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just-late-roman-republic-things · 3 months

Note

I am not an English native speaker,I hope you apologize my poor ENGLISH,I love your blog and your opinion about OCTAGRIPPA,here's my question

I just wanna know if you notice suetoanius mention that Octavian met an Eagle at Campus Martius when he 76 years old,watching the bird flyed onto Agrippa's name and announced himself would be dead soon? I consider it a very strong evidence to prove the two truly loved each other.Anyway in my culture,we don't think anyone should loved a friend until death like this

Hello! It looks like you're referring to Suetonius, Divus Augustus, 97:

It is a bittersweet passage, isn't it? We don't know whether it really happened, because stories of omens like this often develop after the fact. But it does suggest that people in Suetonius' time still thought of Agrippa and Augustus' relationship as significant.

Speaking of cultural differences, I think you'd find this interesting: I'm part of the aromantic community. I know six people who married people they love as friends, not romantically. To them, these relationships are just as important as romance is for most people. But some folks think a relationship without romance isn't good enough, and that these marriages are not "real love." So aromantic people here are trying to teach others that our love is still real, just different. Sometimes the most important person in your life is a friend.

(And some aromantic folks, like me, don't want a platonic relationship either. But that's another topic.)

This has also influenced how I look at history. Like many queer people, I like to look for historical same-sex relationships, and people we might now consider "trans." Finding people like us in history is important. But the aromantic community has taught me that the love in friendships is important, too. If every very close partnership gets put in the "romantic" category, it denies people like me a chance to find others like ourselves.

So how are we supposed to interpret something like Octavian and Agrippa? Is it possible to know what category they're in? Do categories like "romantic" or "platonic" even mean the same thing in ancient Rome??

Here's another cool thing aromantic people taught me: sometimes, there is no clear line between romance and close friendship. One of my friends says the feelings are indistinguishable for her. She is also happily married, to a very romantic person. You might think, "Romantic relationships have sex, friendships don't," but surprise! Both of them are also asexual! So for my romantic asexual friend, and some other folks, romantic feelings can exist without sexual ones.

If your response to that is, "Well, how do you tell the difference, then?"...you've run into the same problem I did, when studying ancient relationships. And we haven't even touched on cultural or linguistic differences between us and the ancient Romans yet! But this post is getting very long, so I'll leave that for another time.

All this is why, for my masterpost about Octavian and Agrippa (currently unpublished), I decided to change my goal. Instead of trying to put a label to what their relationship was, I decided to just collect the information we do have, to help fiction writers portray them. Whether you then write it as romantic or platonic (or "???") is up to you.

#sometimes i feel for the anons who ask me shippy questions and then get a whole-ass essay about sociology or historiography in response #i'm not mad don't worry. i just love talking about this stuff. being an aroace shipper is interesting sometimes #acephobia warning #arophobia warning #<--i don't think anon meant it like that but tagging it in case other folks are more sensitive to it #historiography #queer history #octagrippa #just roman asks #jlrrt essays

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myonmukyuu · 2 years

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A setting where Ayumu is in love with Yu, and Setsuna cheers her on.

END

Previous | Series Masterpost

If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting me with a Ko-fi!

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AFTERWORD

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I can’t believe I made it there... the last chapter...! (Excluding the epilogue.) But yes, I’m so happy to be done! 29 pages is a lot!! My back hurts and I wanna go lie down now...

To think it took almost 2 years to get to this point. How nostalgic... The first chapter only had 5 pages too. I guess I became more ambitious as time went on?

Firstly I’d like to apologise for the 4 month wait. The comic went through a lot of revision. New pages, deleted pages, changed scripts - it was a bit chaotic and had the most revision of any other chapter. I hope it turned out alright!

I love love looooovved colouring this comic by the way. Sorry about the lighting. I’m pretty sure you need sunglasses to read it with how brightly Ayumu is shining. I really loved the atmosphere in this. Especially having the sun set over the course of the comic! I guess this entire series is setting too...

For those with sharp eyes, this comic also had numerous references to previous chapters! While drawing these panels I couldn’t help but notice how my art has changed so much since then... It’s a good sign of improvement. I’ve also planted a couple of seiyuu/anime references. Even used a sun-chart to determine the light direction in the scene.

Now, story-wise I hope these was a satisfying ending! If not, then I apologise for botching the landing. I feel like this was the only way for my story to end. It may have been 4 months since the last chapter, but it’s only been a single night for Ayumu. Poor girl has been through a lot. It’s a bit of an open ending, but I felt that it had to be that way if I wanted to respect Ayumu’s feelings.

I also get the feeling a lot of people expected me to inflict more emotional damage onto our girls. No faith! I think this chapter has been the most wholesome update since the 2nd chapter. No pain! Just happiness and relief! No strings attached. Ayumu’s heart is sore, but she seems resolute in figuring things out at her own pace. Setsuna probably would be more heartbroken if she had held the expectation that Ayumu might return her feelings. But she was a bit more preoccupied with whether Ayumu would even be her friend. So she’s pretty happy with this outcome.

It was pretty funny writing this because while Ayumu’s feelings were relatively stable, Setsuna’s seemed to bounce back and forth wildly. The contrast was fun!

I think I can talk a lot about the characterisation and writing choices now that the story is over! But maybe there’s a time and place for that and that isn’t in this afterword. I will say that Ayumu and Setsuna are easily my favourite NijiGaku characters and even though this series is ending, I have so much more planned for them!

I almost want to apologise because I get the feeling some readers are waiting for me to draw other characters/pairs but I’m like “nope I only breathe setsupomu sorry check back later”.

I have a lot of sentimental thoughts, but I think I’ll save that for when I release the epilogue - that’s when it’s truly over. I can’t slow down yet. I have a big announcement after the epilogue is complete so please look forward to it!

It’s been really hard work getting all the way here. It’s exhausting but very fulfilling. When I was finishing this comic, I felt a rather strange feeling. Not a bad one. I felt that this comic could be a lot better. Maybe even the whole story. Drawn better, written better. Okay, it sounds bad when I put it like that, but tat feeling was - despite how much I think it can be improved, this story was something only I could make, and that’s special. To me at least.

...I could really do with some time off though.

Anyways, I’ve typed enough! I hope you enjoyed my story.

Let’s keep working till we blast past the finish line.

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DELETED SCENE

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The following pages were deleted. These were originally meant to be between pg 1 and 2, but I ended up removing them. These are very rough and haven’t been edited at all, but here they are anyways if anyone was curious:

#love live #ayumu uehara #setsuna yuki #setsuayu #ayusetsu #setsupomu #my art #WE DID IT GUYS #well... almost #still an epilogue lefft #but ill keep working hard!!!#whew this took like 4 months?#ima take a break for like 2 days or something #and become one with the universe #also! isnt the timing insane? with the setsupomu service shots we got in the anime last night asdsadasd #ok nap time i got 3 hours of sleep in me and am coming down with a cold...

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poorgay · 1 year

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Childe 8+ Moms AU/Abyss Moms Polycule MasterPost

ive had enough of linking things ( ・∇・) 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 (again thanks 2 @/8417 & @/milfmorax my coconspirators who came up with the master post idea among many other things)

plot is: no genshin woman is acc dead they all 1) fake their deaths 2) go to the abyss 3) have petty drama with one another 4) end up in a polycule 5) adopt childe

for the ones that aren't dead canonically, rules 2-5 still apply

(they're all kinda bad people whatever cant women do anything 🙄)

✨featuring✨:

childe genshin impact

the tsaritsa

raiden makoto

guizhong

skirk

columbina

arlecchino

alice

rhinedottir

istaroth

the goddess of flowers (nabu malikata)

zhongli sometimes when i feel like bullying him

in release order

ai fun times:

⚠️these are just the main posts ive made explicitly including childe with reference to more than one ship! if u wanna see more of a specific ship go to the #rhice, #thundersnow, or #abysslilies tags on my page! (those are the ones i've written about so far....)⚠️

(if u wanna make stuff 4 this au go ahead lolol)

#masterpost #childe 8+ moms au #abyss moms polycule #♡ genshin ♡#i love using blue for this au acc #lolololol the posts are still the same in previous what ever cant be helped 🤷‍♀️

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maxwell-grant · 2 years

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By no means do this now, but if you ever get the time recommending some good shadow fanfiction would be cool?

(Art by Michael Walsh)

Because fanfiction can be a touchy subject, I feel like I need to add a big caveat upfront that I don't endorse or necessarily agree with every single aspect of a fanfic take on the character, nor do I expect others to agree with mine for that matter. I've written Shadow fanfic and taken liberties aplenty with the material, and will probably take more if I get back on that saddle. This is just par for the course when it comes to fanfic. I’m not trying to be judgmental, I just wanna put this out here to try and prevent misunderstandings if possible.

There’s really not that many Shadow fics out there to begin with (especially not after the Conde Nast webpage purges of the 2000s) and not that many that I’d even particularly recommend, I’ve read pretty much all of them still available online as is. I’m gonna leave out some things that could reasonably be called published fanfiction, like the Tales of The Shadowmen stories featuring the character, and stick purely to what you’d find online. So here goes some of my recommendations

Works written by Cryptix / @oldschoolcrimefighters: I've said this before and don't think I can say it enough, but @cryptix23's posts on The Shadow's pulp magazines were one of the biggest deciding factors in making my liking for The Shadow turn into, *gestures at that masterpost on top of my blog, this. I owe her a debt I can never really repay for showing me the heart of this character in a way nobody else had, just by pointing out what was in the source material all along, and particularly regarding info on the agents where there was nowhere else to be found. I still greatly enjoy reading her own fics for the character and how she depicts the dynamics between the agents and The Shadow, and how much color and life they inject into these adventures.

The Nexusverse Shadow / works written by evillurks: You can find some of the prompts written via their Deviantart account Shadowtricker. This one is a lot harder to find in it’s entirety and I think some pages for it are non-existant outside of the Wayback Machine, I compiled as many as I could find in a couple of Word docs for personal reading and probably missed several. It’s on livejournal and comprises a couple hundred (maybe over a thousand) posts of a Shadow RP blog, based around the idea of a somewhat aged-up version of The Shadow still living and active in the 1980s, interacting with an AU version of Myra Reldon (the protagonist more often than not) as well as other characters and worlds through a sort of multiversal crossover dimension thing.

I haven’t had time to read all or even most of the long-form RP stories published but I have read most of their short snippets and I can definitely recommend them. These feels the most like Shadow pulps out of any of these I’ve read, there’s certainly a case for this to be the best version of Myra Reldon (taking everything that worked about the pulp version and doing it better) to the point I kinda default to this as my frame of reference for Myra at times, and though it’s not a high bar to clear, it’s the best take I’ve seen on a “The Shadow in modern times / out of his own time” concept, letting the character age and adapt to different times for better or worse, and still remain recognizably distinct and fiercesome.

Kimberly-Murphy Smith’s Shadow saga: Quoted this one briefly in another post. Will reiterate that, yes, there are aspects about this take on the character that I do find very disagreeable to the point I feel the need to point it out, but all in all: This basically takes the movie version of The Shadow and thoroughly combines with the radio, pulp and comics versions, as well as the other iterations of the movie story such as the James Luceno novelization and the Kaluta/Goss comic, and somehow makes it work.

It’s the best take there ever was on specifically the “movie” version of The Shadow because it’s structured entirely around making the inserted movie changes into a fleshed out character and universe for these things to be in. It did maybe the best job anyone had ever done, until Matt Wagner, of combining and editing all the separate takes on The Shadow into something cohesive and entertaining, as well as making his relationship with Margo work. I like it enough that it even went a long way in redeeming the movie characterization for me. It also did the one thing I absolutely think Shadow fanfics / modern works should be doing, which is introducing new agents aplenty to the fold that don’t overlap with the established supporting cast.

Der Dunkle Adler by Keith Holt: A short one, it takes place in a German tavern in WW1 with soldiers sharing stories about encounters with the mysterious flying ace with a boogeyman reputation. Really good premise, really good execution, solid ending, this is the one that inspired me to do my own take on The Shadow’s war years (although not how I’d “canonically” handle it, for the most part).

Identities and the 8th Wonder by Matt Dennion: It’s The Shadow vs King Kong told through the perspective of his 3 main identities, as Lamont Cranston shows up to Carl Denham’s exhibit, The Shadow frantically struggles solo to save people from Kong’s rampage despite being completely powerless to do anything but temporarily distract Kong, and then, as The Black Eagle, he works alongside G-8 and his team to put down Kong for good. Not the only time I’ve seen this premise done and usually this kind of “spot the cameo” exercise bores me, but this one stuck with me for a long time as an excellent display of The Shadow fighting despite being hopelessly outmatched in a way he’s never been before, spinning plans and traps on the fly against an unsurmountable menace destroying his city, making mistakes (even fatal ones) in trying to save lives, and finding a way to overcome the odds and help save the day, to a grim resolution unusual for Shadow stories. It’s a little The Spider-y and in a way that works really well for me.

Never to be Cheated by @saphura: Another short one. I like the premise, I like the prose, I like the characterization, the concept’s intriguing, very solid all-around and I tend to appreciate the more explicitly supernatural takes on The Shadow that emphasize the ring and it’s weird significance.

The Life of an Agent series by Greg Daulton: This one sort of provides a bit of backstory for the main agents by showing how they could have met and joined The Shadow. I don’t have much to say about it but it’s pretty allright, more interesting as kind of a shorthand to get to know the agents a little better.

Lineage by Matt Dennion and Tom Kurtz: It’s The Shadow, Batman, and Zorro (both the original and a descendant) battling across four decades to foil Ra’s al Ghul’s master plan. It’s this big epic that does a couple of things I do find interesting, namely 1: I think Ra’s al Ghul being the arch-villain of several different established characters (and even killing one of them), with big names and legacies in their own right across the decades works pretty well in selling him as a big immortal threat to the world at large, 2: I kinda like the idea of Shambala being presided over by god-like figures from different mythologies, I mostly hate Shambala conceptually and in entirety to begin with so anything mildly interesting for it is a plus

In His Shadow by JanEyrEvanescence12: This one falls more on the “very loose reinterpretation of a lot of things and plenty of concepts I find brutally disagreeable, but it does some things interestingly enough that I still think it makes for a pretty allright read to go back to, and because it’s fanfic it’s easy to look at it more for what it is” side of things. It’s unfinished and I wouldn’t even particularly recommend it for it’s story, more so for it’s imagination and some of what it’s doing to reinterpret the character.

Strange Bedfellows by Zath Chauvert: Cute, simple, conceptually pretty funny, and I’m giving away the twist here as is, but the Phurba becoming sort of Lamont and Margo’s weird dog monster, that likes Margo and still kinda hates Lamont, is pretty great.

#replies tag #the shadow #pulp heroes #fanfic #opinion #gonna be upfront here and say that #the people who write Harry Vincent-centric fics usually get it right over 95% of everyone else writing Shadow content #and I'm including myself in those 95%#official and non-official alike #there's like 4 of you but you Get It #well 5 actually but one of them hid his tracks more neatly

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apoptoses · 10 months

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I'm back. Fed my cats, watered my plants, took a shower, had dinner and then finally sat down and finished what I'd started. Mind blown tbh, might be one of my favorite one shots by you now. And listen, Daniel has never not been River in my mind, but your recent posts have rewired by brain chemistry a bit so I pictured him as Spader throughout the fic and let me tell ya, it was an out of body experience holy shit!!!! He might've awoken something in me 🥵 sorry River but you're gonna have to share now 🥵

"but then again, maybe the unnatural was the only place Daniel felt safe anymore. That by coming to love such an inhuman thing human experiences no longer cut it" That's my no. 1 boy!!! Coming to terms with his monsterfucking nature and embracing being unapologetically horny for the death guy, we love to see it.

“Yes, lover?” Armand murmured without putting the magazine down. Daniel rolled his eyes. He reached over and tilted the magazine down until he could see Armand’s face, stark white even in the warm glow of the lamp beside him.“ Can we talk without Cosmo in between us?” Daniel asked." Babies are learning to communicate! With words! Also it's extremely them to finally learn how to voice their needs via their sexual appetite/preferences lmao. The way you also fleshed out Armand's insecurities and uncertainty when it comes to Daniel and what really wants out of things was just lovely. "Yes, sometimes I'm more careful with you than you really know" 😭😭😭 he truly is just trying to navigate this relationship the best he can, he's just had a hard time with not letting his intrusive thoughts win, that's all.

“Oh. You took off your rings,” Daniel said. “You never do that.” Yeah this hit the spot, alright. Completely bare for the first time, fully in it for the experience. It's not just about Daniel getting what he wants now, not anymore.

"Daniel glanced between Armand’s hand and his face, his wide eyes, so dark they looked almost entirely black." full jungle cat mode, my favorite Armand mode. Blown asf pupils because he's that horny, the song of my people 🥹

"The thigh he’d just defiled, one he’d ruin further by coming on it", defiled!!!! at this point I was delirious lmaoo no coherent thoughts tbh just know that it just doesn't get better than this, in DA-verse.

“If there’s some kind of rules to this you better tell me now before I’m not able to stop,” Daniel managed to say between rough, messy kisses. He’d have felt ridiculous being so desperate his teeth clacked against Armand’s but he was too far gone to care." Also THIS. Daniel was beyond all logic here but he still had the decency to ask Armand for permission of some kind, he's so stupid in love and also the most ridiculous human, I love him so.

Life changing, this one. 15/10 no further notes xoxo DA

Dungeon anon I'm gonna cry haha You and desertfangs have been the only ones to make any comment on that fic at all and it feels so awful, but knowing you enjoyed it so much means a lot.

Also WELCOME to the wonderful world of Spader!Molloy, please see my masterpost I posted earlier and drool with me. His backlog of films is just so fucking perfect and his looks are incredible and ugh! I just love picturing him as Daniel.

That's my no. 1 boy!!! <- okay Daniel aside, are you a succession fan? haha Is this a kendall roy reference?

But yes! Making them communicate was the whole point! They're locked into this awful game of 'if I hint will you pick it up?' and 'i see your hint but i don't wanna ask what it means unless you can say it explicitly'. They have the ability to not use Armand's mind gift as a crutch they just gotta use it!

I love thinking about the opposite POV as I write and were that fic from Armand's POV it would be an entirely different story. Because what do you do if someone is saying in their mind 'yes I want this' but they're saying with their mouth 'no, I'm not into that' and then sometimes in their mind they're also like 'no I can't do that'? What do you do? It's so much pressure that I think he would retreat just like he did here.

I love Armand with his rings but I think there's so much intimacy in the idea of him taking them off. They're part of him, they're a symbol of the walls he has up and the defense mechanisms he hides behind, so any time I have him remove them around Daniel he's being the most honest.

Daniel was beyond all logic here but he still had the decency to ask Armand for permission of some kind, he's so stupid in love and also the most ridiculous human, I love him so. <- Exactly, he's always got the drive to get permission even when it's not needed! He loves being out of control. And I love him sloppy kissing, like full on messy teenage makeout mode and Armand being too into it to even tease him about it. They're both a mess!

Anyways I'm so happy you liked it because I don't think anyone else did haha Or they were all uncomfortable with saying so, I guess. I feel super defeated finally getting back on ao3 and getting crickets. But I love that you love it, I loved writing it.

ps- cats? Tell me more! Send pics if you can!

#apoptoses answers #dungeon anon

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the-hs-etaverse · 2 years

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I'm not sure if this is the place for this but I'm trying to figure out SCP-085's classpect and I'm wondering if you had any thoughts on that

I'm not super knowledgeable about the SCP lore (though I'm familiar with the Foundation), but hey, I can give it a look! I'm not a classpect-specific blog, but I do want to post my opinions on the matter here. (Still working on those masterposts :3 )

Okay before I read the 085 article I just wanna say: Classpecting is determined mostly by the character's role in the narrative. SCP classpecting can be challenging because, at least initially, there's little to no narrative, just an anomaly with containment procedures (which may in themselves contain the narrative but you know what I mean).

...

Christ, they're ALREADY at SCP-7000? (okay it's just the contest but !!!)

...

Oh. OH OH THIS IS THE GIRL THE DRAWING OH I LOVE CASSY

Cassy is very lonely, so I'd say Space is a relevant aspect for her. (There's a seeming trend that Space players have to contend with loneliness, re. Jade's seclusion, Calliope's whole deal, etc.) I'd also say Space because of the nature of her existence: she is a two-dimensional drawing.

You know, a couple years ago, I wrote a sketch of a fic (haha) in which Cassy and Fred (SCP-423) met and became friends. That doesn't matter really, I just wanted to mention it

...

All right, just finished rereading the article. It's here, if you want to read it yourself.

I'm mostly inclined to stick with my initial assumption that Cassy is a Space player, but at the same time I would like to take into consideration the metanarrativial circumstances of her existence. See, Cassy was one of the first SCPs. Back in 2008-2010? Whenever the Foundation started? Back then, there were fewer restrictions on SCPs, and the Foundation wasn't as firmly dedicated to the Secure | Contain | Protect protocol as it is now. So interactions with the SCPs would extend beyond simply that and the scientists trying to understand them; they were treated in the Foundation... I hesitate to say more humanely? But yes, they were treated more humanely. I believe some of the more "stable" humanoid SCPs (like Abel before the rewrite, Cain, and Iris) were used as sort of a task force and were sent on missions. But as the Foundation stabilized to what it is today, backstories were rewritten, articles were revamped, policies were put in place, more narrative consistency was implemented, so on and so forth. One of the examples that troubles me the most is the rewrite of SCP-166 from the rather fascinating concept of a devoutly Catholic succubus to a still Catholic but otherwise weird eldritch demigoddess who partially exists to fuel Dr. Clef's manpain. There are still little standout inconsistencies of sorts that hearken back to the old days of the Foundation, like how Cain (SCP-073) is allowed to "freely wander the facility and eat in the main canteen". But the biggest hallmark is Cassy herself.

TV Tropes's character entry on SCP-085 says "The Foundation in its entirety is startlingly protective of her". I agree, although when she accidentally learned of her true nature, she was nominated for destruction, and although the O5 (overseer) Council voted that she not be destroyed, it was not by an overwhelming majority. (Okay I'm kind of defeating my whole point here) The Foundation has let her build and fuel her own car and interact with Escherian impossible constructs. Most notable, in my opinion, is how she is referred to within the article. Most SCPs are referred to with it/its. Cassy is mostly referred to with she/her.

Ultimately, the point I'm trying to make is, the SCP Foundation is unusually kind to Cassy, while it is usually clinical to other SCPs. I feel like her aspect should reflect that. Maybe she should be Hope or Rage? Those both relate to the metanarrative. Hope would be more suitable, I think, as Cassy is fictional to the fictional universe of the Foundation, and since her presence seems to trigger a protective instinct in others, even in the meta-Foundation.

So I'm torn between Space and Hope. Likewise I'm torn between Witch and Mage as her class. Cassy is a Witch in that she creates her own living space just by being on a page, and it seems she creates Hope (compassion?) in others. On the other hand, Cassy is a Mage in that she always conforms to her spatial habitat even when in different artistic media, and she is born in loneliness and depression and love.

To give my perpetual classpect caveat: nobody perfectly inhabits any one classpect, not even fictional characters. It's like trying to put a tiger in a shoebox.

So I'll leave it up to you:

Cassy is a [Witch/Mage] of [Space/Hope].

#classpect #scp #scp-085 #ask #queue #long post #forgive me for the stream of consciousness rambling at the beginning #that is simply how my brain processes

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 years

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Omg I so wanna draw the lying down one too but I've only just started doing different poses (I draw two characters hugging today!!) but I will try!!

Could I have a quick description of the room and each of their wings again? (I know that Sophie is a void bee, Fitz is a rainbow bird I think, and Keefe has wings that change shades depending on his mood, but I want something kore concrete)

(2/3) Wait i don't remember what they were wearing dammit-

I've started the sketch btw, imma just give them placeholder clothes until I find the chapter the scene is in

(3/3) Ok nevermind this is looking horrible, her body is malformed. I'll try again tomorrow

_________________

Heathen you sent me like four asks all at once I hope you don't mind me combining them as they were all related to the same thing. Also it's super sweet of you to want to draw them but please don't feel any pressure to! Me reblogging that post was more about art I'd like of the au in general, not that anyone else needs to draw it

also congrats on drawing two characters hugging!! characters interacting with each other can be so annoying to draw, so kudos to you! also I have seen your submission with the Maui art I just haven't gotten to it yet dw <33

as for the descriptions, give me a moment I also don't remember what chapter it was in. okay after checking the cuddling is in chapter ten, The Reconnections. They're in Fitz's living room which has a wooden floor and it's scattered full of papers and things like that--he was very distraught and made a mess. as for the aesthetic of the place, think something quaint and cottagecore, as this used to be a gnome's home. so wood and plants and rugs and things like that, though there's no strict description. I do have a vague idea of the layout in my head, but it's not solid enough to really help beyond what I've already said

you were close with the wings though!! I actually have reference drawings for the three of them linked in the masterpost, but I'll gie you the link right here and here as well. I haven't done drawings of all the wings yet, but I've got the three of them. Sophie's a void bee, Fitz is a golden eagle (unfortunately not rainbow), and Keefe's are similar to a creature unique to the au. Essentially think regular feathered wings but they shift between various shades of black to greys to whites based on how he's feeling, so they're probably pretty light in this scene because he's chilling with his friends. Perhaps a tinge of grey on the ends because he can feel Fitz's distress, but otherwise light.

But the clothing descriptions aren't in that chapter so I'm going to check to see if I actually described them earlier, because there's a good chance I didn't.

Sophie has bandages on her arms and one of her shoulders...I think the left one but don't quote me on that. Otherwise I don't think I described any of what they were wearing, so you can dress them how you'd like!! I rarely bother with mentioning clothing as it's usually an unimportant detail, so unless it has relevance--like the red clothing in the most recent chapter, or the cloaks to cover wings--then you're free to make it up however you'd like!!

if you do end up drawing it, I hope it goes well and i will love it no matter how malformed she is, as it's so sweet of you to put the time in to make something for the au. also today is the wings au's birthday!! may 9th!! so it has officially been out and in the world for an entire year as of today <33

#edit: added the links because I forgot to the first time whoops--#shattered upside down #kotlc wings au #quil's queries #heathen nonsie #long post #seriously this is very kind of you but please don't feel like you have to!!#also i was playing viddy games last night and kept getting notifications of asks from you and was concerned /lh #like oh no did something happen should I be paying attention to this/#*?#but also. game #so hopefully this information helps!!#i actually often forget what they're wearing and if I ever mentioned it #because a single day can last several chapters. so weeks can go by since I mention what she wore and I forget

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thegeminisage · 3 years

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one of many reasons castiel spent the first year of knowing dean trying not to strangle him: dean's weird little winchester-only dialect

i’m fucking obsessed with this right now, so buckle in for a meta. a cool fun (horrible) thing about dean's dialogue is that a good 90% of what comes out of his mouth is:

a pop culture reference ("you're just gonna take some divine bong hit, and shazam, you're roma downey?")

references to real life phenomenon ("i don't wanna wake up missing a kidney in a bathtub full of ice" "try new mexico, i hear he’s on a tortilla")

these also often take the form of nicknames, and dean has a tendency to give people nicknames in general or call them something besides their given name, whether it’s affectionate or rude ("easy there, van damme" "so i’m girl interrupted" furthermore castiel = cas, ezekiel = zeke, etc, see also frequent use of "chucklehead" "asshat" and on the nicer/endearments end "buddy" "pal" "sunshine" etc)

an idiom ("a snowball's chance" "if it smells like a duck...")

slang ("drinking the koolaid" "jonesing for some hooch" not to mention the literal endless amount of words dean uses to refer to killing - gank, waste, juice, ice, etc)

a metaphor ("power up your batteries" "fly me back to my page on the calendar")

a euphemism ("cloud seeding" "i'd have given you an hour alone with her first")

sarcasm (his habit of replying "peachy" or "super" when asked how he is)

wordplay (see: the entire "vampirate" and "werepire" debacles)

completely nonsensical (guessing what happened to a magical artifact: "it was dug up by tomb raiders? it was seized by the king of the dead by warlords?")

said at lightning speed - if you pay attention, dean actually talks a LOT, usually a mile a minute (this makes me feel a way when you recall him being nonverbal for a year at age 4 but that’s another post)

slang IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (casual usage of “guano,” etc)

a lie, a deflection, a joke, etc

or worse, something dean’s NOT saying, deliberately, because he’s one of the most repressed people on earth

the end result of all this being:

dean winchester is utterly infuckingcomprehensible.

think about this. there's an ENTIRE SECTION on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE PAGE of the spn wiki devoted to JUST explaining dean's pop culture references, because the average viewer won't have seen everything he's talking about either. they have a whole page for this called “hunter’s lingo,” but honestly, it’s not all hunters, just sam and dean’s fucking batshit communication style. even i don't understand dean half the time. SAM gets it, sam speaks it back to dean a lot in the early seasons, but that's because sam and dean are 1. practically two halves of the same person 2. FREAKS. every time we get an episode that involves outsider POV is devoted to them going "what the fuck is WRONG with them?"

enter castiel. technically speaking, the show implies that angels are omnilingual. castiel should understand every language known to man, but knowing the meaning of words doesn't help him understand the following:

pop culture references

references to real life phenomenon

nicknames

idioms

slang

metaphors

euphemisms

sarcasm

wordplay

you get the idea.

listen to me. look me in the eyes. castiel cannot understand a single fucking word that comes out of dean's mouth. my guy laid a hand on dean winchester in hell and immediately fell in love with him and has no fucking idea what he's talking about ever. because not only is dean winchester's way of speaking CLINICALLY insane, and sometimes incomprehensible even to other human beings who are not sam, castiel is an angel, and someone prone to taking things even more literally than other angels do

go back and watch and watch seasons 4-5 especially. the reason cas does so much squinting and head tilting is because every time dean opens his mouth castiel has to open up his mental "dean winchester dictionary" and translate entire paragraphs on the fly, because again, dean never shuts up!

what makes this extra hilarious to me is this gem:

this line is from 5.13. at this point cas has known dean for AN ENTIRE YEAR AND A HALF. what you see here is my guy SNAPPING. cas made an EFFORT in this scene. he asked who glenn close was. he's telling dean that he can't understand him. he is doing his level best to have a normal conversation with this guy he has a crush on and for the life of him he cannot do it (equal but opposite energy to cas blowing up the gas station and motel room in 4.01, tbh)

yes, cas can understand dean's tone. he can use context clues, and he usually gets the general idea. and when cas DOES understand dean's jokes, he laughs at them. the first time we ever see him smile is during their 4.07 heart-to-heart when dean says "it was a witch, not the tet offensive." since cas has knowledge of human history, he knows what the tet offensive is; he got the joke, and he laughed.

but as far as actual dialogue goes, he consistently struggles to keep up. even after metatron gives castiel the pop culture knowledge in season 9, cas struggles to put it to put it to proper use (dean: "you wanna just walk right into the death star?" cas: "what does a fictional battle station have to do with this?"). whenever he asks dean to clarify it's always when he’s most annoyed, like most of the time he knows it would be futile but he's too annoyed to care. (dean: "i don't know who's on first, what's on second!" cas: "what IS second???") i’m pretty sure he spends seasons 4-6 wanting to shake dean by the shoulders and ask him why he is LIKE THIS.

it takes cas - who, again, is omnilingual - YEARS to begin to acclimate to dean’s speech and start speaking that language back to him. it's season 8 before we start really hearing him use slang, season 9 before he begins to understand wordplay, season 10 before he starts using pop culture references (to other angels, who immediately fail to understand him, which disappoints him immensely), and season 11 before he really gets into metaphors. i don't remember what season he started using "yeah" instead of "yes" but i do know it took a really damn long time.

and honestly, i don't think cas truly got the hang of it until at least season 11-12. that's something like 7 or 8 YEARS. it’s more than half the time they’ve known each other at the point of the series finale.

so what's true romance, fellas? it's falling completely and totally in love with the most inexplicable person you will ever meet in your whole 4.5 billion year life, even though you have yet to understand a single thing he's ever said to you. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[spn masterpost]

#destiel #dean winchester #castiel #deancas #supernatural #liz's meta #liz makes stuff #liz's spn stuff #i have a whole other thing about how cas will code switch when he's around angels vs humans but this post is already way too long #seriously debated waiting and posting this in the morning because i want people to reblog it but fuck it! 2am meta.#season 5 cas: completely in love: i have no idea what the fuck you're saying to me. i love you. i'm going to kill you. why are you like thi

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cat-sapphics · 2 years

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So I just wanna ask you if you are really against mspec lesbians? because bilesbianism was always a big part of bisexual and lesbian history I’m not trying to sound mean or anything I’m just genuinely curious about if you are against them why and hear your points only if you want a obviously/gen

alright so i was going to just delete this ask at first out of assumption that you were gonna be like "why are you against us, it's QUEER HISTORY u pos exclus >:(((" but you seem genuinely curious and it seems i've misread, so i apologize and i'm glad i didn't delete it.

but anyway, you're right!! "mspec lesbians" used to be a huge part of our shared history, that's very much true. back before lesbian separatism was active, all women who associated themselves with women were considered lesbians, because the word "lesbian" was considered an act and not an innate orientation - hence why it was much more acceptable and even encouraged for (especially straight) women to choose to distance themselves from men and "go lez" by associating themselves with women more, not even romantically. we now call this political lesbianism, which is finally recognized as being lesbophobic. bi women who dated women were considered to be lesbians in lesbian relationships. bisexuality was not seen as its own valid entity yet.

^^ which is exactly part of why it's also biphobic to be acknowledging bi women as lesbians, even if they as individuals want to be recognized as such. we have fought long and hard to gain our own spaces as our own unique orientation and community, while still engaging in solidarity with actual lesbians simultaneously. to say that we can just be lesbians if we want to undoes all of that separatism, and it brings attraction to men back into exclusive spaces that were designed to keep that out. where are they to go if we just keep following them and refusing them the right to their own personal communities just like we have? and that's what makes it lesbophobic primarily.

i think a good source for you to read into would be [this carrd], and i know carrds tend to be frowned upon in debates but this one actually has a lot of time, effort, and research put into it. it is very gentle with its wording and does not demonize inclusive people who have used harmful labels at all before, plus it even offers alternatives that cat be used!!

there's another one that's been going around for a year or two (justsaysapphic), but it's short and doesn't really say much beyond "mspec lesbians are bad and lesbophobic." i just went to go find it for reference, but it seems as though the author has deleted it and replaced it with a link that shows that they are now in favor of mspec lesbians, which goes to show that they can't say the same about the previous one in terms of valid resourcefulness. i'm disappointed and in quite a bit of disbelief tbh and kinda wish i hadn't found that out now ?? oof. i mean... i'm always open to people changing their opinions as opposed to being unbearably stubborn so i guess i can't be a hypocrite, but it was such a big deal in the lesbian community so i'd be lying if i said i wasn't shocked. and i am gonna be critical about it too, because something about it all just strikes me as really... off... about how this person went from fighting lesbophobia to "hmm, no the radinclus queers were right actually, words have no meaning anymore" since i always see inclus turn into exclus but very rarely vice versa - i just can't quite put my finger on what. but anyways, not the point here.

i hope this helps, though. i didn't feel like typing up a long organized masterpost for it right now (as you can probably tell since this is not my greatest post ever written), especially when that link explains it better, but feel free to ask if you have anymore questions and i'm sure i could either answer them myself to my best attempt or find more related posts that i've saved somewhere before in the past!! :,)

#ask #anon #pridecat rants #lgbt discourse #lesbian discourse #mspec lesbians #bi lesbians #anti mspec lesbians #anti mspec #discourse #lgbt resources #sources

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winchesterxxi · 3 years

Text

My Favorite Ghost (Poe Dameron x Reader)

Rating: T (Teen and Up Audiences)

Type: Angst

Summary: What happens when a Resistance fighter gets trapped on Republican grounds and the man in charge of her torture is none other than her ex-husband Poe Dameron, former Leia Organa’s protegée turned First Order Admiral?

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Force-sensitive reader, torture, graphic descriptions of violence, blood, injuries, swearing, death.

A/N: Poe Dameron angst??? oof

MASTERPOST | REQUEST HERE | KO-FI

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The mission couldn’t’ve gone more astray.

It was a simple and easy task for a single person to carry out. Fly below the cruiser, get in, get their coordinates for their next targets and get out. Hand the coordinates over to Holdo, and prevent the StarDestroyer from blazing those planets.

Simple. Until it wasn’t.

It all went astray when a face scanner crossed your path. The blueprints didn’t mention any face scanner on that door. You panicked, trying to get your face to scan and let you in, resorting to fiddling with the wires on the side of the device looking left and right to make sure no one would catch you. Except they did.

4 stormtroopers rounded the corner and, hands full with a small screwdriver and needle-nose pliers, you couldn’t have moved fast enough to reach your blaster before they had pinned you against a wall, face against the cold metal.

Next thing you knew, a dark sac is being put over your head and right after your body is pulled away from the wall, a hard object hits the back of your head and you are knocked out cold.

You don’t know how long it had passed before you regained your senses, eyes struggling to open due to the immense brightness that was aimed at you from a light above.

You scanned around the room as much as your body allowed you to, for you soon enough came to find everything below your neck strapped to a metal platform that stood upright in the middle of the room you were in.

You could spot a few cameras pointed at you, and you could also hear steps and muffled voices outside as well as a distant and low rumble of the ship’s engines – you should be close to the cockpit. Most torture rooms tended to be. That way, the commanders and soldiers don’t need to walk far to deliver information obtained from those captured.

The thoughts in your head didn’t have much more time to run wild as the big double doors in front of you opened and gave way to a silhouette to step into the room before they closed again behind them.

For as much as you forced your eyes to read them, it was practically impossible because of the light pointed directly at your face, coming from above. All you could see was the bottom of their uniform – knee-high dark leather boots and black pants, either a general or an admiral, and the clenched fists in shiny leather gloves - as they stood in front of you, hidden from the light.

“Are we getting this over with anytime soon?” you question bitterly while resting your head back and closing your eyes. You’d be damned if you were going to show any fear to anyone within this ship.

“Although I won’t blame you for just standing there, I know I’m pretty pleasant to look at.” Confidence, fake it until you make it. Or until you piss someone off, which is a better description of what you were aiming at.

“Can’t argue with that.”

Your blood runs cold.

Head snapping back down, facing forward, your jaw tightens and your whole body tenses at the reverberation of those words against the metal walls. And that is when the person you dreaded the most to run into again, in your whole life, steps into your sight.

His eyes meet yours and for a moment you think your mind is deceiving you.

This isn’t him.

Those eyes do not belong to the face in front of you. They aren’t his eyes. His eyes had a constant sparkle in them with the life that bubbled inside of him; they were big, brown, kind and caring.

These are hard, dark and cold. Lifeless.

“Poe.”

Despite his name leaving your lips in something little above a whisper, you know that name no longer refers to him. Not in the way it was engraved in your mind. Poe was your husband, the lively and witty resistance pilot that Leia Organa had assured you were meant for you. And maybe he was. But this isn’t Poe. This is someone – something else.

“It’s Admiral Dameron.”

You grith your teeth together and have to muster all the strength in you to not let your bottom lip quiver at the coldness and lack of emotion in his voice, so distant from that you were used to in the sweet nothings that would reach your ears in the mornings you’d wake up in his arms.

“What do you want?” you ask him, voice tainted with both pain and disgust.

“I could ask you the same thing. You were the one caught in our ground, trying to break a facial recognition system. What exactly were you looking to get?”

“It was outside the navigation system room. Take a wild guess.” Your anger-powered wit met a halt, as a sharp pain ran through your whole body with great intensity.

A pained screamed was let out of your mouth, muscles tensing and thrusting your body forward against the metal boundaries that enveloped your ankles, thighs, wrists, middle and upper torso.

Once the sting stopped, you threw your body back, chest rising and falling rapidly, trying to catch your breath, as Poe circled where you stood.

“Being a smartass won’t get you anywhere.” He taunts from behind you.

“Because being honest and cooperative will get me a congratulatory snack after this, right?” you weren’t about to give in, and apparently neither was he as another violent ache ran across your body, this time for a few more seconds longer.

“You really don’t listen to people’s warnings, do you?” he snaps his intimidating eyes at you while coming back around to stand in front of you.

“I had a good teacher.” You manage to jeer through gritted teeth. That gets a reaction out of it. One that would be imperceptible to the common person, unless they had been married and in love with them, so much so that they picked up on every little quirk.

“You do realize you’re not getting out of here alive.” It wasn’t even a question, more so of a statement as his lowered head allowed his eyes to look up at you through his lashes, and your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach at the realization, and you have to blink away the tears that threatened to make an appearance.

“You would do that? Kill me?”

“It’s protocol. Resistance scum dies, either if they deliver a confession or not.”

“You won’t even say my name, but you’re okay with having your hands being the ones that put an end to my life?” he doesn’t answer, breaking the wall he had put up for a fraction of a second when his eyes wander around, away from yours. “And Resistance scum? Wow, your ego really is something.”

“Shut up.”

“The only scum I see here is the one standing in front of me, who betrayed friends and family to save his own ass”

“I SAID SHUT UP.” His left-hand slams against the metal behind you, just a few inches away from your face and you flinch, eyes closing at the sudden movement, the fleeting possibility that he could hit you crossing your mind.

When you open your eyes you see his face just inches away from yours, heavy breathing fanning against your face, his hand still rested next to you.

Your eyes are distant, looking somewhere above his other shoulder as you shift your right hand, as much as the restraints allowed, palm facing upward and fingers spread. Between your faces surges a ring, attached to a silver chain that surrounded your neck.

You bite the inside of your cheek and a single tear spills out of your right eye, his attention remaining on the object floating in front of him.

That is his mother’s wedding ring, or rather, it was, until the day he gently put it around your neck, the day that was now so far behind in time that, together with the present circumstances almost felt like a fever dream. He had insisted that you both didn’t need wedding rings as the simple act of you wearing his necklace, the one everyone knew was destined to rest against the sternum of whoever he’d end up deciding on spending the rest of his life with, was enough.

And you never took it off. Not after he started to seem more distanced. Not when he’d started to snap at you. Not when the fights started. Not when you started to sleep in separate rooms. Not when he turned on you mid-mission and started to shoot at your X-Wing. Not when, moments after that, he turned his X-Wing around, killing a few other Resistance pilots. And not when he flew away, following the First Order fleet.

You never took it off.

Closing your eyes, you relax your hand and let the ring fall back against your chest and Poe pushes his hand off the metal, taking a few steps back. He looked… ill at ease.

“What happened, Poe?” you whisper, voice begging for an answer, his name sounding on your lips for the second time today, the most it’s had in little over a year. And, surprisingly, he doesn’t correct the way you address him.

“There was never a chance of us winning. We were outnumbered, our technology wasn’t as advanced… It was either surrender or joining them.” Something tightens inside of you at the way he used us and them to reference the Resistance and the First Order. He was referring to himself as Resistance. Probably unconscious. You decide against pointing it out or correcting him.

“And you chose to join them.” You slowly nod “Was it all so meaningless to you that you could just turn your back on us?”

“The Resistance will forever be doomed.” He utters bitterly.

“You wanna talk about forever?” you question, eyes red and glazed with how wet they were, and he stares at you.

“THIS –“ you raise your voice and look down, motioning to the ring resting against your flight suit, before looking back up to meet his gaze “WAS FOREVER.”

Your words and the silence that followed hung between the two of you almost as making the air in the room thicker by the second.

“Do you ever even think about me anymore? Or does your every thought revolve around these people?” tears sting your eyes once more and you take a shaky breath in “Every morning when I wake up I still expect to have my cheek resting against your chest, but there’s only a pillow. When I go to Leia I expect you to be standing next to her, planning some sort of strategy. When I fly in my X-Wing I still expect the commlink to crackle with your voice. When I see BB rolling my way, I still look up in hopes of seeing you walk up behind him. I hate you. I hate you so much. I hate you with every fibre of my being. But I also love you in equal measure.”

Poe remains immobile, standing a few feet ahead of you, the device that controls the electric shocks tightly fisted in his left hand and he is looking at you, straight ahead. At this point, you are panting with the effort of mustering out all of those words and feelings through the tears and sobs that rattle your whole body.

“Somehow, after all the shit you’ve done, I still love-”

You don’t manage to finish those words, the second time you’d be uttering them in over a year as they die on your lips and are replaced by a glass-shattering scream of pain, as the sharp burst of electricity travels your body once more during a much more excruciatingly long time. All your muscles tense as much as they can and you forget what breathing feels like.

Once Poe’s thumb slides of the control button, your whole body jerks forward, panting, tears falling to the ground beneath your hovering feet, head down. Despite the rational choice being to shut up you need to say this. You know that he is still there, somewhere, below all that darkness that took hold of him. He is still there. And you need to get him out.

“I still lo-“

Poe’s thumb slides over the button once again, inflicting another piercing wave of torture to your already spent body. Something is, indeed, still in him as this time around he can’t bring himself to look at you and at the way the electricity is slowly but surely bringing you closer to a point of no return. And despite the tears blurring your vision, this fact doesn’t go unnoticed.

After he relieves the pressure on the button, your body no longer jolts forward but instead goes limp against the metal board, the back of your head resting against it, mouth starting to taste like blood, which peeks through the corner of your mouth.

“You won’t even look.” You struggle to get the words out, voice coming out raspy and hurting as it passes through your throat.

“If you’re going to kill me, at least be man enough to look at me when you do it.”

Your whole body is pulsing with aftershocks of pain and you are struggling to keep your eyes open, feeling your eyelids grow heavier. Just when you are about to close your eyes, just to rest them, you told yourself, you hear Poe’s voice for the first time since he told you the Resistance was doomed.

“After all this, do you still love me?” Your brain can’t quite comprehend if by this he means the torture or all the events that you crying about earlier, the ones that led him to join the First Order.

Either way, the answer would be the same.

“Yes.”

Jaw tensing, Poe pushes the button in his fist one more time, watching your body light up with the blue electric jolts that ran your full height up and down, side to side, travelling through each of your limbs eating away at the remaining life in your body. His lips were trembling just the slightest and his eyes, lit with the image in front of him, started to be glazed by tears.

He didn’t let the button go for much longer than he previously had, being completely lost inside his mind and out of it at the realisation that even after all the shit he put you through and the hurt he caused you, you still loved him.

It wasn’t until he stopped seeing you squirm that his finger release the button and your body fell completely limp against the metal, head falling down, the metal loops preventing you from falling forwards completely. He hesitated in stepping closer to you, scared of you moving or rather not, he wasn’t sure.

But his heart gave in to the breaking of itself when the latter possibility turned out to be the truth.

You weren’t moving.

You weren’t breathing.

There was blood dripping from your mouth onto the floor.

You were gone.

And he did it.

A trembling hand of his came up to push your head back against the platform holding you.

That’s when he took a good look at your lifeless face, and a shaky exhale left his lungs.

Oh, how he still loved you.

He wanted to cradle your face in his hands a lay a kiss against your forehead, run his knuckles against your cheek and wipe the blood away from your soft lips.

But they were watching him. The cameras were pointed at him and the microphones were on, preventing him from freely displaying any kind of affection towards you.

Blinking away the tears and trying to keep his body language as much stoic as possible, his gloved hand reaches up for the ring that hung from the chain draped around your neck and he pulled it down, breaking the silver link as it released the hold it had on you.

He slid the ring into the chest pocket of his uniform before walking away, towards the door, and out. Leaving the lifeless body of the only person who could ever allow him redemption behind, limp and broken.

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TAGLISTS

PERMANENT TAGLIST

@blondekel77 @pedrobreakmyback

POE DAMERON TAGLIST

@niall2017

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#My Favourite Ghost #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron #star wars #angst #poe dameron angst #oscar isaac x reader #FirstOrder!Poe x reader #fo!poe dameron x reader

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thran-duils · 3 years

Text

Use All of Me (P.11)

Title: Use All Of Me (Part Eleven) Summary: Fem!Reader x Dark Mob!Steve Rogers. The Avengers are heroes saving the world but in this AU, they are also permitted by the powers in charge to have less than favorable business underneath their guise of mere superheroes. Steve and Tony are at the helm, keeping their empire’s wealth in check, both devious and perilous if crossed. Steve takes a liking to the reader at a party and it may be her undoing to her autonomy choosing to go home with him. Words: 2,711 Warnings: Dark AF, angst, emotional/mental abuse, smut, breeding, death Author’s Note: As some of my midwest friends have poked fun at, a freeway to me is an interstate, like I5 and I90. A highway to me refers to state routes or highways with stop lights along it at certain spots. I know it’s not a huge deal but I like to explain cause it’s definitely regional and sets the scene of what I am thinking of when I’m writing.

Part Ten || Part Twelve || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

“I need somebody, ANYBODY, to get in a car or something and get to Grand Central terminal right now.”

Steve was on multiple way call with the team that answered the phone, sitting in the passenger seat while Natasha sped down the freeway. Tony had separated from them, heading towards the Avengers facility where he could have more cameras which gave him more eyes. Facial recognition was granted at the facility grounds on a larger scale of satellites too unlike his house.

“You wanna tell us what for?” Rhodes asked perplexed.

“Y/N left,” Steve snapped. There was a chorus of murmurs from all ends of the phone call, generally ignored by Steve who was too hot headed to acknowledge their concern. “I don’t know where the hell she is going. But Nat heard her whispering to her friend in the bathroom about taking a train. To god knows where.

“Do we know it’s going to be Grand Central?” Sam inquired calmly.

“No, not for sure! But I want it covered. As soon as possible! They got a half hour head start or so from my house. Nat and I are going to Penn. That’s where the Amtrak is. Tony’s accessing surveillance, using facial recognition.

“What do you want us to do if we find her?” Bucky asked.

“Don’t hurt her,” Steve ordered.

“Well, no shit,” Bucky cut in, unable to hold back his sarcasm. “I meant, where do you want us to—”

“She’s with one – or two, I’m not sure – of her friends,” Steve interrupted, strained. “Try to make it as quiet as possible. I don’t want it all over the evening news. Just—get Y/N away from there.”

“What about her friends?” Clint pointed out.

“I’ll deal with them later,” Steve got out in a surly tone. “Call me if you find her.”

<><><>

You laid across the backseat of the car, examining your nails.

“I really don’t like you having no seatbelt on,” Natalie said for what felt like the tenth time since you had escaped past the gate of your house.

“I’ll sit up when my back hurts,” you responded, stretching one of your legs as far as you could towards the ceiling. You grunted when you felt a pull in your lower abdomen.

“We are out of the gate, Y/N. And away from cameras. We are on a highway.”

“There are still cameras. But I know. It’s been like an hour.”

You were tingling with anticipation, threatening to eat you alive. You half expected Natalie to slam on her brakes at any seconds because Steve landed in front of the car in the lane. You doubted though he would want to put you in danger and that could cause a huge accident.

Would not want to hurt his precious cargo, you thought to yourself darkly.

Yua sighed from the passenger seat and looked back at you around the seat. She had decided to come with the pair of you and had been filled in on the situation after you had successfully gotten through the gate. You almost snorted at the absurdity of the fact all you had to do was wear a hood and one of Steve’s baseball caps to shield your face and make sure to not make eye contact with the guards meandering around the gate. Holding the backpack in your lap had helped to hide your stomach.

“Y/N. Sit up. Please. Stop making Natalie get worry lines, it’s starting to stress me out. It’s not like they won’t be looking for Natalie’s plates in the cameras if they have access outside of New York.” You were sure Tony did. His company was worldwide. “I don’t think them seeing your face is going to make any difference. They saw you get in the car on the surveillance tapes at your house by now.”

You exhaled heavily, knowing she was right. You imagined Steve seeing the tapes and turning around to tear a door of his hinges, hurling it across the room. You would laugh at the imagery if it did not simultaneously terrify you. Sitting up with some difficulty, you patted Natalie’s shoulder who thanked you.

The two of them had turned their phones off – you had left yours behind. You were sure Tony would figure out how to track theirs but yours was definitely compromised. You did not even want it on you, choosing to leave it on the entrance table by the front door.

It was scary. You could not stop thinking about how angry Steve would be – was. It was present tense now for sure. He had to have figured out you were missing by now. Otherwise, Wanda, Bryce, and Patricia were completely inept, which you knew was not the case.

Staring out the window, you watched the trees go by trying to think about the nature walks you could go on without watchful eyes around the cabin. It lulled you into some sense of relaxation.

<><><>

Steve stormed through the terminal, his eyes watchful on the crowd for anything that screamed Y/N from behind or a profile. His eyes zeroed in on the back of a woman’s head and he changed course quickly, coming up to her, shoving his way through the crowd much to some people’s annoyance at being shoved aside. He grabbed her arm and whipped her around when he was on her.

She cried out in half fear and half pain.

It was not Y/N.

“Sorry,” he said not sounding sorry at all. “Thought you were someone else.”

She glared at him, rubbing her arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Steve bit back a comment, turning from her without a word.

“Hey, aren’t you Captain America?” someone asked him from a few feet away. That caught the woman’s attention, as well as others.

Steve shot the kid an annoyed look and said clipped, “Not right now, kid. Sorry. I’m busy.”

He took off again before anyone could say anything else, god forbid ask him for an autograph or a selfie. His heart was hammering, searching desperately. He came to a stop, staring out over the crowd. Hope she was here was dwindling fast. He felt like his chest was going to explode from the myriad of feelings coursing through him right now.

I’m not seeing her, Natasha texted him. He had sent her the opposite way from him, telling her to check the female bathrooms that direction. He was getting similar texts from the group at Grand Central too and he could not stand to look at his phone anymore, shoving it into his back pocket furiously.

He ran his hand through his hair, tugging on it near the ends in frustration. He took one more stroll down the terminal, scouring it to make sure he had not missed her. Natasha appeared and without a word went into the bathrooms to cover her bases.

When she appeared again, she was empty handed. She approached him slowly, with caution, his gaze burning into her.

“I shouldn’t have left the house,” Natasha said, shaking her head. She looked disappointed and guilty.

“You couldn’t have known it was going to be right then,” Steve said tightly. He had little patience for coddling someone else’s feelings right now but extended the gesture briefly because it was Nat. His face hardened, shaking his head slightly. “I’m gonna tell them I’m heading home to speak to that bumbling idiot I call my security guard.”

<><><>

Natasha had barely got the car into park before Steve threw the door open and made a beeline for the front door of his house. The door bounced off the wall with the sheer force he threw it open with. Natasha followed him, far more collected. She grabbed the door, closing it, eyeing the hole the doorhandle had made into the wall. She shook her head before following Steve towards the living room.

Bryce stood up from the couch on sight seeing Steve. Wanda did as well, far less stricken looking than Bryce though. She looked concerned.

“Did you—” she started to ask Steve, but he cut her off, all his rage radiating towards Bryce as he stormed in.

“How the fuck did you let this happen?” Steve roared at Bryce.

“The front gate didn’t catch her—” Bryce tried to pass the buck onto the other men, but Steve was not having an ounce of it.

He was towering over Bryce now, Bryce trying to not fold in Steve’s shadow. “I don’t care about the front gate! She shouldn’t have even been able to get into the car!”

Blubbering, Bryce tried to say, “There were a lot of women, Mr. Rogers. She was starting to say goodbye to them all—”

“You didn’t think to be outside? To keep an eye on her? Not even for a second? That didn’t cross your mind?”

“I didn’t expect her to leave.”

“Now that—” Steve snarled, pointing threateningly in Bryce’s face, causing him to flinch. “I find to be an egregious lie!”

“S-s-sir?”

Steve moved closer if that was possible, his nose inches from Bryce’s. Bryce visibly gulped, trying to not break eye contact with him. Steve’s voice was dangerously low, “Do you have something to tell me, Bryce?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“Bryce. I am giving you one chance to be honest with me: Did Y/N ask you for help to leave me?”

Bryce’s forehead was covered in a sheen of nervous sweat. His eyes darted nervously to Wanda who was standing nearby, watching the scene unfold curiously. She did not move to help, and he was forced to focus back on Steve knowing Natasha would not help him under any circumstance.

He licked his lips nervously and exhaled shakily. “Yes. But—”

He did not get to finish because Steve had taken a step back, cocked his arm back and socked him straight in the face, knocking him backward. Bryce yelped in agony, grasping at his nose as he laid on the ground, blood gushing from his broken nose. Steve unholstered his gun and Bryce saw, his eyes growing wide as saucers. His broken nose was quickly forgotten, holding up his hands in front of him as he pleaded for Steve to not do it, but his sniveling went unheeded. Steve unloaded half a round into his chest.

Steve’s hand shook now, and he lowered the gun slowly to his side. His eyes were absent of warmth, staring down at the man who he had entrusted his future wife and children’s safety to. Bryce’s eyes were still open in fear, blood trickling from his mouth as his head and arms slumped to the ground. His chest stopped moving in a matter of seconds, lying in a quickly forming puddle of red.

Rolling his shoulders back and cracking his neck, Steve replaced his gun, taking a deep breath, exhaling slowly.

“They could have gone anywhere,” he finally said tautly.

“Steve, I’m sorry,” Wanda offered, taking a few steps towards him.

“You weren’t in charge of watching her,” Steve responded, still not looking at the two women behind him.

The front door opened loudly down the hall and there were running steps, putting the trio on the defense quickly. Two of Steve’s security guards came into view, both out of breath. They both visibly relaxed seeing Steve still standing there, their eyes only flicking to Bryce’s body on the ground for a second. To their credit, they both did not blanch.

One offered, “Sorry for running in. We heard shots.”

Steve ignored her apology, beginning to walk. “Clean up the body and get rid of it. Now,” Steve ordered impatiently, moving past her.

“Where are you going?” Natasha asked, moving to follow him, Wanda in tandem.

“Back to the facility. It’s time to brainstorm and make a different plan,” Steve said over his shoulder.

<><><>

The cabin was two stories, an open floor plan on both floors. There was a wall shielding the top loft bedroom from view and a bedroom on the ground floor. Immediately, Natalie said the three of you could sleep upstairs since there was a queen bed and another twin bed. Yua pointed out that there was a back door right next to the other bedroom and you would be able to hear if someone came in there. Plus, people in horror movies always ran upstairs which ended in their demise. She stopped arguing when Natalie said there was a staircase from the upper deck outside the bedroom leading to the backyard.

“Wow, there are some CDs here,” Yua said flipping through a small case next to an entertainment center. “It’s like we are back in the 90s.”

“Hey, that entertainment console was top notch in the 90s. Don’t trash talk it,” Natalie joked.

“Gotta leave things people don’t want to steal since they use this as an air bnb,” you teased and Natalie pointed at you, acknowledging that.

Yua laughed, “They’re all burned CDs too. Oh, look. Top hits ’04. Oh, that’s past the 90s. Upgrading.” You chuckled as she pulled the CD out, opening the console. “Oh, my! And it’s a six disc! We could change albums whenever we want. Is there a remote? Oh, yes!” She chose five more random albums and put them in as well, closing it and choosing the original disc she had put in.

The first song started out and the three of you immediately made eye contact. “Oh my god. I have not heard this song in forever. A true lost Destiny’s Child gem,” Natalie said, unable to stop laughing. “Ooh, I put it right there, made it easy for you to get to…” she began to sing as she moved towards the kitchen to put the bags of food on the counter.

She had stopped at a mini mart near the bottom of the mountain to grab a good amount of food to hold you guys over. Yua and her had left you in the car to be able to cover the store quicker to leave as little time as possible staying stagnant in a parking lot. The whole time you had been on edge, pulling your hood as far down your face as you could while trying to keep a look out. Every car that drove by on the highway made the hairs on your arms stand up, praying it would not whip around and come back to you.

“If Mr. Brightside isn’t on this album, I’m going to be really disappointed. That was a true gem of my childhood,” Yua chimed in. She flopped onto the couch, stretching out. “Feels good to not be in the car. Hey, Nat, can you bring me one of my beers. Please?” She shot you an apologetic look. “Sorry, Y/N.”

“Just four more months,” you said lightly, touching your stomach as you sat down as well.

Yua reached over, caressing your stomach lightly. “Can’t you not drink while you’re breastfeeding too?”

“Don’t tell me that.”

“Sorry,” Yua snickered as Natalie came out of the kitchen holding a beer and a glass of wine.

She held it out to you, and you stared at her in bewilderment that she was offering you alcohol.

“It’s not rosé,” Natalie smiled. “It’s sparkling. A blush kind.”

“How nice of you,” you said, smiling in return. You took a small sip and said, “Hmm. It’ll do.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘thank you, Natalie’,” Natalie intoned, turning on her heel and walking back towards the kitchen.

“Thank you, Natalie,” you and Yua intoned back in unison.

“I’ll make dinner. What’s it gonna be? Frozen meal of mac and cheese or frozen meal of Salisbury steak?” Natalie asked, facing the two of you. “Or… there’s tater tots. Or pizza… and we could make a fruit salad on the side.”

“Thank god for the fruit,” Yua commented, grinning. “I say you make the pizza and fruit. Gotta pretend Y/N is still trying to be healthy somehow.”

Despite laughing, you did think of how Steve would react seeing you eating all this processed food, the same day you had cake no less. Touching your stomach again, you rubbed gently, thinking surely Steve was trying his damnedest to see you too.

~~~

Tags: @imsonick , @alexakeyloveloki, @kvzctam, @ironlady1993, @taintedgenre, @inlovewiththefictionalcharacters @roxyfan14-blog

#steve rogers x reader #dark!steve rogers #dark steve rogers #dark marvel #dark marvel fic #dark steve rogers fic #my shit #marvel fic

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annikathewitch · 3 years

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Idk, I’m bored, thought I’d make one of those posts ppl pin at the top of their blogs

Hello! This is the main blog of the paluimbel system. We're a median, monoconscious, mixed-origins plural system of uhhh... too many people for individual introductions to make much sense. The name Fencer works for all of us, and we generally don't care that much about pronouns, but would prefer if you use they/it when referring to our system as a whole.

Feel free to ask us as many questions as you want about systemhood/plurality! We like sharing our experiences.

What is a plural system?

(EDIT: I've just had like 15 new people follow me for the tumblr poll conlang thing, so I thought I'd put links related to that somewhere easy to access. Masterpost/Intro is here.

Currently Active Polls: On hiatus for a bit due to exam season T-T)

My current hyperfixation is hermitcraft but also pokemon. Linguistics and conlanging are basically permanent special interests but we don't always post about them.

Oh and here’s this, just to be safe, because I’ve seen too many posts accidentally come true. Not putting any more DNIs, because I don’t wanna spend ages trying to list every possible group of shitty people. If I don’t like what you’re doing, I’ll just block you.

Some fics I’ve written under the cut, just in case you’re interested.

The Adventure of the Sphinx’s Riddle

Complete. ACD Johnlock, pre-relationship, mutual pining. It’s basically a Percy Jackson au, set in the same time period as canon Holmes. Most of the fic is Holmes figuring out that he’s a demigod.

The Adventure of the Buried River

Complete. The sequel to The Adventure of the Sphinx’s Riddle. I plan to write a third part and turn it into a trilogy, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

‘Till All That Remains is the Arms of the Angels

Complete. Eternal Duo enemies to queer platonic partners slowburn for the teen titans au. Each chapter is probably gonna be really short, just a scene or two. It’s kinda inspired by that one episode of Good Omens that’s mostly just a bunch of scenes of Aziraphale and Crowley throughout history, showing the development of their relationship. I put any necessary context in the author’s notes, so you don’t really need to know anything about the ttau for this to make sense.

TTAU Season 1

Technically a series, not an individual fic. It’s kinda an intro to the above mentioned teen titans au, set up like episodes of a tv show. Currently Includes:

Pilot- There’s a breakout at Essempei City Prison and the Titans (Sam, Ponk, Bad, Puffy, and Ant) must work with the Syndicate (Techno, Niki, and Phil) to prevent all of the city’s most dangerous prisoners from getting out.

Who Am I That I Should Get to Hold You?

Incomplete. Flower Husbands angst with a happy ending. It’s another TTAU fic, but like with ‘Till All That Remains is the Arms of the Angels, you shouldn’t need any background knowledge on the ttau to understand the fic. Basically, 3rd life happened in the ttau, but it was a simulation and everyone got returned to their bodies safe and sound after they died. Everyone except Jimmy and Scott, who, because of a glitch in the simulation, ended up actually dying. Scott’s scientist coworkers managed to upload his consciousness to a computer before his body died; Jimmy wasn’t so lucky. So now Jimmy’s dead, and Scott’s basically immortal. This should be the end, right? Wrong. There is always hope, they just have to find it.

#useful #(also for the record the Apollo dni thing is a joke)#(so like. Apollo fictives/kins/etc. are welcome to interact)#(if you don't know what any of that means then feel free to ignore it)#.............................................................................................#(feel free to break our dni we break our own dni all the time and find it hilarious)#(we added this banner here before we figured out we were plural let alone before we knew we had an Apollo fictive XD)

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oh-boy-me · 3 years

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Obey Me Devilgram Posts and Comments: Egg Hunt/Paws and Claws 2

Two events until we’ve caught up!

Hhhh we’ve finally reached the events where I’m like “oh yeah that JUST happened”

I’m very excited to go back to doing this once every two weeks (or maybe once a week, since I still have initial cards to get to eventually)

This is an event that I think started great and kind of got bad at the end? Maybe I shouldn’t give away all of my thoughts before the tier list though lol

日本語は私の第三言語ので、時々間違えます。日本語話者、間違いを見たら教えてください。 (Japanese is my third language, so I make mistakes sometimes. Japanese speakers, if you see a mistake, please tell me!)

And as always, we have the #devilgram rush tag and there’s a full transcript below the cut.

Enticed by a Magnificent Deer

Lucifer: Even the adlibs were filled with passion

Angeluke: I don’t want to see Simeon’s angry face

Mammoney: Look!!

AsmoBaby: Maybe I’ll put on some antler decorations too(1)

#Mystical #Acting

The Bat Can’t Lie!

stn: It’s a surprisingly weak field for you

LordDiavolo: I can’t wait to see what’ll happen

DDSimeon: As expected of Asmodeus!

Belphie: Don’t do it in my room?

#Unskilled #Acting

Little Puppy’s Big Decision

DDSimeon: If it’s Luke he’ll be able to do it

Mammoney: It’s because he’s a chihuahua

monSOLO: I think it’s nice and fitting for Luke

ButlerBarb: You’re a strong enough angel even now

#Cute #ImNotAPuppy!

The Strong and the Strong

L3V1: I don’t wanna fight with these two

AsmoBaby: It’s rare for Solomon to be this serious

stn: I was able to see something good!

Beelzeburger: It’s worth seeing

#AreYouSerious? #Strong

The Golden Egg Will Be in Whose Hand!?

Beelzeburger: They look tasty

stn: Are you looking for a goose or something??(2)

Belphie: Bring them back for Beel

ButlerBarb: Eggs are wonderful ingredients with high nutritional value

#GoldenEgg #EggHunt

Let’s Paint Eggs!

Mammoney: Wouldn’t it be good to sell ‘em?

Angeluke: Dessert ingredients…...

L3V1: Let’s make some omurice(3) and do ketchup art

monSOLO: What would happen if you drew a magic circle?

#Eggs #PaintingEggs

Egg Panic!

AsmoBaby: I wanna eat egg disheees

Lucifer: What are you doing, seriously(4)

ButlerBarb: The eggs are acting oddly

stn: Don’t show those to Beel

#Eggs #MidSearch

1. So with the sentence we’re given I don’t think I can tell if Asmo wants to put decorations on Simeon or if he wants to put them in his own hair. I left it ambiguous as a result. (Based on their translation they might have not known either lol) 2. I have. Zero idea why Satan says this. Idk if there’s a clue in the story or not but the summary on the wiki gives me no hints. Also でも (demo) is a pretty versatile particle, so he could be saying “You’re even looking for a goose?”, but I THINK this one makes a little more sense. Edit: Thanks @otomenormie for reminding me that there’s a fictional goose that lays golden eggs lol, Satan’s probably referring to that. 3. Omurice is fried rice wrapped in a thin omelette layer. (Fun fact I can never remember how to spell omelette.) It’s popular to draw patterns and cute pictures on it with ketchup, and it seems like it’s a popular dish with children! 4. Lucifer uses まったく (mattaku) here, which I’m sure we all know by now, but I couldn’t really take him seriously saying the common translation of “good grief” lol

Masterpost

荘厳な鹿に誘われた

Lucifer: アドリブにしては熱がこもっていたな Angeluke: シメオンの怖い顔は見たくないな Mammoney: 見ろよ！！ AsmoBaby: ぼくも角に飾りをつけようかなー＃神秘的　＃演技

コウモリは偽れない！

stn: 意外な苦手分野だ LordDiavolo: どうなるのか楽しみだ DDSimeon: さすがアスモデウス！ Belphie: ぼくの部屋ではやらないでよ？＃苦手　＃演技

小さな子犬の大きな決意

DDSimeon: ルークなら出来るよ Mammoney: チワワだからだろ monSOLO: ルークらしくていいと思うんだけどね ButlerBarb: 今でも充分強い天使ですよ＃可愛い　＃子犬じゃない！

強者と強者

L3V1: この2人とはケンカしたくない AsmoBaby: ソロモンがここまで本気って珍しー stn: これはいい物が見れた！ Beelzeburger: 見ごたえがある＃本気？　＃強者

金の卵は誰の手に！？

Beelzeburger: 美味そうだ stn: ガチョウでも探しているのか？ Belphie: ベールの為に持って帰ってきてよ ButlerBarb: 卵は栄養価が高い素晴らしい食材です＃金の卵　＃エッグハント

レッツ、エッグペイント！

Mammoney: 売ればいいんじゃね？ Angeluke: スイーツの材料…… L3V1: オムライス作ってケチャップアートやろうよ monSOLO: 魔法陣を描いたらどうなるんだろう？＃卵　＃エッグペイント

エッグパニック！

AsmoBaby: 卵料理たべたーい Lucifer: なにをやっているんだ、まったく ButlerBarb: 卵の様子がおかしいですね stn: ベールに見せたらダメなやつだ＃卵　＃捜索中

バルバトスはダイコンとはwww

#obey me #obey me!#obey me simeon #obey me barbatos #obey me leviathan #obey me asmodeus #obey me luke #obey me lucifer #obey me solomon #obey me mammon #obey me beelzebub #obey me diavolo #obey me translation #devilgram #devilgram rush

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taylizmasterpost · 3 years

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Jake Gyllenhaal and Jealous Liz (October 2010 - February 2011)

Now, there’s a lot to say about Jake and Taylor. The time they got together was a time when he was promoting his movie, Love and Other Drugs, and she was about to drop Speak Now. So at first glance, it look a lot like a traditional PR stunt. However, they do not have a first public meeting -- something that Taylor has with a lot of her other PR relationships (think Calvin at the Fund Fair or Harry at the KCAs), and seemed generally more camera shy.

Jake’s costar in Love and Other Drugs, Anne Hathaway, was also single at the time, and arguably a PR relationship between the two of them would’ve drummed up significantly more buzz for the film, so stunting with Taylor seems an odd choice.

Jake also reportedly annoyed Taylor with how much he wanted to hide from the press, which is interesting. I’m not totally certain if they were real or not, but I’ll put all of their stuff in here, because it’s interesting to note Liz’s reaction to all of it, despite her relationship:

23 October 2010 - Emma Stone hosts SNL. Both Taylor and Jake G show up to support her, supposedly they’ve already started dating at this point and this was their first public appearance together.

"They walked around together backstage, but they were careful not to be seen too close. It was hard to tell if they were together, but everyone was shocked that she brought him," a source told People magazine.

Notice the lack of public meeting. Strange that they just showed up together dating.

24 October 2010 - Liz tweets about listening to Never Grow Up

October 2010 - Taylor writes All Too Well, the first of the three “Nashville songs” -- All Too Well, State of Grace, Stay Stay Stay-- that were written for the Red album before she moved to LA, based on the fact that she said she started writing for Red slightly before Speak Now was released.

We also know All Too Well has to have been written in 2010 because what the copyright record for it says:

Now, it seems to me that this is too soon to be about Jake. It’s obviously a breakup song, and Taylor and Jake have only just started dating (unless they had a secret dating history we don’t know about). It would be weird for her to be writing all this about him while they’re still dating.

All Too Well could be about any of the three women I’ve spoken previously about in this masterpost. However, I’m going to try to make the case that this song is for Liz:

All Too Well is Liz’s favorite song from Red. She has said so on multiple occasions. Years later, when she came to watch Taylor’s Reputation tour in Glendale, Taylor even played it for her as the surprise song. Sure, it could just be that Liz is just a fan, but the song fits where we are in the timeline. Liz has moved on with someone else. Taylor is trying to get over it, but she can’t help but think back to the past she remembers “all too well.”

If the song is about a woman, lines like “back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known” reads to me as Taylor making a (possibly unfounded) dig at closeting. All Too Well also carries the bad driving metaphor with “almost ran the red,” which runs throughout a lot of the other Liz songs on Red, and which Liz will later reference herself in her own music. The lines in the bridge about “asking for too much” and “running scared,” remind me of Taylor insisting she was single during Valentine’s Day, despite spending it with Liz, only to turn around and miss her once Liz got a boyfriend. Lines about loss of innocence are also interesting, when we think about that L Chat post about Liz from earlier...

Of course, obviously, you can think this song is about whoever you want. If you wanna claim it for JH or Joe Jonas or Taylor Lautner or maybe even some girl Taylor went to high school with, be my guest. I personally don’t buy it being about Emily in a post-Dear John world, and the timeline doesn’t read as Jake to me, so I’m giving it to Liz!

25 October 2010 - Speak Now is released. In the album’s prologue, she specifies that the song “Long Live” is for her band, which is interesting to me, considering that the bridge of the song sounds like it might be about a relationship, and the secret message of the song is “For you,” which sounds oddly specific:

Will you take a moment? Promise me this That you’ll stand by me forever But, if God forbid, fate should step in And force us into a goodbye If you have children someday When they point to the pictures, Please tell ‘em my name

The secret message for Mine is “Toby,” which is the name of the actor who played her love interest during the song, making it make no sense for the song to be about him (and, in my eyes, making it more likely she was trying to cover up who the song was really for). We’ve already discussed Story of Us having “CMT Awards” and Back to December having “Tay,” so I won’t beat you over the head with those.

Unlike the original handwritten lyrics to Sparks Fly, which featured the lyric “Get me with those brown eyes, baby,” the version that Taylor put on the Speak Now album had the lyric “hit me with those green eyes, baby,” with the eye color presumably being changed because Liz has green eyes:

The secret message for Sparks Fly is “Portland, Oregon,” which is where Taylor and The Agency covered Tom Petty’s song American Girl in May 2009 during the height of early TayLiz.

26 October 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted together in Brooklyn getting lunch with Emma Stone:

Liz does a sound check for Taylor for the Today Show. A video later gets posted on YouTube and someone leaves this comment noting Taylor and Liz’s chemistry:

31 October 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in Big Sur together and stay at California’s Post Inn Ranch.

Liz spends Halloween with her boyfriend:

1 November 2010 - Taylor’s appearance on Ellen airs. Ellen asks her about Jake. Taylor says “I’m always optimistic about love. Yes, always, sometimes.”

2 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in Santa Barbara together. They get ice cream, interact with fans, and Taylor reportedly laughs at everything Jake says.

16 November 2010 - Jake attends the Love and Other Drugs premiere alone. This is interesting to me, considering if this was a PR relationship you would’ve thought he’d bring Taylor as his date. Still, Paula made some weird decisions in her time as Taylor’s publicist (like putting her with a carousel of 18 year olds), so this could just be Paula thinking that Taylor showing up at the premiere with him would be too obviously read as a stunt. Doesn’t rule it either way. Still, I think Anne would’ve been a better choice for PR for this.

Mid November - Perez Hilton alleges that Jake has picked up Taylor on his private jet to fly her to London because she was “feeling lonely.” Jake was in London promoting Love and Other Drugs so this seems very stunty to me personally.

22 November 2010 - Taylor attends the American Music Awards and wins Favorite Female Country Artist.

Liz tweets congratulations at her and seems generally excited.

24 November 2010 - Love and Other Drugs is officially released in theaters.

25 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake spend Thanksgiving in Brooklyn with Jake’s family.

26 November 2010 - Liz seems to have spent Thanksgiving with Jason:

27 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake are spotted in a coffee house in Nashville:

And, maybe in response, Liz makes this weird and vaguely jealous Tweet:

Now, I don’t know what this means. Maybe the “you” refers to Liz and she’s having what Carly Rae Jepsen would call “boy problems” -- feeling torn and overburdened between a best friend and boyfriend:

youtube

Or, perhaps, the “you” in this Tweet refers to Taylor, and Liz is trying to say that Jake is “using her up,” maybe meaning taking up her time. Or maybe Liz wasn’t referring to any of this. We can’t really know. Still, it’s interesting.

29 November 2010 - TayLiz hang out and Liz tweets about it. Perhaps to make up for the lack of time spent together since they both got boyfriends.

30 November 2010 - Taylor and Jake have coffee in Nashville:

1 December 2010 - Taylor writes a MySpace post about the CMTs.

Liz tweets about watching Glee, meaning she’s the one who got Taylor hooked on the show and therefore interested in Dianna. Hilarious.

2 December 2010 - Taylor calls Love and Other Drugs a “good movie” when asked about it, and won’t say anything more. She also adamantly refuses to talk about her personal life (This gives me 2018/19 Joe vibes, whatever that means).

3 December 2010 - Liz tweets that her favorite song on Speak Now is Last Kiss. She also tweets at Jason about his cooking:

5 December 2010 - Jake is asked about Taylor and says this:

“One of the greatest parts about being in a relationship is the intimacy you share, but it can be difficult if you’re being watched the whole time.”

This reminds me so much of what Taylor’s currently saying about Joe. Interesting, looking back on it.

7 December 2010 - Jake and Taylor do the “maple latte” pap walk stunt in Brooklyn with Maggie and her daughter. This is the only series of photos of them that I think was a set-up, but that means it’s pretty gross this is the one they chose to bring a child into:

I think the reason this was so obviously a pap walk was to get the “maple latte” in the shot. I’ve already speculated that Taylor had written All Too Well prior to her relationship with Jake, and this stunty pap walk would make sense if she needed to use him to cover for it.

8 December 2010 - Liz makes another weird vague possibly jealous tweet:

Now, in the context of Mine possibly being about Liz and Taylor saying that song is about her “tendency to run from love,” it’s possible Liz is shading Taylor’s pap walk with Jake the previous day. This tweet feels very “back before you lost the one real thing you’ve ever known.”

However, maybe she’s just really happy with Jason. I don’t know. I don’t know these people.

9 December 2010 - Taylor and Jake drive around LA, Jake yells at the paps.

Compare these to those photos with Taylor Lautner earlier in the timeline. These are not nearly as staged. Take away from that whatever you will.

13 December 2010 - Taylor turns 21. Liz and Caitlin bring her a pizza. Liz tweets at Taylor that she’s changed her life. This is supposedly the birthday that Jake didn’t show up to that The Moment I Knew is about. Liz and Caitlin bringing her pizza if she’s sad about it would make sense...

31 December 2010 - Taylor and Liz spotted together in Nashville. They get Pei Wei and JustJared calls Liz a “gal pal.” Taylor seems upset, possibly about her whole Jake birthday thing. Or possibly something else.

Liz tweets about going for a run and listening to Speak Now:

5 January 2011 - Taylor and Jake break up.

19 January 2011 - Taylor and Jake are spotted together by fans in Nashville, first at a coffee shop and then at dinner. Jake did not have any other business in Nashville, so it can be assumed he came there to talk to Taylor:

CONCLUSION: Were Taylor and Jake real? I don’t know. They really only ever did that one pap walk and didn’t seem to publicly promote each other’s work, as far as I could find, despite both releasing projects while together. The one pap walk they did seems to maybe have been to cover for All Too Well, which had possibly already been written (likely about Liz) before Jake and Taylor started dating.

Were those tweets from Liz jealousy? Or am I reading too much into it?

Either way, Taylor’s had her fun, and now it’s time to maybe start thinking about getting back together with Liz. There’s just one problem: her boyfriend.

The Speak Now Tour Begins (February 2011 - May 2011)

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nonbinary-octopus · 4 years

Text

Not Just the Two of Us Chapter 5: Further Discussion

Wordcount: 1.2 K

Chapter 1: Confession

[Masterpost]

[More of my writing]

“So,” Patton said. “Polyamory.”

They were all seated around the dinner table now, with Patton across from Roman and Virgil across from Logan. Patton figured it was as good a time as any to get some more information.

“Yep!” Roman answered cheerfully.

“Could you tell me more about it? I wanna understand.”

“Certainly. What did you wish to know?”

Patton shrugged a bit. “Honestly, I’m not even sure where to start asking questions. It’s a really new concept for me. I didn’t know you even could date two people at once.”

“It’s not cheating, cause we all agreed to do it,” Virgil said.

“That’s a good starting point.” Patton considered. “Any new words I need to know?”

“Yes,” Logan answered. “The structure of our relationship is called a V, like the letter and Virgil’s first initial. This is a visualization wherein the three of us are each a point, and a solid line connecting two people is a romantic relationship.” He held up a hand with two fingers raised to illustrate. “Virgil and I are not also dating one another, so it is not a triangle.”

Patton nodded. He took another bite of his dinner instead of saying anything. Logan’s food, meanwhile, sat untouched while he happily infodumped.

“Roman is what we could refer to as the ‘hinge’ or ‘vertex’, as he is the one Virgil and I are both dating,” Logan continued, touching the spot between his raised fingers and briefly scissoring them, “and since Virgil and I share a boyfriend, we are metamours. This word is a combination of meta and amour, or possibly a portmanteau of meta and paramour—” He waved a hand in a dismissive, slightly annoyed gesture— “the etymology was unclear— and is defined as someone with whom you share a partner, but whom you are not yourself in a romantic relationship with. In addition, since Roman and I live together, we can be referred to as ‘nesting partners’. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a corollary term with which to refer to Virgil, as Roman’s non-nesting partner.” Logan briefly made a face that indicated he was upset with the information for evading him when he’d tried to learn it, then continued. “We could also refer to myself as Roman’s primary partner and Virgil his secondary, as an indication to the current levels of commitment and time spent together which come with cohabitation and the length of time we’ve been dating, but we’ve decided against this particular terminology, as it also implies a ranked hierarchy, which we do not want.”

“I see,” Patton said. “You sure know a lot about polyamory.”

Logan grinned. “I’ve been doing more research in the past couple days.”

“You’re taking this real well,” Virgil noted.

Patton laughed. “Honey, I’m gay,” he answered. “I should hope I know better by now than to judge a relationship just because it doesn’t fit a certain societal mold. And knowing Logan, I’m sure he’s doing all the research he can to make sure you three do it in a healthy way, and I think I know all of you well enough that I don’t need to give anyone the shovel talk.” He grinned a soft, loving grin. “I trust you.”

The others relaxed. “Well… good,” Virgil said after a moment.

“Besides, it’s not like I didn’t see all those wistful looks you’ve been giving Roman when his back was turned,” Patton added innocently, scooping up a bite onto his fork. “I’m glad you’re happy now.”

Virgil dropped his own fork, eyes wide.”You knew!?”

Patton nodded, sticking his forkful of food into his mouth. Virgil continued to stare at him as Patton chewed and swallowed. Patton shrugged. “You weren’t exactly subtle.”

Virgil groaned, putting his head in his hands. After a few moments, he looked up, squinting at the other two. “Did you know too?” he demanded.

“I hadn’t picked up on it, no,” Logan assured him.

“If I knew, do you think I’d’ve been half as nervous asking you out?” Roman asked. He patted Virgil’s shoulder. “I had no idea, honest.”

Virgil nodded, relaxing a bit. To Patton, he asked, “How long’ve you known?”

“Couple weeks,” Patton said. “A month or two, I guess, but it looked like it’d been going on some time already.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything. I’m glad you worked it out.”

“Okay, well. Good.” Virgil looked down at his plate. He pushed around a vegetable with his fork. “You just caught the tail end of it, then.”

Roman gave him a gentle smile. “You never said, how long have you been crushing on me?”

Virgil’s face reddened, and he kept his eyes fixed firmly on his food. He said nothing.

“Virge?” Roman asked hesitantly.

Virgil sighed. “Logan beat me to the punch,” he said, not lifting his eyes. “I’d figured out I liked you — like, like liked you — and been trying to figure out how to ask you out for probably a year already, but then Logan actually did, and you like him back, so I figured, there goes my chance, and stuffed it back down again and tried to ignore it, but it never really went away.”

Roman stared at him. Virgil continued to stare at his food. He impaled the carrot slice he’d been chasing around. It split in half.

“So, uh. Yeah,” Virgil said awkwardly into the silence. “A while.”

“You’ve had a crush on me this whole time?” Roman asked.

Virgil nodded quietly.

Roman was quiet for a moment too. Then he said softly, “That makes mine look like a little baby crush.”

Virgil finally looked at him again, raising an eyebrow. “How long’ve you had a crush on me?” he asked.

Roman grinned sheepishly. “I’m… not entirely sure,” he admitted. “Not several years, but… at least a month, probably. It snuck up on me; by the time I realized I didn’t just— y’know, friend-like you— by the time I figured it out, I was already crushing pretty hard. And then I tried to squish it for like a week or so,” he added, making vague circular gestures with his fork. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about you, so I eventually confessed to Logan, cause y’know. Not fair to him to have his boyfriend secretly crushing on someone else, and also I thought he might be able to help me stop having a crush on you, but then instead, Logan surprised me with the polyamory thing, so. Uh, yeah. What was the question again? I think I distracted myself.”

Virgil chuckled. “You answered it,” he assured Roman.

“Oh good.”

“You’re adorable,” Virgil continued.

Roman made an expression of equal parts embarrassment and delight. “Thanks.”

“C’mere,” Virgil said. “I wanna kiss you.”

Roman perked up happily. “Okay!” he said, leaning across the corner of the table. Virgil met him halfway, and they kissed.

Patton glanced over at Logan to see how he reacted to the kiss. Logan appeared perfectly calm, continuing to eat his dinner. Patton looked at him for a moment longer, trying to spot any of the signs that meant Logan was just not externalizing any displeasure he was feeling, and saw none. On the contrary, he was doing that thing with his face that quietly exuded fondness. It was subtle, but Patton had seen him look that way at Roman many times before. Patton found himself grinning. It was good to see his best friends all so happy.

Chapter 6: A Lot of Information

#original #my writing #sanders sides #my Sanders Sides writing #Not Just the Two of Us #eventually LAMP #polyamory #polyamsanders #polysamderous

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