's left is to "mend this old wound". (Maul)

Maul has what he wanted, or so he thinks. His old enemy, his past, ready for the killing. His future and legacy, his apprentice, within reach for taking.

But things have changed. Obi-Wan is older, wiser, more serene and at peace with himself and with the Force, in spite of all he's suffered. He has grown from his failures, let go of the past, and found balance, while Maul has regressed, repeated the same mistakes, clung to the hurt and pain in his past and deteriorated, been sucked almost dry by the Dark Side.

And Obi-Wan pities him.

Maul is scalded by this, upset that after everything he's endured, Obi-Wan seems to have taken no ill effect. And it's not like Order 66 and Anakin's betrayal didn't hurt him (hell we have all of the Kenobi show to demonstrate otherwise) but that he's processed those emotions and feelings and traumas, and returned to a settled baseline. He is more a Jedi now than ever, and revenge is not the Jedi way.

And can I flail a little bit inarticulately for a moment about the dichotomy between Obi-Wan's "I had no intention of fighting him, though that seems inevitable now." and Thrawn's "It was not my intention to utterly destroy Lothal but that is inevitable now."?

So Maul digs for something to bait Obi-Wan with, touching about the reason he's there on Tatooine to begin with, discerning that there is someone that Obi-Wan is protecting. Notes of Sith vocals creep into the music here, a sequence that sounds like Maul's arrival on Tatooine from Phantom Menace ("It ends where it began.").

And with this implicit threat towards Luke, Obi-Wan ignites his saber.

SO much ink has been spilled about this duel. I was surprised at how short it was at first too, but it makes perfect thematic sense in hindsight. The way Obi-Wan slowly baits Maul, drawing Maul's mental frame of mind back to Naboo, because he knows that Maul is stuck in the past, constantly reliving that moment of triumph and defeat over and over again, fixated on it as the shatterpoint where things in his life first went wrong. He can't let it go. He can't move on. He has to keep going back to that moment over and over to make things "correct" and kill the one he pins the blame on for his pain. (But this will not fix him, even if he accomplishes it.)

An entire story is told solely through foot placement and stances. Maul moves through the stances he's used in duels with Obi-Wan before. Obi-Wan shifts through his classic New Hope lightsaber grip, to his iconic Soresu.

And then he switches to Ataru, to the same stance Qui-Gon used.

The music has been tense throughout, but now the Force Theme creeps in. There's a flare of recognition in Maul's eyes; He knows this, this is familiar.

So he lunges, using the same lightsaber trick that he used to kill Qui-Gon...

...except it doesn't work.

I love the look of quiet realization and acceptance in Maul's expression. It's just like, "......Oh."

Maul submits and falls in defeat, into his enemy's arms, yet another parallel to Phantom Menace, to the start of everything between these two men. And then he asks something heartbreaking: Is Obi-Wan protecting the Chosen One? The one who would defeat the Sith?

And because Obi-Wan no longer believes that Vader can be saved, he answers yes. (Amazing how well this scene fits with the later Kenobi show.)

With his dying breath, Maul finally recognizes his true enemy, accepts and forgives Obi-Wan as his brother, as a fellow victim of Palpatine, and declares with almost prophetic insight, "He... will avenge us."

Not take revenge, avenge. As Trilla Sundari would admonish Cal Kestis in the Jedi Fallen Order video game, Maul also asks for restitution and justice with his last words.

(I do kind of wish we got one brief reaction shot from Ezra as he sensed Maul passing, just for confirmation that he knows. It's inferred but still.)

Back with Ezra as he returns home with the Boon, and he's also claimed the prize of Maul's ship, the Mandalorian gauntlet. (Again, just the briefest scene of him finding it, that would have been nice.)

"I was wrong. This is where I'm supposed to be. You're my family. And we should go home."

Ezra has finally forgiven himself for Malachor, completed the arc he started in "Legacy" (or maybe even earlier), and returned to his proper place. His family accepts him back with the laying of hands like a benediction.

And meanwhile, just to wring your heart one last time, we return to Tatooine, to watch Obi-Wan watch over Luke from a distance, a scene drenched in OT nostalgia, from using the exact audio of Aunt Beru calling Luke to closing us out with Luke's Theme and Binary Sunset for the credits, reminding us that the shadow will not hold sway forever.

Eventually, the sun will rise. And a new hope will emerge.

Trust in the Force.

Man, there aren't enough words to tell you how much I love this episode. It's so beautiful and poetic and thematic. It's the lynchpin of Ezra's character development, he needed to be in this episode, to go on this journey. It's gorgeously animated and there are so many many layers of parallels and themes, motifs and archetypes, that tie into the monomyth in general and Star Wars in particular. I'm astonished how well it melds with later canon material (JFO and Kenobi), but I guess that just speaks to how true to the spirit and essence of Star Wars it is.

It's just beautiful.

#star wars #star wars rebels #ezra bridger #obi-wan #kenobi #rebels rewatch #liveblog #meta rambling #long post #music #soundtracks #this is a pro jedi blog #i love rebellion era jedi they come pre traumatized #rebels rambles

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mistwraiths · 1 year

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3.5 stars

This book is a strange one, and due to mixed reviews, I understand why people either like it or dislike it. It's not like Shea's other YA books, where there's subtle magic and good characters, romance, and an unreliable narrative. There are two of those things but honestly I don't think they're done quite well.

Strangely, I found the first half of the book better than the rest of it. Mostly, when the romance starts, that's kind of where it really starts to get slower and stupid. Her books always seem to have a kind of insta-love but this genuinely felt forced and unnecessary. I get there's supposed to be this "star-crossed" fate quality to it but I hated it. We don't really get to know much of Noah at all, hardly spend time with them even with their traveling there really isn't much interactions to have. It's all mostly internalized. Plus, the main character has way more important a story to be bogged down with romance that isn't even good.

It's a shame that the main character, Vega, is stupid, has zero self-preservation skills, and generally unprepared for the world. Which is ODD considering on her shoulders she'll have to take a big journey. If she's memorized the stars, why are they tattooed on her. Why is the one tattoo on her in an easily seen spot on her neck?? Like could the big tattoo not be condensed? Could it not be somewhere it could be easily covered. Vega has ZERO idea how the outside world and she's told specifically that people will hunt her. Like... maybe she should have been taught how to blend in???

Vega just makes the DUMBEST choices. Her Pa tells her she can't go? Burn the house down! Ask around for the Architect when people are literally hunting her. Pointing a gun surrounded by people with guns who are gonna take her horse. Investigating a campfire when she's literally being hunted. There's probably more but honestly, I kept wondering was there NO OTHER WAY TO PREPARE HER??

Lots of people say the tone of this novel feels off and I agree. It feels too low stakes and yet boasts the big mystery/journey. I do think the book takes longer than necessary and this story could potentially be wrapped up far quicker. For about 350ish pages, it's pretty much Vega runs away from people. And that's it. This book also eagerly keeps its bigger mystery from the reader although I figured out what the darkness was pretty early.

It's a black hole. Once you learn that, you figure out quickly that low stakes isn't cutting it. This book isn't fantasy or really even sci-fi. It's feels oddly like a western end of the world, survivalist story. Once you learn that there's a black hole and Vega has to get on a ship to save everyone, well... all her whining about love feels extra annoying. And futile when you realize it's too late.

Vega constantly moans how she was too late, but honestly nothing Vega could have done would have made a single difference on the end. The black hole was coming, just unfortunately they didn't have more than a hundred years. Which in my honest opinion, how the fuck did the people who made space ships not see/calculate a black hole. It just seems a really quick time for this black hole to pop up and reach them.

I could have liked the ending better maybe if it ended unknown like she was traveling and didn't know how long, how far, or what was going to be there. I could have liked the ending if she was going to be the new colony's new Astronomer and maybe chart them a new path home to a new world. But she finds a theory (A THEORY!) that maybe the planet that got PULLED INTO A BLACK HOLE came out okay. HUH??? WHAT?? And everyone is like SOUNDS GOOD WE'LL LOAD UP THE SHIP.

It feels like she's about to lead everyone into space to DIE. Which is an interesting ending and in my opinion an odd choice. And that's it. The idea of a planet being survivable and somehow coming out of a black hole okay after witnessing it eat stars and suck your planet up is... kind of bizarre.

Was this a good book? I enjoyed it but I can definitely see why people didn't.

#shea ernshaw #a wilderness of stars #steph reads #steph's book review #book review #2023 reads

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davidmann95 · 3 years

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How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

* Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion

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unnamedelement · 3 years

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You Carry Them in Your Heart: Ficlet for Diverse Tolkien Week

I wrote this little snippet this morning in honor of @diversetolkien‘s Diverse Tolkien Week, using the prompts “Women of Color,” “Culture,” and “Anti-racism.” It is inspired by a number of blatant headcanons (and some canon-based meta, imho), and the versions of Legolas and Mirkwood that exist in my own work.

Further, it is inspired by my own relationship with my messy and ethnically-complex family history. While I will never know what it is to not be white in this world, I do know what it is for whiteness and for imperialism to steal the truth from you. I do know how badly it hurts to never be able to reach those parts of you whose stories were erased; how it hurts to know that your family’s language was beaten out of them; how it hurts to know that someone somewhere in the past started shaming children for their questions and teaching them lies about their brown skin. I know how it feels to have nameless grandmothers, to have ancestors whose stories were lost to time and shame and trauma, to the endless march of the victor’s narrative.

So, all that is where this little ficlet is coming from. My own family shit, but also Mirkwood and its arguably colonial positioning, plus all my own very gratuitous worldbuilding and headcanons.

You Carry Them in Your Heart

It was midafternoon and the sun shone weakly overhead, and Legolas and his mother were traveling with a small group of elves. It was cold but not too cold, but Legolas was young, and his mother had buttoned him into the fisherman’s sweater gifted him by the Lakemen before they set out that morning.

“Mother,” he asked quietly, and he curled his fingers into his mother’s shawl from where he rode behind, pickaback, and he listened vaguely to the murmurs and melodies of the elves around him. “Why are the Men of the Lake pale like moonlight?”

It was the first time his mother had taken him with her on her trade trips to negotiate with the men around Mirkwood, and he had had many questions.

“Your father is pale like moonlight, emlineg,” his mother responded, hitching him up slightly so his face was pressed momentarily into her curls.

“He is not,” Legolas said, shaking his head firmly. “He is pale like sunlight.”

“Your friend Ithildim is pale like moonlight,” his mother answered smoothly.

“Hm,” he said quietly, and he laid his head on her back, raised a hand to stifle a yawn, for they had been up since long before sunrise. “Ithildim is pale like moonlight...”

There was quiet for a time and Legolas watched those traveling around him. They walked up the River and back toward the wood, and his home was a dark mound on the horizon. The elves around him, however, were not all pale like moonlight. They were some of them the moon, yes, but they were also autumn trees under sun, were hazelnut and chestnut, every shade of the endless wood.

He spoke again: “The Lake is to the east of our home, Mother?”

“It is, child.”

“Saida said the men of the West are different than those of the Long Lake.”

His mother laughed lightly, and Legolas gripped her tighter. “And how would Saida know anything about the men of the Western Woods?”

“Her brother has told her,” Legolas said eagerly. “For he is a captain and has seen many things! He says the people to the West run the plain outside our woods, and they worship the North Sun.”

“And so do you, emlineg,” his mother countered. “The Sun brings us warmth after long winters, does it not?”

Legolas reached a hand out into the air around them and the wind played between his fingers.

“But she says those Men are not pale like moonlight, Mother. They are like loam beneath leaf mould after winter.”

“Like you, then?” his mother asked wryly.

Legolas shook his head behind her.

“Like me?” she tried again.

He shook his head once more. “You are too dark, and I am too light. And they are cool, like clay under silt.”

“Ah,” his mother murmured, and Legolas felt it vibrate from her into him as he pulled his hand back in, wrapped it gently in that hair that was so like his own. “Saida knows a lot for just being told.”

“Her brother is also an artist,” Legolas said matter-of-factly. “He draws her pictures of his travels in the evenings, in their camps. He brings them home to her and tells her stories. His stories are like picture books. I have heard them, too.”

“That is nice of him.”

“Yes. I wish Felavel could draw like him.”

“Felavel brings you back other things from her work,” his mother said neutrally.

“Yes, and I love them—there are so many different things in our Wood!”

“There are, child.”

It was quiet again for a long time. Legolas knit his mother’s hair between his fingers like a loom; her hair was a dark blackwater that contrasted with his tawny skin, warm as the hair she had plaited from his face into a knot that morning, to keep it tidy during travel. He loosened his hold on his mother’s hair and it unwound from his hands like a spring. He scratched at a braid that tugged at his hairline and then turned his attention again to the elves around him. Their hair was light to dark, cornsilk to coils, but the Men of the Lake had hair that waved like gentle weave in shades of brown, and those of the Western Plains had hair that fell in a sheet like dark and windless rain. The men of those places had one hair, it seemed—not many.

He shifted against his mother’s back and spoke: “Why do all the Men in one place look the same, but we elves here—in our one place, in our Wood—we do not?”

His mother did not answer for a moment, and he could feel her thinking, and he matched his breaths to hers while she pondered. She readjusted her hold on his thighs, and Legolas waited.

“Our people are complicated, Legolas,” his mother finally said. “We come from many places and many cultures and many histories, but we all eventually made Mirkwood our home.”

“Ithildim says he has been here forever.”

She laughed. “Many of his mother’s people are Avarin, Legolas. But they have not been here forever, though they have been here longer than even our own folk”

“And much longer than Father’s,” Legolas said assuredly. “Well,” he immediately corrected himself, “than—than his father. Is that right, Mother?”

“You have many questions, emlineg,” his mother said, but she was laughing again. “When we return, I will be telling your father you are finally old enough to begin your studies!”

Legolas shrugged and then squirmed to be let down. She dropped him to the ground and he took her hand.

“That is all right, I guess,” he finally said, and she swung their hands between them. “I think I want to understand.”

There was quiet as they began their journey again, as they watched the wide and wild world move about them.

“The most important thing for you to know, emlineg,” his mother said finally, after they had walked together for a time, and had fallen slightly behind the others due to Legolas’ small legs. “Is that we are all wood-elves, and that you have parts of all of its folk—East and West of the Mountains—in your soul, and your history. You are the creation of all those who came before you, and you carry them in your heart, where'er you go.”

Legolas looked up at her, and her dark hazel eyes were wide and bright and shining in her face; her hand was tight on his.

“That is a beautiful thing, child,” his mother whispered. “You must never forget that.”

Legolas stood and watched her without moving for a moment, for there was something happening here that he knew he was not quite old enough to understand, but it seemed so important to his mother...

He eventually raised his arms into the air without words and she picked him up. She adjusted him so he could tuck his head against her chest, so his legs dangled to either side of her hips.

They were almost caught up with their folk when Legolas finally affirmed, voice muffled in her shawl and cut short by a yawn: “I shall never forget it, Mother.”

And she pressed a kiss to his head then, and he let himself drift as the river cut the plains and they eventually breached the wood; let himself drift as voices were lifted in song, as birds wove their notes in his mind; as it fell to darkness around them and the Sun fled them and the night came down heavy; and he drifted, too, as they went through the great gates and crossed the bridge into the Halls.

He did not even truly wake as his mother handed him to his father, as they hugged above him, as golden hair caught blackwater curls and tickled his tired nose.

That is a beautiful thing, child. You must never forget that.

But he was safe and he was warm and he was loved, and that was beautiful, and elves—

Elves do not forget.

He adjusted himself against his father’s chest and felt his mother’s hand brush his cheek; his father’s heartbeat was strong and steady in his ears as they moved toward his room, and it was a bass drum at festival that beat in time with his; it was a lullaby that reassured him into sleep.

.o.

Years would pass, and Legolas’ mother would leave them, and so much of what and who he was would flee.

And yet, even after all that—even after his mother was but a memory in the wood-elves’ storied past—Legolas would carry her inside him.

He would let her beat in his heart with the dozens of mothers of their people that had come before them—that he had never known—and he would carry them forward, and on.

And to the day that he sailed oversea, Legolas would never ever forget.

FIN

Please reach out to me in a DM/chat if you feel I have written something insensitive. I would be happy to speak with you.

#dvtw21 #legolas #mirkwood fam #diversity in middle earth #my fanfiction #my family trauma shit #lmao haha its fine #cw cultural erasure #lotr fanfiction #throwing my work and my own vulnerability into the world as if i am made of steel and not a delicate flower #long post #diversetolkienweek #silvan elves #wood-elves

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gottagobuycheese · 3 years

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4, 5, 7 for the writing meme. Thanks!

(Writing meme)

Thank YOU for indulging me with these questions, and sorry for taking so long to answer! What is possibly my final finals season just about wrapped up, and I couldn’t think about anything else until it did (so fingers crossed it really has wrapped up lmao). So without further ado, here are some unnecessarily long answers!

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

Ideas as in “I am actively working on this/making notes about it” or ideas as in “I have daydreamed about it at least once”? Because there’s…definitely way more of the second than the first lol.

But if we’re talking the former, then the thing that’s currently gripping my mind is a (hopefully) short post-true ending Undertale fic in which Undyne and Asgore catch up over tea and somehow get around to talking about the nature of human souls and what it what it takes to actually collect one (i.e. what it took to really, truly perma-kill a human). The problem is I don’t remember how much each character actually knows about the subject, so I’m rewatching a pacifist playthrough as “research” — and also falling back headfirst into the vast plethora of content that exists for the source material, predictably. It’s been a good few years since I was this fixated on it, which is great news for me because there is SO MUCH stuff to catch up on! (Tangentially, I guess it was kind of predictable, since I always seem to fall back into some kind of comfort video game around finals season, but usually it’s Ace Attorney, so this is new.)

In terms of the second, an idea that has been pretty solidly in daydream territory for a while is some kind of Stranger x Nobody Knows crossover fic in which (Senior) Inspector Han and (possibly former) Detective Cha cross paths for some reason. I have no idea what I’d want from it plot/content-wise, so I doubt it’ll ever be much more than a vaguely entertaining impression in my head, but I just think it’d be cool to see those two interact XD

Sadly neither of these things are the things I’m ACTUALLY supposed to be working on, so they probably (hopefully) won’t be done for a while.

5. Share one of your strengths.

 Ah, one of my least favorite interview questions. Uh, I guess I have fun writing dialogue, and it definitely tends to come easier than other aspects of writing (like DESCRIPTION, blegh). Plus I have been told that it makes people laugh sometimes, which is usually my goal — or makes them feel Painful Feelings, which is my other goal that unfortunately rarely makes it to the publishing phase — so I will count that as a success! And therefore a strength of some sort.

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it. 

Oof, this is a hard one, haha. There is a subtle yet important difference between saying why you like something versus saying why you’re proud of something, but I shall try to veer more toward the latter since that’s the actual question.

As it turns out, being more comfortable with dialogue means that most of my stories end up being pretty dialogue-heavy, which I just discovered when flicking through fics to borrow a snippet from, but if we’re going with strictly prose, then this bit from a long-ish comedic Good Omens fic I still haven’t figured out all the plot points to was fun to write:  

In literature, funerals are often held in the pouring rain. This is because, in literature, authors can carefully describe how grief-stricken the attendees are, how their water-logged clothes, heavy and cold, cannot begin to compare to the weight of the sorrow that drags them down, how it pulls at their body, hangs from their shoulders and backs and legs and soul, begging them to join their loved ones in the ground. They can describe how the heavens themselves weep for the dead, that the earth, for once, pauses in its frantic flurry of activity, takes a moment to mourn what it has lost, and grieve for those who are left behind.

Of course, grief is complicated. Authors understand this. Sometimes the attendees are angry, and so the funerals are sunny, and the attendees are angry because the world dares to keep spinning on its axis even when theirs has ground to a halt. They are angry because the heavens won’t hide their tears for them, won’t admit they did something wrong, taking away someone who was so loved, so cherished, so good. They are angry because their heartache isn’t enough, doesn’t nearly encompass the gaping void torn in their reality, doesn’t do the dead justice. The earth and the skies and the seas ought to be mad with grief as well. Thunderstorms, gale-force winds, surging tides and shaking stone. How dare the world imply it’s no great loss?

Or maybe the funerals are held in the snow, because grief is cold and numbing and relentless, and no amount of warm soup or thick blankets or knitted mittens will make it better, fill the hollow misery the way one can fill a grave with soil and ice crystals. No one really wants to be there, socks soaked through and half-asleep from the chill, but sometimes you need to slog your way through those waist-deep banks of grief anyway, that frigid, dull, powder-white pain, focus only on how your teeth chatter and your fingertips turn blue and put all the rest of it aside for later, when it’s warm again. If it will ever be warm again.

Or perhaps the author just likes snow.

I get to ramble about some of my favorite kinds of weather for three paragraphs?? Count me IN

Anyways, I think it did a good job of keeping with the vaguely whimsical tone of the rest of the story, despite this being the opening to a (fake) funeral scene. And yeah, maybe it’s a bit excessive and heavy-handed, but it fits the context well enough and has some actual Imagery™, not to mention that it actually segues somewhat neatly into the next bit, so I think it did its job — which is all I can really ask for, so I’ll be proud of that! It’s a bit of a narrative reprieve from the dialogue-and-emotions heavy previous scene and the comedic shenanigans of the subsequent scene. Which would probably also be quite dialogue heavy, except for the part where I haven’t written it yet sjkdhfskf

#ask #Cheese talks #I tried to type this out twice and accidentally tabbed out of the page and had to start over #so I kept putting off actually starting again #but THIS TIME I made sure to copy and paste as I went #and also just type out everything on a separate note and then just copy/paste it here #thank you again for this!#it was fun to look through old writing #but gosh I sure would like to finish some of those some day #lots of ideas but very few actual Stories #and now that I have all the time I could possibly want I don't want to do anything #writing ask meme #my brain is still very much in drawing mode and not writing mode #but hopefully it'll shift into more writing mode soon #because there's a lot of stuff I need to finish writing before getting back into Obligations #ANYWAYS FEEL FREE TO ASK MORE #SO I CAN START THINKING IN WORDS AGAIN INSTEAD OF JUST PICTURES #drivingsideways

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revisionaryhistory · 3 years

Text

Three Days ~ 71

~*~Emma~*~

For the rest of the trip, we relaxed listening to music. Before Sebastian had asked, I’d not thought too much about what I was going to do. Further limiting my time was a given, but I hadn’t thought about what that would look like. Talking about not waking up at “home” with my mom, dad, twin sister, and niece should have bothered me more than it did. That it didn’t, tells me it’s the right decision. One of the side effects of putting up with shit too long is once you decide to stop it’s not that big of a deal. Something inside has been moving in that direction for some time. What Sebastian had said about not sacrificing myself was on target. That I would do what it takes to take care of my sister isn’t in question. It’s been proven.

I texted Angie from the Uber to Sebastian's apartment. We were going to start up at Chelsea and Union Square with Aritzia, Anthropologie, and Free People. Those were sure thing stores, but not always original. We'd weave our way through Chelsea and into Soho. That shop Seb and I found would be last. We'd stop for lunch when we got hungry.

Angie hopped on the subway and headed to Union Square. It would take her thirty minutes and me fifteen from Sebastian’s place. Plenty of time to relax and watch Sebastian gather what he needed to work on. I saw a script, notebook, and a couple of real books. I think I'd find it fascinating to watch his process, but more importantly this time I wanted him to know I had friends and could amuse myself. I didn't care that he needed work time and I wasn’t going to need something from him for ignoring me. Doing things independent of your partner was important.

I grabbed a bottle of water for my journey and made my way to where Sebastian sat. He moved the items in his lap, making room for me to sit down. He supported my back and rubbed along my leg. "What are you shopping for?"

"Whatever I find." I smiled sneakily, "Especially if find something for Paris, our first date, and our live music fun tonight."

Sebastian’s hand made it to my ass, "When I think of live music I picture short, revealing, sexy."

"I love how you think." I ran my fingers through his hair. "Can I bother you for five minutes?"

"Sure" His eyes held questions.

I pulled his head closer, pressing my lips to his until he caught on and joined in the fun.

Our little mini make out session was going to make me late. Assuming Angie left as soon as we texted, walked straight onto a train, and there were no delays. None of these were likely. She'd forgive my lateness anyway. I looped my crossbody bag over my head, "I'll text if it's anything other than seven."

"Ok." He ran toward the kitchen. "Hang on." I heard a drawer slam before he reversed direction and came back. Sebastian held up a key, the slightest smile appearing on his face, "In case I'm in the shower or something when you come back. You remember the code?"

"Yes." I'd punched it in when we got here less than half an hour ago. He was nervous. I admit I had to focus to keep my hand steady as I took his offering. "I love you."

Sebastian opened the door and gave me a quick kiss as I walked out. "Love you, too."

I was a couple of steps away when I heard my name.

"Emma, put it on your key ring so you don't lose it."

The door closed before I could reply. I guess that eliminates any question if the key was a temporary just in case he was in the shower today sort of thing. What made me smile the most was the lack of conversation. If he'd overthought the decision, he didn't feel the need to talk it through. No discussion about what it meant or didn't mean. He may have been nervous, but he wasn't uncomfortable. I seriously doubt he's in the habit of giving out keys to his place, so nervous but not uncomfortable was good.

Angie was leaning against the building when I walked up. We hugged like we hadn't seen each other in months. "Sorry, I’m late."

"Were you having sex? I'll forgive you if you were having sex."

I grimaced with a shake of my head, "Making out."

My best friend huffed out a breath, "Close enough." She held the door open for me, "I got here like two minutes ago."

Aritzia, Anthropologie, and Free People were right in a line. We'd hit them in my favorite order. Aritizia was more comfort clothes for me. Their clothes were more staples than fun. But today I found a gorgeous Sicily sweater and cardigan in a soft heathered cashmere. A pair of tie front pants in purple plaid would look awesome for wandering museums. Anthropologie gifted me with a sequined tunic dress for a night out. A simple black midi dress, a grey-blue fringed and a textured cardi, and a long black wrap jacket. Free People had a colorful mini dress, a definite statement Hyacinth dress, and a fun floral dress. Assorted other things went into my bags too. I went a little crazy, but in my defense, I hadn’t been shopping in a long time and my best friend was egging me on. Plus, there was someone to appreciate what I wore. I had all sorts of cute clothes, but dressing for a boyfriend was different. Especially one who liked to look. I knew what he liked and indulged.

Conversation while we shopped was mostly about the shopping. It's good to have a friend who'll not only tell you something makes your ass look fat but also say, "You look amazing but where the fuck are you gonna wear that more than once?" Part of the fun was trying on horrifying things. Those things you don't understand how they were ever made. We'd mix those in with good stuff and laugh until we cried. We had a long-standing tradition that whoever found the most "exquisite" outfit was treated to lunch. We were pretty even and had pictures for documentation. Today I would be buying lunch.

"We’ve got a table at two. Alissa's going to meet us."

"That'll be fun. Are she and Will coming tonight?"

"I don't think so. They've got a family thing."

I nodded and we headed toward Chelsea, stopping at the Guitar Store for strings and a capo. We had plenty of time so we stopped anywhere else that caught our eyes. Walking was more private and so was our conversation.

"Anything I should know about before I see you tonight with your boyfriend?"

I sighed in relief. Finally. I bumped her hip with mine, "I love him."

Angie put her arm around me, "This is not news, Emma."

We shared a laugh. "I wasn't sure until I was in the cab leaving his place. Georgia solidified it. Sebastian was so good talking me through all their shit. He and Eli have more in common now. They both hate my parents."

"Eli doesn't hate your parents."

I pulled away, looking at her with raised eyebrows and clear disbelief written on my face. "Try again."

Angie spoke through our laughter, "Eli tries not to, but they make it truly hard. I think he'd be more forgiving if you didn't have us and your Seattle family. Eli loves you like a little sister, best friend, and some weird second wife he's never fucked. He’s protective. He and Sebastian are going to have to figure out how to share."

"They'll arm wrestle or something. Then maybe you'll become Sebastian’s little sister, friend, and second girlfriend. Ooo, we could use you to confuse the fans. If we're out and get seen we can trade off and kiss each other’s dates. Set up a different narrative."

"Good idea.

“It'll be more fun for you. I have kissed Eli, but you don't know about Seb."

"I doubt anything will become so severe that making out with Sebastian is the answer." She smiled, "Not that I would mind."

"You would not mind. He's one hell of a good kisser."

She backtracked, "Who said it first? How did it happen."

"He surprised me showing up early from Canada, watched me cleaning up my classroom for a minute, then told me the song I was dancing along to was about sex. I turned around and he had on those ears. He looked so adorable. He looked at me with his mouth and eyes open wide and said, “Fuck, I love you."

Angie slapped her hand on her chest, "He didn't know until right them." She gasped, "He came in wearing those ears to be cute and winds up telling you he loves you. He is adorable.” She glared at me, "And you said it back."

I nodded, “In Romania."

"What's up with learning Romanian?"

I trusted her with everything. "It's his name. He prefers it in Romanian. I've been learning just enough to add it to his name. It has a very nice effect on him.” I remembered the wall and shook myself out of the memory. “Plus it makes him happy.”

"And you’re happy?"

I nodded, "Incredibly. All the reasons we talked about are still going on. He adores me and it's clear by how he treats me. And I love taking care of him." I knew she’d understand what I meant.

"There is nothing better in the world. I'm so happy you have someone. It had been so long I thought you were intentionally keeping everyone away."

“Just waiting for the right one." I pulled out my key chain. "I do have a new key."

Angie snatched it, "He keyed you!"

"Looks like it."

"Do you worry this is going fast? I mean it is going fast."

"Yes. It is going fast. There is a risk that maybe this time next year we could be married, have three kids, and signing our divorce papers." I barely made it through without laughing.

Angie snorted, "Sign a prenup so you don’t have to pay alimony when his mid-life crisis tanks his career."

"I talked to Trevor about Sebastian. He knows about my parents, Amy, rehab, and how shitty they can be to me, but he doesn't how about what happened." I stopped walking and looked at her. "I'm starting to feel ashamed for not telling him. That's never happened before." Relationship or friendship. It had never happened. I looked at the most recent member of my secret club. "I don't want to."

She understood, "Why?"

"I don't want him to change the way he looks at me."

Angie smiled, "He won't. You don’t know that yet. It's only been a month. When you know, you'll tell him, and he will look at you just the same or better than he does now. It'll be fine."

"How do you know?" It wasn’t a smart assed clap back. I sincerely wanted to know her reasoning.

"Because he feels different to you and about you. You’re both sharing things neither of you share. That’s the glue for your relationship. You’re adding a little more glue, letting it set up, then adding more. It's getting stronger and eventually, you'll both tell the big secrets and it will be like a layer of epoxy around you that will make you near impossible to break.”

"I like that."

"I speak the truth."

We beat Alissa to the restaurant and ordered a pitcher of margaritas. I was still rearranging and shoving bags into bags under the table when she got there. Angie jumped up and they hugged. I took a step closer, but instead of hugging me, Alissa looked at me warily. “Is it ok for me to be here? Angie said it would be.”

I looked at Angie then back to Alissa, “Why wouldn’t it be?” Oh, what the fuck was going on? I just wanted a nice drunken late lunch with friends after a successful shopping expedition then go home and make out some more with my hot boyfriend.

Alissa grimaced, “I’m sorry for saying all that about Sebastian.”

“Oh!” I laughed and put my hand on my chest. Relieved. I pulled her into a hug, “I’m not upset. Between you and Kirk and the shit Eli told him, we had a somewhat uncomfortable, but really good conversation.”

“Good.” We sat down and Alissa kept talking. “I didn’t mean to be negative. It was just strange. How he was acting and the things you were saying. In a good way. It didn’t come out that way.”

Why is she still . . . oh. “Sebastian said something.”

She cringed, “More of a small group WhatsApp with me and Kirk.”

I laughed again. “Sounds fun.” I sort of wish he hadn’t done that, but I understand why he did. In the end, it was a good thing, but they couldn’t know if I would be scared off by their words.

Angie jumped in, “There’s no way Emma didn’t talk that through.”

Alissa didn’t know me well enough yet to know I wouldn’t let the conversation fester. “Especially with us being a thousand miles apart for the next two weeks. Why is that distance makes time seem longer?”

“I don’t know, but it does. Seb was right to be angry. We could have screwed things up. Neither of us realized how important you were to him. He was worried. That’s more like Seb. Kinda. He’s confusing.”

I think I know what she’s going for. It’s very like him to be worried, but not so much calling out a friend about a girlfriend. From what we’ve talked about and what I learned on that post he’s not had a history of defending girlfriends. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. I wasn’t willing to go into that here. I changed the subject. “And then he goes and tells Will to post a picture of us.”

Alissa nodded, “How’d he react to the comment saying he was going to propose?”

Angie started laughing, “She’d say no.”

“I told him not to. He’d need a good reason. Like he’s actually not a citizen and needs a marriage green card. Or maybe health insurance. I have good health insurance.”

That was the end of that and we went on to other topics. Alissa and Will were having dinner with family but would come by Bowery Ballroom if they were done early. Keaton and Eli’s bands were friends and often teamed up to fill a bigger hall and split the money. They usually made more that way than in one of the smaller halls. Both did a full set and even though Keaton was the bigger name they would trade off who opened. Tonight was Eli’s turn.

We split up outside the restaurant. Alissa going back home and Angie and I heading to the boutique by Sebastian’s. It wasn’t a horrible walk, but we had a lot of bags. In the cab, Angie gave me a look. One I could read perfectly. She wanted to know what I’d avoided at lunch. I like Alissa and I’d say we’re friends. She’s also married to one of Sebastian’s best friends. I didn’t know what the line was. Not for Sebastian. He’d tell me to do what I wanted. The line was mine. Will and Alissa were still enough strangers to me that I wasn’t comfortable with too much information flow between all of us. I wouldn’t think anything of it with Angie and Eli and I was confident that given some more time it would be the same with Will and Alissa. Also, I didn’t know how intimate of conversations Sebastian had with his friends. I’d need to be around more to know.

I’d told Angie about our conversation after the party. In general. With what Alissa had said I went into a little more detail, filled in holes, and answered questions. I watched her thinking. I knew what was coming and was glad for it. “Are you worried? I’d be worried. Maybe not worried. Concerned. It’s like being a rebound. You’re the first after something else, only the something else is personal growth. You don’t know if he’s going to go back. You know what I mean?”

I did. “If he wasn’t so forthcoming with talking about it, I would be concerned. He’s laid it all out there. What he’s done, not done, feels bad about. He doesn’t act like that with me. If he starts too, I’ll know what's going on.” I told her about the conversation on the deck where he did want to shut down and how we got through it. “Struggling with change doesn’t bother me. All the girlfriend stuff.” I shook my head and shrugged. “We’re going to have to figure out what both of us are good with. I think I’m going to be able to not get sucked into comments or let them get to me, but I don’t know for sure. I know private is ok, but I’m not ok with being denied. I’d feel like a dirty little secret. I could change my mind. Could be next week. No idea.”

Angie took my hand, “I still get hate from Eli’s fans. We had to figure out how to deal. You guys will too. The rest, I think you’re right. If he’d gotten pissy and refused to talk about what Alissa and Kirk had said it would be a problem. Everybody gets a chance to do things differently. I don’t for one second think you’re going in blind or overlooking things because you want a boyfriend. You’d walk away if he wasn’t treating you right.” She got the look she gets when she’s about to tell me something I don’t like. I know that look, because I have the same one. “I’m one hundred percent not saying now. Way too soon. You’re already started to feel ashamed and that’s not going to get better. Might not get worse, but it’s not going to get better. You are the bravest person I know. Don’t let being afraid of your past ruin your future.”

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan fanfiction #fanfiction #sebastian stan X ofc #marvel actor fanfiction

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unreachablevoice · 4 years

Text

Moving In Is What Started It All

Summary:

With Marinette’s parents being away with work, she is left in the care of one of their supposedly family friend; who just so happened to be someone who she has always been idolizing. And throw in the fact that she is having a hard time with friendships experiencing hardships, bridges being burned, and secrets unraveling and her parents unintentionally (plus being clueless with their daughter’s suffering) throwing their daughter in a pit of misery.

Note:

This fanfic will not contain Miraculous. Though, This does still contain the concept and some of the episodes of the show just cut out the parts of Ladybug and Chat Noir.

Previous | Next | Masterlist | AO3

Chapter 1 |The Surprise (to be honest, not quite)|

Narrative POV

It was a typical Monday morning, those mornings where you just don't want to get away from your bed.

Where you don't want to open your eyes.

Where you don't want to get up early and go to school.

But too bad, Marinette had school today because it was Monday, the day of the week where people were the laziest. Her phone rang under her pillow, it was where she puts it so that she'll hear her alarm more clearly. Slowly, Marinette's eyes fluttered open.

She woke up.

Still being a bit sleepy, Marinette rose from her bed and slowly headed towards her bathroom to get ready for school. She took off her nightwear, getting ready to hop into her tub that's filled with hot water to the brim. She dipped her toes in, and then the rest of her body was next. Her white, pinkish porcelain skin covered in warm water stood up after a short soak. She then got out of the tub and walked towards the shower to wet her hair. Marinette put her unscented shampoo in her hair and gently massaged her scalp.

After, another drop of unscented body wash was put on a fluffy baby pink scrub. Marinette began to scrub her body lightly; gently and carefully cleaning every part of her body she could find. Again, she went to the shower and took a fast but thorough rinse, making sure that no soap was left on her body. Her feet then, gracefully walked towards the tub, ready to jump into the warm water once again. As her toes touch the warm water, a slight tingle had risen in Marinette's body, maybe it was because of the cold rinse from earlier.

After a long soak in the tub, Marinette got up, patted herself dry, and drained the water-filled tub. She wrapped herself with her towel and went out, it was a good forty-minute bath.

Opening her closet, she grabbed a nice set of neatly folded clothes. She wore something a bit different, Marinette had an oversized red sweater with long sleeves that has "Princess" written in the middle of it, in a cursive font, and white color. She partnered it off with white shorts that just covers up one-fourth of her legs. And she wore sneakers that have white shoelaces and is the same color as her top. Her hair was put in her signature hairstyle, low pigtails tied using a pair of red ribbons.

Marinette was ready to head off to school, all she needed was to eat her breakfast. She then rushed downstairs to their kitchen and greeted her parents. "Good morning Maman et Papa! What's for breakfast?"

Her father answered with a bit of an apologetic tone for her mother was too busy to even utter a single word to her. "Good morning Marinette, I'm sorry but the bakery is a bit busy right now. Would it be alright if you cook food on your own?" Tom asked.

Marinette just nodded off. Knowing that both her parents are too busy to even catch a glimpse of her, she decided to skip breakfast so that she won't be a bother to her parents in the kitchen. She went back up to her room and brushed her teeth. Then, she grabbed her readily prepared bag, which was fixed beforehand on the previous night. She then ran downstairs again and left for school.

But before she could even touch the doorknob, her parents called over to her and said, "Don't stop by anywhere today, okay? We have something important to tell you when you get home." Marinette let out a small "yes" and now, went out for school.

When she arrived, Marinette was greeted by her best friend Alya. "Morning girl! Well, you're early today. Did something good happen?" she asked, raising her eyebrow and spoke with a singing tone. Marinette giggled at the ridiculous action that Alya did.

"Nothing, really. I just, unexpectedly, woke up from my alarm." she smiled and shrugged nonchalantly.

Alya rolls her eyes at her best friend, "Whatever you say, girl. Come on, let's go. I've been standing here for like a minute or so."

Marinette threw a fit of laughter, a laugh that was not too loud but was audible and pleasant. A little giggle if you might call it. And Alya liked the sound of it. Everything about her voice, from speaking to laughter.

Alya may be a responsible, and a great blogger and reporter, but she sure can be laid back sometimes..., Marinette thought. After a few seconds of laughing, Marinette wipes the tears that were formed because of her giggles and nods to Alya's request to go to their classroom.

When they arrived, there were not that many people yet so they decided to head to their lockers to get some stuff. "Girl, what's our third period for today again?" Alya asks.

The girl shook her head, not knowing what Alya would do if she wasn't around to help her. "It's Science Alya, you kept on asking that exact same question every Monday for like a whole month now. Do you even have a copy of our class schedule?" the blue-eyed girl asks, being a bit disappointed that her best friend was being extra laid back, except for reports and blogging that is.

"Haha... Funny you asked. You see, I kinda threw it away...? I figured since it didn't have any use, I had to get rid of it." the brunette answered in a kind of a questioning and nervous voice. Marinette facepalmed and sighed. I guess it's that time of the year where Alya gets super laid back, huh? Marinette thought.

She just smiled back because she still loves her best friend even though she's like this and because it was too early in the morning for her to scold the stubborn brunette. After they grabbed their stuff, they head back to their classroom and saw Adrien already sitting on his seat. Marinette was feeling nervous, there sat Adrien, the love of her life. She was ready to do anything just to greet the blonde normally in the morning.

Adrien noticed the two best friends and gulped, he prepared himself awhile ago to greet them in case the two girls were early today. He wished Nino was with him right now. "Good morning Alya! Good morning to you too Marinette! Y-You're early today! Hehehe..." Adrien smiled and became flushed right after, he felt embarrassed that he stuttered in front of Marinette and Alya. Plus, he just laughed weirdly in front of her. Both girls greeted back, although Marinette’s was as awkward as the blonde’s.

Alya facepalmed at the actions that her two friends just made. These dorks, why don't they just get together already?! Such oblivious lovebirds... Alya sighed. She knew both of them were in love with each other, they were just too oblivious to see it. Plus, the other one thinks he's got no chance with the other one and vice versa.

A while later, Nino arrived. And now, the whole gang was there.

Alya explained to Nino how she just witnessed an irritating event. And Nino groaned, equally pissed off as Alya. The couple ships the two, they're their major OTP. But too bad, the noirette and the blonde wasn't together, crushing both the couple's dreams. They cried silently and internally, but that didn't stop them. They swore to each other that they will do everything in their will power to make their two best friends a couple too. “Operation: Project Adrienette” as they (or everyone in the classroom — sans Chloé) calls it.

Alya and Nino started dating a while back when Nino finally told Alya his feelings. In which, she returned with much glee so it was obvious that they would ship the two as much as the others would.

After a few chatting, the whole class was now there and Mlle. Bustier arrived, a bit later than usual. The class stood up and greeted her, Mlle. Bustier greeted back while gesturing for them to sit down. Their attendance was checked, surprisingly nobody was absent, and then the discussion started. The class was being taught of different things, there were some instances where someone makes a joke and everyone would laugh that they would get off-topic and forget that they're being lectured about something.

After periods of teaching, it was now lunchtime. Marinette didn't go back to her house since she decided to skip lunch, again. She decided to wait for classes to start again while playing with her phone. She texted Alya, her parents—because they asked her why she hasn't returned and she lied saying that she'll just eat outside, and someone very important.

The bell rang and everyone arrived in their classrooms, including Marinette. The gang—Marinette, Alya, Nino, and Adrien—greeted each other. As usual, they were all very happy to see each other, acting as if they haven't seen each other for years.

And another set of periods that contained thousands of knowledge was bestowed upon Marinette and her friends (*this sentence right here is a bit weird hahaha*). And after that, it was time to head home. Alya was supposed to invite Marinette and the boys to eat somewhere outside, like a café or something but Marinette refused, she told Alya what her parents told her to do and, thankfully, she understood.

"Sure girl, but promise me you'll hang out with us sometime, okay?" Alya gave with a reassuring smile, and Marinette nodded.

Sadly, even Adrien couldn't hang out today. "Sorry Alya, I also can't make it. My Father said he also has something important to tell me," he said feeling melancholy.

Adrien really wanted to hang out with his friends, but then his father had to ruin everything. Though, everything's alright since Marinette also had something important to do. Alya sighed and turned to Nino, "I guess we'll all just hang out some other time then..." Nino nodded sadly in agreement. And they all bid each other goodbye.

Since Adrien's driver was busy picking up his father from somewhere, Adrien had to walk back home. When he reached his house, his father was already in their living room, waiting for him. The older Agreste noticed him arrive and greeted him.

"Welcome back son. We have guests today so after you put your bag down, and come sit down here. I cleared your schedule for today, so let's wait for them together." his father said in a formal look but with a soft voice, smiling like a touched father who just witnessed his son pet a stray little puppy. Adrien smiled back. He ran upstairs to his bedroom, throwing his bag in his bed, too excited to even notice his stuff became scattered on the floor because of his strong throw.

He rushed back downstairs, feeling thrilled. Having a smile plastered on his face, he felt that the people coming over are going to be good news. I might not be able to hang out with Alya, Nino, and Marinette, but I still get to spend time with Father so I guess that's alright with me. Adrien thought.

◎◎◎ ◎◎◎ ◎◎◎

As Marinette arrived back to her home, her parents were waiting for her at the front door. Marinette was confused, why were her parents downstairs? "Dear, we will be gone for as long as it takes, we don't really know when the problem's going to be solved... I guess you could say it's a business about that again." her Maman sighs and shakes her head disappointingly, giving emphasize on the word ‘that’.

So it's about that huh? Wonder what's the problem this time? Marinette thought, irritated by the fact that a problem has stirred up again.

"Oh! And you will be left in the care of our old friend! He has a son your age so we think you'll like it there. So go upstairs and pack your stuff, we'll go there today." her Papa added, looking at her Maman with a small, secretive smirk plastered on his face which was also copied in her Maman’s face. Something that Marinette didn’t quite understood.

"So.... I'll be staying at your old friend's house while you're away? Why not in the usual one instead?" Marinette asks, it was weird how they seemed to have changed their usual setting.

"Dear. You know it's too far. We said you're going to school by car but we heard that you didn't want to cause a stir so you chose to walk and we don't want you to get too tired from all that walking. So we decided to ask our friend instead."

Marinette just nodded in approval and her parents told her to hurry up and pack since they'll be leaving in an hour.

Marinette did as told and went to her room. She packed her clothes that are enough for a couple of months, her sketchpad that contained some of her latest designs, her diary, and of course her sewing kit and machine. She put them all in a pink, white polka dotted luggage, she grabbed her signature pink purse and skidded downstairs.

"Maman! Papa! I'm ready!" she shouted. As she was about to take the next step on the staircase, she tripped, face planted on the floor. Marinette groaned as she slowly lifted her now crimson red face, clearly being hurt by the bad fall.

Her parents scrunched their face, showing a pitied and hurt expression for their daughter. "Geez Marinette, be careful!" her Maman said while her Papa helped her up. Marinette gave out an embarrassed laugh and accepted the given help.

They headed out to the front door and locked it. There, outside, they saw their silver car waiting for them. Their chauffeur put Marinette's luggage in the trunk and they hopped in and rode to a white mansion.

Wait a minute, this place looks familiar... Marinette thought, squinting her eyes to get a clearer vision of the house. It took a while for her to remember what the mansion reminded her of, but it eventually came.

"The Agreste Mansion??!!"

#adrienette #adrinette #ml marinette #adrien x marinette #ml #miraculous marinette #miraculous ladybug #ml fic #ml fanfic #miraculous adrien #miraculous alya #miraculous nino #marinette dupain cheng #marinette deserves better #mlb #ml adrinette #ml adrien

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peachymess · 5 years

Text

On Eren

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Snk, you keep me up at night. It’s 7am and I can’t sleep. It just hurts too much. All the fears hitting me at once. I need the next chapter, just to further the in-verse present time. Yet at the same time, I can barely read another word or I might perish.

Listen, Eren might have had a very black-and white sort of tunnel vision all his life. He may always have been rash and headstrong and quick to decide what he deems as right and wrong. And he might come down on what he deems “injustice” very hard. But that’s not all there’s been to him. He’s also always cared about strangers in need, his friends, the freedom we’re all born with and deserve to have. He cries for people’s fates, he smiles at others’ joy.

He felt hate, yes, but he also felt love. I’m just gonna go ahead and pick a side. I refuse to accept that we’re meant to land on the far-evil side of his spectrum. If his plan is exactly what he says it is, I actually accept it as IC, because given Eren’s circumstances, we can understand what lead him to become this consumed with hate and misguided action. However, even so, I don’t think that’s where he’ll be by the end of this story. He’s swinging, and he’s gonna land somewhere closer to the middle. I’m not talking redeemed, I’m just talking understood and hopefully reawakened from his hate-consumed state - unless we’re just gonna have a straight up “this had to be done for best ending” twisteroo.

The thing is. If his plan is what he says it is, it’s nuts. But it’s *so* nuts that it’s... almost cartoony. Because not only do we get the plan like he says, it also means that the bleak as hell narrative Mikasa gave this chapter, is meant to be correct. Paraphrasing to a dangerous degree, we can sum it up like this: “Eren is a monster and I’m starting to realize he didn’t become one; he’s always been one”. This, canonized, would erase the weight of any smile, care and love Eren’s shown to give from earlier years. It would mean that beneath care for his friends and laughter at the dinner table, his thoughts and goals were so ugly and selfish that it even at that point outweighed the “shallow” good he projected into the world. Not only does that set the bar extremely low for what people we are meant to consider “evil”, but it also flips the script of the entire story to be one of hatred and fake beauty from start to finish. If we’re told Eren’s meant to be evil masked as good from the get-go, 1. If we accept it, every happy interaction looks empty and pointless as hell and strips the story of its stakes to some degree, or 2. We realize it honestly doesn’t fit because his “good” feelings being genuine is why entire plot points work and the story developed in the way it did.

What I’m trying to say is this: Mikasa’s temporary conclusion that Eren might have been a monster* all along, isn’t correct (and it’s meant to be seen as a wrong read imo). But if his plan is what he says it is, he IS one, thus her conclusion would be correct. Which it isn’t.

Side note: while I believe Eren’s plan and Mikasa’s conclusion need to coincide (plan true = M conclusion true VS plan fake = M conclusion fake), there is an argument to be had that Mikasa could be wrong about Eren always having been a monster while Eren still truly having become one by this point in time. But I don’t believe so. For instance: if Eren wasn’t a monster before but has become one now, Mikasa’s closing conclusion (him being one NOW) is still correct - but the reasoning/buildup used to arrive at that conclusion, is wrong. It would be like solving a mathematical problem incorrectly but arriving at the right answer by luck. She’s asking herself if, looking back, she can actually see the seeds of his true form, where she previously saw him through rose tainted goggles. But if he truly was a good boy before, it would be unfair (and a waste of time) to put on the table, a plot point that’s synthetically explained/constructed, when there is a true calculation/formula to the conclusion since (if) it’s correct. And the other way around, if her conclusion is right, but the plan is fake, the “monstrosity” she’s caused to reflect on, is fake to begin with, so how can she still be right he’s a monster?

So, back on track, I don’t feel like Eren is meant to end on this 100% villain note. His plan of genocide, his on-the-nose villain final titan face, PLUS Mikasa’s “sike, he’s ALWAYS been a monster”... it’s just too much evil. Especially for a story like SNK. It feels to me, like this is the “the night is darkest before the dawn” part of the story, where we go from “he’s a pure boy”** to “my god... no... he’s actually a demon boy, god help us”. Mikasa’s narrative says this, and Armin is having that exact themed melt-down when his desire to see Eren as good, physically stops being compatible with what he sees around him. They’re both so scared of acknowledging Eren’s flawed, that having to accept it, initially feels like a much bigger deal, a much longer fall from grace. So we swing with them, from one outer point to the other. Panic mode... but it won’t end there. It’s too cartoony, too black/white still. Looking back, the good times they shared, they were real. And the pain he’s later caused, is also real. But he’s not setting out to do damage for the sake of damage. He’s not evil to the core. I refuse to believe that’s what we’re meant to be left with at the end; redeemable or not, his goal isn’t pain. A lie is best wrapped in truths, and Isayama is fueling our own fear of Eren’s monstrous side by making us do callbacks to things in the past that could be seen as seeds of evil. And to a degree he’s right. Eren is violent. To be honest, it never say well with me how he killed those men at age nine. I understood the “the end justifies the means” aspect of it, and I think that’s why I was able to let it slide despite the discomfort. Yet it never quite... fell to rest. A nine year old being able to stab other humans to death with no remorse and such violent words... should a nine year old child be able to do that, even if it’s for the greater good? I’m sure I’m not alone. And Isayama intended it this way, to be able to do this callback. It spreads uncertainty. You start to buy into it... Becayse it’s true to some degree: it’s messed up. Your regular kid couldn’t do something like that... But it’s not proof that Eren is evil through and through. It’s just presented in such a way that it makes for a compelling argument. And in the heat of the moment, it provides the “holy shit fuck” the story needs to make the stakes as severe as possible. Taking a step back, I refuse to believe it’s a true revelation, but an intensional gaslighting of his person, presented so we’ll swallow the bait. Eren having always been a monster incubating, is too cartoony to be the final note.

So the question becomes: is the plan true or false? Depending on the answer, we’ll have three different proceedings. In neither scenario, he’s means to be the evil monster he’s seen as right now, though. If the plan is true, he’s become this way through being misguided and lost in perpetual hate and pain caused by all the knowledge and visions. With this backdrop, EMA/SC will have to either take him out despite realizing/finding out the pain that corrupted him - so not hating him but having to end him all the same. Or, they manage to win through to him by countering the hate with love (he could still die though, we might be past the point of no return, ngl).

On the other hand, if Eren’s been playing the long game and about to throw them for a loop, the cast members will all learn this in time and come to accept the bittersweet outcome that after all will be the best ending they can ask for in a world with so much hate. Eren can still die, I’m not delusional (but here’s hoping he won’t).

*when I use the term “monster” - and “evil”/“villain” - I’m pinning that to a personality that intends harm with the end goal of harm. Just because he’s not a monster (if this turns out to be the case), that doesn’t mean he isn’t still in the wrong, antagonistic, irredeemable for actions done in the name of good, etc. This ramble meta is about Eren being a conscious agent of pain versus a bringer of pain yet an agent of “good” (not considering his performance as an agent of such).

**He was already tainted from the attack in Liberio, so while I say “pure boy”, I mean in terms of us/the characters still seeing him as originally good (possibly - but “I refuse to believe it” - bad).

Edit: while I say at the start that if the plan is true, he’s a monster, and later say it could be true and he’s still not a monster for it, what I mean is this: if the plan is true in the sense that he knows how evil and selective it is, and will fight for it till the end, then yes, he turned out to be the monster that Mikasa correctly realized him to be. If, on the other hand, erens goal isn’t the pain but the greater good, he’s a misguided “good boy” who caused more bad than good out of mistake. If this is the case, I also believe he will realize it before the end, to swing that morality pendulum back towards the middle. Hope that clears it up. It’s about intent.

Thus concludes my late night/early morning rambles. I’ve said it before, I’m fine with anyone calling me a naive idiot for still holding out hope, but I’m just not accepting that Eren going full Satan and us accepting that “surprise, he always was Satan” is what Isayama wants to leave us with.

Isayama say sike right now.

#snk #snk 123 #eren yeager #snk meta #snk 123 meta #’you never go full retard’ to quote a good movie lol #save me jesus

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nazariolahela · 5 years

Text

Something Domestic: Chapter 3

A/N: Hey y'all! This is a new TRR AU I’ve been working on. This story is told in first-person narrative, from Riley’s (MC) POV. There will likely be smidges of canon in this, but not too much. Thanks for reading, and please leave feedback, and/or if you would like to be tagged.

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Synopsis: When Riley Brooks takes a new job as a nanny for the affluent Rhys family in New York’s Upper East Side, she assumes she’s just going to care for the children of the couple who hired her. But instead of just school pick-ups and afternoon snacks, she also finds herself spending time with Liam, the handsome divorced dad. Can Riley control her feelings for Liam while still performing the job she was hired for?

All characters are the property of Pixelberry Studios. Thanks for allowing me to borrow them.

Chapter Summary: Riley and Hana discuss the new changes in their lives.

As the cab pulls up outside of Nomade, I spot Hana leaning up against the side of the building. She’s dressed in black leggings and a denim jacket over a purple A-Line tunic. Her brown hair is twisted in a side braid that rests on her left shoulder. Tendrils fall across her face as she taps on her phone screen. Looking at the door to the restaurant, I notice there’s no line. That’s good for a Friday afternoon, considering people line up around the block to eat here.

Hana and I prefer the lunch menu because it’s cheaper and less crowded. The one time we came here for dinner, we had to wait two and a half hours for a table, and our tab was almost $300. I tip the driver and exit the cab, bounding across the sidewalk to my roommate and best friend. She giggles as she sees me and scoops me into a bone-crushing hug.

“Hey, girl! You’ll never guess who just emailed me!”

“Who?” I ask. Her parents Xinghai and Lorelai are well-known in the New York social scene, so it could literally be anyone.

“I’ll tell you when we get inside,” she says and links her arm through mine as we make our way into the restaurant. Typical Hana. Always keeping people in suspense. When we reach the host station, her phone buzzes. She quickly pulls it out of her purse and glances at it, rolls her eyes, then shoves it back in her purse.

“What was that all about?” I eye her.

She sighs. “Oh, just some weirdo my parents are trying to set me up with. Neville Vancoeur or something,” she waves her hand dismissively. “My mother gave me her famous ‘When are you going to settle down, Hana? You’re not getting any younger and I want grandchildren,’ spiel last week, so now they’re aggressively playing matchmaker.”

Hana and I met freshman year at NYU Steinhardt. With both of us being education majors, we ended up having a lot of classes together and spent way too many late nights cramming during our study sessions in the library. After graduation, we both realized rent in this city is impossible to afford if you’re not a Rockefeller, so we rented an apartment together and have been roomies ever since. Hana got a job student-teaching music at Stormholt Middle School, and she also gives piano lessons one Saturday a month to a rich family in the city.

Her parents are something else. I’ve only met them once, but they make me glad I don’t have much of a relationship with mine. They feel she’s better suited to be a wife and a mother than an educator. It makes me angry for her because she’s so much more than that. She doesn’t need to marry some stuffy guy who probably skated his way through business school on daddy’s money and pop out his crotch goblins to do something meaningful with her life. She’s also mentioned to me many times that she’s into girls, so all this effort to set her up with some preppy trust-fund douche from East Hampton is a waste. Jokes on you Mom and Dad Lee.

I giggle as the hostess arrives from seating another customer. “Good afternoon, ladies. Table for two?”

We answer and she grabs two menus before motioning for us to follow her. When we arrive at our table, she informs us our server will be with us shortly and walks away.

“Okay, so tell me who emailed you,” I say to her as I unroll my napkin and place it in my lap. She looks up at me, her eyes beaming.

“Do you remember that benefit dinner we went to a few months ago? You know, the one for New York educators, where we drank our weight in Lemon Drop martinis?”

I smirk recalling that evening. The bits and pieces I remember, Hana lost one of her shoes and spent the better part of the evening showing everyone on the dancefloor the “proper way” to perform a pirouette.

“Well, I do remember you taking over the dance floor and me going home with that cute bartender. What was his name again? Daniel?”

“Oh my god!” she replies, laughing and slapping my forearm. “I can’t believe you don’t remember his name!”

We giggle as our server approaches our table to take our drink orders. I order a glass of white wine and Hana orders a Sangria. When the server leaves, we resume our conversation.

“So anyway,” she continues, “that night, I was talking to one of the ladies who works in the music department at Valtoria High School, and apparently there were rumors their music teacher was planning to retire. So, after we exchanged information, she passed it along to the school board, and they just emailed me asking me if I was interested in a job!”

My eyebrows shoot up to my forehead. “And?”

“And...I think I’m going to take it!”

I jump up from my seat and move around the table to wrap her in a hug. “Oh my God, Hana! That’s amazing!” She laughs as I give her a congratulatory squeeze. Hana has been trying to get a position with Valtoria High since we graduated. It has one of the top music programs in the city, and the waitlist is insanely long. Most of the teachers there have tenure, so not many positions open up unless someone quits, retires, or dies. Hana securing a position on the teaching staff will not only get her parents off her back but also open up so many doors for her. Her dream is to eventually start her own music school where she can teach music to kids of all social and economic statuses.

We return to our seats as our drinks arrive and the waitress takes our lunch order. After she leaves, Hana turns to me. “So, enough about me. Tell me about the new nanny job.”

I smile. “The interview went really well. I met the family I’ll be working for. They seem really nice and I’m excited to get the opportunity to work with them. My first day with them is Monday. The pay is pretty great, plus, the children seem very well-behaved. Nothing like the last family I worked for. The mother comes off a bit cold, but she seems pretty easy to work for. At least I don’t have to worry about her micromanaging everything I do.”

“Uh-huh. And what about the father?”

I whip out my phone and google “Liam Rhys” to show her a picture of him. After scrolling past links to his company and click-baity articles from the local tabloids, I pull up a photo of him and his older brother from a few years ago. I hand the phone to her. She glances at it, her eyes wide.

“Oh wow...Riley… That’s Liam Rhys,” she says, warily.

“Yeah. What about it?”

She shakes her head and hands the phone back to me. “Nothing, it’s just his family is very well known throughout the city, as well as in the tabloids. Not to mention, he’s extremely attractive, so you need to be careful.”

I cross my arms over my chest. “What are you trying to say, Hana?”

Her face turns serious. “You’re a wonderful person, Riley. I read those tabloids, and I see what they say about the nannies of public figures like him. I don’t want your name dragged through the mud because you were photographed staring too hard at Liam.”

“It will be fine, Hana. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I remember what happened with Ben Affleck’s nanny. And Gavin Rossdale’s nanny. And Jude Law’s nanny”

“Those men were also sleeping with their nannies while they were still married. Even if it gets that far, he’s getting divorced. We wouldn’t be doing anything wrong.”

“The public won’t see it that way. They’ll blame you for the split. Just be careful.”

I nod, taking her words seriously. Our waitress returns with our meals and we dig in. We spend the rest of the meal gossiping about our friends from college; who’s working where, who’s getting married, who got arrested, and so forth. After the check arrives, we pay our tabs and gather our things to head out. As we exited the restaurant, Hana turns to me and grabs my arm turning my body toward hers.

“Hey. I just wanted to let you know that I’m here if you need anything. Please don’t forget that.”

I smiled and wrap her in a hug. “I know. Don’t think that I won’t take your words to heart. I know what I’m getting myself into with the Rhys family, and I appreciate you looking out for me.”

“Of course, that’s what besties do.” Her phone chimes inside her purse. She releases me and reaches into her purse to retrieve it. She frowns then slides it back into her purse. “I’d ask you if you wanted to head over to The Double Tappe for a drink, but my mom wants me to come over. I’ll see you back at the apartment?”

“You bet. I think I’m going to head over to the Northbridge Mall and buy some new outfits for my new job.”

She laughs and wraps me up in another hug. “‘Kay. Call me later,” she says before turning and walking down the sidewalk. I wave goodbye and take off in the opposite direction. As I stroll down the street, I walk past a magazine stand. There on the rack is the latest issue of Trend the receptionist was reading earlier. I pull a $5 from my purse, and set it on the counter, before picking up a copy of the magazine. After thanking the cashier, I slip the magazine in my bag and continue walking until I reach the bus stop on the corner. When the bus arrives, I step on, flash my Transit Pass, and take a seat near the front. I settle in and pull the magazine out to read up on my new employers.

The article shows pictures of Liam, Madeleine, and the kids at the park. The kids look adorable playing with their father and each other. Madeleine is sitting on a bench, her nose in her phone, wearing her usual resting bitch face. I swear, that woman never smiles. Then, there’s Liam. The butterflies in my stomach start fluttering at the sight of him playing with his children. The cutlines on the photos mention how happy he looks to be spending the day away from work with his kids, but I don’t need to read it. I can see it in his face.

Despite his notoriety here in New York, he’s still a man that is devoted to his family. It’s a shame his soon-to-be ex-wife, couldn’t see that. Stop it, Riley. Their relationship is none of your business. But it is, though. Now that I’m working for their family, their business is my business. Which means I have to keep my mouth shut about what happens behind closed doors. I’d hate to lose my job because I told someone something, who told someone else, who leaked it to the press.

I read on and catch myself staring at the pictures of him. It’s unfair how good looking he is. The fact that he is a doting dad makes him that much sexier. My cheeks flush as I imagine sitting at the park with him and the children. In my fantasy, I’m sitting on a picnic blanket, a wicker basket full of snacks and drinks, while he chases Philip and Charlotte around the grass. After they tire themselves out, they wander over and I pass out juice boxes and crackers. Liam comes up behind them, smiling. When he reaches me, he kneels on the blanket, takes me in his arms, and presses the most sensual kiss to my lips.

The squealing of the bus’s breaks rips me from my little daydream and I shove the magazine in my purse. Nope. Not going there. I exhale loudly and stare out the window as the bus continues down the street. Oh man, I’m in big trouble.

#trr au #trr fanfic #liam rhys #madeleine karlington #riley brooks #the royal romance #playchoices fanfic #something domestic #nanny au #nazariolahela fanfic

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theclaravoyant · 5 years

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AN ~ This fic is called “Catharsis” not just on the characters’ behalves, but on mine. I am planning another more nuanced, narrative-integrated exploration of some of these themes but in the moment when I started writing this I kinda Went Off at biphobia. Kevin was the vessel for my protectiveness... and Julia Diaz unfortunately copped the unflattering role of Every I’m-Not-Homophobic-But person I’ve ever met. This is for you grandma :)))))

NOW ON AO3 (~2400wd)

Warnings: This fic has a happy/uplifting ending (*jake peralta voice* I CATHARTED) but it does deal with themes of homophobia and biphobia, including a reference to AIDS. If you would like to know more detail about the fic’s contents before diving in, message me and I’m happy to chat.

Prompt: 4. “I know you didn’t ask for this.”

Fandom: Brooklyn 99 - featuring Rosa Diaz, Kevin Cozner, Julia Diaz, Jake Peralta, with background Holt x Kevin and Rosa x Jocelyn.

Rated: T

Tags: Platonic Relationships, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, Biphobia, AIDS reference.

Catharsis

“Rosa?”

She knew that voice. She ignored it.

“Rosa, mi niña…”

She glared at her report. Corrected a typo with an aggressive stab at the keyboard.

“Uh, excuse me, Detective Diaz?”

She gritted her teeth, and forced her lips into a wide twist on a hospitable smile. In an overly sweet tone that bristled for all to hear, she invited –

“Detective Peralta, can you assist Mrs Diaz please?”

“Uhh. Sure.”

Jake looked uncertainly between Rosa and her mother, but stepped forward. Rosa knew when she needed protecting and if this was one of those times then he would offer what he could. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through, after she and her mother had tried to talk about it again and had come to another explosive loggerhead. Still, he was not too sure of his place in all this. He wanted to give Julia a good scolding, but given that she was Rosa’s mother it probably wouldn’t be intimidating in the slightest by comparison. Plus, he had to remind himself, it was probably not his place. Rosa could scold her own mother. And now he was getting side-tracked.

“How can I help you, Mrs Diaz?”

Fortunately, the fact that Julia was still very keen on watching her daughter and apparently cared very little about Jake’s question, or presence at all, became side-tracked all on its own when the elevator doors opened and the newly-demoted Officer Holt arrived back from lunch with Kevin. It was not exactly a daily occurrence, but not irregular around these parts; still, the squad usually would have clamoured all over them for the day’s instalment of juicy wedding-planning gossip were it not for the never-before-seen Diaz family throwdown emanating a distracting amount of tension in the middle of the room.

At first the newcomers were unfazed, and Kevin opened the gate to the bull pen and gestured – with an arm full of flowers and a tiny but glowing smile - for Raymond to proceed him through. They would have happily continued in this distracted bliss, letting the team resolve whatever drama was going down, were it not for the fact that the lilies in Kevin’s arms and the slightest brush of his hand against Raymond’s arm as he passed made the two of them suddenly relevant to said drama.

It started small, just a little – Jake would have had to call it a wince, from Julia. She kind of, curled up her nose a bit, and Jake was reminded of the time he’d punched his former literary hero in the face.

Do not. Punch. Rosa’s. Mother, he commanded of himself, and of course he wasn’t going to, but after dinner and games night and the fight about Jocelyn and knowing the reason for no cop talk at parties and seeing how things like that sneer infected the lives of his friends, he couldn’t just stand there, and so it slipped out – his place or not -

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Julia baulked. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate for a workplace, that’s all.”

“What?” Jake frowned. Why did this keep surprising him?

“What?”

Rosa’s version was not so much confused, as cold. It was sharp – near ruthless. All the fear and pain and seething she had felt etched into her these past few months she spat into her words as she got up from her desk and stalked around it, closer to her mother.

“They’re coming back from a date,” she growled. “Kevin is Holt’s husband. They’ve been together for thirty years.”

Julia at least had the sense to look impressed by this, which quelled the biting fury and the stinging sense of rejection inside Rosa, if only a little. She shouldn’t need to shove wholesome couple after wholesome couple down her mother’s throat for her to get it, but at least it was something. At least it was something. She swallowed, and prayed that this would be over quickly. Of course, it wouldn’t. Not least because the next thing her mother said made her want to start digging a pit to the centre of the earth and never return.

“Well, that makes sense, dear. They were probably the only two left.”

“Ex-cuse me?” Holt interjected.

“Mom, oh my god,” Rosa protested, her stomach churning.

“IIIII don’t understand enough about what’s going on here to be standing where I’m standing,” Jake babbled, because he’d somehow ended up in an uncomfortably prominent position in a very tense, angry circle of Strong Feelings. He scurried out of the way, back behind some desks, and half expected Holt and Rosa to leap into the space he’d left and go after Julia like it was some kind of cage match.

But no.

It was Kevin.

Cool, calm, collected Kevin who was just starting to bristle around the edges and who had a sharpness to his glare, and to his tongue, that anyone in the room besides perhaps Holt would be hard pressed to say they’d ever seen in him before. Jake had. When they were being hunted by Sean Murphy, and Kevin had been trying and failing to protect his husband.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Mrs – Diaz, is it?”

She knew she was in for something, but nodded.

“I’m sure you understand that I don’t appreciate your making light of my relationship,” he continued. “Nor of a very serious disease that took several of Raymond’s and my friends away from us a very young age. Many younger, if I may point out, than Detective Diaz there.”

“I’m so sorry,” Julia apologised, and it could not be said that any part of that was faked. She just hadn’t thought of it quite like that. But the thought of her little girl succumbing to such a horrible disease only made her throat close up and her fears feel more prickly and urgent and intense. “I didn’t mean any offence. You can’t choose who you are.”

“Perhaps not,” Kevin rebutted, “but if I could, I like to believe that I would choose Raymond every time, and he me.”

Julia blinked. “You wouldn’t want to have a family?”

“Raymond is my family.”

“But… wouldn’t it be easier… I mean, if you liked both, wouldn’t being with a woman be easier?”

“Not always. For example, not all women would feel comfortable with the fact that I also enjoyed the company of men.”

There was a beat of eye contact between them, and Julia cleared her throat.

“…Well,” she said, somewhat quieter this time. “You wouldn’t have to tell anyone.”

Rosa wrapped her arms around herself, under the guise of crossed arms. The mask of irritation she had put up began to crack as she replayed the argument with her mother in her mind. It was Jocelyn that her mother couldn’t take seriously; it was always she’s a nice girl, but, like Rosa failed to grasped the concept of settling down. It was always nice, always compliments, so it was hard to explain how much it hurt. Few people in the room knew how that felt. Jake, at least, took note of the tears that were starting to burn her eyes, and shuffled a little closer to her. He was still a whole desk away but somehow she breathed a little easier at that.

Then Kevin met her eyes.

He had been about to turn back; to retreat from a conversation that was deeply uncomfortable and that might not be his place. He wanted nothing more in this moment than to shut himself in Raymond’s office – or even better, their home – and forget he’d ever poked this particular bear.

Then, across the circle, he’d seen her.

He’d seen Rosa, and her arms across her chest, the sheen of tears in her eyes as she tried to look neither away from, nor directly at the scene in front of her.

In her, he saw himself, in church, as a boy. He saw himself, in class, as a student, learning about Achilles and Patroclus and knowing he couldn’t say what he was thinking. He saw himself at his brother’s wedding, looking out at the crowd of people that had gathered to celebrate and wondering – knowing, at the time, or so it had felt – that such a crowd would never turn out for him.

And perhaps it was the fact that he and Raymond had just come back from booking the florist for a ceremony he’d once thought impossible, that sent a pain careering through Kevin’s chest like an arrow. It certainly did not help matters that they’d just started putting together the guest list and seating chart for the wedding, and his father was not on it. And worst of all, was the acute sense of bitterness that he remembered all too well, that had tainted his father’s last breath, when he had told Kevin that he loved him for the first, the last, and the only time since the day he’d come out.

He had tears in his eyes by the time he turned his attention back to Julia. She glanced between him, and over her shoulder at Rosa. There was something between these two, that much she understood. Could the gay thing really run that deep?

“Mrs Diaz,” Kevin said, and it was clearly taking a lot to keep his voice steady. Julia turned back to him, solemn and intrigued as he took a deep breath and spoke – not only on his own behalf, but on her daughter’s as well.

“I know you didn’t ask for this,” he said. “But your daughter is trying to share something with you that is very important to her. She is trying the best she can to share her life with you. It might be difficult to understand but please, please believe that the love you feel for your husband – that is the same love she is capable of feeling. Maybe for a woman. Maybe even for Jocelyn. That’s all she’s trying to tell you. And you should listen. And you should treasure her with all your heart. Because I know for a fact how it feels when that revelation comes too late.”

He let it land, and all of a sudden his knees felt weak beneath him. He marched past Raymond and out of the bull pen into the lift before the shock of what he’d just done could wear off enough to collapse him.

The others watched him go: most were baffled by his unusually vivid emotiveness, but Rosa for one was grateful. Jake hugged himself a little tighter; protectiveness over his friends warring with crappy-dad sympathy to make one super uncomfortable feelings-cocktail. Julia was a little hurt, a little stunned, a little intrigued. Holt, as per usual, took the unusual turn of events in his stride. He held up a wrist and explained:

“Kevin’s father gave me this watch the day he died. After twenty-two years of not tolerating my presence in his home, he apologised, and he wished us luck.” Luck. He snorted. “My father died when I was younger, before I met Kevin, but my mother has always loved and supported me - every part of me, and of the two of us – and believe me when I say I would not be where I am without that love and support. Do not underestimate your power.”

Julia nodded. Maybe, just maybe, it was starting to sink in.

“I know you love your daughter very much, Mrs Diaz,” Holt continued, a little more gently now – but only a little - “and she loves you. It would be a shame to let that go to waste. But I’m sure you know that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m needed elsewhere.”

He gave Julia a pointed stare before exiting the bull pen to track down and comfort Kevin.

Julia took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. If nothing else, it was comforting to know that her daughter had a very protective group of friends and colleagues. And the passion with which they all spoke about each other. And the watch…

When Rosa had walked out on her, Julia had feared for just a second, that her daughter might never speak to her again. It had been one of the most frightening moments of her life, and though it had passed blissfully quickly at the time, she couldn’t help but reflect on it now. And on Holt’s words. And on the gaping wounds their arguments seemed to leave in her. She was only trying to love her daughter, to want what was best for her. But if she stayed on this path, this dark future of bitterness and grief, how could that possibly be better? Wouldn’t she prefer to see her daughter carry herself with pride, smile at the one she loved, open the door for them and carry the bouquet they’d presented her and brush arms with subtle love on their return from a lunch date?

Julia turned to face her daughter, to find her midway through wiping tears from her face.

“I love you, mi niña,” she whispered. “And if Jocelyn makes you happy – then I am happy for you. And I’m going to try harder to understand.”

“Okay,” Rosa said, her voice wobbling dangerously. She cleared her throat. “And yeah. Jocelyn does make me happy. I dunno about marrying her yet but. You know. We’ll see I guess.”

Short sentences. Still not quite crying. Nailing it.

Fortunately, that was part of her daughter that her mother did understand, or at least was used to. She did not push Rosa for more, simply picked up her handbag.

“I got a new extension to Trivial Pursuit,” she said. “Your father and I would love to play it this Friday if you’re available. Bring your friends, of course - or perhaps… Jocelyn?”

Sick and dizzy as she felt at the barrage of emotion, Rosa’s stomach flipped. She was lucky she was not a naturally smiley person, or she might just have given herself away because all of a sudden her heart was screaming IT’S ALL I EVER WANTED, which was of course, an exaggeration, but after months and months of the most awful tension of her life it was like falling away like a mudslide. Is this what relief felt like?

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

Julia nodded, and took her leave.

#fictober19 #rosa diaz #kevin cozner #brooklyn 99 #b99fic #holt x kevin #rosa x jocelyn #b99squad #clara's fic tag #homophobia #biphobia

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fantasyresident · 5 years

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My Review For Pokemon Sword and Shield (Spoiler-Free)

The road to Sword and Shield could be considered interesting to say the least. Shit hit the fan with everyone’s accusations, complaints, and grievances before the game even came out. Death threats, fake leaks, ridiculous critics, you name it. As a dedicated Pokemon fan, I saw huge potential with Sword and Shield, and I have officially completed Shield just a couple days ago. Reviews from official critics like IGN and Gamespot mainly praise the game giving it scores of 9.3 and 9 respectively. But then others off to the side of these major critics are saying the game “isn’t worth the $60″. I can say after playing the game myself to its completion (plus some) that the game is definitely in my view worth the money. I will break down my opinions of these entries by categories of Mechanics (how well the game works, how much gameplay there is, and how valuable the gameplay aspects are) Story (how good and effective the plot of the game is) Characters (how good the characters within the plot are) Dialogue (how good the writing of the game is) and Visuals (how good the game looks from a visual perspective). Here I go.

Mechanics: (9.1/10)

Sword and Shield is jam-packed with excellent features and gameplay elements to endlessly enjoy. The new Pokemon Camp feature is the best, most interactive way of playing and building your friendship with your Pokemon. The curry cooking is very simple, but it is more interactive then just giving a floating PokePuff or Bean to a Pokemon and having them chew it slowly right in front of you only to give it yet another one until they cannot eat anymore. You can throw a ball to have your Pokemon play fetch with you, speak to your Pokemon, and have them play with the little wand toy. While you cannot pet your Pokemon like in the past, the new features feels so fresh and even just watching your favorite Pokemon interact on their own is a worthy replacement for old systems like Amie and Refresh. Aside from Camping, the Gym Challenge was by far one of the best features. Gyms actually for the first time ever felt like full-fledged Gyms. Each Gym has their own special challenge in the beginning, and each one helped diversify the experience rather than tossing you into a room with randomly arranged trainers and the Gym Leader standing at the end waiting for you to get through the maze. I particularly loved Allister’s Gym Challenge, but every one of the challenges was a fun light-hearted experience. Many nuisances from the game that lingered in the past main titles have been removed, like no longer having to farm heart scales just to experiment with different move sets, having a Pokeball throwing shortcut, having a name rater posted in every Pokemon center, and many other quality of life improvements. The only problem I find with the mechanics of the game is the pop-ins. NPCs (ones that move from place to place), wild Pokemon, and berry trees all have their pop-in moments in the game. As you approach them, they come into view normally from a mid-range distance, and fade away again if you get too far away. This isn’t a huge deal when it comes to the experience as a whole, but it did slightly rob from the otherwise fresh Wild Area experience considering the pop-ins are the worst there. Lagging while online in the Wild Area is also a slight problem, but not too persistent of a problem.

Story: (8.5/10)

The story of Shield very much reminded me of the Pokemon anime in a sense (Swords being no different other than Pokemon variations). The narrative mainly focuses on the lovable and colorful cast of characters rather than a constantly changing dynamic plot. The plot is pretty big (not a Dynamax pun I swear), but it’s mainly told through your trainer character’s perspective, so the secrets of the unfolding plot occur through the perspectives of the adult figures, which you eventually see around the end. It’s not a complex story, but I found it to be very solid, kind of like a Pokemon movie. The characters carry the story along smoothly, and it’s a nice “save the world” Pokemon plot. There’s not a bunch of lore for the region, but what lore is explained is very suitable for the Galar region and I found it to be pretty interesting. I feel like the ending wraps up a little quicker than in usual Pokemon games, but the post-game story helps to finalize things even if it contains two very weird parodical characters. I think the point of the game’s plot is timely (for a reason I cannot elaborate upon for non-spoiler purposes, but to anyone who finishes it, you may know what I mean). I feel like it really connects with a real-world issue that the world is facing currently. Additionally, the story’s presentation was handled very well in most parts, I really liked the mid-battle cutscenes and the scripted battles that remind me of classic RPGs. While I don’t think the plot of Sword and Shield beats the darker dynamic plot of Sun and Moon, it’s good and solid all the same.

Characters: (10/10)

As I briefly mentioned in the story segment of this review, the characters are some of the biggest stars of this game. Each Gym leader stands out and have their own little backstory. These backstories aren’t told through cutscenes, but you can read their biographies on the back of their League cards which I thought was a good way of telling us more information about the Gym Leaders than we got with them in the past titles. Gym Leaders are normally just treated like pretty designs and then thrown away by the post game. Sword and Shield however puts each of them in the spotlight more and they all get some time to shine. The designs for the characters themselves I find to be particularly amazing. Personally, Piers, the long awaited Dark-type Gym Leader was my favorite, but every single one of them had something interesting in store. Aside from Gym Leaders, memorable characters like Marnie, Bede, Sonia and Leon really help liven and enrich the experience. I felt really invested in these characters, and when I feel that invested in the characters of a video game, I consider them a smashing success.

***ADDITIONAL NOTE***

I neglected to mention the most important characters to any Pokemon game: the Pokemon themselves! The designs of the Galar Pokemon and Galar forms are breathtaking. I love the vast majority of them and there’s very few that I think little of. The designs are themed and look very creative, I really loved the art direction for this generation’s Pokedex.

Dialogue: (9/10)

With the new Galar region, inspired off of the UK, the dialogue is bound to change. A lot of British slang is slipped in which was enjoyable even if I wasn’t familiar with some of it. Each character seemed to have their own way of speaking and I liked this individuality in dialogue. Nothing any of the main characters say seems off-putting, so I’d say the dialogue is in a very good place for a Pokemon game. It is a game that’s marketed for younger audiences, but it does a good job of not making you feel like a baby (something that prior titles also done a good job with), so the dialogue is consistently good for any audience. Some lines could be improved perhaps or less generic, but nothing stands out to me as an issue with dialogue, so I’d say the writing is pretty on-spot.

Visuals: (9.4/10)

This is perhaps one of the most controversial parts of these games, with many complaining about reused models, trees looking badly textured, and the game looking like just an “upscaled 3DS game”. While I do agree that the Wild Area trees are terrible-looking upon close inspection, I by no means view this game as just an “upscaled 3DS game”. The visuals of Sword and Shield are by far the greatest the series has to offer, with town areas and dungeons looking absolutely superb. Some critics think that the graphics need a dynamic change, but I couldn’t disagree more. Graphics are a subjective thing until you’re delaing with something like the textures of the game (like the trees.) If fans don’t like the Pokemon style, they shouldn’t be playing the games anymore. Sword and Shield mastered the style the franchise should have with the very interesting, beautifully rendered areas like the Glimwood Tangle and Ballonlea. I found these areas and others to be breathtaking upon first seeing them and I just really adored the look of these games. As for the character models, (the people and the Pokemon) they look just fine. They’re not the biggest upgrade, but they fit in well with the rest of the game’s style, so no problems in that department. If you are to find graphical flaws that aren’t only subjective, they can be found in the Wild Area. The trees and some ground textures (near water in particular) are a bit blurred and wonky. But then you gaze upon the surroundings as a whole and it looks quite nice. The lighting looks incredible in many areas, and I just found myself in awe of just about anything I was looking at. As for the animations, there are some new incredible animations (like Cinderace’s Pyro Ball) and many well-polished animations. There are however some of the same-old animations that didn’t work and still don’t work like double kick and tail whip. Overall, the visuals are extremely nice and just what I’d expect from a next-gen Pokemon game.

My Verdict:

Pokemon Sword and Shield was an exciting new adventure that brought me back to the old days of playing Pokemon, only without all the nuisance problems that once plagued the fun of the experience. This game reminded me of what it was like to wholeheartedly enjoy a new adventure with new lovable partners. The graphics and mechanics are beyond refreshing, even if some areas could be better polished. The narrative isn’t as wide as Gen 7′s, but it’s as solid as I’d expect a Pokemon story to get while not straying too far from the roots of what makes them good to begin with. At the end of the day, experiencing Galar was without a doubt worth the $60 price tag, and the memories gained from the experience is even more priceless.

Final Score: 9.2/10 👍

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peterstanslizzie · 5 years

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Re-watching Lizzie Mcguire: Episode 1.19 (Gordo and the Girl)

I wish Kyla Pratt had guest starred in more episodes. But hey, maybe she can come back as Brooke in the new series next year?

- We kick things off at the Digital Bean; Lizzie and Miranda are talking about how excited they are for their own Scary Movie marathon. However, they are bummed about Gordo not being with them because he needs to spend some time bonding with his dad.

- They reflect on their own bonding experiences with their dads and they weren’t exactly pleasant with either of them. Suddenly, they spot Gordo with a girl named Brooke Baker (played by the Proud Family’s Kyla Pratt) sitting at their own table and looking really comfortable with one another.

I’ve said in my recent episode reviews that Gordo is low-key girl crazy; So, it’s about time he goes on dates

- Miranda accurately suspects he’s on a date with Brooke. Lizzie doesn’t see it that way because she believes he would have told them about it. And just as they are about to approach Gordo, the two of them lock lips!

Gordo’s best friends are clearly stunned at what they just witnessed

Problems At School

- At the Mcguire home, the kids are having breakfast side by side and they are both quiet and oddly in-sync with one another. Their parents, Sam and Jo notice this and decide to take action.

- Jo asks Lizzie why she’s feeling down but Lizzie doesn’t want to say a word and just walks away before she could question her more. For Sam, things are a lot smoother with Matt because he straight away tells him all the problems he’s facing in school like not having a clue as to what’s going on in Math class. Sam tells Matt that he will help him with his homework after school and things are pretty much resolved. Well, boys at Matt’s age are easier to deal with compared to teen girls.

- We are taken to Biology class and Lizzie is partnered up with Gordo to dissect an octopus. Gordo is straight up lying to Lizzie about his date with Brooke but he does it so well. He is masterfully able to come up with a smooth narrative confidently on what he did with his dad the night before.

- The next thing you know, a random girl passes a note to Gordo and it’s from Brooke! She wants him to come over to her table but Lizzie desperately wants him to stay because she doesn’t want to dissect an octopus alone.

Relax Lizzie! Gordo will only be gone for awhile. Plus, shouldn’t you know what to do? Don’t tell me you’re making Gordo do everything for you?

Gordo’s Date

- Lizzie and Miranda are having lunch at the outdoor cafeteria and they are discussing about what happened with Gordo in the lab. Miranda says that people at school are gossiping about their supposed relationship.

“I feel like I’m in a dream where everyone wants to kiss my frog”. This line is definitely memorable to me. Also, it’s kinda clear that Lizzie is a little jealous that Gordo likes somebody else.

- They just can’t believe that Gordo is somebody’s boyfriend because they always see him as their guy best friend. But shouldn’t they know he’s girl crazy too? I mean, he’s bound to have a girlfriend one day. Gordo approaches the two and informs them he’s helping out a friend (a.k.a. Brooke) with their homework. Like I said, he’s an excellent liar.

- Lizzie is trying to give Miranda the benefit of the doubt. She thinks that Gordo is just friends with Brooke and Brooke might be using him for her own benefit. The kiss that happened yesterday was a legit one; There’s no denying that.

Lizzie Isn’t Sure If She Likes Gordo

- Lizzie tells Miranda that she would be devastated if Miranda ends up dating somebody but doesn’t tell her anything. Maybe Lizzie isn’t only jealous about Gordo liking another girl but she’s afraid that her friends will abandon her once they are partnered up. Well, that’s just reality sweetheart lol

- Anyways, Miranda thinks that Brooke really likes Gordo because he’s “different” and that’s why she “likes him”. When she said that, Lizzie’s face lights up and asks her if she actually likes him likes him. Miranda straight up says “no” and asks the same question to Lizzie. She hesitates answering the question, which tells us viewers she does like him in that sense.

This is I believe, the first moment in the series where we got a strong hint that Lizzie likes Gordo

- Gordo shows up and Lizzie confesses to him that they saw him with Brooke at the Digital Bean. She even tells him she’s concerned about Brooke possibly using him for the wrong reasons because she’s friends with Claire Miller and doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell them about his relationship.

- Gordo is clearly offended by everything she’s saying because he really likes Brooke and he doesn’t like how his friends are telling him that her feelings for him is false. I agree with Gordo; He’s only been dating Brooke for like maybe less than a week and they can’t just expect him to tell them everything so soon!

A Hot Date With Gordo

- I assume a few days had gone by with Lizzie and Miranda not being on speaking terms with Gordo. They overhear Claire talking about Brooke’s upcoming “hot date” with someone at an Italian restaurant called the Holy Rigatoni. Lizzie doesn’t want to wrap her mind around the fact that the hot date is Gordo. To make matters worse, she thinks Brooke is cheating on him.

- Lizzie and Miranda come up with a plan to convince Gordo that they are finally supportive of his new relationship but they are so awkward in their execution, especially Lizzie. It’s hard for them to get onboard with a relationship they don’t believe in the first place.

- There’s only one way for them to approach this: Spy on Brooke and her mystery date and catch her cheating on Gordo. They are about to be so wrong on this one...

- We skip to date night at the restaurant. Lizzie and Miranda are spying on Brooke and her date, which is clearly Gordo. Before I continue, I need to know why does Miranda need to be dressed up as a dude. Is it really necessary? Do they think that only ‘couples’ or ‘straight couples’ can get tables at this joint?

Poor Miranda! I can’t believe she’s letting Lizzie ask her to do this. But hey, this proves to us that Miranda is a great friend to have!

- The guy who’s with Brooke (Gordo) gets up and heads into the men’s bathroom. Lizzie asks Miranda to follow him and check out who this person is. Miranda, the ‘dude’ or should I say Mirando enter the men’s room hesitantly. Yikes! She’s gonna be mortified by the things she’s about to see in there hahaha.

- Miranda finally realises it’s been Gordo the entire time and she scurries out of the bathroom to notify Lizzie. Just as they’re about to leave the restaurant, the manager stops them and informs them that their table is ready and they had no other choice but to stay. Plus, Gordo could have been able to see them run off.

I love this guy. Especially the way he is describing their restaurant specials in that surfer bro voice he has

- During Gordo’s date with Brooke, Brooke tells him she wants them to spend more time together. However, she isn’t aware of the piece of spaghetti hanging on the side of her mouth. Gordo tries to tell her but she can’t stop talking lol.

If I were Gordo, I would just use my hand to remove that string of spaghetti off her face

- Gordo explains to Brooke that they are always hanging out between classes and after school. But Brooke prefers them to be together even more and wants him to change his class schedule to fit hers.

Busted!

- Lizzie is now convinced that she’s wrong and Brooke isn’t playing with Gordo’s feelings. She and Miranda decide to quickly leave the restaurant but they accidentally bumped and crashed into a waiter carrying a whole tray of food.

Lizzie falls again feat. Miranda. By the way, that is a lot of pasta!

- This causes Gordo and Brooke to focus their attention on them and he immediately recognises his two friends. Gordo obviously feels hurt and betrayed by them and rightfully so. But, he also needs to recognise that his friends do truly care for him.

- At Lizzie’s front porch the next day, both Lizzie and Miranda are sadly thinking about the possibility that Gordo may not want to be their friend anymore. But with the magic of television, Gordo pops up! He lets them know that although he is still upset they spied on him with his date, he is happy to know that he has friends that actually care about him.

- He tells them that he actually broke up with Brooke because he isn’t ready to be committed to a serious relationship yet since Brooke is pretty demanding as a girlfriend.

Things are back to normal!

Kids, let’s learn about Percentages!

- I guess this is the B-plot of this episode: Sam teaching Matt grade-school math and then Matt abusing the knowledge he has gained. Sam is using visual aids like gum-balls to make it more fun to learn.

-But Matt makes a classic ‘Matt-move’ and tries to trick his dad to avoid taking out the garbage by using Conditional Probability. Well, Matt ends up confusing Sam and he is able to get away from doing his chore.

- Matt continues this habit by making bets using odds and percentages with Lanny on whether Lizzie will yell at him, which she does. Lanny silently suggest they should play this game with the other kids at school.

- Afterwards, we see Matt taking calls and placing bets with other kids from school and can I just say that these kids are super gullible. There’s this one kid who was told by Matt that the Yellow team has weaker odds of winning a dodgeball match compared to the Blue team but he still bets on Yellow? Like what?!

- Jo is going through her kids’ laundry and discovers Matt’s book, which lists out all the names of the kids who owe him stuff. Matt and Lanny walk into the living room carrying a bunch of things they cheated out from the other kids and stop dead in their tracks as soon as they see Jo.

Lanny makes a very wise decision to ditch Matt here lol

- Matt tries to cover up his own tracks by suggesting the things were given to him by the other kids but Jo is not buying his story and tells Matt to return all his stuff back to them.

Aww the puppy dog pout

Overall Thoughts

- This episode definitely stood the test of time because I still remember most of the plot from this episode. The introduction of Brooke as Gordo’s new girlfriend was a great addition to shake things up in our best friend trio of Lizzie, Gordo and Miranda. We also get a subtle revelation that Lizzie does have some deep feelings for Gordo.

- I only wish that we got some little context on how did Brooke and Gordo actually meet and asked each other out because seeing them straight away on their date and kissing was a little shocking to me. But overall, it gives us a nice, thorough glimpse on what middle school dating life is like in Lizzie Mcguire

- I thought that the gambling B-plot involving Matt, his parents and Lanny wasn’t bad at all. It was brief and to the point; They didn’t drag any scenes far too long to the point where I would’ve gotten bored. I also like how they taught us that gambling and cheating can also be carried out on a smaller scale in school, involving trivial things like candy and toys etc.

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halothenthehorns · 4 years

Text

The Keeper of the Keys

Sirius turned to his obligated chapter and was fixing to start when Harry spoke up, "Hey Sirius."

He startled slightly, this was the first time Harry had addressed him directly, he seemed rather weary of him and Remus. Plus his Harry shouldn't be able to talk for at least a few more months, so it was quite startling. Still he smiled with pleasure and looked around at him, "Yeah?"

"What's with the nicknames?"

Sirius blinked. Then blinked again. Then cursed slightly as he cast his eyes towards Moony. At school, they had plenty of reasonable explanations for their nicknames. However they had always intended to tell there Harry why, the truth.

However, with Harry's memories being shot, and only slowly coming back, who knew what kind of impressions he had gotten. Had he already heard about werewolves and had a negative opinion of them like most wizarding kind? He didn't think he could stand seeing Harry freak out over one of his best friends, however Harry had addressed him. Yet it was Remus' right to divulge this back story. Torn, and silent for too long, Remus answered for him, having come to much the same conclusion as the others, "That's got a back story Harry, and we'll explain later."

Harry frowned, not much appreciating this, as they seemed to constantly interrogate him and demand his whole truth answers, but at the pained look on the man's face, he decided to let it go for now.

Seeing Harry's nod, Sirius quickly pressed on.

There was another knock so loud, it boomed. Dudley woke up and stupidly said 'where's the cannon' clearly still half asleep.

"Harry my boy," James said, clapping his son on the shoulder, "there are some things that don't need to be stated."

Harry laughed quietly while the others smiled at such an interaction between the two.

Vernon came out of his own room with a rifle in hand.

Lily and Remus frowned in annoyance, forestalling the question they knew was coming Remus spoke up, "A rifle is a muggle weapon, like using the confringo curse through a metal pipe."

"I can't believe he was planning on using that on someone, simply for trying to give Harry back his heritage, his life," Lily grumbled, her anger at the Dursley's continuing to grow with everything they did or said. It also didn't help that she was positive Vernon had attained that illegally, as muggle laws made it nearly impossible for the common citizen to even own a firearm.

Vernon yells out that whoever was knocking had better go away, because he was armed! With one more loud sound, the door came down with a smash, falling right off its hinges.

There was an edge of unease as Sirius read that, then he looked up and asked, "we are sure that this is a friendly wizard just there to give Harry his letter right? Not that many wizards would use such force to get into a muggle house."

The other three exchanged uneasy looks, but Harry leaned back into the couch, completely at

ease. He felt no impending danger, and told Sirius as much, so he went on.

The narrative then describes a giant of a man with long black hair and black eyes.

"Is that Hagrid?" James asked eagerly.

"Sounds right," Remus agreed, beaming as well.

"Hagrid," Harry said the name slowly and distinctly to himself. He had come across it in the first chapter and it had meant something to him, but now saying it aloud, he knew that name, but why? "I think I know him," he muttered, rubbing his temple in frustration.

"Keep reading Sirius," Lily instructed, switching baby Harry in her arms so that she was able to wrap one arm around her elder sons shoulders.

The man comes striding into the place and apologizes for breaking down the door, then asks for a cup of tea while heading towards the sofa. When he spots Dudley there he tells him to scoot over, but Dudley runs for cover behind his mother and father.

Lily couldn't help a slight smirk at this. Reflecting that the Dursleys would be terrified a stranger had come in like this, invited himself something to drink, and insulted their son all in one swoop. While this would normally be the height of rude, and could only make the Dursleys opinion of Hagrid equal to their feelings of Lily. Knowing what she did though, Lily was hoping this was only the beginning.

Then the man turns to Harry and exclaims how excited he is to see him, since he hadn't seen him since he was a baby.

"Well there's are proof that it's Hagrid," Sirius said happily, "cause Hagrid was the one who dropped you off at your Aunt and Uncles, as a baby."

"Like the giant description wasn't enough for you?" Remus laughed.

He comments that Harry looks like his Dad, but he's got his mom's eyes. Vernon obviously does not appreciate this, and snaps that he needs to leave at once. The giant's only response is to tell Dursley to shut up.

"Thank Merlin," James said to the ceiling, "I've been wanting someone to say that to him since this whole thing started."

He reached behind himself, took away Vernon's gun, and then twisted it around as if it were putty before tossing it into the corner.

"Would a gun have even hurt him?" Sirius asked, "With his tough skin and all?"

"I'm not sure," Remus said slowly, "we know his giant skin prevents most spells, but I'm not sure if he's ever tested it against muggle weapons."

"Hang on," Lily said, looking to all the boys in the room, "giant skin? What makes you say Hagrid's a giant?"

"Oh come off it Lil," James said, "smart as you are, you never figured out why Hagrid's as big as he is?"

Lily frowned at them all and stated, "I always thought he had an overdose of Rano Potion, the

effects of which can't be magically fixed, at least as of today's standards."

Sirius snorted in disbelief, "Leave it to you to think a potion would do that to someone."

"Well what made you four think," Lily began hotly, but Harry cut her off and said;

"No, they're right."

All four turned to him wide eyed, and he quickly raised his hands up and said, "I don't know how or why, but I think they're right."

Lily deflated at once, grumbling under her breath about guesswork.

"That doesn't bother you, does it Lily," Remus asked cautiously.

Lily blinked once, then again before gaping and half shouting, "of course not," at Remus, which caused baby Harry in her arms to kick up quite a fuss.

In response Lily got up and handed over the baby to Remus, then bent down and whispered something in his ear before leaving him there. Remus seemed quite happy now and made quick work of calming down his little cub.

Harry watched the whole thing smiling and wondering if the adults even realized he already knew the truth, but Sirius was already moving on.

The giant turns his attention back to Harry and tells him Happy Birthday, and then hands him a cake.

"That was so sweet," Lily smiled, clasping her hands with joy, "he didn't have to do that."

"Glad someone did," James muttered.

Harry's first intention was to say thank you, but instead he couldn't help but ask who this man was.

Lily frowned and wanted to reprimand but Remus quickly jumped in with, "Just be happy the boy has any manners at all Lily, with his kind of upbringing."

"Yeah, I'll bet Dudley wouldn't have even thought to do that," Sirius agreed.

Lily nodded grudgingly before Sirius continued.

The giant laughed and declared himself as Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts.

Harry suddenly groaned, clutching his head in pain.

"Harry," they all said in concern, both Lily and James placing a hand on him.

"I remember this," Harry groaned, "I can't remember, but I know I do..." he trailed off muttering for a bit before sitting back and saying, "please keep going Sirius, the more that comes the less odd I feel."

Still casting him concerned looks Sirius complied.

Then he turns himself back to the room at large and again requests tea, though jokingly adds he would take something stronger if offered.

"I doubt they've got any brandy on hand," James frowned, hating to think if he was wrong and they had brought alcohol instead of anything else that was actually needed.

"Even if they had brought some, I doubt they'd offer it to him," Lily said.

He spotted the empty grate and snorted, bending forward and blocking out the view from the rest of the room, but when he leaned back again there was a fire there.

"Hagrid's not supposed to do magic," Remus chuckled, "though of course who could blame him in this instance."

"Why not?" Harry asked eagerly, thinking he knew the answer to this, and much like with Hagrid's occupation, when he found out the answer another piece of him would feel right again.

"We don't know," Sirius sighed sadly, "we tried all sorts of things to get him to tell us, even got him snockered one night-"

"Sirius!" Lily said loudly, though Sirius kept going, "-but he never told us. Quite disappointing really."

Harry frowned in disappointment but encouraged Sirius to go on none the less, hoping they would find out soon.

He then busied himself for a few moments by taking all sorts of things out of his pockets, and begins a pot of tea, and a few sausages on a poker.

Harry's lips twitched for a moment, feeling there was a significance to a pig for some reason, but remained quiet all the same.

When he was done with the first few pieces of meat, Dudley fidgets, but Vernon snaps not to touch a thing that man offered.

"Really?" Remus sighed sadly. "Does he think they're poisoned?"

"I would like to reiterate that we are just lucky Harry has any manners," Sirius stated.

Hagrid ignores them and instead passes the sausages to Harry.

James smiled sadly to himself, thinking privately that this was most likely the first time in his son's life someone had thought of him first. He resolved that he would have to find some way to thank Hagrid for this.

Harry gladly eats the food, and after he was done he asks again if Hagrid could better explain who he was. Hagrid repeats his title and says that Harry should know all about Hogwarts. Harry tells him he doesn't.

Remus chuckled darkly all of a sudden, causing Lily and Harry to look at him curiously, so he was quick to explain himself, "If there's one thing Hagrid loves most in the world it's his job at Hogwarts, and if there's one man he respects the most, it would be Dumbledore. For these Dursley's to not have told you Harry anything about it, oh Hagrid's going to lose his temper on them."

James suddenly smiled, thinking that this couldn't have worked out better, and that if there was any justice Hagrid would deliver it.

Sirius came to the same conclusion and read on eagerly.

Hagrid looked shocked, and Harry quickly apologizes.

"Why would you apologize?" Lily asked, "It's not as if it's your fault."

Harry merely shrugged, knowing that the quickest way to soothe someone's temper was to apologize and admit it was your own fault, however he didn't think any of them wanted to hear him say that.

Hagrid says that it's the Dursleys who should be sorry, asking didn't Harry ever wonder where his parents learned it all. Harry asks the obvious follow up question, all what?

James and Remus leaned in eagerly, and Sirius was practically bouncing in anticipation.

Hagrid's clearly angry now, getting to his feet and rounding on the Dursleys as he yelled that Harry didn't know about anything? Harry felt a little indignant, thinking to himself that his school marks weren't that bad.

"To be fair," Harry defended himself as his parents through him sympathetic looks, "taking that out of context, how was I supposed to know?"

"It's alright Harry, you will know soon enough," Sirius laughed.

"But I already know," he answered, now looking a bit confused.

"I mean in the book," then when he received strange looks, he just decided to press on.

Harry defends himself out loud, saying he knows math and stuff. Hagrid waves him off and corrects him saying he meant their world. Harry, still understandably confused, asks what world? Hagrid looked ready to explode as he shouts Dursley at the top of his lungs.

"Curse them," James muttered, "curse them into oblivion and I'll leave you all the gold in my vault."

Hagrid doesn't believe it, saying he must at least know about his own parents, they're famous! Harry doesn't really believe him, saying there was no way his parents were famous. Hagrid just looks confused now, finally asking 'you don't know what you are?' Vernon butts himself back into the conversation, snapping that Hagrid needed to stop talking now, he forbad Hagrid from telling Harry anything!

Lily shook her head from side to side, "got to give the man some points, that took a bit of bravery."

"Lily dear," Remus said solemnly, "I learned quite a bit in my seven years at school, one of which was that there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity. Vernon just crossed that line."

Hagrid gave him such a fearsome look, Vernon shrank back against the wall again as Hagrid begins yelling about how they never told Harry, that they'd kept this from him! Harry is now eagerly asking 'kept what?' Vernon tries one last time to yell at Hagrid, he forbids him to know.

"You can't control the world like you try to on Harry," James said in disgust.

Petunia gave a gasp of horror.

"Afraid all your nasty secrets are coming back at you," venom dripped from Lily's voice as she hissed that under her breath.

Hagrid turns away from the three of them in disgust and tells Harry that he is a wizard. Harry's first reaction is to say, 'a what?'

As all three boys cracked up laughing. Lily told them all to hush before turning to Harry and saying, "a very reasonable answer I assure you."

Still feeling a bit bashful Harry appreciated his Mum's attempt all the same.

Hagrid repeats a wizard is if this is the most normal thing in the world, before sitting back down on the sofa.

"Oh," James deflated at once, "that's it. I was hoping Hagrid would do much worse than shout at them."

Sirius, Remus, and Lily looked disappointed as well, but Harry felt like this conversation was far from over, something else was going to happen he just knew it, so he encouraged Sirius to continue.

Then Hagrid finally hands over Harry's letter.

"High time," Sirius muttered, while Lily and James felt a sense of loss, knowing they should have been there when their boy opened his letter.

The envelope is now addressed to Harry as being on the floor, in a hut on a rock, in the sea.

Remus frowned as he asked, "Hut on the Rock?"

"The Sea?" Sirius reread, ignoring the part that made him see red.

"That is odd," Lily admitted, "normally those letters are absurdly specific, why is it so vague this time?"

"Maybe it was because it was hand delivered this time," Remus offered. "I've never known one to be, so perhaps the magic of it wasn't needed as much that time," Remus used the only explanation that came to mind.

"Where were you anyways?" James asked Harry curiously.

"I've no idea honestly," Harry answered, "it's not like they told me."

The letter inside is addressed to Harry from Hogwarts, labelling the headmaster as Dumbledore, and telling him that he's been accepted at said school. Enclosed will be a list of school supplies, that term begins on September 1st, and that they await his owl. When Harry is done reading, the first thing he manages to ask is, what did they mean by owl?

Again all three boys burst out laughing at that.

After Sirius settled a bit he asked, "You've just found out you're a wizard, read a letter like that, and that's your first question?"

"It's a fair question," Lily defended her son, "after all the deadline was that day, and that is quite a bit odd to someone who's never heard it before."

The others only looked a mite shamed for taking the mickey out of Harry, but Sirius decided to keep going before Lily got to mad at their picking.

Hagrid thumps himself on the forehead, saying that reminded him, and he pulls a real live owl out of a pocket of his jacket

Harry frowned, looking concerned, "is that safe for the owl?"

"So sweet," Lily said smiling at him, "but yes of course, it's probably one of the school owls, and I'm positive he put cushioning charms and engorgement charms on his pockets. I'm sure the poor thing had plenty of room to breathe."

Harry watched her in complete fascination for the explanation. Even being in a house, in this house where the very air must be of magic for him to be living through this, he still delighted in everything, especially her taking the simple time to turn and talk to him.

a quill, and parchment and begins to write a letter which Harry reads upside down.

"A real accomplishment that," Remus chuckled, "since his handwriting isn't exactly legible right side up."

It is addressed to Dumbledore and states that Hagrid has retrieved Harry and that they are going to go shopping tomorrow. Then he gives the note to the owl and tosses the bird out of the window, Harry watching him do all this as if it were as normal as a telephone call.

"What's a telephone?" James asked curiously.

"I showed you one when you came round to my place," Remus told him, "it's that thing on the wall you asked about."

"Oh yeah," James said, then frowned, "you called it a landline right? And you said you could talk to people a long ways off without an owl, but you didn't explain how it worked."

"That my friend, would take far too long," Remus chuckled.

Hagrid tries to turn his attention back to Harry, but Vernon steps forward again and snaps that Harry is not going. Hagrid grunts and says he didn't really think a muggle could stop him. Harry asks what a muggle is.

"He's so innocent," Sirius said sadly, "I feel ashamed he doesn't know better."

Lily rolled her eyes but let that one go.

Hagrid explains that a muggle is what they would call someone who doesn't have any magical ability. Vernon is clearly not listening, still saying he refused to let Harry go, and that they had tried to stamp it out of him.

"Stamp it out?" James repeated furiously. "Does he even realize what that can do to a wizard, to try and force them not to use their magic like that?!"

"But I am fine," Harry said quickly, before another outburst could occur, "and they never did anything more than what you've read."

"Still not right," they all muttered darkly.

Harry couldn't believe his ears, demanding to know that they knew he was a wizard.

Petunia shrieked 'knew, of course they knew!' Harry was the son of her dratted sister, who constantly came home showing off her magical prows.

Sirius shook his head as if trying to get water out of his ears, he hated having to say all that stuff about Lily, but instead asked, "you were doing magic at home?"

Lily nodded distractedly, she had known her sister had disliked her use of magic, calling it unnatural, but she had no idea it had been pent up for this long. Then again, it explained the horrid way her son was now being treated. Treating her baby like this because of the way she was, it made her want to vomit as she realized her son's condition was all her fault.

As the silence dragged on and Lily didn't answer, Remus jumped in, without taking his eyes off of Lily, "yes, muggleborns are allowed to do magic there first two days back home, to prove that they are learning magic at school."

"Lily?" James said softly, reaching around Harry to place his hand gently on his wife's shoulder.

She blinked a few times, clearly distracted, and said in a vacant voice, "Yes dear, Sirius please go on."

Sirius gave James and Remus concerned looks, but decided to do as asked.

Petunia snaps that while their parents doted on her, she was the only one who saw her as a freak! She continues on this rant, clearly having held all this in for quite some time.

Lily pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, but when Sirius made as if to stop again she blurted out, "keep going, I want to hear what all she says."

Looking very concerned by this point, James decided to agree with Lily, for now.

She finishes her little diatribe by saying how Lily had met Potter, and they had Harry, but then Lily got blown up and the Dursleys got stuck with Harry.

Lily went pale as a sheet, and seemed either about to vomit, faint, or burst into tears at any given moment.

"Mum?" Harry spoke softly, and was also the first to speak up.

Suddenly bursting into tears, she threw her arms around her only child, technically anyways, and began apologizing incessantly about how sorry she was, and this was all her fault.

Harry simply sat there, looking frozen and almost fearful, until James got up and went around to her side of the couch. Sitting down on the armrest, he gently pried Lily off of Harry and whispered quietly in her ear for a moment. Lily nodded distractedly for a bit, before Harry finally came out of his shock and spoke up, "I don't blame you."

Lily brushed tears out of her eyes and gave him a watery smile, but Harry kept going before she could speak, "really, it's not your fault how she treated me. You couldn't have known, and it's not like you left me to their care on purpose."

She sighed, still looking relatively unconvinced, when Sirius spoke up from the floor, "Look at it this way Lil, we are going to fix this, stop it from happening if it's the last thing I do."

Remus shot Sirius a dark look, warning him that he didn't appreciate that kind of declaration before speaking up, "it is going to be alright Lily. Look at your boy now, despite all of that, he

doesn't seem to be any the worse for wear," not one hundred percent true, but he was trying for comfort here.

Lily sighed and nodded, squeezed both of her boy's hands and then said softly, "yes, I know. Please let's just keep going."

It was clear that she didn't completely agree with them, that she still blamed herself, but if she didn't want to talk about it then there wasn't a force on earth that could change her mind.

Harry is understandably outraged as he yelled back that they told him his parents died in a car crash.

"Finally," Sirius crowed, "I'm so glad you told Hagrid that Harry. Let's hope Hagrid does a bit more then yell at them for that lie."

Now Hagrid's angry again, jumping back up and shouting that a car crash could never kill Lily and James Potter! Harry urgently asks Hagrid what did happen to them, and Hagrid loses his anger to be replaced with anxious nerves.

"Rats," James muttered snapping his finger, if only Harry had waited a few more moments to ask that.

Hagrid's nervous now, clearly not wanting to be the one to tell Harry this, but reflecting Harry can't go off to school not knowing.

"That would be kind of odd," Remus agreed.

He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys,

"Wish he'd do more than that," Sirius muttered darkly.

but then agrees Harry has more a right then anyone to know. So he starts by saying that there was a person, and it was so weird to Hagrid Harry didn't know his name.

"Which is amazing really," James sighed "considering so many people hate saying his name."

"Well, if they didn't know his name, then calling him You-Know-Who would have just been stupid," Lily reasoned.

"I still think it's just stupid," Sirius grumbled.

Harry obviously asks for his name, but Hagrid shivers and clearly doesn't want to tell, instead saying that this was the most evil wizard ever and that's why they all feared him so much. Still he can't seem to spit out the name.

"I hope Hagrid does tell you," Remus said sadly, "I'd hate for you to hear it some other way."

'We should have been the ones to tell him' Lily thought sadly.

Finally he shuddered but manages to say the name Voldemort.

"Well it's a start," James chuckled.

Hagrid goes on by explaining how this dark wizard started looking for followers, and how he got them. Some were afraid and looking for protection, some wanted the power.

"Kind of odd hearing about this past tense," Sirius said, mostly to himself.

"Kind of nice though too," Remus said wishfully.

They were distrustful times. Then there were some that stood up to him, and You-Know- Who decided to kill them. They say Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who feared. Harry's mother and father were an excellent witch and wizard, and they stayed faithful on Dumbledore's side.

"Voldemort and everyone knew that," Remus said with pride.

Sirius remained quiet, hating to think that his little brother had been dragged into that mess, wondering if he had come out of it, wondering if he was involved in the death of his best friend.

Lily and James locked eyes, knowing that if it was the choice of dying, along with their newborn child, or joining Voldemort, their death now made sense.

No one knows for sure why he wanted the Potter's dead, all anyone knew for certain was that he showed up on Halloween.

"Halloween?" Was whispered throughout the room, every occupant going as pale as death.

"That's at the end of this month," Sirius' voice barely came above a whisper as he looked to the two parents who were looking at each other in a way he'd never seen.

"That's so close," Remus muttered, clutching the baby in his arms slightly tighter to himself.

"So soon," Lily whimpered, while James tightened his hold on her.

Harry was a year old.

"A year old!" James yelped.

"So it's not until Halloween next year," Lily let loose a breath, that year suddenly feeling like a lifetime.

"More than enough time to come up with a plan," Remus reassured them all.

Hagrid stutters that he came to their house, but doesn't seem able to get the rest of the sentence out.

"It's okay Sirius," Lily said gently, when it became obvious he didn't want to say it, "we're not going to let it happen."

"I know," he snapped, a little more viciously than intended, "Hagrid's the one that couldn't get the words out." Looking slightly hurt, but also a bit warmed, Sirius mumbled a quick apology before hurrying on.

He blows his nose loudly and apologizes, saying that he knew Harry's parents and it's so awful because they were such good people.

"Definitely need to go by and see Hagrid again," James vowed aloud.

"Count me in for that," the other three agreed.

You-Know-Who killed Lily and James Potter. Then he turned his wand on the baby, and tried to do the same, but it didn't work. That's the story behind the scar on Harry's forehead, why he's so famous. No one had ever survived once Voldemort wanted him dead, but Harry had.

"Hum," Lily murmured, "we must have had time to place some sort of protective charm on him."

"I can't think of very many that would hold off that kind of curse," James offered.

"I know this," Harry muttered, rubbing at his forehead again, "I know the bloody answer to this."

"Well when you remember do please let us know," Remus said, looking intrigued, "It could be used to save our lives."

"Don't pressure the kid Moony," Sirius slightly chuckled, "I'm sure if he knows, he must have found out at some point during all of this," and he waved the book in his hand and at all the others before continuing.

Hagrid even lists some of the other powerful wizards on the good side Voldemort had done in.

"Remember those names," Lily said softly, "we need to warn them as well."

"Those were all members of the Order," Sirius said sadly.

"Those have some pretty big family's," Remus observed, "Wish Hagrid had been more specific if it's just the members of the Order, or their entire family or," and here he stopped and trailed off into muttering.

Harry could feel something truly painful building inside of himself.

"I don't need to remember that," Harry muttered, his head ache beginning to lessen a bit now, but still quite painful. He hoped that gaining back more of his memories wouldn't be quite this bad.

Harry tries to think back to that dream of flashing green light, and now imagines a cruel laugh as well.

"I sincerely doubt you remember that," Lily shivered, "just your subconscious mind trying to visualize what happened."

Harry shrugged, hoping that he really didn't remember that.

Hagrid keeps talking, saying he took Harry from the rubble of his old house himself, but then Vernon finally bumps his way back in by saying it was rubbish. Harry jumped, nearly having forgotten they were there.

"Wish they weren't," Sirius grumbled.

Vernon seems angry again, saying he had accepted there was something weird about Harry, that he should have given him more of a beating to get it out of him.

"How is a beating ever the answer?" Lily cried, nearly lunging to her feet in rage.

"I'd like to give you a good beating," James snarled.

"You are so lucky I keep my word Dursley," Sirius snapped, looking about ready to toss the book into the fire.

Remus simply rocked the baby in his arms around a bit, trying to comfort himself with the knowledge that this hadn't happened yet, that his cub was fine.

Harry looked around at all of them, half smiling with love at their reactions, half afraid of what they really were going to do when things were all said and done.

He claims that Harry's parents were weirdos,

"Only in your twisted world," Remus growled.

"If he keeps going about you two..." Sirius hissed, growing a bit paler with every word he read, then sucking in a deep breath forcing himself to continue.

and the world's better off without them

"Accio!" Lily cried suddenly as Sirius really did look like he was about to chuck the book into the fire.

"That-" Sirius began swearing violently.

"He's speaking ill of the dead, to our son Lily," James said with a look of disgust, probably from referring to himself as dead.

"I still don't want him toasting this," Lily snapped, just as angry at being insulted like this in front of her child, but not willing to take it out on the book. When it looked as if Lily were about to continue the chapter, Sirius strode over and plucked it from her grasp.

After a brief glaring contest Sirius vowed, "I promise I won't try to burn this book again."

When Lily still held his gaze he continued, "or in any way try to destroy it."

Releasing her breath she sat back into the couch and Sirius went back to his place at the hearth before reading.

and that he always knew they would come to a bad end.

"Sirius, you sound ridiculous biting your tongue and reading," Remus said sadly.

"Yes well it's that or nothing," he said while spitting a bit of blood into the fire place and continuing.

But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat.

"Yes!" All four cheered, all malice gone from Sirius' voice as he now eagerly continued.

Pointing this at Vernon he warned them that if he didn't stop talking, one more word out of him, then he trailed off threateningly.

"Oh come on," James slumped back.

"Oh he will say one more word," Remus vowed, "I'd put money on that."

"Hopefully soon," Sirius huffed.

In danger of being speared on the end of an umbrella by a bearded giant,

Lily snickered quietly to herself at such a sentence, relieving a bit more tension in the room.

Vernon took the threat for what it was and backed against the wall again. Hagrid turned back to Harry, who asks what happened to You-Know-Who. Hagrid admits that is a very good question. Some speculate that he died, but Hagrid doesn't believe that.

"Still nice to think about though," Sirius sighed.

Some say he's still out there, waiting his time, but he doesn't believe that either.

"So what," Lily asked in confusion, "he doesn't believe he's dead, but he doesn't believe he's still out there? He can't be both. Even if he was a ghost he would still technically be in one of those two categories."

"I'm not sure," Remus said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully, "there are areas of Dark Magic no decent wizard has even looked at, but as we all know Voldemort's as dark as they go. It really is unpredictable what could have happened to him that night."

"I'm voting for died," James said darkly, not wanting to think too long on it.

Sirius didn't want to think what Voldemort would do if he really wasn't dead, so he decided to read on.

Some say he's still out there, without his powers, just too weak to do anything. Something about the night he attacked Harry must have done something to him, because that same night, You-Know-Who had vanished.

All of the adults shivered in disgust, not wanting to think who Voldemort would come after if he ever did come back. Yet Harry was here, fully grown and healthy, so they felt safe in assuming that Voldemort did indeed die.

Harry was beginning to doubt all of this. How could he be a wizard? He'd spent his life being bullied by the Dursleys.

"Thanks for that awful reminder," James said darkly.

If he was a wizard, why hadn't they been turned into toads every time they'd tried to lock him in his cupboard?

"If only," Remus snapped in disgust.

If he'd once defeated the greatest sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley had always been able to kick him around like a football?

"Cause magic doesn't work like that," Lily said sadly, suddenly wishing that it did.

Out loud he told Hagrid he must have made a mistake.

"With your looks kid, not much of a mistake to make," Sirius laughed.

Hagrid merely chuckles. Asking Harry if something weird had ever happened when Harry

was scared or angry. Harry reflects back on all of the odd things that had ever happened to him, and realized Hagrid was right. The very latest incident for one, releasing the snake when Dudley had punched him...

"All excellent examples of the good uses of magic," James beamed.

Lily smacked him lightly, but privately agreed, though thinking he should have never had to be in those situations.

Harry looks back at Hagrid, smiling, and sees that Hagrid was beaming at him.

"I wish you had told Hagrid about those moments Harry," Remus said sadly, "Hagrid would have taken you out of there faster than you can say Merlin."

"Wait for it," Sirius said with a bit of hope, "he still might."

Hagrid comforts Harry, telling him it was impossible for him not to be a wizard, but Vernon has had enough. He steps up one last time, stating he would not allow Harry to go. Hagrid growls back that he couldn't stop him, that Harry was going to go to the best school of magic there was and be taught by the greatest wizard, Albus Dumbledore. Vernon shouts at the top of his lungs that he will not pay some old fool to teach him magic!

"Yes!" James pumped his fist in the air as if he'd just won a Quidditch match. "If that doesn't get a reaction out of Hagrid nothing will."

"He's going to deserve every moment of it to," Remus said with a dark smile on his face.

Lily was practically vibrating, wanting to hear what had happened, and Sirius was quick to comply.

Vernon had finally gone too far. Hagrid once again pulls out his pink umbrella, shouting that Dumbledore shall never be insulted in front of him, and brings the umbrella down in a flash of light on Dudley. The boy squeals in shock and begins dancing around, holding onto his backside, and when Harry gets a good look he sees a pig tail poking out of his pants.

"Thank you Merlin!" Sirius crowd, tossing the book into the air in celebration.

"Thank you Hagrid!" James corrected, hugging Lily and Harry to him with almost as much joy as when Harry had first been born.

"High time that lot got some comeuppance," Remus agreed, bouncing the toddler in his arms around and making the baby giggle, joining in on the euphoric mood.

"Oh I hope he tried turning Petunia and Vernon into pig's as well," Lily said vengefully, feeling it was a small price for the way her baby had been raised.

Sirius leaned over to where the book had landed and quickly found his place again.

Vernon and Petunia flip out, grabbing hold of Dudley and dragging him into the next room where they lock the door.

"Aww," Sirius groaned after reading that, "I suppose it's too much to ask he goes after the lot."

"I don't think so," Harry said, still laughing slightly at all of their reactions.

"Rat's," all three boys muttered, while Lily privately thought about how they were going to go about explaining the tail to other muggles. She was positive Hagrid wasn't going to remove it, so that was a small amount of punishment.

Hagrid is now stroking his beard and glancing down at his umbrella, admitting he probably shouldn't have lost his temper,

"You should have lost it a long time ago," Sirius said, still slightly laughing.

"He would have if Harry had told him everything we know," Remus agreed.

but it hadn't worked all the way. He had meant to turn Dudley into a real pig.

James actually applauded Hagrid for this, while Lily reached over and shoved him off of the arm rest. Even landing on the floor he was still laughing, and after a few brief moments, he and his friends settled down enough that Sirius kept going while James got up and retook his earlier position on Harry's other side.

Then he casts a sideways look at Harry and kindly asks him not to mention what he'd just done, since he technically wasn't supposed to do magic at all.

"I'm sending Hagrid a thank you note," Remus said gleefully, "and I'm thinking about teaching him the proper way to do that spell."

"I'll help with that," Sirius cackled.

Lily and James were privately hoping that Hagrid would never have to use that spell, but didn't begrudge the two either.

Harry asks why not?

James snorted a bit, "Like he's going to answer you when you ask like that."

"Yeah Harry, don't you remember the whole 'tried getting him drunk and it didn't work' bit?" Sirius asked.

"Well I didn't know that then," Harry told him exasperatedly.

Ignoring the strange looks he was receiving Sirius tried to finish the chapter..

and Hagrid begins to say that he did used to go to Hogwarts himself, but was expelled in his third year. They snapped his wand in half,

Remus gave a low whistle, "wow Harry, he must really like you, we never even got that much out of him."

"Well it is a private matter," Lily scolded, "I wouldn't want to go boasting about being expelled either."

but Dumbledore had allowed him to stay on as a gamekeeper. The affection in his voice for the man is obvious. Harry asks why Hagrid was expelled,

"Blunt much," James laughed.

"Like you were ever any better," Lily reminded him.

but without a hint of subtlety, Hagrid says that it was getting really late and they should head to bed.

"Subtle," Remus snickered.

"Like you were any better," Sirius laughed, "exactly how many times did you use your mum as an excuse to sneak off again?"

"Thirty-three by my count," James input.

Remus was about to counter when Harry asked, "Why were you sneaking off?"

All four paled and deflated at once, wanting to bite their tongues for, again, foolishly forgetting Harry didn't know. It was just so easy for them to forget, since they had never intended to hide anything in this house.

"Er," Remus started lamely when James said, a little too loudly, "How about we explain later."

Harry frowned severely at them, wanting to stop what he felt was just silly, "I've told you guys things I'd rather not, why's this different?" He almost added on that he already knew anyways, but then Sirius said, "Look pup, the chapters almost over, then," he threw Remus a sideways look, and waited for him to nod before continuing, "then we'll explain alright?"

Harry nodded and they all remained silent as Sirius finally finished.

He tosses his thick jacket over to Harry and tells him not to mind if it wiggles, he may have left some mice in the pockets.

Sirius closed the book and then threw a world weary look at Remus, who sucked in a deep breath, and then began to explain.

#The Life That Never Lived #bookhater95 #fanfiction #Harry Potter #Reading the Books

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but-tom · 6 years

Text

Iron Man Dildo

Warning: Smut. But I don’t even get to the good stuff lol. Self indulgent. Don’t bother reading.

It all started out when MJ was browsing through Amazon because “American history is pointless when it’s passed down in the white people’s narrative.” Ned and Peter know not to argue (after learning it the hard way) and get promptly started on their group assignment.

“Parker, As you know, I’m not usually one to pry on other people’s sexual relations because yuck.” MJ deadpans. “But for product verification, how big is Iron Man?”

Ned chokes on his noodles.

Peter blinks, “Well his profile lists him as 6 foot,” He adds uselessly, “Not that I googled him...much.”

His curly haired friend throws him a wtf kind of expression in pure MJ fashion. And Peter immediately concludes he probably has said something dumb. Again.

“Dude I think she meant his penis size.” Ned has clearly recovered from his fit.

Peter sputters, “How - how would I know?” But his cheeks are already burning.

MJ tuts, “We already know you guys are together and if the hickeys you were sporting Monday say anything, you’re obviously the one to ask.”

“Hey! You told me you were bitten by mosquitoes.” Ned turns accusingly to his best friend.

MJ shakes her head in defeat. “Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots.”

If it was possible, Peter was only turning redder. He never had secrets anymore from Ned and MJ. They were the first and only people in his life who knew about both his Spiderman identity and his relationship of six months with Tony. But talking about sex and stuff was just weird and awkward. It rarely ever had to come up in conversation when MJ hated 99% of the human population and Ned was married to his sets of Star Wars legos. “I really don’t want to talk about this. I don’t even know why you want to know this MJ. Can we go back to the paper please.”

“Don’t be such a prude Parker.” MJ quips. “It says life sized but it’s Amazon you can’t trust shit.” She then turns her laptop around to show Peter the screen.

“What - what is that?!”

Peter’s eyes are immediately drawn to the signature red and gold colours and the glowing arc reactor, but it’s definitely not in the form of the Iron Man suit he knows and loves.

“No way! An Iron Man dildo? That is freaking awesome. Wait does it shoot out stuff like the original suit?” Ned is way too excited about this for Peter to be comfortable.

“Wouldn’t that be a safety hazard?” And as always MJ is way too calm.

Peter slams the laptop close with a bit too much force as apparent in the indignant, “You dipshit!” from MJ. But he can’t help but feel the need to protect his boyfriend’s virtue. Although Tony himself would have grinned fondly at his young lover’s antics.

“Why would anyone sell this? Why would someone buy this? Do you think Tony knows about this?” Peter panics.

“If people are buying Avengers flavoured ice cream, which is false advertising by the way, and an Avengers waffle maker, why not a dildo that actually guarantees satisfaction.”

“Unlike an actual man.” Ned finishes for her. Ned and MJ share a fist bump.

Sometimes Peter hates his friends. “I hate you guys.”

“Even though I spent $80 on you? Plus $7 shipping fees? You ungrateful hoe,” MJ huffs, stealing back her laptop.

“YOU BOUGHT IT?!” Peter and Ned shriek.

“This is your Christmas present by the way.”

——————————————————————————————————

Peter stares down at the small package in front of him, conflicted. He had made a big fuss to MJ and Ned that afternoon about returning the godforsaken thing immediately. But now that he actually has it in his hands, Peter feels the familiar dread of curiosity and something else creep up on him. And Spiderman has never been one to win over his own curiosity. His boyfriend can begrudgingly attest to this.

With shaking hands he unwraps the package. He reveals the prize and it’s smaller than he expected. Slim. Definitely smaller. But it’s long and he can wrap both his fists along the length of it with room to spare. And Peter’s face heats up from the memory this gesture provokes.

He notices the package comes with a small container of lube. Considerate.

There’s no use pretending he’s not going to go through with it. It’s all he’s been thinking about the past three days, alone in his twin bed. On the last day he’d even reached the point of resenting MJ for not choosing express shipping.

It was pure coincidence that Tony was on a business trip for a conference in Dubai for a week. It was the first time since they’ve been together that Tony has been away for so long. And Tony has spoiled his boy, from make out sessions in the backseat of his Bentley to bending him over his desk at Stark Industries overlooking the view of Manhattan.

So Peter, between his teenage hormones and missing his boyfriend, is deprived. He can’t resist this opportunity in the form of a sleek, red and gold promise. He’s never had anything but Tony’s everything up his ass. And there’s nothing like an Iron Man dildo to add to the list.

Peter dips two fingers in the lube, and immediately it drips and soaks his pajamas. He curses softly and quickly undresses himself. When he’s in nothing but Tony’s too big Pink Floyd t-shirt, Peter finally slips one tentative finger in his hole. He’s never really gotten used to fingering himself. Tony had always taken all his sweet time to make sure his young lover was opened up and stretched for him. And Peter never had any complaints about that.

Panting as he adds a second finger, Peter is grateful for the excess amount of lube he’d added. He can hear Tony in his head. “Always so tight for me darling.”

He’s scissoring his fingers but they’re smaller than what he’s used to and just not enough. He clumsily reaches for the dildo and briefly he is comforted by it’s smaller girth because he’s definitely not prepped enough.

When the cool head of the dildo touches his rim, Peter shudders because the temperature is different. It’s also a shock to his dialed up senses. It only makes him want more so he forces himself to relax as he pushes the silicone in slowly. “Oh.”

And from then on, he’s a moaning mess on the bed because the solid head of the dildo is nudging perfectly against his prostate. When he finally has the mind to actually use the remote to turn it on, the vibrations rattle his insides. He shrieks, “No, no, no too much.” But his hands make no move towards the remote tossed carelessly on the bed, clutching at his sheets instead.

Peter can only imagine what he must look like on the bed. His curls sticking to his forehead, the tears leaking from the corner of his half hooded eyes, and lips swollen from his biting. In his pleasured daze, the boy wonders how Tony would react to this sight. Wearing his T-shirt and using Iron Man’s dildo up his ass to bring him to orgasm.

“Tony, oh my god. Tony, tony.” Peter’s sobbing now. He’s so close. His hands creep towards his cock because he knows he needs the touch to get himself there.

Then the vibrations stop.

Peter groans. Stupid Amazon -. But he doesn’t get to finish the thought because there’s a sudden weight on top of him and a hand on his cock that’s definitely not his own. “As much as I enjoyed the show, I don’t think I can just watch anymore.”

Against the solid weight of his boyfriend and the cool fabric of his silk suit against his bare skin, Peter gasps, “Tony!”

He was going to die of embarrassment. How much had he seen? When did he even get here? Why was here? But the thoughts flew out the window as the hand on his cock picked up pace. The calloused hands showed no mercy as a thumb brushed his tip to smear the precum around the head. It was completely unnecessary and absolutely delightful because he was leaking. There wasn’t a dry spot below his waist. “Tony, please. I can’t. Please.”

Tony ignores him. “You know.” He drawls. “I was up in my hotel room in Dubai after a three hour conference, wanting to Face Time my beautiful boyfriend. But when he doesn’t answer after three calls, I get worried and naturally I ask FRIDAY to contact Karen to activate surveillance in your room.” For the first time today Tony meets Peter’s eyes. His eyes are dark and heated. But he continues nonchalantly. “Installed for your safety of course. But this is the last thing I expected to see.”

Peter’s breath hitches. He’s not even mad, if only in the sense he needs to come right now or else.

Tony is closer now, lips to his ears, he whispers lowly. “I flew almost 11,000 kilometres because I couldn’t help but be jealous. But only after I watched the full footage of course.”

Peter tugs the collar of Tony’s freshly pressed dress shirt and meets his lips in a hungry kiss. It’s teeth and too much tongue. But Tony meets his fire with his own. More, more, he needs more. The dildo is still pressed to his prostate and he was so, so close to coming. He feels half mad with desire.

Tony’s large hands skim the sensitive parts of his body, making a clear path to his ass. Peter moans into his mouth when he finally cups his ass with both hands. He is thrumming with anticipation as one of Tony’s hands wander down to touch the end of the dildo still in his ass. But Tony is a tease and he pulls back, grinning. “So an Iron Man dildo? Once a fan, always a fan.”

Peter makes a sound in protest and retaliates. “Well they were out of Captain America products.”

He squeaks when Tony suddenly pushes the dildo in his ass even deeper. It doesn’t hurt but it’s too much. “You’re going to pay for that.” Tony’s eyes narrow but it’s the promising heat behind them that makes Peter whimper.

“Promise daddy?”

#starker #peter parker/tony stark #mine

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theonyxpath · 5 years

Link

Of course, Mid-Winter is a lot colder, but inside where the convention is, it’s nice.

Above, is an illustration from They Came From Beneath the Sea! of the sorts of terrors, horrors, and monsters, you face while playing our new game. Right now, its Kickstarter is doing really well for a totally new game, yet we’d love more backers getting a chance to playtest via the Early Access version available to every backer.

And, we’d also love folks to download the backer previews of the actual text and let us know what you think. Feedback now would be super helpful.

Even though it is Storypath-powered game, we’ve added enough extra materials that allow for not only a straight-forward style of playing, but also some pretty hilariously meta sessions as well, and we’d love to hear how those new elements like Quips and Props work around your table.

Although, as Matthew lets us know in the Media-focused part of the Blurbs below, at least one group is mixing They Came From! with their World of Darkness gaming! We had expected a bit of Trinity Continuum or Scion mixing since They Came From! is also a Storypath system game, but it’s cool that folks are diving in with other mash-ups as well.

CtL2e Jumpstart art by Tilen Javornik

In mentioning Mid-Winter, I was, of course, mentioning the convention that all of us from Onyx Path will be attending at the end of the week. We’ll have all of our game lines being played, sometimes with the very folks who wrote and created them, so it’s a rare chance to play with our whole crew.

We’ll also have our Q&A event late Thursday afternoon in the opulent Founder’s Room. You have to sign up, but once you enter that sanctum, we have a bunch of announcements of upcoming projects, some alcohol, and we pretty much do an AMA right there in a far more intimate space than your usual panel/seminar meeting room.

Previous years have been hilarious, and lots of stories were shared. It’s the right sort of way to meet up at a con where we’re already mixing it up with the attendees in games, in the restaurants and bars, and even the hotel lobbies.

Lest you think it’s us that are being all spontaneously open and stuff all by our lonesome, that’s not the case. Mid-Winter has a deliberate openness and friendliness that’s fostered by the whole crew that runs it – so you get a lot of attendees that go every year. I’m personally looking forward to seeing our Mid-Winter friends again this year!

Changeling20th Players Guide art by Drew Tucker

Now, the other part of Mid-Winter is that almost our entire Onyx Path Monday Meeting team will be there in order to have our annual Onyx Path Summit.

The Summit is where we’ll look at what went down in 2018 and look towards how we want 2019 to go. We’ll do some team-building exercises, and we’ll laugh a bit, and probably cry a bit too. It’s a rare chance to get us all together, and it sets the tone and direction for our decisions throughout the year.

Since that’s happening, and we’ll also be announcing new projects at the con, it makes sense that I talk about our plans for 2019 more next week, and so this week I’m going to give you our thoughts about what were the highlights of 2018 – the year that was.

Usually, it’s just our crew doing this, but this year Matthew asked for thoughts from our YouTube viewers, so I’ll be including some of the ones that talk directly about Onyx Path highlights – even though it’s awesome that folks had a great D&D campaign last year or that sort of thing.

Here’s the link for that vid and the comments: https://youtu.be/hgs2PdZyR-s

Here Then, the 2018 Highlights:

From Mighty Matt McElroy: A highlight for me was seeing the community content programs for Pugmire and Scarred Lands expand with new titles and fresh ideas from the fans of those games. I can’t wait to see what people come up with for 2019.

From Dynamic Dixie Cochran: My highlight was coming on full time and immediately doing the (pretty successful) Dragon-Blooded Kickstarter! I’m also excited we started the Pathcast and shipped Changeling: The Lost Second Edition. (I can’t pick one thing!)

From Erlan P on YouTube: Happy holidays The best gaming experience was playing Scion, the Wolfsheim story. The players decided to fight the werewolf to stop the Kindernacht. They fought all the main werewolf character and the Fenrir. The battle was so brutal that at the end of it one character died, two were incapacitated (one even losing a whole arm!) and the only one standing was at -4, just barely moving. It was supposed to be an impossible battle, they should had realized it eventually and ran, but no one gave up, and at the end they were victorious.

From Mirthful Mike Chaney: Dragon-Blooded pdfs going out a little earlier than promised and Lost 2e shipping early.

From David F on YouTube: Favorite moment tied to gaming in 2018 was watching my wife light up when I told her that her likeness would be used in Geist 2.0 (close tie with Scion for her favorite game).

From Monica Valentinelli: A highlight for me was seeing the D&D community geek out about Scarred Lands, Mau, and Pugmire at GameHole Con. It was fun to nerd out.

From Fast Eddy Webb: Getting Monarchies of Mau into backer hands, and early to boot!

From Drew1749 on YouTube: My favorite gaming experience this year was the Changeling 20th Anniversary game one of my friends ran for us. The premise of the game was fairly simple but was so much fun, we were the guardians of a freehold that existed within a middle school in Ohio. As such the heroes were all given jobs as members of the school’s faculty regardless of qualifications. There were several groups of changelings in the freehold, each with different assignments and responsibilities. Some students were also Changelings and we had to protect the students and freehold in general from outsiders and fae intrusions.

There a lot more to Drew’s comment, and it’s all good stuff so check it out if you can, but I had to keep these to a paragraph. Sorry, Drew.

From Impish Ian Watson: Not to beat a dead horse, but it was great having the Kickstarter for the Trinity Continuum, getting the backer PDFs out, and hearing from so many excited fans about the new books.

From Stray Reaper on YouTube: Best Gaming Experience for 2018 definitely has to be returning to my friend’s kitchen sink Chronicles of Darkness game. I got to finally play around as an Acanthus.

From Brandon S on YouTube: The highlight for me this year has been my World War II Werewolf the Apocalypse 20th game (which I take far too much joy in stylizing as WWIIWW) set behind enemy lines in Arnsberg, Germany mere days before the British dambusters flooded the area.

From Matthew “The Gentleman Gamer” Dawkins: My highlight was Vampire-themed, and could be one of two things. It was either the release (to wide acclaim) of Beckett’s Jyhad Diary, or the excellent writing and successful Kickstarter funding of Chicago by Night for V5. We turned that book around in an efficient manner, and I feel due to the diversity and mixed experience of the writing team, we put together one of the best Vampire sourcebooks ever made.

And finally, from Thiago H: I always like Scion, but got the same problems everyone knows. Crunked system, complicated character creation, the combat system was hard do explain (but I thought it amazing anyway). And then, 2nd edition came. And man, I got really surprised. The system is amazing, character creation is awesome, we have heroism, the players can contribute actively in the narrative, they really weave LEGENDS as the group progresses. I fell deeply in love with everything.

Thiago also has a lot more to say that I couldn’t fit, but well worth reading. Thanks!

Dystopia Rising: Evolution art by Michele Giorgi

Finally here’s a bit of a wrap-up that could count as my highlight of last year, Ian’s year-end review of all the many projects we released last year, as well as a list of all of our Kickstarters. Phew! http://theonyxpath.com/release-retrospective-2018/

Just look at them all, with so much more to come in 2019! Do I have to say it? It’s almost like we proving that Onyx Path has:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

KICKSTARTER:

They Came From Beneath the Sea! (TCFBtS!) funded on Kickstarter in less than 48 hours and we’ve passed through the first couple of Stretch Goals including getting Larry Blamire to illustrate a horizontal scene usable on a screen, two entries for a book of additional soggy Threats, a T-Shirt, an added Adventure Scenario, and we are rising up on the next goal!

TCFBtS! has some very different additions to the Storypath mechanics we’ll be explaining during the KS that take an excellent 50’s action and investigation genre game and turn it to 11! You can see the actual play here:

Check out the teaser:https://youtu.be/kxLydk4t76s

Hope to see you there back in the 50’s, fighting watery menaces and cracking wise!

ONYX PATH MEDIA

Illustration by Michael Gaydos

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is coming direct from the Mid Winter Convention, where our three troubadours of terror have a rare opportunity to actually all be in the same room while recording! Plus an equally rare chance to talk with almost everybody from Onyx Path and a huge number of our creators, fans, and random Milwaukeans trying to get in from the cold!

https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

And Here’s More Media About Our Worlds:

On our channel Matthew Dawkins is recapping his campaign of Scion that he’s named “Tokyo Noir”. It sounds like a lot of grisly fun and mixes the children of Bishamon, Kissh?ten, and Loki in a murder mystery. Matthew is involving viewers in deciding the direction of the game, so get in early with your suggestions! https://youtu.be/cKpHy3W4Z-E

YouTuber Stuart Armstrong has put together an interesting video on crossing over They Came from Beneath the Sea! with the World of Darkness! Check it out and give his channel a subscription: https://youtu.be/2wBFny9mSng

One of our forumites, Cinder, has started a written recap of their campaign of They Came from Beneath the Sea! It’s in its early stages right now, but you can subscribe to the thread for updates: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/cavaliers-of-mars-and-pugmire/1278691-explorers-of-the-fathoms-tcfbts-actual-play

The Story Told RPG Podcast interviewed Matthew Dawkins regarding They Came from Beneath the Sea! and his fun, informative interview can be found here for all interested listeners: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/bonus-episode-4-they-came-from-beneath-the-sea-with-matthew-dawkins

The Twin Cities by Night Crew have a Scion 2nd Edition three part series that will be released this week.

The murder of a Scion of Ra halts the progress of the sun across the sky. In response a group of strangers are unknowingly brought together by their divine heritage to investigate the crime.

ELECTRONIC GAMING:

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is now live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is both rolling and rocking!

ON AMAZON AND BARNES & NOBLE:

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue you bought it from. Reviews really, really help us with getting folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these fiction books:

OUR SALES PARTNERS:

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the Screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! http://bit.ly/2w0aaEW

And we’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

Here’s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http://theonyxpath.com/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution/

And you can now order Pugmire: the book, the screen, and the dice! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=296

DRIVETHRURPG.COM:

This week, we’re offering PDF and PoD versions of the Changeling: The Dreaming Map of Concordia on DTRPG and in a variety of materials on our RedBubble store!

CONVENTIONS

Start getting ready for our appearance at MidWinter THIS WEEK in January in Milwaukee! So many demos, playtests, secret playtests, and Onyx Path Q&As you could plotz!

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM FAST EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Geist2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Distant Worlds (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Creatures of the World Bestiary (Scion 2nd Edition)

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Let The Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Redlines

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Memento Mori: the GtSE 2e Companion (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

C20 Novel: Cup of Dreams (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Second Draft

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Ready Made Characters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Witch-Queen of the Shadowed Citadel (Cavaliers of Mars)

Development

Hunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)

CofD Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

CofD Dark Eras 2 (Chronicles of Darkness)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Scion Jumpstart (Scion 2nd Edition)

Manuscript Approval:

Wr20 Book of Oblivion (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Editing:

Aeon Aexpansion (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

M20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

In Media Res (Trinity Continuum: Core)

Tales of Excellent Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

V5 Chicago By Night (Vampire: The Masquerade)

V5 Chicago By Night Screen (Vampire: The Masquerade)

Spilled Blood (Vampire: The Requiem 2nd Edition)

Post-Editing Development:

C20 Players’ Guide (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)

Signs of Sorcery (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

Night Horrors: Shunned by the Moon (Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition)

Adventures for Curious Cats (Monarchies of Mau)

Indexing:

Scion Origin (Scion Second Edition)

Scion Hero (Scion Second Edition)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIRTHFUL MIKE:

In Art Direction

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – Bunch of art out for approvals.

The Realm – Contracted.

Ex3 Monthly Stuff –

Chicago By Night – Contracting next bits.

C20 Player’s Guide – More art coming in and going to WW for approval.

Aeon Aexpansion – Going over the notes.

They Came From Beneath the Sea! – KS rolling.

EX3 Lunars – Most KS finals are in.

Signs of Sorcery – One more piece and then over to layout.

In Media Res – Contracted.

Hunter: The Vigil 2 – KS art in progress.

Shunned By the Moon – Got the notes, contacting artists.

Book of Oblivion

Marketing Stuff

In Layout

Geist 2e

Proofing

Scion Hero – Indexing.

Scion Origin – Indexing.

M20: Gods and Monsters

Pugmire Roll of Good Dogs and Cats

Trinity Core – Gathering errata.

Trinity Aeon – Gathering errata.

Ex3 Dragon Blooded – Sending errata to devs.

CtL2e Condition Cards

Ex Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg)

At Press

Wraith 20th – New cover proof approved. Everything else is printing.

Wraith 20 Screen – Printed.

Scion Dice – At Studio2.

Lost 2e Screen – At Studio2, shipping with books to KS backers.

Scion Screen – At Studio2.

Changeling: The Lost 2e – PoD proof coming.

CtL2 Jumpstart – PoD processing.

Fetch Quest – Manufacturing finishing.

TODAY’S REASON TO CELEBRATE:

After much brouhaha, my granddaughter Natalia came into this world yelling loudly on Jan. 2nd. Yelling loudly being a pretty typical method for dealing with the world in our family.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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