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princess-of-riviaa · 3 years

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Wicked Rose

Pairing: Geralt of Rivia x Rosa Malvada (OFC)

Summary: Geralt is sent on a mission that sends him to the doorstep of vampire Rosa Malvada. Steamy smut insues.

Warning(s): dirty talk, biting kink, SMUT, blood, both characters are very dominant

Word Count: 3092

There were countless reasons to enjoy an immortal life. The power was intoxicating--there was no greater feeling than knowing you were the greatest threat in any given room. The access to knowledge that stretched across every part of the realm, the secrets that stayed trapped within country borders--all of it there for you to revel in. But the greatest thing of all, the thing that brought satisfaction even in the darkest of nights, was being the kind of monster everyone believed vampires to be.

A regular vampire proved to be a challenging opponent, even for a skilled warrior. The Higher Vampires were impossible to kill. With their wit and strength, they ran circles around mortal men. Not even the legendary witchers could end them; only a Higher Vampire could kill one of his brethren, which had only happened twice in all of history. And Rosa Malvada, Princess of the Higher Vampires, was the most feared and powerful of her entire clan.

Geralt of Rivia, the most famous witcher along the west coast, had been stalking her for three days now. He’d been careful, calculating every movement before he made it. It was cute, actually, how much effort he put into being stealthy. Little did he know Rosa had noted his presence within the first twenty minutes of his days-long hunt. She’d considered draining the blood from his body and burying him in some forgotten part of the woods. Who was he to think that a centuries-old Higher Vampire--a princess of their clan--wouldn’t note his presence? How dare he think she would fall into his trap! But she’d been curious. She’d never seen a witcher hunt, and it had been appealing enough that she’d played the part of a happily oblivious vampire, letting him follow her from town to town, never letting him realize that she was drawing him ever closer to her nest.

The night of the full moon, Geralt had decided to make his attack. He’d been smart enough to drink one of those witcher elixirs he kept on his body--a wise precaution she had to give him credit for. But even that magical potion couldn’t take her down. Not before she found out why he’d been hunting her. Not before she’d have her way with him.

His boots were near-silent as he strode through the abandoned halls of an ancient castle along the coast of Temeria. It had been Rosa’s home since an ancient royal family had decided to abandon it due to the rumors of an evil vampire lurking in the halls at night--a rumor that had proved true, since Rosa had been sloppy enough to leave behind a mess of the guards’ bodies she’d drunk from. The family had been so scared they left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. The belongings they’d left behind were now part of Rosa’s trove.

Geralt pulled out two swords from his back, careful to make his movements as silent as possible. His ears perked up at every breath of the wind. That witcher elixir had heightened his senses, Rosa realized, and if she wasn’t careful, her game of cat and mouse would come to an end much too soon. She watched from the shadows as he stopped at the end of a hallway. He looked like a mountain in all that black armor--a mountain she wanted to climb. The sight of him was distracting--

Until he cocked his head, a predator finally spotting his prey.

“The shadows won’t hide you from me.” He spoke in a whisper, but Rosa heard him perfectly, as if he’d whispered the words in her ear. Rosa stood in a corner of darkness, and with thirty feet of distance between them, she thought it would have been harder for him to spot her. She was impressed.

“What makes you think I’m hiding?” she purred in response, moving through the shadows so he could catch a glimpse of her blood-red eyes.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he admitted as he turned to face her. That perfect face was paler than usual, enough so the veins under the surface of his skin were visible. And those eyes--darker than the shadows that now cloaked Rosa. He was the pure embodiment of death.

Rosa had never wanted a man more.

“Then what are you doing here?” She forced her tone to remain clipped, despite the desire starting to pool between her thighs.

“A descendant of the family who once lived here,” he began. “He’s paid me to return a lost family crest to him.”

Over her dead body. “Everything within these walls belongs to me. If they wanted some family crest, their ancestors should have brought it with them before they fled this place.”

“I’ve been paid to finish the job,” he insisted.

“Whatever amount they’ve promised you, I’ll double it.” She had more than enough gold to spare. Make enough calculated kills, drink from the right kind of people, and inheriting chests of gold becomes as easy as breathing.

“Come out of the dark. Maybe I’ll consider your offer.”

“Drop those blades,” she compromised, “and I’ll go anywhere you want, Witcher.”

Metal clinked against stone, a riotous sound amongst the silence of the dead castle. Geralt’s hands went slack at his sides. It was a mirage. An act of relaxed calm hiding a hunter about to pounce.

Rosa was precise with her movements, careful to never move within his reach even as she evaded the cover of darkness. His eyes slid along her body so sensually that her body burned everywhere he looked. It was almost enough to get her to step towards him. Almost. She lifted her chin higher, confident in the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts that he now took in. Blood-red hair curled down her back, stark against the white dress she wore.

He sniffed audibly before muttering, “I didn’t know vampires could be aroused by anything other than blood.”

He could smell the lust dripping between her thighs. It only made her want him more, somehow.

She retorted, “I didn’t realize witchers could be so attractive.”

Silence filled the air as they stared at each other, both resisting the urge to close the distance between them and take what they both were craving.

“Afraid to want a monster, Witcher?” she taunted.

A warning growl was the only response he gave.

“I’ll pay you to leave empty-handed tonight, to return to the man who paid you and insist that this precious family crest no longer exists.” She took half a step towards him--the only amount of distance she dared to close between them. “I’ll pay you in gold. Or, if there’s another form of payment you’d prefer, I’d happily let you indulge in that too.” The smile that tugged at her lips was flirtatious. It only grew as Geralt’s gaze dropped to her mouth, those darkened pupils missing nothing.

He was silent. A man of few words. That was fine--Rosa would be sure to fill the silence as he filled her tonight.

She spread her arms. An open invitation. All he had to do was take it. “Come on, Geralt. Take what we both want.”

Still, he hesitated.

“Would you prefer it if I beg?” she wondered.

He pounced. Half a second passed before he had her pressed against the wall, her back pressed tightly against his chest. She ground her ass into his hard-on. Oh, fuck. The stories of a witcher’s girth weren’t just stories. One of his hands moved to her hip, grinding her body against his erection, while the other tugged hard enough on her hair to force her to look up and back at him.

“I’d like to hear you beg,” he growled.

Yeah, right. She dug her elbow into his stomach hard enough to make his grip loosen on her. A second later he was the one trapped against the wall. She held onto his wrists with a grip so tight not even a witcher’s strength could get him out.

“Sorry, darling, but I don’t beg for anyone.”

Before he could say anything, she licked up the column of his throat. His witcher heart was slow, but his pulse still made her toes curl. She longed to know what he tasted like, longed to know if he tasted better than he would feel when he was balls-deep inside of her.

The sensation of her tongue on his skin made a low growl elicit from the back of his throat, a sound so intoxicating that Rosa did, for a moment, contemplate begging him to fuck her if she had to. She needed this man inside of her, needed him to mark her up and fuck her so well she couldn’t walk right for a day afterwards.

“You don’t beg?” Geralt's voice was a low timber in her ear, making her shiver with arousal. And then his hand was around her throat while the other one went to the sensitive mound between her legs. “Then you’ve never had a Witcher fuck you.”

A moan fell from her lips before she could stop it. Her body was pure reaction now; there was no more room for her pride to decide what she would do. She was merely a reaction to every move Geralt made. She was at his mercy.

In one flash of movement Geralt picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder, carrying her off through the castle like game he’d just proudly hunted down. He stopped at what was once the duke’s quarters, but had been Rosa’s quarters for centuries now. The room was filled with piles of clothes, books, and gold. Crimson sheets were thrown about the bed on the far wall, which was where Geralt strode for now. He was gentle as he set her down but the look in his eyes was wild and ravenous. She had no doubt her eyes held the same kind of animalistic hunger.

“Ever fucked a vampire before?” she questioned as she sat up and started untying his breeches.

“No,” was his simple reply, his voice a deep, rumbling baritone that made Rosa’s stomach knot with need.

She pulled down his breeches enough for his cock to spring free and--wow. Whether it was the Witcher mutation or Geralt had been blessed by the gods themselves, Rosa didn’t particularly care. Not as her mouth literally watered at the site of his thick, long cock, already glistening with precum. Dark curls swirled around the base of his shaft. A thin vein ran along the length of his cock from base to tip and she practically moaned. She wrapped her hand around his length, softly caressing the velvet of his sensitive skin as she began to jerk him off. He growled in approval. It wasn’t long before her skilled hand had him bucking his hips, desperate for her to increase her pace so he could cum. But she continued her slow assault on his throbbing cock, enamored by the look on his face as she teased him. Precum continued to fall from his tip. It mixed with her hand to make a sinful squelching noise. That, along with Geralt’s grunts and growls, was the only sound in the room.

Rosa finally pulled her hand away when she decided she’d tortured the Witcher long enough. His eyes were lidded, heavy with lust, but they widened with arousal as he watched her lick up every last drop of the precum on her hand. With a growl that promised her unbecoming, he splayed a large hand on her stomach and pushed her back. He climbed over her as she relaxed against the bed. His right leg instantly moved between her own, his knee finding a home against her aching pussy.

“My turn,” he growled before moving to hover over her heat.

“Wait,” she called out, her body already humming with intense heat. “You really want to get me off?”

The look in his golden eyes was answer enough.

“Then let me drink from you.” Her voice was breathy, too overcome with lust to sound normal anymore.

He paused, and that lust in his eyes was replaced by a look of distrust.

“I won’t drink too much,” she promised. “But for a vampire, drinking a partner’s blood while being intimate with them is better than anything else. It’ll make me cum long before eating me out will.”

“Which vein is best?” Geralt asked in a low, curious voice, but there was still hesitancy written all over his face.

“The closer to the heart, the better,” she admitted. “Anywhere would do, but blood from the heart, or anywhere around it…” She closed her eyes as she thought about the intoxicating taste of blood straight from the heart. It had been a long time since she’d let herself indulge in it, since tasting blood that sweet normally sent vampires into a frenzy. But the memory of that nectar on her lips made her legs clench, it was that good.

“You stop when I tell you to,” Geralt demanded. His tone was stern, but he was giving in. Indulging her.

Her heart began to beat faster at the thought of drinking from him. “And if I don’t?” Rosa wondered, opening her eyes to look at him again.

The answer to her question was written in his eyes. If she didn’t stop, if she gave in to the monster inside of her, he’d kill her.

“As you wish,” she complied.

He reached a hand towards her. For a second she thought he was reaching for her neck, wanting to pull her towards him for a kiss, but his hand stopped between her breasts, at the dress still covering them. A second later and the dress was torn to shreds, her breasts falling free. Her nipples were already hard from arousal and a low sound of approval fell from Geralt as he observed it. His eyes scanned the rest of her body with hunger.

“Your turn,” she demanded, longing to see his body in all of its naked, muscled glory.

He rose to his feet and began undressing, teasing her as he moved slowly. All she had to do was spread her legs and one look at the sight of her glistening folds made him rush his movements. His body was a glorious maze of muscles and scars--a picture perfect warrior. Dark curls that matched the hair around his cock swirled around his chest and trailed a path down his stomach. An ancient kind of power and strength radiated off of him. Gods, did she want this man inside of her.

Geralt gave her only a few seconds to take in his naked form before he was on top of her, his mouth devouring hers. His tongue was hungry and demanding as it pushed past her lips and collided with her own. She moaned into his mouth as he ground her hips against hers, his cock rubbing against her clit and sending electricity through her veins. Her arousal spiked, and suddenly she could feel her fangs coming out, and before Geralt could break the kiss, she bit his bottom lip. They both moaned--him at the sensation of being bit for the first time, surprised that it could be so arousing for the victim; and her because his Witcher blood was the finest wine she’d ever tasted. Her legs clenched around his hips as she swallowed the first drop of his blood.

It was then that he chose to plunge deep into her folds. She released a cry of pleasure that made the walls shake. Her walls squeezed around him as he continued to enter her, his cock going ever deeper and farther inside of her. Geralt muttered something in a language Rosa didn’t recognize, but she got the message clear enough from the tone: he was loving this as much as she was. The pain of his cock splitting her open was a welcome hurt. It turned her on and made her walls clench even tighter around his length, which only made his growls and moans deepen.

“Fuck me, Witcher,” she cried out.

He obliged her. His hips began to move at an exhilarating rate and the sensation of his cock penetrating her at such an inhuman speed threw her over the edge in a matter of moments. She threw her head back as she cried out, her fangs only elongating further as she came around his unrelenting cock.

Even after the waves of ecstasy calmed inside of her, Geralt didn’t stop fucking her. His hands had moved to her hips in a deathly grip. She was sure to have bruises from where he held her.

“Let me drink from you,” she cried out.

Without even stopping his thrusts, he tilted his head to the side, inviting her to suck at his throat. She pulled him closer to her and clamped her mouth around the soft skin of his throat, letting her fangs break the skin slowly. His movements became sloppy as she began to drink from him, as if it were as much a turn on for him as it was for her. She drank mouthful after mouthful of his sweet nectar. Her entire body lit on fire as they attacked each other, her with her mouth, and him with his cock. This was how she wanted to die, she decided--her mouth around his throat, him balls deep inside of her. It was the closest to heaven she’d ever get.

Geralt let out a broken moan as his cock spasmed inside of her. A second later his hot seed poured inside of her, dripping down her legs and onto the bed. Geralt came longer than most men did, which must have been another aspect of the Witcher mutation, but she loved it, reveled in every second of it. And when he was done, he collapsed on top of her. She pulled her mouth back and forced her fangs to retract. Blood dripped down his neck and dried on his shoulder.

“I didn’t realize you had a biting kink,” she murmured minutes later.

“Neither did I.” He was on his back beside her now, his eyes closed and a droopy smile on his face.

“We’ll have to do this again sometime,” she said, admiring the few of a Witcher fucked out beside her.

He let out a humm of agreement, and then his breaths deepened and slowed. She fell asleep beside him, a smile plastered onto her face. It was the best sleep she’d had in decades.

#geralt of rivia #geralt of rivia smut #geralt the witcher #geralt smut #vampire x witcher #the witcher #the witcher smut

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Ducktales Shadow Into Light (Lena Restrospective) Finale!: Lena In Season 3! (Commission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome to the FINAL part of my look at the life and times of Lena Sabrewing. It’s been a long and satsifying journey through the character’s rich arc and some of Ducktales 2017′s best episodes. Lena started as a tourtured but complacient teen willing to do bloody awful evil things if it meant her freedom, who through the power of love and friendship realized what she was doing wrong, that she loved Webby and turned on Magica... and after a brief stint of this going horribly wrong a magica simply just bodyjacked her, she sacrificed herself for Webby he story seemingly done. Of course it wasn’t, Disney woudln’t let them kill a teenager... fully grown lion men horrifcally decaying indiana jones style yeah, of course it’s disney, but killing a teen is where they draw the line. Point is Lena was merley trapped in the shadow realm with a bunch of those guys Yugi beat and with the help of everyone’s faviorte stoic hummingbird, freed Lena. Lena found new family in Violet.. but also found dying is easy but living is harder and had to wrestle with both her fears of turning out like Magica and Magica herself who naturally was gaslighting her to try and get the last scraps of her power back. We also took a detour or two to see where she came from: looking at both Minima De Spell and her rivalry with a 34 year pretending to be a small child, and Magica’s Shadow whose like Lena except almost nothing like Lena. We also took a look at her one comic apperance which was never released here for some reason and was incredibly disapointing.

So yeah i’ts been one long, fun ride filled with gay subtext, launchpad’s spider sense, giant legs, movie refrences from warriors to jaws to nightmare on elm street 3: the dream warriors, toddlers who look and probably are 34, launchpad apparently huffing enough paint to damage his brain as that’s the only way to explain the terror of the terrafirmains subplot and gay subtext. I’ve enjoyed every step of the way so before I take the last one of those steps, i’d like to thank all of ya for reading this. I’ve gained at least 10 if not more followers off this series alone and I appricate all of you. I’d also like to thank Kev for directly comissioning this, keeping me in work and in x-men comics since 2020.

As you can probably guess by the title.. this one’s a bit different. This is a combination of two things: The first is that i already reviewed “The Phantom and the Sorceress” when I was reviewing each episode of Season 3 as it came out. My thoughts have not changed at all so I felt redoing that review would be redudant and a waste of Kev’s money. The same goes for Split Sword, which has the extra issue of being a three story episode with only one of the parts starring the focus of this retrospective. The second is while she shows up about the same amount as season 2, her apperances in season 3 outside of her Christmas Cameo are all more substaial outside of her two starring roles. Both COTHJSW and The Last Adventure shed some more light on our faviorite shadow and feel like natural evolutions of her character so it felt wrong to just flat out ignore them.

So rather than do a full review of the episodes i’m just going to go into Lena’s apperances for Season 3. This way I can cover Phantom again without fully repeating myself, and fully track the last steps Lena takes as the series closes out in a fresh and hopefully enjoyable way. So join me under the cut for one last step into the shadows as we finish bringing Lena into the light.

Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks!

Challenge was one of the very first Ducktales I ever talked about on here, alongside Quack Pack, so it’s quite a trip returning to it a year later, even if i’ts just my memories of it. It’s also an excellent episode, with a great and engaging main plot and a “it’s just kind of there” subplot.

It’s also one of the only three episodes to focus on Violet, and one of only two that focuses just on her and not on Lena in any way. It is a shame: While I love Lena as a character, I wouldn’t of just spent several weeks talking about her if I wasn’t getting paid for this retrospective or not, Violet is equally intriguing and so i’ll be taking a second out to talk about her as I really HAVEN’T gone into her character this retrospective and given how important she is to Lena and to all of us, most Lena fans like Violet just as much and vice versa. I’ll still be talking about Lena in this episode, obviously, but I feel her sister from two misters deserves some time in the spotlight too as the show only gave her three episodes, and one was more focused on Webby and Lena by design and the other we’ll get to.

Violet is an excellent character. She speaks well and with little emotion but that’s just how she is and she’s never called out for it or insulted, something I like. Likewise she dosen’t judge others, never really batting an eye at the rest of the groups own quirks and at most being freaked out by leg huey a bit. She’s just a kind, curious, intellgent young lady.

And this episode shows that off: We get to see her in the spotlight of her own, every bit the Woodchuck Huey is and more, but still supporting and encouring him, seeing their contest as a friendly one and putting no stakes into it as she’s failed before, she can fail again. What matters is she get back up and keep going. Her “razzing” is also just downright adorable, and nicely shows off her and Lena’s new dynamic: they’ve gone from friends to siblings, something really not shown off last time and something that wason’t confirmed on screen till now but it just works naturally, the cool and collected but chaotic underneath that lena just plays perfectly off the uttelry calm and deadpan violet. It’s a natural, perfect dynamic that they clearly had mapped out from the beggining and simply had to build up to that.

Her genuine shock at Huey’s betryal... hurts the heart, as she genuinely thinks it’s her fault and not just my boy having a panic attack and doing something questionable. But it also shows her character.. when givne the same opprunity and no guilt for it, he struck first.. she dosen’t. She saves him because it’s the right thing to do and shows Huey she really is the bettter woodchuck.. but htere’s no shame in it. It’s okay to fail, what matters is you keep trying. And as a result despite giving Huey the opporunity to win with her.. he turns it down. She gets a deserved win, celebrating with her family and just wearing the most adorable smile. She also just has.. buckets of chemistry with Huey. I mean it was apparent to me with the whole Library Scene in Nightmare but god damn do they ramp it up with this one. They just contrast each other perfectly here, the handshake is adorable and he clings to her.. while also being hilarious “I naturlaly defer to authority!”. I will take this ship to my grave, and fully support it... that being said if you ship Huey/Boyd or all three togehter, go for it man. I do the latter sometimes. Your good. You didn’t need me to tell that but sometimes shipping discorse can get downright ugly so rather than make it a war between two ships, I just wanted to offer an olive branch for once you know? Same with Weblena. I obviously adore that ship but if you have a non-boys ship with her, tha’ts cool too. Ship what you want to.. i’m just doing me through this retrospective.

Now back to Lena. Her apperance in this episode is really heartwarming and really nice after all the shit she’s been through. This is the first episode she’s in where NOTHING bad happens to her. No really, every apperance, even her two cameos had her suffer in some way. She spent the entire first season grappling with Magica, and her season 2 apperances trapped in a shadow dimension and nearly loosing her girlfriend to her own jealously, horrifically stalked by her abuser using her own self doubt against her, attacked by a literal tempest in a tea pot and captured by aliens. The girl has not gone one friggin onscreen break since the series started and probably not many off it either.

Here? She just gets to cheer her little sister, proudly celebrating both her and her new dads. She gets to teach her sister to trash talk, even if that ends up backfiring a bit but she meant well. And she gets to celebrate with her family when her little sister wins. It’s all small stuff.. but it’s all things she’s NEVER had. A sibling to be proud of and support. Dads to sit with and go places with. A family to celebrate things with. This is all pretty normal stuff, but not something everyone gets to have and something Lena NEVER had even remotely. But now she’ll ALWAYS have that. A supportive loving family to give her a place to belong, and to support in turn. After a nightmarish 14-15 years of existance, she’s FINALLY allowed to just be happy without having to fight a giant monster first.

She’s finally made it, she’s hoped and she’s waited, for the first time in her life she dosen’t feel alone. Her hearts started to heal, to know this is real, this is how it feels.. to have a home. Yes I haven’t given up on that song. And if you think this is the last time i’m going to quote a song you clearly didn’t read the review I did of the next episode.

The Phantom and the Sorceress:

Season 3′s primary focus outside of the FOWL plot was tying up loose ends. Pretty much every major recurring episode outside of Fethry got an episode tying up their character arc and of course Lena was no exception.

You’d think with Magica no longer a threat to her and having fully accepted she’s a good person now, and having found a place to belong that Lena was done. But while she accepted her past, that she’s not magica, and that she deserves to be happy.. she never accepted Magic as part of her despite being made of it and that’s what this episode ties up as well as the mystery of the blue aura that surronded her magic at times.

The episode starts with Lena’s amulet, which she has back now which is the only part of this episode I don’t like as they don’t really explain why she’d take it back from Violet. But her magic keeps goofing up and making Sleepovers dangerous, and gets Scrooge grousing about how magic is bad.. only to naturally backpedal when an angry Webby points out Lena is magic. He does amend things and genuinely apologize for it, having not meant her at all and not even thinking of her as part of his hatred of the stuff. It also shows why Lena likely didn’t take him up on his offer.. with her self loathing still going she probably thought he was just pitting her and would always resent her.. when really he just geninely did not care despite his overwhelming hate of magic. It worked out granted, she found a better fit for her family wise.

But Lena hates it too.. and while she hasn’t fully brought it up before it makes perfect sense: We saw how she viewed it as dangerous and not worth the risk to bring her back in Friendship Hates Magic and Magic has brought her nothing but pain, nearly killing her on several occasions, allowing magica to fuck with her head or directly control her and general putting the one person she cares about more than anyone in harms way. She hates what she is.. because it’s brought her nothing but pain and misery. She has ever reason to resent it..

Yet this episode is about forcing her to accept it.... to realize that Magic is part of who she is, and that it’s not inherently good or bad, it’s all about the intent of who uses it. Her last two uses of it were not made with any malice and in fact using it to pull her friends into her dreams allowed her to break free of Magica.

And it’s perfectly done by giving her a new enemy, something I REALLY wish tehy’d done with Fenton at some point, but get why it took this long with Lena: The Phantom Blot. The Phantom Blot, like many characters in this series is HEAVILY redone: he keeps the iconic look and threat level but instead of being an operatic supervillian, he’s an anti-villian with a link to magic he never really had before. He works with FOWL sure but it’s likely because unlike the rest of FOWL he actually agrees with Bradford’s goal for a less chaotic world and his desire to wipe out magic is perfectly in line with that.

He’s also given a backstory that perfectly parallels him with Lena: Both were created by Magica in a way and horribly abused by her: Lena mentally and phsycially, and Blot by having to suffer under her rule after he took over her family and then barely survivie as she wiped out his villiage, his family and his normal life swearing vengance on her. LIke Lena magica didn’t care about him or see him as a threat, figuring like most people who swore eteneral vengance on her he’d get swatted down like a gnat once and never return. INstead he returned again and again and again for decades, learning each time getting stronger and wiping out more magic along the way. He went from what was probably a good normal person to a vengeful vigliante dedicated to wiping out magic good or bad because he can’t concieve that it isn’t ALL bad. He’s easily what Lena could’ve become if , ironically enough she hadn’t encountered him, seeing the end result of hating something just for what it is as it tried to murder her. That hating and resenting Magic would just lead her to become as hollow and vengful as the blot, having a good cause to start.. but slowly loosing yourself to hate and anger. Letting the person who ruined your life still control it simply by focusing all your energy on hating them and people like them.

It also gives us an interesting and painful teamup as with the boys and Scrogoe stuck in another dimension, there’s only one person they can turn to deal with Magic: Magica herself, whose resulted to depression eating pizza and the most she can do as a threat is eat the garlic Violet was wearing in case of vampires (”There now your susceptible to vampires!” is easily the best joke of the episode, from how Magica eats the garlic in one bite to her manical laugh to Violet just being annoyed rather than terrified or anything). Magica only agrees because they have a common enemy and if he sucks up her magic amulet, that’s the end of any magic she has left.

It’s also here we learn the reason for the blue and purple color coding: Duckworld magic is indeed color coded.. but rather than be based ont he emotions used or anything.. it’s based on the user. The purple is Magica, and as we later learn Poe’s, magic, and thus Lena borrowing it via the amulet. The Blue is HER magic. Tapping into her emotions and her own inante power. It’s a nice twist I didn’t see coming but makes absolute sense in hindsight: Every time she’s triggered it.. it’s been when she’s been using her own emotions and been doing thigns for her own good, and not for anyone elses. It also explains why the Magica powers aren’t working for her or stable: their not HERS to control and thus are fighting her.

So she trains to use her own using the time honorted traditions of montages and having your sibling shoot things at you out of a magical amulet. She grows in her talent and power and herself, even if she learns from the person she hates more and comes to accept magic.. in time to fight the Blot who misguidedly thinks harming her will show Magica the pain he felt.. even though as we learn later that ship already sailed and we already knew she cares nothing for Lena.

But as he drains her amulet... she focuses on what she cares about... and if we didn’t already ahvea MOUNTAIN of subtext for webby and lena her “frienddship” montage has maybe one or two shots of her sister.. and about 80 of webby. Seriously they.. they weren’t even hiding it at this poitn outside of the finale, which we’ll get to.

And so she takes hold of her magic, no longer need the amulet to channel it and taking on her super mode! Which was highly contreversal at the time. BUt I get why. As a transformation, ala dragon ball, and a superhero type costume it works, giving her a power and grandeur not seen before and showing she’s using all of it, giving weight to when it only shows up in the finale when she needs it most and likely would’ve given it weight any other time it showed up. But it wasn’t clear if this was her permenant look now and Frank’s response to it was to say he wanted to dress everyone up in that outfit , at the same size Lena has it, including launchpad wearing it like a cape. Which while hilarious and it was, was also blatant trolling as her return in Split Sword showed it wasn’t her default form, and they could relax. But as a form showing the apex of her power, character development and confidence, it works and has all the drama i’d expect from a form like this, reflecting the blot’s power back onto him and overloading the gauntlet and facing down Magica easily.

It’s the perfect way to cap things off... Lena finally acccepts herslef as she is fully: she’s not evil and neither is magic.. magic is a part of her and her power is not something to hate.. but to embrace. To use to protect the world from people LIKE Magica who would misue their power to harm others or the blot who belivie her power is inherently evil. This is a lena freed from the chains of self hatred, fully accepted. It turns her story into a wonderful, beautiful story of escaping abuse and accepting yourself as who you are, that no matter what you are or where you come from, you are beautiful, you are good and you can do good. And as she flies off with her sister and girlfriend, she’s finally, fully, truly at peace with who she was who she is now and flies into the future.. and to free her girlfirends dad from another dimension. Nothing is holding her back now, no one can push her around, she’s who she wants to be, she’s the master of her, and the thoughts enough to lift her off of the ground. She and Webby are independent together and they are flying. And yes i’m linking the song again.

youtube

But even with her character Arc Wrapped she still could support others in their own growth. Case in point:

The Split Sword of Swanstantine!

This was the vingette episode, with a pair of the kids, one from Team Magic the other from the Duck Boys, going after a piece. And while Violet’s segment is neat it dosent’ really expand on her enough for me to go into it like I did with Challenge, so i’ll only be covering the cold open and Lena and Huey’s segment. Given these two are some of my faviorites, Lena hasn’t really gotten to have any meaningful interactoins with anyone besides Webby, Violet and Magica (And scrooge but for like.. two minutes), and this bit is really creative and intresting I loved it. It also has Steelbeak so I got a nice Jason Mantzokus fix on top of that despite him barely getting to speak in this one.. and really all season. Season 3 REALLY wasted Steelbeak, only using him three times and just ignoring the whole idea of him growing more compitent with time. Maybe Frank’s saving that for darkwing duck if he gets to do that I dunno. At least Invincible and Close Enough are using the man properly so I got that.

THe setup to the episode as a whole is comedic gold: Scrooge has taken the kids to Monocrow to find the split sword, one of the missing mysteries before FOWl.. only to then realizze in one of the best jokes of the season, after HOURS of plane travel probably that Violet and Lena had also come along having slept over and thus spending the episode in their sleep clothes. As Violet puts it in LIebe’s best delivery of the series “You said eveyrone get on the plane so we got on the plane”. So, fricking relatable. Scrooge’s awkard “Do you.. like history?” is also great, David is a treasure, as if he’s just now realizing he really dosen’t know Webby’s closest friend and girlfriend and is scrambling for some common ground so he can stop talking. 1/2′s good enough and we’re off.

Lena and Huey’s plot, the final one of the three, likewise has a simple setup: Huey finds the sword piece.. and also Steelbeak, whose ready to punch him some children. Lena freezes time as she can do that but can’t delay the inveitble, just give them time to plan.

And this is a nice showcase for Huey and a nice chance for Lena to be snarky as Huey wants to try anything and everything he can do that dosen’t involve fighting as he hates it and Lena endulges him as he gets tossed around, playing on her phone while he tries dumb scheme after dumb scheme from prtending to be his dad, to his inner child, to construction to offering him a snack, to “what sword piece” while hodling the sword blade twice his side behind his back.

Lena eventually calls him on it: He can’t keep avoiding this and there’s some reason he dosen’t want to fight. The reason turns out to be he bruce bannered himself and thus has a split personality for all his agression and primal rage, the duke of making a mess, Huey’s version fo the McDuck family anger he’s buried away and is ashamed of, hating his more impuslive emotions due to his desire for control.

As for how Lena impacts this.. it’s her own acceptance of the part of her she hated, her magic, that gives her the clarity to help Huey, helping him realize like her this shit isn’t healthy and to make peace with the Duke instead of fighting him and locking him away. The result is a perfect combo: a huey with all the power and strength of a mcduck, but the nuance and tactics Huey normally has to beat Steelbeak easily. Lena is impressed, a friendship is forged and we see how far sh’es come: from hating herself.. to helping others stop doing it before it gets worse.

How Santa Stole Christmas!

All we really learn here is that she and Violet share a room and a king sized bed.. but we got that cheek smooch and I had to mention that so there you go.

The Last Adventure!:

Like most of the main cast Lena gets a decent note to go out on, if a bit wobbly. The wobblyiness comes from two sources. The first is just a nitpick of mine; We don’t get to see the climax of her fight with the Blot alongside Manny. No really. The Blot got two spotlight episodes, his own sidekick/wife/amy sedaris, and was built up as one of FOWL’s biggest threats.. and his defeat isn’t even shown on screen for some damn reason. I feel they just ran out of time but given how important Lena and Manny were series wide and how awesome the keith david reveal was, it’s a cop out

Speaking of Cop Outs we can’t talk about this episode without talknig about the elephant in the room: Lena saying Webby “already has two sisters”, seemingly shooting down any posiblity of Weblena. I do not see it that way but do feel the two could’ve phrased it better and we could’ve gotten SOME Weblena by the end instead of none to offset this. I feel Lena’s motivations, esecpailly given the context were purely to try and placate Webby to keep her from investigating the twins further and endangering herself, not realizing how badly this wouldn’t work as Lena’s never cared about where she comes from and her past is all pain and abuse before Webby, while Webby had this gnawing at her her whole life. I do think the last episode was the WORST POSSIBLE place to put this, as it comes off as queerbaiting evne though I don’t think that was the intent. So yeah this line sucks and was poorly conveyed.

Everything else though is thankfully excellent: Her raging frekaout at June feels warranted, as June is literally trying to cut Webby out of her life and was purposffully trying to galight webby as we find out. Her and Violet’s reason for going is also just pure awesome, pure heartwarming and pure badass, both angrily and simply proclaming when stating why their going on the final attack no fowl “It’s Webby”. Webby helped Lena become a better person and lnvoes her more than anyone else and vice versa and Webby gave Violet Friends, a sister and a life of her own. Nothings going to stop them and Scrogoe wisely backed down on that one before they strangled him.

Her final scene is the best though: Not only do she and Violet give May and June friendship braclets but despite the earlier hostlitlity... Lena helps them with not a second though. She now understands them, gets that their like her: a being made by an evil dickhead who saw them as a tool to use and not a person and was willing to kill them the moment they were no longer useful. She too was once lost, sad and felt alone..but Webby pulled her out of that and now she’s going to be there for these two, these alterante versions of the love of her life, to give them the same support and encourages them they’ll find their home. And sure enough my boy comes by not a second later to adopt both of them. In an instnat they’ve gone from alone with only webby like Lena was.. to having a family of their own and loyal friends to stay by their sid.e

And so Lena ends the series charing off into the wild blue with her sister and her newfound friends, the future all ahead of her, the past finally put to bed, and herself finally at peace, in love with Webby.. and with herself at long last.

This retrospective was a wonderful time. I throughly enjoyed going through Lena’s history and being more and more impressed how much I’d missed and how it was even BETTER the second time around. This arc is Ducktales at it’s best and Lena is the finest thing they acomplished. This is easily Kimiko Glenn’s best role and really let her show off her range. Hopefully this isn’t the last we’ll see of this wonderful lesbian shadow, but as it stands with peace, love and self worth found, it’s still a good place to leave her. If she ever returns i’ll of course pick this up again, and free of charge but for now I enjoyed the ride and throughly enjoyed this retrospective. T

Thank you all so much for reading. If you liked this retrospective, please stick around. My next comissioned story arc is covering the various crossovers Lilo and Stitch did, but after that in three weeks return here for Season 2. All three arcs, All done intermidtley. Buckle up.

Until then follow for more, and join my patreon. My next stretch goal is monthly reviews of darkwing duck and reviews of the super ducktales mini series, and after finsihing this post i’m going to throw in some extra non-duck ones! 25 is being changed up from covering Tailspin every month, to covering a Danny Phantom episode every month, and the beloved special ultimate enemy. So check that out. I may throw in some more on both 20 and 25 so stay posted. And just for joining at the 2 dollar tier you get acess to my discord server and get to pick one of the shorts for my varoius shortstaculars I do. Next one up is goofy’s birthday with Donalds in june so join now!

ANd if you just have one speciifc episode I haven’t covered you’d like me to, those are 5 bucks a pop on commission and available via my ask box, direct messages on here or discord at technicolormuk#6550 and until the next rainbow i’ts been a pleasure

#ducktales #weblena #lena sabrewing #webby vanderquck #violet sabrewing #shadow into light #the phantom and the sorceress #the split sword of swantatantine #challenge of the junior senior woodchucks #scrooge mcduck #huey duck #may duck #june duck #manny the headless manhorse

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sinnhelmingr · 3 years

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tell me about heldolin possible reconcilliation? // @usedhearts

rubs my filthy little gay hands together. oh yeah baby talk complicated wlw to me--

So, the groundwork for this hypothetical: Our little AU for 3, where Gwyndolin is saved from her canonical fate by a daring rescue on the part of her ex-wife. The two have been distant for some decades, ranging from cool hostility to open disregard, but with that underlying air of disappointment lacing every interaction. There’s nothing to salvage, but Hel’s not the kind of person that can leave anyone to what was planned, regardless of their interpersonal issues. One fraught road trip through enemy territory until they reach safety later...

Well there’s a lot to work through. First being Lin’s lingering trauma surrounding her captivity. Her we get the first hints of reconciliation in Hel’s refusal to let her deal with it alone. Yes, Gwynevere can help, and yes, her realm is safe and offers whatever support the wayward queen requires, but no one here saw it. No one here understood what the Valley had become. Even if they have lingering disagreements, Hel is the one sleeping on the floor of Lin’s chamber rather than in her own bed, because she can’t stand to think of someone she once cared for dealing with all of this alone. It helps, in some way, because Lin does need someone there and is going through it trying to cope.

Every possible reconciliation attempt proceeds from there. Hel has gone through, well, hell and back to save Lin and is still devoted to making sure she’s safe, but it’s not romantic. It’s honestly just Hel doing what she perceives as the right thing. Whether it helps or not, or her role could be filled by anyone else Lin cared for, it doesn’t matter because she’s the one there. And like it or not, she’s not going anywhere. From this, we have a variety of options but the two I personally see working out are these:

Lin coming to rely on that, sort of clinging to Hel even if not literally. When not dealing with any official business regarding the ongoing political nightmare, she might drift towards Hel, wherever she is within the palace.

Alternatively, given the mood of most of their interactions post-divorce, there’s a chance it starts as resentment. That Lin can’t stand to be in her shadow, clinging to her in the daylight when her struggles are easier to bear.

Either way, the two are at least within physical proximity to one another, given Lin’s mental health and coping skills. Which is, inevitably, going to lead to a lot more run ins with her nephew.

Hel in a lot of ways has come to care for Lothric as if he were her own, because my God someone has to love that kid beyond his brother. Someone has to care about his wellbeing. He’s irreverent and he’s anxious and he’s struggling but determined to keep going, hardly the pious saint of the royal family’s propaganda. His wit is sharp and at times cruel, and he’s unsure about a lot of things but trying to hide that fact. Lin’s going to have to, through watching Hel interact with him, accept that her nephew is in fact more than a sacrifice -- for now. I think it’s Lin showing initiative to defrost ice queen around Lothric is going to start changing Hel’s demeanor towards her as well.

Like that’s not to say Lin changing overnight to team ‘hey yeah let’s not roast a living person with autonomy who never had a chance to live!’ is what it would take. That’d be unrealistic and OOC. I think it’s just. Hel being able to see that Lin can set aside her pride or stubbornness just long enough to get to know her sacrificial lamb as a person, as something more than what the rest of the world makes him by hers and Nev’s design. Lin defrosts to Lothric, Hel defrosts to Lin. It’s equivalent.

I think that would be the tipping point to sort of lessen the feeling of obligation between them. Maybe they can finally start talking again like people who are on at least civil terms, if not outright friendly. In my head it plays a little like their initial childhood interactions where Lin is reticent but observant and Hel is the more daring of them. She leads, and for a time, to a certain degree, Lin follows. And during the course of the narrative, as the latter grows stronger, as she acclimates herself to life outside of a cage, Hel starts to back off more and more.

Maybe Lin won’t need her so much now, maybe things will go back to normal. And instead, Lin still leaves the door open between them, as it were. Just because she’s no longer so reliant on Hel doesn’t mean she wants her gone.

Or maybe she tries to keep her distance if she’s still fighting against certain imminent realizations. Maybe she tries to shut the door but finds, as always, Hel has a key and she just. Accepts it over time. It’s her choice whether to come and go, just as she can choose to tell her to leave.

Another vital step in their potential reconciliation is that it not be built upon reliance or obligation -- now they can see each other as relative equals.

By this point Hel’s been doing everything short of actually saying the words to convey she’s not stopped loving Lin. Even if she doesn’t realize it, there’s no other way people can take her actions. For Lin, I don’t know if it’s that simple but we can talk it out next time you’re online because Christ I’ve been typing this so long the weekend is over and you are back at work. The vibe I get from your Lin is that even if she cares she’s daddy’s girl and stubborn as hell once she’s been hurt. She’s either unsure or unwilling to convey that she’d like to patch things up. Which is valid, she’s been through a lot, there’s so much to work through before she even thinks of romance ever again. She’s especially been through the loss of her daughter, and that bond comes before anything else.

(Sidenote for those who are not privy to our discord lore: Let’s put a pin in the fact that at present Lothric has decided his salvation lies in overriding his mother’s decision to just lock him in the kiln once he’s ‘ready.’ He’s seen how Hel can influence his aunt and said ‘Yes, of course, I have to Parent Trap them into a reconciliation and then Hel will convince Aunt Gwyndolin I deserve to live and Mother won’t have any allies left!’ All the while his primary lackey is just questioning what version of the Parent Trap he saw because that’s not the plot at all-- /j. Anyway there’s three idiots -- two princes and a physician -- out here trying to play matchmaker despite the fact none of them have any romantic experience. This can only end well.)

I feel like the real test is going to be whether distance makes the heart grow fonder. Hel’s got other responsibilities out there, and once assured Lin is in a more stable place, that others will be there for her in a way that helps, she has to take care of them. She has to be with her own people, has to make sure they are safe, keep an eye on the world beyond. She’s gone like a thief in the night, and Lin has to learn how to navigate the world without her, furthering the balancing act between them returning to normal. Hel rode off on her big black horse and no one cna say for sure when she’ll be back. She comes and goes through the kingdom like a storm, staying just long enough to cause problems but gone with the slightest shift in atmosphere. The horse comes back only weeks later. Its rider does not. Instead, perched upon that black stallion is a familiar crossbreed, tattered but hanging in there.

Hel saved her, at the cost of her own freedom. What can Lin possibly think about that?

So it’s a flurry of Lin campaigning for her sister to send a party to save Hel, Nev saying that she can’t do it yet, possibly as she is is too busy with the fracturing of her own kingdom to lend the men. All the same, she forbids Lin from going off and doing something drastic. Tells her younger sister to stay with her daughter and help Yorshka heal. She needs it. Which works bc we have that big dramatic Hel returning to the castle drenched in blood and falling cinematically into Lin’s arms. It’s the drama these wlw deserve.

And as we know, Lin insists on being Hel’s own caretaker while she recovers. To the point she scrutinizes every move Lothric’s physician makes in checking that the newly returned Death isn’t badly injured. Lothric thinks he stays winning because now Lin’s doing the same ‘demonstrate love but don’t speak it’ bullshit that Hel is so adept at. He’s buying his physician drinks after this despite her protests that alcohol does not sit well with her--

Hel eventually recovers enough from the strenuous battle and escape to start moving around the castle more. She confesses that, despite gossip saying this was some act of passion to show her devotion, she didn’t do this for Lin. She did it because it was the right thing to do, because Yorshka was in danger, and it had nothing to do with her mother. Something that breaks Lin’s shell completely because it proves Hel is still the woman she fell in love with. She didn’t risk her life and return the one Lin loves the most as a hollow token meant to win her heart again, she did it because her conscience has never steered her wrong.

Now try this one on for size: One day it dawns on Hel that something is missing. She tears up her room seeking it only for Lin to finally be That Bitch and hold out her exes wedding pendant -- one she found that Hel never stopped wearing, if the fact it was still around her throat when Lin stripped her of her bloody dress is any indication. Hel’s been found out. Lin’s about to start asking some serious questions.

And if one of them can finally confess at this point that whether the love stopped or never did they feel it now just as they did before, that’s not the end. That’s not reconciliation. Because the fact remains that they broke up over an act that Hel considered pure evil, when Lin helped decide the ultimate fate of Lothric. Reconciliation is going to depend wholly on how AU we want to go, if Hel and the revived Artorias are able to convince Lin that this is heinous and even if it is what her father would have wanted, it isn’t right, it makes her just as terrible as he was. If Lin can finally see to reason or at least sentiment over legacy and duty, then I can see the pair moving towards actual reconciliation and spending at least the last days of a dying world together and at peace with their ultimate fates. If not... Oof. There might be other ways to make it work once Lothric goes rogue and says he won’t be kindling, if Lin can admit that yes, that means all the cruelty was for nothing and she was wrong (like her sister does), then maybe some slowburn reconciliation could take place.

But ultimately it’s going to depend on both character development on Lin’s part, whether by choice or in spite of resistance, and Hel proving that all the things Lin has accused her of (changing, being untrue, being corrupted by heresies) are untrue. Changing and steadfast characterization in tandem. Barely even friends (after the divorce) then somebody bends unexpectedly--

#howl at the moon i'll come for you [GWYNDOLIN/HEL]#i can no longer close my eyes while the world around me dies [V: DARK SOULS]#usedhearts #THIS IS A NOVEL FSDAGSGD

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pantherlover · 5 years

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Rosemary and Rue Re-Read: Part 1

I decided that I wanted to do kind of a deep-dive re-read of the October Daye books, to see if I could catch any clues I missed during my first read, and to see if I could come up with any theories about where the story is going to go. PLEASE come and discuss things with me if you’re at all interested! Or remind me of something I’ve forgotten! I have a feeling I won’t make it as far as I’d like if I don’t have proper motivation lol.

Note: While I haven’t read a lot of the books in a while, particularly the first two, I have read all of them up to Night and Silence at some point and I will be referring to things that happen in later books as I go along. These will not be spoiler free recaps.

Prologue/Chapter 1

Prologue

This phone call between Cliff and Toby in the opening scene is basically the only time that I like Cliff in the entire series - it’s genuinely sweet, and I really love Toby’s goodbye (although it does feel like she was tempting fate a little bit). I think it does a good job of showing what Toby’s lost when she gets back and realizes that not only did he not wait for her, he’s basically turned her daughter against her too.

(That might be a little harsh, but I am seriously Not A Fan of Cliff. I will totally own up to the fact that a lot of that dislike is Toby bias, but I judge his handling of the situation a little. I know Toby disappearing and him being forced to raise Gilly by himself is a really difficult situation, and I don’t blame him at all for moving on (and not just because I like Tybalt better). 14 years is a long time to hold on to someone that’s probably never going to come back, and I think it’s completely reasonable that he decided that he didn’t want to raise Gilly by himself.

... That decision absolutely did not have to involve letting Gilly think that Toby abandoned them and didn’t love her. Cliff can say that he made the choice to let Gilly think that for her sake all he wants, I flat out do not believe that Gilly thinking that her mother abandoned her, and letting some other woman replace her was better for Gilly. I also don’t really think that he believed that Toby had abandoned them; he loved her, enough that they were raising a child together, and yet he didn’t know her well enough to know that she’d never run away from her responsibilities? Bullshit. I think it’s a lot more likely that thinking she’d left on her own was easier for him to let himself believe, because it’s a lot easier to move on from a woman who’d abandoned him to raise a child on his own than to move on from a woman who had possibly been killed while working a potentially dangerous job)

I really like the marsh water charms! I was kind of sad that they fell by the wayside when Toby’s powers got stronger, but maybe they’ll be used more often since they were brought up again in Night and Silence.

I forgot how much Toby struggled with using magic in the beginning of the series. It’s super infuriating to realize that that was a deliberate choice on Amandine’s part - not just trying to turn Toby human, but to not teach her how to use her own magic to protect herself. It’s especially infuriating because we know that she taught August about her own heritage.

“I go out, I find out what’s going on, and I let the knights who earned their titles in battle take over. I’m not stupid; I don’t engage.” This line, and the line coming up where Toby says she “doesn’t have a death wish” get funnier the longer the series goes on. I want to know exactly how much Seanan McGuire cackled when she wrote that line.

Toby demonstrates her STELLAR detective skills by narrating how Very Suspicious Simon’s current living arrangements are, and then... failing to consider that he might be setting up a trap. How on earth did Toby ever become a private detective when she is the LEAST curious person ever. (I’m still waiting for her to go back to the Library to research bloodlines; that way, she might actually notice the next time a Firstborn randomly shows up in her orbit instead of being surprised by it)

It does seem very suspicious, rereading this book, how... human, Simon’s set up is? Toby notes that he’s paying cash at his rental; that doesn’t really seem like something that someone from the Summerlands would’ve picked up on, as opposed to someone who’s used to operating in the mortal realm. It definitely feels like Simon deliberately set this up so that Toby would notice, and no one else.

Now we meet Oleander de Merelands. Given how much Evening hates mixing bloodlines, she employs a surprising amount of people with mixed blood. (Also, Toby says that Oleander is half Tuatha, half Peri. We’ve met Tuatha before, but I don’t think we’ve met any Peri yet. Something to look forward to?)

And here’s where Toby gets turned into a fish, thus beginning her Trials and Tribulations. I don’t remember a lot of the plot of The Winter Long, but I do remember that Simon insists that turning Toby into a fish was the merciful option. I think it’s interesting that Simon’s ‘mercy’ results in the exact same situation that led him down this path in the first place - losing her fiance and child. Especially because he deliberately puts Sylvester through this too, so his malicious actions and his merciful actions end with the same results. (Simon, why are you so terrible at everything)

I also think it’s fascinating to compare how all three of them handle the situation - Sylvester completely falls apart until he gets his wife and daughter back (and even when they do come back, their relationship is fractured to the point where Rayseline tried to murder her own mother, and might never be repaired), which nearly costs him his other daughter. Simon tries so hard to find his daughter - despite it being her own choice to be lost - which ends not only with both of them still out of his reach, but with Simon losing himself, first metaphorically and then literally. Toby, on the other hand, accepts that her family is lost to her (or at least tries to accept that) and is able to move on and build a new family for herself.

So, I have a question: We know from The Brightest Fell that the reason that Luna and Rayseline were kidnapped was because Evening wanted Toby gone, so Simon used them to draw Toby out. Was it ever explained what Toby did to make Evening want her gone at this point in time? I don’t think it was Toby finding the knowe - I believe it’s been several years since the knowe was found, and while Evening’s clearly capable of long term plans, I think she’d be impatient to get rid of a threat she’d consider ‘beneath’ her. Does anyone have any ideas, or remember from a later book?

Chapter 1

I think the woman with ‘oily black curls’ buying ice cream and diet coke is the first appearance of the Luidaeg. If it is, then she’s the first in a long line of ‘seemingly inconsequential, unnamed characters who appear in the background and then turn out to be VITALLY IMPORTANT later in the story.’ I’m going to try to keep track of these moments; we’ll see how well I do.

Mitch! I LOVE Mitch and Stacy; I really hope that they can have bigger roles in an upcoming book. Maybe they can help Toby when she tries to rebuild Home?

I don’t normally reread the first two books, and this scene with Toby at her job is reminding me why. She is crushingly lonely, and she feels like she deserves to be, because she feels like she failed everyone - failed Raysel and Luna by not finding them, failed Sylvester by not being there, failed Cliff and Gilly by abandoning them - while completely ignoring how they failed her too, by not looking for her.

I think this introduction scene with Tybalt is the one time in the entire series where I actually believe Toby when she says he doesn’t like her. This is definitely the most outright assholish he ever is with her, and there’s no real underlying affection to combat his dickishness. I really wanted to punch him in the face during this scene the first time I read the book.

I really like the description of how Toby literally grabs shadows to use in her illusions. I don’t think I’ve ever heard magic described like that in any other series; it’s very creative.

That’s the first two chapters! WOW I had no idea this was going to get this long. Again, please please PLEASE come talk to me about these books! I have been dying to find people to discuss these books with for ages.

#October Daye #Rosemary and Rue #ReRead Project

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steve0discusses · 5 years

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Yugioh S4 E3: So Many Dragons in This One

Y’all so I’m like getting over a pretty nasty cold that’s pretty much wiped me clean like a hard reset and this episode coinciding with it is something else because this episode is essentially a fever dream start to finish.

First off:

If your mind didn’t immediately start playing ska-like alt rock and go through every lyric from “Escape From the City” then I can’t help you. Because that’s where my mind directly went and stayed for the entirety of this episode.

Back in the museum, Yugi learns about some more crypto-history.

Because Y’all, Yugioh just LOVES to screw with history. I mean we’ve already seen what they did to Seto Kaiba’s timeline, but get a load of what they’re about to do with world history.

(Arthur now has the USA gradient because I was at a loss of how else to describe Arthur. If Bandit Keith comes back then I’ll be mixing fonts, yet again.)

This was done mostly to recap the last 3 seasons, but also to drop in some brand new lore that came out of freakin nowhere.

Atlantis.

Yes, he said Atlantis.

(read more under the cut)

In the actual dialogue of the show, Tea mentions she read a single book about Atlantis once in her life, and then Joey and Tristan go “Tea, you nerd!” and it’s like wow the standards are low in this group. One single book, boys? That’s all it takes to be a nerd? When you have any of the KAIBAS right over there? One single book is the requirement?

Starting to think no one in this universe knows what a nerd is.

So the underwater cave dwelling from a few episodes back is none other than the Atlantis ruins. I feel like this should be a way bigger deal in terms of like all of history, since in this universe, Atlantis is time wise at the dawn of (checks wikipedia)...proto-writing...and yet they seem to really have their math and large construction science down.

The arch wasn’t really utilized (I hesitate to say “discovered” as it is an arch) until about 2000 BC or so. Good on the Atlanteans, I guess?

Don’t know why we’re getting so sidetracked by cards when a civilization 10000 years ago could make immense underwater 60 ft castles that don’t immediately collapse under the pressure, but this is the Yugioh universe and everyone’s card addiction runs strong and true.

It just seems funny to me that Hawkins, who devoted I want to say like 60 years of his life toward becoming a walking encyclopedia about Egypt, got super sidetracked and ended up 10000 leagues under the sea in Atlantis. He just threw all that Egypt work completely to the wind and basically changed his career at age I dunno 70 or so. Or maybe this guy is only 50 but he just seems super way old to me.

(And raising his granddaughter for some reason? Hell knows what happened to Rebecca’s parents, but knowing Yugioh, it will probably be really, really tragic.)

So then, although Atlantis is in our world and under the sea, Hawkins decides to throw another fast one on us.

(I just chose a random number, but Buzzfeed decided Washington was 34th. Which is wild.)

Bro took this moment to explain to me in great and excruciating detail that the Atlanteans in Aquaman did in fact invent tanks. Aquaman is his favorite. Ya, I know.

So I thought “ah, this is the Shadow Realm” (since we have seen Bakura just make a monster a real boy before) but then it became kind of unclear if the Shadow Realm is a different realm than this other realm which is just where the nice monsters live. So um...I’m still not sure about that one, I’ll get back to you when it’s made clear (I may never get back to you on that one)

Then Rebecca decides to drop this lore about the ghost that lives in Yugi Muto’s head that we’ve been *pretty Sure* up to this point was strictly Egyptian dealing with strictly Egyptian things.

I am not entirely sure how we’re going to take a guy who lived 5000 years ago and explain why he’s living now in AD 2002 Yugi Muto’s head because of some guy 10000 years ago. But they’re going to try.

Like I’ve heard this referred to as a filler season, because it uh did not happen in the Manga. So, legally, they can’t really touch the manga at all (and I assume they were probably waiting for the manga to finish at this point), and so we’re just gonna...pull Atlantis out of nowhere because the nice thing about Atlantis is that it is so freakin old that it is well outside of copyright. Completely fair use. But it’s still kinda wild.

Also, Yugi made sure to off-handedly tell us that most of the monsters who’ve invaded their world have been very, very, nice, and that’s why everyone has been so chill.

I mean. OK?

You still have literal dragons flying around but apparently only some of the dragons are mean and attack, the rest just chill and float around like a fish or something. Personally, I wouldn’t be thrilled by this.

Hawkins notices Yugi’s enchanted dead guy necklace, and without asking “so...does this belong to a dead guy? Did you get this from the dead guy’s corpse? Yugi? Yugi, look at me. Yugi, young man, is this another dead guy necklace you’ve been carrying around in your pocket because I feel like I see a problem here, buster.”

Hawkins suggests, instead:

Oh OK...that’s a lot to take in.

Didn’t expect giant possessed lady statues but it’s a nice spooky touch. Can’t have enough giant possessed lady statues in your anime, honestly.

Also, I’m really glad they gave this skinny lady statue a double chin.

And after all that, Hawkins decides he’s done with his one single afternoon in Japan, and he’s going to go and travel 16 hours back to the US stuck in a plane within hearing distance of Rebecca. Worth that 32 hour round trip for that one afternoon in Japan (or actually one way is 4 hours longer than the other way or something? I forget the details.)

And like the show had him blush and then Tea got mad, but like Yugi also blushed when Mai gave him a note once that said “thanks for the help!” so I feel like Yugi just shuts down completely whenever he has to deal with girls.

Maybe this is just the face Yugi makes when he quickly enters the pyramid zone and is like “Pharaoh, it’s getting mad weird out there!” And Pharaoh’s just sitting on his throne eating cheese whiz straight out of a can in star pj’s with matching bootspants and he’s like “My Gods, Yugi! If I’m here, and you’re here, who’s driving the plane!?” and then they just start shrugging at eachother about who has to go on the date this time until Yugi snaps out of it.

ah, a disembodied voice.

Literally thought it was my own voice.

It keeps Yugi up for a while, but when has Yugi ever fallen asleep right away on this show?

After Yugi calms down enough to go the hell to bed, we zoom back to our Xtreme sports boys who have finally decided to stop Tony Hawking all over this island long enough to deliver the sober news that Gurimo is freakin dead.

Which they barely brought up at all because who freakin cares about Gurimo? This guy sure didn’t.

Cool. Good plan.

Hard to rebuild civilization without people. Just throwing that out there.

But ya. Lets go end mankind on Episode 3. Thought it would take a little bit longer for him to get enough soul juice but apparently he’s good on the soul juice from these three juicy cards that have no souls (I thought).

3 God Cards + 1 Gurimo - 1 Rex - 1 Weevil = Destroy Humanity

First, a dream sequence.

This is one bizarre ass dream sequence and like...I don’t even know if I have much to say because it’s like...so out of left field and both out of the lore of this show and just barely inside the lore enough for it to work.

Still feels hella out of nowhere though.

That may be just the Dayquil talking.

Either way, we get to have Yugi run around in pjs again, but unfortunately they have no stars so I just don’t freakin care when see it. I get that stars are hard to animate and he’s a year older and maybe grew out of the star pj’s but c’mon. We had a good thing going, show.

But they hear a voice within the pyramid, and I’m using Tea’s font color here but it’s not Tea, it’s another girl who is...a lot like Tea honestly.

So up to this point we’ve accepted that the puzzle is all of Pharaoh’s mysteries and also mixed with the memories of Yugi as well. We have a room of short term memory (that pharaoh never uses) full of little clones of Yugi’s friends. We have a room full of all the lego pieces that Yugi lost over his young life (and 2 very cursed tamagachis.) We have a room that has a gigantic guardian Dark Magician who almost killed Shadi once. We also have several rooms that are just traps that can basically kill you, or if you are Shadi, just totally set you on fire, because screw Shadi.

Also it has this room:

But we find a new room that is like an entire fantasy realm and it’s like...so what memory is this?

Somewhat confusing if you’re me and you’ve assumed up to this point that everything in the puzzle has something to do with Pharaoh’s past. Apparently there’s just a door to another world in here they just never knew was here.

Just this entire time Yugi and Pharaoh were completely unaware that they had a DOOR TO ANOTHER WORLD in their necklace. Which, as I mentioned before, is where all the duel monsters live, but looks nothing like the Shadow Realm, which we’ve seen before.

And like honestly I kinda just figured at first that the giant eye was supposed to be there eating dragons, as if this was some sort of cycle of life for the duel monsters, to be a dragon, grow old, and then get devoured by the eyeball in the sky to start over again as nutrients to feed the baby dragons.

But in fact the eye is Not Normal and we should be alarmed by it.

Very hard to know what should and should not be normal when I’ve never seen this place before, also it has three crystal dragons that I guess the other monsters MUST be worshiping or something because check out the purple tile palace they made just for these crystal dragons.

Like this made me ask a LOT of questions about the civilization of duel monsters. Like who made this? Did a bunch of Kuriboh make this? Hell does this civilization works and is it a monarchy and are there castes?

Do they do taxes?

And then we meet her, the voice asking for our help, it’s this girl. Dark Magician girl. Nice to finally meet you. Wish it had a little more build up and made more sense.

We’ve talked to this chick before. She was digital at the time, but she kind of pretends that she already knows Pharaoh and Yugi and they kinda just...take this as it comes. I mean there wasn’t much time to deliver this dialogue so they were like, if the lady in the cornucopia hat says so, I guess we have to do the thing.

It is nice that we do finally get an explanation for why Pegasus could make all these cards but could not resurrect his dead wife--being that she is...not from this world.

But like now the puzzle not only dives into Pharaoh’s past but is also just a straight up a dimension portal. You can just...visit these people whenever? I guess?

I was getting used to the puzzle being a very large metaphor, and I wasn’t actually prepared for it to have a utilitarian use like a Stargate. This asks a lot of questions, but put those questions aside because we have to adopt this dragon by pulling a huge ass sword out of it’s right eyeball.

This show is SO mean to eyeballs.

She explains that there was some lore that lead to this sword being plunged into this buddy’s eye over here but I forgot it already. It was like half a sentence and then it was gone and I’m on Dayquil and I’m sure it’ll come back. At some point they’ll bring it all full circle, I’m sure.

Like if this happened in a dream then does this place even exist on a mortal plane at all? Can it only be accessed through dreams and being dead? It’s kind of a fascinating concept since these duel monsters have to be summoned through paper, which has all sorts of relevant meaning in a lot of Eastern mythologies.

Stuff I’ll never know because say goodbye to the Duel Monster Land that Apparently-Exists-Now-And-Absolutely-Always-Existed,-Stop-Thinking-About-Who-Invented-Tanks,-It-Was-Obviously-The-Atlanteans-10000-Years-Ago, we’re gonna go and take this huge ass dragon we have no business inheriting but are anyway because the dumbass ghost in our brain has this grand reputation that he banished some sort of evil 5000 years ago but has absolutely no memory of how the hell he did that or what even occurred, and because of his completely wiped bean, this makes him a complete idiot at best and a complete psychopath at his absolute worst.

But yeah, lets take this dragon and see what happens.

You gotta bring furniture, but the dragon is free. 2 bedrooms, no rugs, it’s free.

I just realized we got a dragon and not the sword. Only in this anime.

And then he wakes up to the last thing I expected.

It was nice of Yugi to take the time it took for him to get entirely dressed and ready, but I guess if the world has to end you gotta go out in style. Which for him means his school uniform because, although Yugi absolutely hates this school for some reason, he has a lot of pride for it. Just a crazy amount of school pride for how rarely he attends school and for the lengths he went to get out of soccer practice that one time. But will Yugi be caught dead in anything but his school colors? No.

HOW IS THIS CITY STILL STANDING.

Also Kaiba must be having a wild time on the top of Kaiba Tower but maybe he took a helicopter a while back to go on a world dragon tour because we didn’t hear a peep out of him this entire very Very VERY dragon-centric episode.

Really weird how many dragons there are with so few Kaibas. It’s like the moment they turned around, every dragon on Earth came out of hiding to throw a huge ass dragon party.

PS get a load of this dragon.

Why would you ever give a dragon an ass?

I don’t even know how this is possible because it doesn’t have a butt crack, but it’s got serious ass going on. It’s the Lizzo of dragons, when you set it to defense mode, it probs just twerks to intimidate the other side.

(Yugi’s friends are so freakin patient OMG)

Also how the hell can Yugi play this card on his duel disk if neither Kaiba or Pegasus have any idea this card exists? Magic, I guess? The duel disk is part magic?

Not like it matters much, we know from Bakura that you don’t need a duel disk to make real boy cards if you have a millennium item anyway.

So at this point I’m like...I think I watched the last episode of the season, I think it’s...out of order and bro was like “nope...it’s Episode 3. We’re still on Episode 3.”

And so after that it closed the...dimension joining portal, which was a Golden Compass style aurora borealis, then Dark Magician Girl returned to her home planet.

...Which is also dangling around Yugi’s neck.

This was a lot.

I have a lot of questions.

Everyone in domino SHOULD have a lot of questions but I think they all went back to bed.

A tornado with a GLOWING EYE tried to destroy their city, and they just rolled over and went back to bed.

This season sure takes off really quickly holy crap.

Now fair warning, because I’ve been hella sick the next recap is uhh...a huge mess so it will probably be a week or so before I post it/even get to it. At some point I started numbering them completely wrong and I either saved 10 caps to a different folder or I never made them in the first place and I honestly am not entirely sure. Last week is kind of a blur and it’s a mess on my desktop right now, so my pacing is gonna reflect that because I am...behind...on everything.

Oh dude and actually now that I look at what date it freakin is, I have to go to one of my best friends weddings real soon so can we just say...it might be a few weeks before I can steadily update again? I have to learn a whole dance routine for this giant wedding and y’all, I am not a dancer. And, while my friends have had dance classes since they were like 5, I’m like...low key extremely certain I will fall completely on my ass. Anyway, there is no way out of this situation I thought would never actually happen, and thought was just a funny idea they invented when they got drunk at the bachelorette, but nah, they remembered, and this is really happening but the bride will think it’s funny so here we go.

PS this dance is to the only existing mashup of Bollywood and N*syncs Bye Bye Bye (which, yes, it is a breakup song) I hope you feel the second hand embarrassment through your computer, I am dancing for 300+ people. Directly following the groom’s parent’s dance, which is 10 minutes long, and for which they hired a professional choreographer. We are the only dance out of four epically spectacular dances that is from the bride’s side, and our dance is...2 minutes and the equivalent of a high school lipsync.

TBH I'm low key excited to do it because potentially it could be a really great story depending on the reaction of what happens.

Anyway, so if I disappear for a while only to post fanart I’ve drawn out of stress, that is what I’ve been doing in the background. I’ve just been trying to remember how to do the Bye Bye Bye dance correctly for 2 straight weeks while feverishly trying to catch up with all my other work.

Also, because I mentioned George Washington, I had to go and find the horny grandma clip from Gilmore Girls and I’m so glad that two people on the internet managed to clip it, and I can’t believe the only two people who’ve clipped this did it with their phones. In fact, kudos to this youtuber for videoing a Tablet with his phone, because there’s no better way to watch a show from the 00′s than to make you feel really illegal about it.

youtube

#Yugioh #ygo #photo recap #episode recap #Yugi Muto #dragons #Joey Wheeler #Tea Gardner #Tristan Taylor #Arthur Hawkins #Rebecca Hawkins #Grandpa Muto #The Eye of Sauran or something #Again this episode is kind of a blur and I'm amazed I managed to cap anything this week #Oh yeah #The lost city of atlantis #s4 ep3

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goliath-de-senfina-sango · 4 years

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HAPPY NEW DECADE MY DUDES! IT IS WODENSDAY AND I BRING YOU GHOSTS!

Nerds chat, big sisters are consulted, ghosts are fought, magick is performed

“You know, Danny, one day you have to do something that isn’t mind-blowingly awesome,” Tucker said. “One of these days it’ll happen. You’ll say something plain and boring, not ‘I’ve been to the moon’ or ‘I found the ghost that was haunting my locker and made fast friends with him’.” Tucker didn’t really mean that of course, he wasn’t sure Danny was capable of doing something that wasn’t impressive. Then again that might’ve just been because Tucker thought everything Danny did was impressive. They were flying over Amity Park on hoverboards controlled by their gloves, all because of Danny.

“Tucker, please,” Danny scoffed, “It’s not that what I say will be something dull and normal, it’ll just be what our new normal is pretty soon.” Danny had his hood up, somehow, and didn’t both wearing his helmet. Unlike Tucker, he didn’t actually need it to keep safe in the air. He wove around Tucker in circles before diving for the park, a cheer on his lips. Tuck dove after him, and soon enough a monochrome figure came into view, blurry at the edges but his face matched his yearbook photo easily enough. The two skidded to a stop and hopped off their boards - which took more effort than was convenient, he’d have to figure out a way to fix that - and Danny held up a hand for a high five. Sidney flinched back a bit and Tuck cleared his throat.

“Danny, high fives were invented around the ’70s. Sidney is from the 50s.” Tucker slapped Danny’s hand to demonstrate and grinned. “It’s just a greeting, like a handshake but faster. Hi, I’m Tucker Foley.” He held out his hand and Sidney stared at him. “I’m the furthest thing from a bully.”

“Tucker is the geekiest guy in the world.” Tucker stepped on Danny’s foot for that, grinning at the yelp he received. “That’s a compliment you dork!”

“Sidney Poindexter,” he finally shook Tucker’s hand, and smiled.

“So, Sidney, how’s it been, finally being back on Earth?” Leave it to Danny to ask the awkward question.

Sidney just lit up like a christmas tree though and spread his arms out to gesture at the park. “It’s been amazing! Everyone looks so different and all the cars are so much faster and sleeker than before - colorful too! I’ve never seen so many different kinds of people just hanging out with each other! Though there’s a lot I don’t understand, and I guess that’s just how the future is supposed to feel but goly these rectangles people are tapping on seem to do a lot .”

“Yeah, different time periods make for pretty different experiences,” Danny mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Speaking of experiences, what’s it like on the other side?” On one hand Tucker wanted to smack Danny with his hat for that, but on the other he understood wanting to know. They weren’t exactly about to go through the portal to find out and get lost.

“Oh. Well uh, for a while I was just floating around in the green void, passing through doors and islands and buildings and even other ghosts. According to some Will O Wisps I wasn’t really a ghost yet, just a soul that got stuck in the Infinite Realms.” Danny had pulled out his journal, looking at Sidney intently and Tucker knew the look on his face. Danny was hyperfocused by now. “That’s what it’s called, by the way, the Infinite Realms. Cause it goes on forever n ever and apparently anybody from everywhere can end up there. It felt like I was in there for years before enough of the uh…”

“Ectoplasm?” Danny held up a hand and with visible concentration silvery green light jumped between his fingers and wrapped around them like a blanket.

Sidney snapped his fingers. “Yeah, ectoplasm! Enough of it bonded to me that I could touch things around me again, which was swell! It was pretty scary too, though, cause anything can become a ghost…”

“Huh… like dragons, and jersey devils and chupacabras?” Tucker snorted at Danny, rolling his eyes.

“What, have you met bigfoot?”

“No, but I did meet the Fiskerton Phantom, and a komodo dragon that can turn invisible.”

“Like I said, scary stuff. But uh, ghosts can make these things, places, called Sanctuaries where they can be safe, which is what most of the islands and stuff in the Realms are. And I managed to make one, and I was safe from most of the more dangerous ghosts out there! But… that safety didn’t really last.”

“Did you go through a portal and end up trapped in your mirror somehow?” Sidney flickered like static and laughed, a hollow sound that made Tucker shiver and his skin crawl.

“Oh wouldn’t that’ve been better? No, I messed up. I hadn’t listened to the ghost with the blue dress and blonde hair that told me how making a sanctuary works - or I guess I didn’t ask enough questions about it.” Sidney’s eyes flickered red and Tucker felt a tug in his hand, looking down to see his helmet was glowing green. “It was based on my memories . The most recent ones too, so I ended up in my own Casper High with a bunch of… I dunno, echoes or shadows of the bullies from my life and by the time I realized what had gone wrong I couldn’t get out.” Sidney wrapped his arms around himself and Tucker was absolutely about to lose hold of his helmet.

“Sidney, would you like a hug? Cause you sound like you need a hug.” Danny spread his arms wide open for Sidney, and over the din of insults and jeers and horrible laughter that Tucker could hear from Poindexter, he could hear the ebb and crash of waves on a beach coming from Danny. Sidney blinked, looking up at Danny with wide eyes and for a few moments he didn’t do anything. Then he nodded and was being pulled into the inescapable warmth of Danny’s hug.

“Dang, that sounds like a job for Jazz. She can use her super psychology powers to help you out.” Tucker set down his helmet, which was no longer about to fly away, and pulled the Fenton Finder™ out of his jacket - which Tucker had figured out how to add a porta pocket to while he was building the tangibility modulator. When he looked up, Sidney was far more solid looking and Danny was staring at him like he’d handed him the moon and said it was his. “What?”

“Tucker Foley, you absolute genius! ” Danny’s arm swung out and Tucker was dragged into the hug.

“Okay, I absolutely am a genius, but what did I say?”

“Sidney, I have an older sister named Jazz - who you cannot tell about my ghost half by the way, that’s a big secret - and like, a hug is good for a lot of things but having someone to talk to is way better!”

Sidney squirmed in the embrace and phased out of it, leaving Tucker to his fate of being pressed against his best friend like a teddy bear. “I uh. I dunno about that. Last time I had someone to talk to it was the guidance counselor and that uh. Well let’s just say my death was more than just bullies being too rough.”

Oh, Tucker did not like that at all. “I promise you, Jazz is 500 times better than that. She’d never hurt anyone that needs her help like that.”

Sidney still looked sceptical but Danny let go of Tucker and lowered his voice to something soft and sure. “Sidney, Jazz is my big sister. She’s literally always trying to make sure I’m feeling as good as is humanly possible in the face of all the weirdness our parents have put us through. When I was 7 and she was 9 the christmas turkey came to life and she fought it off because I was too small to fight at all and then she taught me what she knew about martial arts. There’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t trust Jazz with, and you should trust her too. But, I can’t make you trust her and I still have to ask her if she’ll do it.”

Sidney took a breath, fully opaque for once, and gave Danny a shaky thumbs up. “Sure.”

“Awesome as that is,” Tucker said, raising the Fenton Finder. “I need to scan you so we can make sure that the security system doesn’t shoot you if something bad happens in the school.”

If there was any one chore that Jazz would happily dump on her little brother were he there for her to give it to him, it was moving boxes of scrapped experiments to the shed. Danny very clearly needed the exercise and Jazz didn’t, and it was tedious. She was a good older sister, she deserved a bit of pettiness. Besides, it meant that she could only give Spike half of her attention as he complained about his little brother cryptid hunting. “Tell Wes that even if he’s right, he shouldn’t endanger the cryptids by trying to show them off to humanity. If you appeal to his empathy he’ll probably either actually stop, or at least stop coming to you about it so that you don’t try and guilt him for what he’s doing.”

“Wouldn’t expect that kind of manipulation from you, Jazz. Is that what you do to get your brat to be quiet for five seconds?”

“First of all, I’m studying psychology Spike. I know how people work.” She set down a box of broken tools and failed devices that would only see the light of day as melted down and repurposed scrap in some other experiment. “Secondly, how dare you insinuate I don’t find Danny’s info dumps about space interesting. It’s adorable and he’s very informative.”

“Uh, rude? I’m not cute, in the slightest.” Jazz turned to see Danny pouting in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m a total badass.”

“Badasses can carry all this scrap from the lab to the shed, shorty.”

“Heck, aren’t you clever? Like, the best at thinking up any response to anything. You know, I uh. I have something you might not have the perfect answer for.” Danny’s hands were stuffed in his pockets now and his shoulders were hunched. This was important.

“Spike, I’ll talk to you later. Remember, morality!” Jazz hung up and ruffled Danny’s hair, grinning at the pout he gave her. “So?”

“So,” he said back, rocking on his heels. “You don’t like, agree with Mom and Dad about ghosts, right?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to disagree they exist when I shot one off of you, little brother. I’d be pretty bad at the scientific method if I ignored proof right in front of my eyes.”

Danny huffed a laugh and shook his head. “No no, I mean like… what they think of ghosts. You don’t think they’re all ‘evil’ for being ghosts, right?”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “Danny there’s no such thing as evil. I may have been… less than correct about ghosts existing but I do know that Mom and Dad know nothing about psychology.” She watched some of the tension in Danny’s posture die down and poked his stomach. “Why?”

“Right,” he said and took a breath. “So, if I were to show you, hypothetically, someone in need of therapy who may or may not be a bit deceased-”

“Can someone only be a bit deceased but otherwise ok?”

“You’d be surprised,” he huffed. “Enough that it’s obvious anyway? Would you, hypothetically, be able to help?”

Jazz rolled that over in her head a bit. Danny had found a ghost that disproved their parents’ hypothesis - or prejudiced stereotype, a toss-up if any - and felt they needed psychiatric help but didn’t trust any Amity doctor not to call the Fentons or try to charge the dead a fee. That or he was fucking with her, but Danny was bad at hiding his distress and the longer she stayed silent the more he fidgeted.

“So whose ghost are you asking me to help out? I’m not Mom and Dad but I do have every right to worry about a stranger you’re inviting into your life.” Danny sighed and relaxed more than he had in a while around her. Jazz couldn’t help but smile, even as she was crushed in a hug. “Lungs.”

“You’ll be fine and his name is Sidney Poindexter.” Danny squeezed her one more time before letting go. “According to Tucker, he’s the guy who used to have my current locker.”

“You have a haunted locker at school… why am I not surprised?” Jazz shook her head, covering her face with her hand. “Sidney Poindexter, that kid who reportedly suffered the most bullying in the history of the school and … ok, wow, he really would need therapy if he were to hypothetically come back to the land of the living. I wonder where I might find him?” Danny didn’t need to hear any of the less pleasant details of that story unless Sidney chose to tell him.

“No clue. When I finish coming up with that hypothetical part of the situation I’ll tell you.” Danny fired her a pair of finger guns and backed away slowly, somehow not tripping over his own feet like the last time she saw him do that. “Later Spazz.”

“Remember not to smear your weird UV paint all over your jacket, Picasso.”

“THOSE WERE NOT SMEARS, IT WAS ART,” he said, and Jazz held onto the door while she laughed.

“I’m worried about Danny.” Jazz had to wait until lunch and sped through eating just to find him, but she’d tracked down Vice-Principal Lancer and he agreed to walk and talk. “He’s been through a lot lately, what with tests and bring hunted by a robot like an animal and social pressures and I know it’s getting to him.”

Lancer arched a brow and sighed at her as they turned a corner. “Have you tried talking, Jazz? It’s the staple of human survival, communication, and all kinds of relationships.”

“I’d talk with him if I could, Mr.Lancer, but I’m his older sister and I’m afraid Danny’s reaching a point in his life where you keep things from your family while you try and figure it out on your own to be more independent.” If Jazz noticed Lancer giving her a pointed look, he hadn’t verbally acknowledged her glasshouse so she could throw as many stones as she so pleased. They stopped and Lancer fished out a ring of keys. “He wouldn’t talk to me about this, probably wouldn’t even listen when I try and tell him to open up to someone. Also, why are we heading into the guidance counselor’s office? Have you gotten a license in that as well?” It was a joke among the upperclassmen that Lancer was at least vaguely equipped to substitute teach literally every class in their underfunded school.

Lance snorted and flipped through keys. “No, Jazz, we’ve actually finally managed to grab a guidance counselor. You know I can’t do everything around here.”

“You most certainly seem to.”

“Be that as it may, Jazz, he may listen to me and I’ll try talking to him but have you considered this all is- Great Gatsby!” Jazz turned away from Lancer to see what startled him and felt every muscle in her body lock up in shock. The room was a mess, burn marks reminiscent of Dad’s latest weapon going off randomly at home littered the walls, the desk was flipped upside down and acrid smoke met her nostrils nearly choking her. Or maybe she had simply stopped breathing when her eyes landed on the figure in the center of the room, green light radiating from their form in all directions casting eerie shadows everywhere and wide green lights bright as torches shone from underneath a cloud of white and above a mass of black and white material. They pulled a black hood up over their curly white hair and a masculine voice hissed out a quiet, forceful and slightly reverberating, “ Shit. ”

Holding up his hands, the figure’s eyes dimmed slightly and Jazz could make out bright blue skin tinged with a bit of green. “Now I know what this looks like, but I promise there’s a perfectly logical explanation.”

“You’re a ghost.” Jazz wasn’t asking a question, her voice pitched up in a desire to be horribly wrong more than curiosity.

“Lab Safety is important.” The green light flickered, a blue face made indistinct by the light show and the shadows of the hood visibly cringed and Lancer gasped in horror in front of her. “I know that maks this illogical by default.”

“That depends,” Jazz said slowly while reaching into her pocket and fishing for a small tube of what would look like lipstick to anyone else, “on why you trashed the room. This does look pretty-”

“Jasmine what are you doing!?” Lancer hissed, and while Jazz was certain he meant the talking in general, the light in the boy’s eyes shifted toward her hand. He sucked in a superfluous breath and vanished from sight while Jazz let off a litany of swears in her head.

“I was trying to get some information from him, Mr. Lancer. He had an explanation apparently and I wanted to hear it.” Jazz dropped the lipstick tube back into her pocket and crossed her arms. “Didn’t you just tell me that communication is important?”

“Important as it is, Jasmine,” Lancer said with what Jazz recognized as a lecturing tone and decided that she already didn’t like what he had to say. “That was a ghost and I do believe the experts - your parents - have advised us all to avoid grabbing the attention of a ghost unless we want to become one.” Of all the times for anyone to actually acknowledge her parents’ work and knowledge and it was now?

“With all due respect, Vice Principal Lancer, I think that of all things to listen to my parents about for once, their biased prejudice against all things ghost is hardly the one to believe. If everyone that died was malicious then the second they got a way into the living world we’d be overrun and there wouldn’t be a living world anymore.” Gesturing to herself and a staring Lancer she drawled, “I’d say we’re proof that my parents are wrong.”

While Lancer tried visibly to come up with an intelligent response to that, Jazz flicked on the lights and gave the room a closer look than she had before. Walking around she noticed the tiniest drops of ectoplasm lingering near where the burn marks were, and just under the desk. Pulling out a vial or three and some cotton swabs, Jazz put away a few samples to check over later. Even if she didn’t want to so much as acknowledge that her parents were right about ghosts existing, or fight them, she wasn’t going to bury her head in the sand and ignore all the evidence that said she needed to either get someone else to do something or do it herself. What’s one more thing to steal my sleep away?

She turned to a puzzled Lancer and cleared her throat. “It looks to me like a fight was happening here. A teenaged boy venting his anger over being d-” Breathe and don’t think about it. “In his particular situation would go somewhere he probably won’t get caught, not a school with a security system made specifically to shoot until he’s a bubbling pile of green sludge upon activation. I wish I knew what he was fighting and why but unfortunately he saw me reaching for a weapon and bolted.”

“Reaching for a weapon, Jazz?” Heaving a sigh she met the arched brow on Lancer’s face with a very practiced look she gave teachers that tried to paint her as being wrong about something.

“Principal Ishiyama said that we can use them in emergency situations and while I hardly share my parents’ opinion that all ghosts are malevolent mindless creatures, a teenager made of thoughts and emotions that just finished fighting isn’t someone I want to talk to without an option to defend myself. I’m safe around other human beings because I practice several martial arts, not because everyone is harmless.”

“That’s rather… pragmatic of you, Jazz.” Lancer let out a breath and the tension left his shoulders. He clasped a hand on her shoulder and Jazz was lead out of the destroyed room. “I personally feel that you need to speak with someone about all of this as much as Daniel does. After all, it is happening to you too.”

“I appreciate your worry, Mr. Lancer, but it’s not necessary.” Jazz smiled at the man. “As much as I’m sure this guidance counselor will be great for the other students, I have someone I can talk to already.”

“That’s good, Jazz. Still, if you need any help I’m certain that Ms. Spectra will be happy to give it to you.”

"She saw me. She saw me in a busted up room with my hands glowing, and I shit you not, she reached for a weapon." Danny paced in Tucker's room with his hood down and hands wildly gesticulating. “Now she and Mr. Lancer probably think I’m some destructive monster. There’s no way I could’ve made a worse impression.”

“Well,” Sidney said from his spot reclined in the air and watching Tucker play God of War, “when I first met you I thought you were bullying someone.”

“Plus,” Tucker chirped as he attempted, fruitlessly, to fight a Valkyrie, “you could’ve accidentally shot them. Much worse impression.” Kratos died on screen and Tucker growled to himself, lifting his controller to toss it and dropping it with a grimace instead. “That thing really fucked up my arm, huh?”

Danny sucked in a breath and held up a hand, pulling out bands of silver and green light from his center, gathering it above his palm as best as he could. It flickered and slipped out of his grasp every few seconds, like trying to hold water in a barely cupped hand. “I could try healing you?”

“Danny,” Sam drawled while putting down her book, “are you sure you know how to do that? It looks like your ectoplasm is glitching through you instead of listening to you.” Danny observed his arm, focusing on the first plane of existence as hard as he could, and huffed a sigh in agreement that it did look like a patch of glitchy green and white around his hand. “Hold out your hand, and Tucker hold out your arm for me.” The boys obliged and Sam held out a hand of her own, eyes closed, and pinched the ectoplasm haphazardly flowing around Danny’s hand. Danny’s eyes widened as she pulled the silvery light out of him and into her own aura, a few words being muttered in Hebrew as it flowed through her body to the other hand, and into Tucker’s arm. When the light faded, Danny felt tired and hungry, while Tucker looked far more relaxed than he had in a while. “Viola.”

Tucker looked from his arm to Sam and back several times, flexing and stretching the appendage. “Sam, I cannot emphasize this enough, holy shit. ” Sam grinned smugly at them while Danny, Tucker, and Sidney all stared at her in awe. “How did you do that?”

“I put forth some effort and actually looked into this ghost stuff from an angle that wasn’t the Fentons’ research. That lead to magick, which leads us to this.” Sam held up her book Magick: the Life Blood of the Earth. “I had a feeling that using Danny’s ectoplasm might warrant immediate effects, especially since he was focusing on trying to heal Tucker.”

“Right,” Danny drawled. “Next time ask me first? I feel hungry enough to eat a whole pig right now.”

“Mom ha-

“But with like, vegetables and stuff because I value my health.” Tucker stuck out his tongue and Danny laughed.

“Tucker, do you have a flashlight?” Everyone turned to look at Sidney and Tucker shrugged, pulling a miniature flashlight out of his pocket and handing it over. Sidney turned it on and pointed it at Danny’s face. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Care to share that idea with the class, Sidney?” Tucker picked up his controller and chuckled as he started up the fight anew. “Is Danny supposed to photosynthesize?”

“Basically, yes!” Danny blinked a few times and tilted his head. “Ghosts are all made of ectoplasm, which drains pretty much anything of energy around it like a plant taking in sunlight, but some ghosts use particular forms of energy to sustain themselves, and when you were trying to heal Tucker everything got all dark, so I thought you might run better on light than just on the heat in the room. Better for your body if your ghost half isn’t sucking all the life-sustaining heat from it, right?” Everyone stared at Sidney for a long beat, trying to process what he’d said. Danny held out his hand and pinched the beams of light coming toward him. After a moment of consideration, he imagined himself drinking the light and the flashlight immediately went dark as it flowed into his hand. “See?”

“Sidney, you’re a genius!” Danny pulled Sidney into a hug and beamed. Then he started pulling on the strands of light racing through the air that he was sure no one else could see, absorbing what he was certain were the higher frequency gamma and uv lights around him. In moments the room looked the way it had before he’d gained his new Sight and for a moment Danny felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin. When he looked around the room however, he couldn’t help the pang of sadness that came with the lack of all those beautiful colors that only he (and Sidney he supposed) had been able to see. “I think I’ll save doing that for when I’m desperate, but that’s awesome to know!”

“So not only are you ghosts, but you’re also plants.” Tucker snorted. “No wonder Sam likes you so much.” Sam bopped him on the head with her book as he picked up his controller and he made an offending noise, which everyone ignored.

“Speaking of ghosts, I think I’ve just figured out a way for you to kill two birds with one stone, Danny! If we go on patrol with the Fenton Finder™ to find the blob ghost that tried to kill us and catch it before it hurts anyone, we can capture an aggressive ghost and show the public - and your family - that ghosts aren’t all evil.”

Danny frowned, watching Tucker get his butt handed to him by Kara on screen for the 28th time, and considered that. The shapeshifter was definitely going to hurt someone if they didn’t do anything about it and Danny knew his folks would jump on any amount proof that ghosts were all evil, likely to claim that this second malevolent spirit was a clear pattern of spiritual behavior. They didn’t need more help sowing anti-ghost sentiments among whoever thought they weren’t entirely crazy, and he didn’t need more harassment from the asshats who thought they were and that he probably was by extension. Ugh. “Tuck, where are you on figuring out who the guy is?”

“Did you seriously think I could find out who this sentient blob of green slime with fangs and glowing red eyes that apparently shapeshifts is supposed to be? With what, ghoulgle?” Sidney chuckled and Sam laughed, shaking her head. “I’m a genius, obviously, but I’m not a wizard, Danny.” Danny’s shoulders slumped and he sighed. “Unless..”

“Unless?” Sidney and Danny echoed. Tucker looked at Sam’s book and so did the other boys, the idea sparked in their minds.

“Danny and Sidney combined aren’t going to have enough power to help me see through space and time to find out who this shapeshifter was. If we really wanna know, we’ll have to catch them and ask them through the thermos.”

“Alright, that’s fair.” Tucker lost in the game once more and turned the HorrorStation off. “Y’know what, sure. Let’s go hunt a ghost. I’m up for a fight we can actually win. Sidney, you in?”

“I-uh I’ll leave the fighting to you guys. I’m gonna give this youtube thing a try and see what I can learn.” He smiled and waved them off, and the trio shrugged, heading down the trap door to Tucker’s room and waving his parents goodbye.

While Sam and Tucker took their hoverboards to the air, Danny found the nearest alleyway and made sure no one was there to see him. He took in the sight of the vivid indigo surrounding him and reached inside for the ectoplasmic green and pearlescent white inside of him, watching it unfurl over his body in a flash and carve away at the ties between him and the Earth. He lifted off the ground and shook himself, sure that he’d never get used to it, before flying up to where Tucker and Sam were waiting for him with the Fenton Finder™ already out and his ectosignature blocked from it. At his insistence, they decided to search together in a group since splitting up was for the idiots getting picked off in a horror movie. Danny let himself slip into the space between spaces, where the background light of the world was blue and violet refusing to blend properly into indigo but just as intense as the indigo had been, if not more.

After an hour of searching, Danny saw a green dot at the edge of his full-body vision and the radar picked up on an ectosignature. They all dove toward the music store where people were beginning to run while screaming their heads off, and Danny dove through the illusion people called a wall foot first, slamming into the shapeshifter mid snarl. “Whoa there, flubber!” Danny ducked a swipe of claws and smirked. “I know jello can dance if you play loud enough music in front of it, but I didn’t know you wanted to. Screaming isn’t music unless it’s a Metallica song, man.”

Tucker and Sam burst through the doors and Sam opened fire, striking the blob while charging it like the crazy person she was. It lunged at her, knocking over a shelf on its way, and Sam barely avoided a bladed arm cutting her head off, though her leg was nicked and she fell to the ground with a litany of swears that Danny couldn't understand. Tucker shot the arm as it retracted into the shapeshifter and Danny dove between the angry monster and his best friend just in time for a fist the size of both of them to knock them into another shelf full of CDs. “Damn, we just fixed my arm and now my back is fucked up, Tucker groaned as he and Danny stood. Danny saw red.

Light and heat and power gathered above Danny’s palm like a raging river into a whirlpool, while Sam shouted insults at the shapeshifter. “Did anyone order a snot rocket?” His blast connected, knocking Discount Venom back into the help desk. An arm whipped out and caught Danny by his leg, slamming him into the ground and dragging him toward the ghost, bumping his already pounding head against every surface it could on the way.

“Aren’t you just the cleverest little bloodthirsty mutant?” Well, they finally heard it’s high masculine voice and Danny already hated the sound of it. “I actually felt that, you little freak.”

“If you think I’m the freak here, then you haven’t looked in the mirror lately,” Danny spat. “I know it’s hard, but you have to acknowledge that some people have actual bodies.”

“Such a sharp wit to go with those sharp teeth, too! Oh, but don’t worry, ghost kid, being a ghost isn’t what makes you so violent, clearly.” Danny heard the whine of an ecto pistol and sucked in a gasp as he was chucked into the air at the same time that a blast was fired. PAIN . “Just ask your little murderer! That’s twice she killed you now, isn’t it? You really should let the other kid get a shot if you can, would-be witch.” The blob’s voice grew distant and muffled as pain filled everything inside of Danny, and while he didn’t remember returning to human form, he knew that it was blood on his back, not ectoplasm. His vision went dark, indigo, then blues and purple, then everything was a beautiful and impossible Lilac, and he could see and hear the stars calling out to him. He reached out and accepted their pull away from the pain in his body.

#Danny Phantom #Tucker Foley #Danny Fenton #Sidney Poindexter #Jazz Fenton #Sam Manson #bertrand #fanfiction #fanfic #Phanfiction #Phanfic #fanphiction #fanphic #PhanPhiction #PhanPhic #Monstrous Chosen Spellslingers #MCS #Rexy Writes

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livelycrispycreepslayerz · 5 years

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Morgana Theory

What if... Merlin was actually controlling Morgana the whole time. Now, listen, I don't mean for her entire life, just for the time that we see her during Trollhunters. We all know that Merlin literally cut off her hand to make the amulet of daylight, which is a) extremely cruel and b) a very strange way to make an amulet... I mean... Yeah. Think about it. Anyways, in this theory we're going to assume that Morgana was the only one who knew how much of a jerk-and-a-half Merlin was. Heck, he was evil! (We're talking Camelot times here). So, Merlin tried to fool everyone into thinking that he was doing good and that everything he did was to protect the kingdom and crap. But Morgana, being his apprentice/assistant eventually figured out about Merlin's real motives and plans. Merlin somehow figured out that she knew, and threatened to hurt her if she told anyone. She obviously did something against Merlin's will/demands so he literally just chopped off her entire freaking hand! At this point, Morgana was done with Merlin and tried to defeat him to protect the kingdom. But Merlin won and used his magic to trap her in the crystal. (Was it the heartstone? Ehh, I forget) Anyways, after trapping her there so she couldn't tell anyone about him being a villian, he set things up to make her seem like she was the bad guy. Then he locked himself in his tomb and... Waited to be awakened. Fast forward to hundreds of years later, when Jim and the Trollhunting gang wake him up. He can't use his magic. Well, I'm guessing the reason he can't use his magic and can only get it back if they defeat Morgana is... Because he's actually using his magic to control Morgana. He probably cast the spell sometime before going into his hundred year sleep, but I think this would explain why he could only get his magic back if she was gone/dead. And at the point where Morgana is banishes to the shadow realm, Merlin no longer needed to control her so Boom! His magic can return. Also, if this is true, we can have a Morgana redemption arc. Thoughts anyone? Sorry if this was long or if it doesn't make sense... I just had a thought.

Keep it Crispy!!!

#trollhunters #tales of arcadia #3 below #theory #morgana #wizards

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junkyardlynx · 5 years

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Ch. 3

The stench of death rolled out in thick, cloying waves as we stepped inside. The sanctuary’s design consisted of a long hallway leading into the safe room proper, and the reason for that was simple. It was a choke point to funnel the enemy into one confined space, turning a hallway into a killing field. The automated magical defenses had bisected, burnt, bludgeoned and blasted apart what looked to be dozens of bodies.

Human bodies.

A wave of nausea rose in my throat. I swallowed it down and knelt by a severed head, it’s eyes glassy and accusatory. My hand trailed over it’s sunken cheek, running over a thin line of scar tissue that pulsed weakly with fading magical energy. Index finger following the design, I heaved a disgusted sigh and stood back up.

“Thralls. Deplorable.”

Sarisa’s voice split the murky atmosphere. It was laden with revulsion and tinged with pity, which mirrored my sentiments. As a practitioner of the necromantic arts, I held a special hatred for those that bent the mind of living creatures into thralldom. We raise the bodies of the dead, but only after seeing the spirits off in a proper manner, allowing them their deserved rest, returning them to the cycle. Thralls had their very minds and souls sundered and no rest would find their spirits without the intervention of a skilled necromancer or shaman. Like myself.

“…I’ll watch your back, Jeal.” Sarisa whispered quietly, and I nodded an affirmation of thanks.

I extended my right arm and splayed my fingers out. Exhaling slowly, I sent tendrils of magic into the earth and began to inhale, the physical realm fading further with every moment. The world bathed itself in ghostly ripples as a chill permeated my body - the spiritual realm knew that the warmth of life did not belong on this side. I would make it recognize my authority over such matters.

I emanated a wave of energy through the tendrils anchoring me to the ground, and the world seemed to recoil in horror as I parted the veil. The hazy shapes of the spiritual realm solidified, replacing ripples with bodies. They rose like wilted flowers under a healing rain, piecing themselves back together.

They screamed.

The scream of the damned, the broken and the violated tore through spiritual and physical space, threatening to rip Sarisa and I apart. A lesser mage would be undone. We were not lesser. Thunderous crackles of red lightning splashed from underneath my feet, snaking out to shackle the ghosts by the throat. Their mouths taped, but there was no sound.

“Sleep, children of man. Return to ash and silence.” My voice laced with sovereign power, they acknowledged my command. Such was the nature of overwhelming force. The anguish left their forms and their bodies slackened as stillness settled in the room. A moment - perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour - passed and their forms dissolved into the ether as the red lightning crackled out of existence. I relinquished my grip on the spiritual world and slipped back into the physical plane.

"Good job, Kel'thuzad."

Come on, dude. I hate that nickname. Why is that everyone's go-to Necromancer nickname? Never should have skipped school to play Warcraft with her and Thomas.

My senses reminded me of the carnage that remained as I rejoined my body proper. I closed my right hand, still extended, and swept it to the right. From somewhere between here and nowhere, a cataclysmic wave of fire appeared and swallowed the broken bodies. Only ash and silence remained as promised. Rolling my shoulders, I stepped back and looked at Sarisa.

"You're not mad about the Kel'thuzad thing, right?"

"Maybe I'll find a cow's skull and wear it as a hat next time."

I nodded with a sort of crooked smile, jerking my thumb down the hall to indicate that we should continue.

“So those thralls were used to exhaust the defenses in your safe house. I suppose that's the only way to get fifty healthy men to throw themselves at a deathtrap, other than the promise of money or a blushing bride. Next time you need to count on there being more than fifty people, obviously. What a rookie mistake.”

We approached the heavily warded door that lead to my sanctuary. The only problems being that the wards had been deactivated and the handle was snapped off, with the door melted shut. You know. Minor things. Misplace your keys, forget to brush your teeth, find your magical sanctum invaded. A basic Tuesday. Closing my eyes, I reached my senses out into the room before us, searching for any magical presences. There were four, and they were strong, but apparently unaware.

I kicked the door apart, metal screeching as it separated from fused metal. Reaching my hand into a black and red void, I pulled my lance from the Wound and immediately thrust it forward. It found purchase in cloth and flesh, and a distinctly human scream filled my ears. With the lance still stuck through the body of one invader, I shifted my weight to my right foot and pushed off the ground, narrowly avoiding a blade of condensed wind. An abyssal heat soaked my brain as I heard a grunt of exertion from Sarisa, who had been glanced by the arc of the wind.

Rational thought left me. I had a reputation for calm and collected behavior, but it wasn’t like I didn’t feel and didn’t ache. It wasn’t like I was happy to leave my mother and father to an unknown fate. It wasn’t like I accepted any of this as righteous or good. It sure wasn’t like I’d let anyone hurt someone I cared about. Especially not her. You fill a cup too full and-

With an almost inhuman roar, I discharged pure magical energy through my lance as I came down from my leap. The struggling mage thrashed wildly, wracked with pain before his body literally exploded, sending crackling viscera across my study. Without pause, my weapon stabbed into the earth and I used it as a pole to vault in the direction of Sarisa and her current attacker. With no weapon in hand, I formed a blade of pure malice, giving my anger physical form as a dagger, ripping into the man’s side. As I jerked it upwards and felt the hot blood on my hands and face, I registered the appearances of the invaders with an almost detatched curiosity, as if I was an observer to this one-sided carnage and nothing else.

40s to 50s. Male. No hair. Brown eyes. Short, peppered goatee. White shirt, brown slacks. Currently in eighteen pieces.

30s to early 40s. Female. Blonde bob cut. Mole on neck. Blue eyes. Athletic track uniform, red. Screaming at six pieces of 40s to 50s male.

Late 20s to early 30s. Male. Crew cut. Five o'clock shadow. Brown eyes. White shirt, brown slacks. Clawing at the ethereal blade in his side. No longer clawing. Head missing. On the ground.

Late 20s to early 30s. Female. Shoulder length black hair. Frameless glasses. Green eyes. Grey pencil skirt, blue blouse. Casting a barrage of wi-

My mind swallowed the photographic details in that same abyssal rage from before as I dropped to one knee, my right hand flung out, crafting a barrier from ether. I had channeled a large amount of magic today, between the casting of Xiyir from miles away and quelling the anguished dead, and so my nerves screamed at me for rest. Thankfully, the mage was weaker, and the blades of wind scattered on my aegis, allowing Sarisa to follow up. She kicked off the earth and traced a graceful arc past the mage, arms trailing almost lazily behind her. A series of wet thuds brought two hands and the top of a skull covered in black hair to the ground. One final thud followed soon after.

Recognizing that the only enemy left was reduced to a sniveling puddle of fear, the black heat leaked from my brain and cold calm took over. Pulling my lance from the earth, I cut a Wound and placed it back inside as Sarisa and I approached the woman on the floor. Sarisa’s injured hip had stopped bleeding, and it was then that I realized she had decapitated the man attacking her the moment after I cut into his side. She rotated her wrist and a thin wire wrapped back around it, returning to it's form as a simple bracelet. Man, I forgot how deadly she was with that wire. Made my rage feel silly and pointless. We came to be side by side in front of the bob cut blonde, who was scrambling backwards madly.

“You people are fucking crazy! Stay away!”

"You forced your way into my sanctum at the cost of some fifty-three people. I don't think you get to say that."

Her voice was desperate, but it was familiar. As her palm landed in a pool of fresh blood, she slipped, and her head slammed into the concrete, directly underneath one of the dim incandescent bulbs. It only took a moment to recognize who she - and the others by association - really was.

Sarisa took action before I did, grasping the collar of the woman’s track suit and hauling her to her feet. With a rough shove, the sole survivor found herself trapped. A choked sob wracked her body as she failed to meet our gaze.

“Miss Lewis, I believe you and the rest of the teachers are - were? - trespassing. I doubt this is an intervention about our school work, so you should probably inform Jeal and I about the situation. Quickly. Calmly. Kindly?” Sarisa’s voice was molten gold being poured over the volleyball coach’s head. She gasped an assent and rambled for a moment before beginning to speak. I'm sure Sarisa felt the same sense of emptiness that I did. Everything was going to hell today. Probably quite literally.

Steeling our hearts, we leaned in to listen.

#writing #my writing #fantasy #magic

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dahniwitchoflight · 6 years

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minor AU Completion of the Beta Kid’s Animal Symbolism

so something I’ve always thought about and wondered about, I wanna talk about for a bit, now that homestuck’s over and I’m rereading it going through the story

all of the beta kids throughout the story have unique animal related symbolism, that eventually ties into delving into greater parts of their characters, exploring even what you might consider the “darker side” to their characters, sometimes to the point of representing their inverted states/jungian shadow selves nicely tied into the idea of “lower bestial natures” being at odds with their true human natures

and these culminate and get fully cashed in by tragic/failed alternate versions of each beta kid that gets somehow mixed with their respective animal (usually through sprite shenanigans) and ends up in some way dealing with their inner issues a bit

Jade’s Dreamself (who was always very silly and prone be overemtional) dies under prospit’s moon, gets stuffed, and later resurrected as a JadeBecsprite who represents Jade’s inner tragic emotional states

Dave gets trapped in an alternate timeline with Rose, but then goes back in time after learning the ins and outs of the game, only to sec prototype as Davesprite and earn wings, and then forevers deals with the depression and aftermath of never being “Alpha” Dave ever again

Rose eventually dies in a pre retcon timeline fighting the condesce, and her corpse is thrown into Roxy’s sprite post retcon, which then merges with Jaspersprite to make Jasprosesprite^2 and which post retcon Rose is herself embarrassed by the inner revelations revealed by this character, who has itself lost all inhibitions due to the animal prototyping

but John never really gets anything of the sort, but in reality, there was a GREAT opportunity for him to have something like this happen to him, early on in the story, that doesn’t actually change much of the story at all

so this is kind of a “what if this had happened instead?” minor AU where some minor details were a little different

because the animal candidate I’m thinking of that could have had something to do with John personally in the above way, already has a great setup for this: none of its own character/personality/dialogue as it was just a programmed toy robot, minimal invasion into the plot (and most only in regards to John’s Dad related things), viewed John as it’s sole master and had a nice clean death via Green Sun explosion in Cascade

and that is the Uber Bunny Robot known as Liv Tyler

and the alternate version John candidate I’m thinking of is the John that got tricked by Terezi into facing Typheus too early and getting killed by him, causing the doomed timeline where Davesprite is from

this John also has a great setup for this, because at first we get exactly 5 or so pages describing what went down in the Doomed timeline, and all of it from Dave and Rose’s perspective, we know nothing of what really happened in that John Typheus encounter, other than “John died and thus was unavailable to help Jade enter the game”, we also get a little bit more later, when we see the Ghost of this John have a chat with a dead version of Vriska much much later in the story. John says there was more to his death than he let on, he died, but not in a fight with his denizen, because he spoke with Typheus, and knew that his death was necessary for his friends to live on, he made his Choice to die, for the sake of the timeline

and because this alternate John and Liv Tyler have a huge chunk of symbolism in common, all of which ties directly back to John, and more specifically, John’s opposite aspect Blood

the first is, the same Liv Tyler Bunny plush was given to John by all three of his friend’s on his same birthday through time shenanigans

Dave gives him the original plush rabbit, which is the actual original rabbit from the one nic cage movie john really loves, when John ecto’s all the babies, he dramatically re-enacts the con air nic cage scene from that movie (reunite with your loving wife and daughter) and gives the rabbit to Rose

Rose in this reality grows up with the rabbit as her own sentimental youthful object, its old and torn growing up with her, so she knits it back together using the needles that John gifted to her and gives it to John on his birthday

John then gives this rabbit to Baby Jade in the same reunite with loving wife and daughter scene

and finally, Jade with her then alt universe penpal Jake, send it back and forth, making robotic upgrades and enhancements and equipping it with all kinds of awesome gear: the Warhammer Of Zillyhoo, the Quills of Echidna, the Royal Deringer, and Ahab's Crosshairs, which match the Strife Specibi of the beta kids. She does this because she foresaw John would be in danger and wanted to send something to help him fight

this rabbit is the literal embodiment of Johns strongest friendship bonds 3 times over, the literal physical manifestation of his Blood

and then Typheus!John is only able to get to Typheus because Terezi through Sollux helped him removed the 3 random objects stuck in his rocket, 3 random objects, that just so happen to be object that appear in Dave’s, Rose’s and Jade’s houses: a cinderblock, a violin and a potted plant

so again, a connection to John’s connection to all 3 of his friends

now here’s where the AU kicks in:

John is still tricked into meeting his denizen early, preserving the timeline with Davesprite and whatnot, however his choice to die to preserve the reality where his friends continue to exist has another part to it

Not only does Typheus allow him to choose to become a ghost to preserve the alpha timeline, but also gives John a sort of challenge, with a potential boon at the end

If John as a ghost can break out of his extra hard dream bubble coma, break out of his memories, remember the choice he made to help save his friends/the timeline, he may be allowed to manifest in a different physical form instead, in order to continue helping his friends/his new alpha self survive the game

all the panels where dead Vriska meets him and helps him to jog his usually hard to jog memory compared to the other ghosts still happen, but the ending is different, because of the extra challenge/boon Typheus gave him. When John remembers fully, he remembers the boon Typheus left him/how to use it, probably something like, a one use portal window thing that transports his ghost back into the physical realm, so he’s kinda in the same state Aradia was as a ghost in Alternia

so he finds somewhere where the uber bun exists, some point before it actually gets to his dreamself on prospit (doesn’t actually matter where)

and then it’s revealed after the fact, that everything Liv Tyler did upon activation at Prospit was actually the choices made by this alternate universe dead spirit version of John

it’s viable because as a robot made by Jade and Jake, it has the ability to potentially house a soul/life, just like Jade’s dreambot for her dreamself (or again, earth version of the tech that Equius made for Aradia, lot of weird Aradia parallels here, but that really only helps this AU) and something that helps is that the bun likely wasn’t built with any way to naturally communicate, no pesterchum in it like lil hal, nor a voicebox, again making a connection to this being a John which has to internally deal with/overcome that he is no longer the “important” John, but this time he’s simultaneously back with all of his friends, and cut off from them at the same time, similar to Davesprite, but also in a having no mouth and must scream kind of way (relating to symbolism of Breath = Speech/communication/mail) being the opposite of his natural element, in an unhealthy place, similar in situation to how Lil Hal was an A.I. copy of Dirk, a heartless version of a heart player/out of their natural element and having to deal with that negative environmental influence

and it helps explain the few things that Liv Tyler seem to do with no direction, like help get Dad’s wallet containing the tumor (which a John would have recognized as his dad’s and picked up anyway) and getting to Dave Rose and helping them (when it’s stated Liv Tyler was supposed to view John and only John as his master, specifically built that way by Jade for that purpose, to protect John)

the package hes in goes through it’s shenanigans like usual, one minor change could be instead of Jack Noir wielding the bunny against the black queen to get her ring in rebellion, he could simply use one of the many regiswords/assassination requests he apparently gives out like candy, like the one he gave to PM, and the bun merely stays in the box until it’s delivered to PM and then John himself and Bun!John recognizes John and becomes his protector

but then you could just make the point in time that Alt!John merges with the bun the point where Liv Tyler’s allegiances switch to helping John from Jack Noir, so the above is just moot anyway

he stays with John for awhile, then fulfills his major mission in helping get the tumor to Rose and Dave and help them to survive/god tier in the correct time and place/again preserve the timeline, fulfilling the idea of him wanting to come back for the purpose of wanting to keep his friends safe/putting his bonds above his own internal state and self to the point of self sacrifice during the green’ sun’s explosion (again, another point for his blood overpowering his breath)

so yeah, you can see, despite all my text it doesn’t actually change much in the plot! the biggest thing could be Jack Noir not using it for the Black Queen (cuz lets be honest he didn’t really need to, his betrayal would have caught her off guard enough to grab the ring) but really just depends on where you choose to do it

AND instead of this flash: https://www.homestuck.com/story/5027 which was more comedic, we could potentially get a string of panels showing what John was thinking and feeling as the Bun Robot, so close and yet so far away from all his friends, completely alone in his own thoughts and with his only motivation being to make sure his friends survive the game, maybe in thought bubbles or code like Serenity the firefly, showcasing the sort of mental descent and depression that John is really prone to, showing how he could end up in a state where he willingly dies for his friends for their sake

I think it’s a great missed opportunity to be honest and at the very least it’s a very neat little AU Idea

and the way it’s set up would be like an awesome shock reveal too

but then also, John is already compared to nic cage so much it’s not even funny

and John himself makes the symbolic connection between nic cage being just like the rabbit “dirty, worn, old, but it’s what on the inside that counts” simultaneously making that connection to himself when he’s inside the rabbit, because it’s bot his outward appearance that matters, what matters is that He’s still John on the inside, still your best friend guys, I’m right here...

and homestuck has a pattern of turning old jokes into new serious content, so it’s not like it doesn’t fit

and if a few panels are thrown in of a ghostly spirit wandering a bit before settling on the bun inside jade’s gift, it can help establish that Alpha John later would become truly intangible and floating through not just earth, but all of homestuck itself

anyway, those are my thoughts for this idea, I think there’s a lot to go on here

the only thing thats not involved are sprite shenanigans, but If I could find a way to involve those then I would :P

maybe instead of dying at the green sun with Dave and Rose he somehow gets thrown into an sprite somewhere and becomes actual RoboBunJohnsprite (even though everything’s taken already and can’t be altered) maybe it can happen instead of Tavris or GCATavris who knows is BunJohn even survives somehow

shenanigans! shenanigans i say

#Homestuck #John Egbert #Liv Tyler

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silver-the-cat · 6 years

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7 Thorns in My Side - Part 1

A Jacksepticeye (And Egos) fanfiction

Summary: The demon has won. Jack is now trapped in a coma, the others are nothing more than mere puppets, and he finally has a physical form that he can use to wreak havoc on this realm. Absolutely nothing else can stop him, nothing at all. Or at least, that’s what he’d like to say. A certain group of 7 egos, all of whom with some kind of relation to Jack and the others, have risen and are determined to make sure the demon falls, for good this time.

It had been months, months since one of their doctors suddenly returned unannounced and with a patient, seemingly unconscious. It didn’t even take long for them to realize that it wasn’t just some simple injury or an illness, this patient was completely comatose.

Marie had only begun working a few weeks prior to the whole incident, only hearing stories of this doctor before his sudden return. Even when she did get the chance to meet the man himself, something about him struck her the wrong way. And the fact he suddenly turned up without any warning with a patient who had fallen into a literal coma certainly didn’t help that feeling of unrest. She had tried voicing this concern to her coworkers, only to be told she was merely being paranoid.

She tried to convince herself that she was just overthinking things, frequently dispelling those intrusive thoughts as she performed her daily routines, checking in on patients and filing paperwork. It just so happened that on this particular day, she was given the job of checking up on the strange patient.

Marie hesitated for a moment outside the room’s door, hand hovering over the doorknob. Something about this patient, it also struck her the wrong way. From what they could tell, this man was in perfect health, aside from the whole ‘being in a coma’ part. They couldn’t find any sign of trauma that could’ve induced the coma, nor could they find any life-threatening disease. In all truth, he shouldn’t have even been in the hospital at all if it weren’t for the coma. Obviously, something was up with him. Something very unnatural.

“Alright, last patient for now…” She said, taking a deep breath. She finally grabbed the doorknob, pushing the door open slowly. “I know there is a very slim chance you’ll answer, but Mr. McLoughlin? I’m one of the nurses, I’m merely here for a routine check-up.” As she expected, absolutely no answer. The patient simply laid in the bed, almost as if he was dead to the rest of the world. Marie took in another breath as she set about her duties. She checked the heart rate, replaced anything that needed to be replaced, and cleaned out the rest of the room. As she finished throwing out the last piece of garbage, she turned back to face the patient, only to nearly have a heart attack.

The man was sitting up in his bed, letting out hoarse, extremely labored breaths every so often. He wasn’t looking at her, or at anything in particular really. Instead, he simply stared blankly ahead, even giving Marie goosebumps. But that wasn’t what terrified her the most.

It was the fact that blood was falling from his eyes like tears.

“M-Mr. McLoughlin? Are you…o-okay?!” Marie yelped, rushing over. “W-What’s going on? Can you h-hear me? Can you speak o-or--?!” The door swung open loudly before she knew it, also nearly giving her a heart attack.

“Nurse! Vhat iz going on?!” Marie turned, not sure whether to be relieved or even more worried at the sight of the doctor, Dr. Schneeplestein if she could remember correctly. The very same doctor she had been afraid of.

“D-Doctor, I’m not sure what. W-When I entered, he s-seemed stable enough!” Marie stammered as Schneeplestein walked over, causing her to back away as he attempted to get a closer look. “But w-when I turned around, h-he was sitting up like this, w-what’s even going on?! W-Will he be okay, I-I’ve never seen anything like this before!” Schneeplestein didn’t reply for a few moments, instead choosing to carefully push the patient onto his back once more while also leaning in a bit closer. This only left Marie even more clueless as to what exactly was going on or even what he was doing, since he was obscuring her view completely.

“Zhere, he should be stable for now….” The Doctor said after a moment of him doing something rather quietly. “....I’m terribly sorry you had to have vitnessed zhat, Nurse. But I assure you….everyzhing has been taken care of.”

“A-Are you sure?! Sir, he was literally b-bleeding from his eyes. A-And it sounded a-as if he was having trouble breathing as well!” Marie pointed out. “M-Maybe I should go find another doctor, j-just in case?” Schneeplestein spun around suddenly, panic strangely flashing across his face for a brief second.

“No, no, no! It’s fine, I can vatch him if you’re really zhat vorried!” He said quickly, holding up a hand. “He’ll be perfectly fine, I assure you! Vhy don’t you,” he moved away from the patient’s bedside, instead taking Marie by the shoulders as he began pushing her towards the door, “go see vhat else zhey need you for? I’m sure you have much, much more vork to do!”

“But, sir, I--” She started, only to have the door nearly slam shut in her face. For a few moments, she merely stood at the door and stared at it, completely confused about what had just happened. But, Schneeplestein was right, she did have more work to do.

At least, she thought as she slowly began to walk off down the hall, I’d have one hell of a story to tell during break.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the door, Schneeplestein has his back to the door, leaning his head back against the wood while one hand was also planted firmly on his forehead. An empty syringe was clenched firmly in his other hand, remnants of a bright green fluid still dripping from the very tip of the needle.

“God dammit….how much longer….?” He muttered under his breath, just before sighing. “I can’t keep zhis up forever….Somevone vill find out eventually…..”

“Oh please, I have my ways of making sure nobody does.” A voice, sounding as if it directly next to him, giggled. Barely flinching, he moved his hand and looked back to the room. In the farthest corner of the room, the shadowy outline of a man stood, the only things visible were two glowing green dots where eyes would be. If you looked closely as well, there was something reflective right on his throat, giving off a dark red metallic shine even in the dim light. “What’s more important than whether or not you can keep your own damn mouth shut is whether or not you’re doing your job.”

“Of course I am, you’d torture me if I didn’t.” Schneeplestein snapped back, walking away from the door and back to the patient’s bedside. The shadow merely gave a small snort, not moving from his place at all. “Vhat do you vant now. I’ve been doing everyzhing you’ve told me so far. For months now at zhis point.”

“Am I never allowed to just pay a small visit? Who can blame me if I want to see my favorite BOY?” The figure laughed, almost definitely grinning if he wasn’t before. “Or to know how the Good doctor is? And if he was doing his job properly. I nearly lost my body for a minute there. How badly are you even screwing things up if he was able to get up?”

“Obviously not bad enough for you to still be here, vhining and moaning to me about all of this.” Schneeplestein hissed. “I have it all under control. Vhy don’t you just get back to being zhe “puppet master” as you enjoy calling yourself.” Almost immediately, he knew that was the exact wrong thing to say. The air suddenly grew cold and sharp with what felt like anger. As he turned, something thin and grey shot out from where the figure stood, coiling itself tightly around his own throat and causing him to stop dead in his tracks.

“You’re extremely lucky I don’t kill you right here, right now.” The figure said coldly, holding the end of the grey thing tightly in one hand. “But I swear, I won’t hesitate to put a knife right in your throat. Just give me a reason to.”

“I….If you h-haven’t....” Schneeplestein somehow managed to choke out, fighting against the thing as much as he could. “K….Killed me yet….or even t-turned me into a….a puppet…..zhen I doubt you vo...vould kill me now….” The figure growled, before roughly pulling the grey thing back and even jerking the doctor forwards slightly. Despite this, the thing was somehow loosened and gave Schneeplestein the chance to yank it off. “It’s clear you need me, alive and not under your control.”

“Do you want a prize for figuring that out?” The figure said, suddenly making the grey thing disappear in a flash of red. “So what? I apparently can’t kill you. But does that mean I can’t make your life a living hell if you don’t do exactly as I say?” No reply from Schneeplestein, especially since he didn’t have any kind of snappy comeback to that at all. “Well, that would be to say your life isn’t already hell. But I’m sure the point still stands.”

“....I cannot describe how much I vish to hit you vith a chair right now….” Schneeplestein said through clenched teeth, glaring down the figure who merely laughed.

“I’d suggest you control those urges then, doctor. Unless you’d rather I harm one of your friends again….” The figure replied, obviously getting a real kick out of this entire situation. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we? Get back to work too, I’m not about to lose my body yet again.” With one last giggle, the figure seemed to melt back into the shadows, leaving Schneeplestein alone with the patient once more. He turned back around, rubbing the back of his neck with a sigh.

He truly did not know how much more he could take, at all.

((Boom, brand new story and an original one two. Obviously enough, everything in this story is based off of everything we believe to be happening right now. Examples being the coma, Anti returning, and Anti even having a physical form. This takes a look at a what if? What if Anti succeeds? What if he succeeds in picking off the egos, one by one, and placing them under his control? And what if he manages to get an actual physical form?

My mind kinda ran wild with this idea, and the ideas that followed. I won’t reveal everything quite yet, but I very much enjoy what I’m trying here. And I hope you all enjoy it too! However many people actually decide to read this, that is.

As for Wonderland, I’ve hit a bit of a brain fart, so it might take a bit longer for that to come out. My sincerest apologies, but I just have had no motivation to work on it at all. I promise I’m still gonna finish it! It just might take a while.

Alrighty, long rambling author’s note done. PEACE))

#jacksepticeye #7 thorns in my side #fanfiction #jse egos #somewhat egopocalypse?#dr schneeplestein #antisepticeye #writing #story #fanfiction story

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vivid-inspiration · 6 years

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For Her

I guess it’s the black coat that I found and decided to dawn that gives me this image. A dark and scary figure, the bringer of pain, an omen. I literally just picked up the first thing I found from the shelter that can act as a camouflage. Black is a good colour to hide in. Never did I assume it would be so closely associated with death like this.

I tried to rush between the crowds to make it to their next target. I can’t use my ‘energy’ until I’m at point blank otherwise they’ll find me. And they have no regard to collateral damage when they are on the hunt. Everyone around me is in danger and if I don’t find him in time…

“Looking for someone? Or something?” A raspy voice rang through my brain.

I turned and scanned the crowd, I can feel the energy, I can feel the pain. My eyes darted back and forth. Nothing. High pitched laughter erupted through the skies aiming directly into my ears. I winced as I saw him being taken away. I was too late. I cursed at myself before disappearing between the hustle of souls.

How could I be so alone in this.

I used to be a good soldier. Always followed the rules, never questioned my superiors. We were instructed to not indulge in feelings and desires. And it was strictly prohibited to even acknowledge empathy.

We were always provided a set of names as the sun rose and were required to scratch each name off before the next dawn… where the cycle restarted with a new set of names.

Our mission was a little ambiguous, I was low in the ranking so all I was responsible for was to go to the designated name and help them make their way to their next stop.

Kind of like, what you would, a guardian angel. In this line of work, you see all types of reactions. Happy, sad, infuriated, confused, shocked, angry. I, unfortunate, was intrigued. Such unique facial expressions, different chemical imbalances resulting in... tears? It was all so tantalizing.

With the Great Famine just ending, we had lists of never ending names to guide. Every name needs a different approach, and some humans are just so stubborn and resisting. We have resorted to the use of a little brute strength with them, they were unaware of the dangers if they remained floating spiritually in this realm. A small curved blade was provided to us that expands to a longer stick if the human proves to be nuisance. Even though many soldiers carved their initials, I took the time to artistically burn my name into it. It glowed with a fire red when the light was right.

Run, run, run. Through the alleys I ran. It started to rain. Heavily. Good. This helped me blend in better with my oversized coat. Umbrellas flew up and sprayed droplets on unsuspecting people. The cars splashed puddles onto the pavement cause city lights to reflect brightly on the ground. The air was heavy but a scent of cleanliness flood the place. I took a right and then a left, then another right until I faced the familiar blinking red light. “MOTEL” the fluorescent lights read. I dug into my pockets and fished for my key before darting in the shadows to my room door.

Click.

I rushed in and threw myself on my stained bed. The bed side table lamp was flickering with age. I let the bed springs pierce through my chest. I needed to replace the ache with something physical. Something more real. The sound of the raindrops eased my mind a little. I need to be quicker next time. I need more resources to get my hands on any list.

“You dumb bitch! I should throw you back into the hole I found you in”

“Fine by me! The only dark hole I ever fell in was with you!”

“You’re talking back to me?!”

I dug my head into the flat pillow. The neighbours started early today. I’m keeping an eye out on them in case any or both their names end up on a list with the way they’re going. Another crash, one of them smashed another plate. I’m never going to be able to focus with all that racket.

I sat up and thought about a new strategy. Blank. I was getting tired. How long have I been running for? A year? 10? 100? 1000 years? Ever since I found out the true mission of my task force, I escaped and hid in the human realm. I stared aimlessly at the ripped wallpaper while shifting my ring from my finger. This ring was the reason I am here. Had she not dropped it, I would have never followed her.

My duties were straightforward and mundane. I guided souls into the afterlife. Very straightforward. They would be taken into the judgement room and fell into one of three categories, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. Once they reach the door, I never see them again, and I never think of them again. I was but a peg in the gran der scheme and never questioned my involvement. Until she dropped her ring. Her skin was sun kissed with an angelic glow. Her hair fell down to her shoulders in waves that resembled the most perfectly balanced river. Her eyes wide with the darkest brown and freckled gold like the earth and the sun was trapped in there. But more beautiful than that was her soul. It serenaded the most beautiful poetry as she gracefully walked by my side. She was scared, I could tell, and for the first time, I was scared. This beautiful being was the victim of a hit and run and her first question was ‘is the driver okay?’

I tried to keep my gaze to myself, but her energy was overwhelming. As we got to the door, she thanked me and took a deep breathe. She straightened her posture preparing herself and flicked her hair back. I watched her walk in and as the door locked after her, I saw it shining. Her ring. A beautiful Topaz ring that illuminated under the light. I picked it up slowly, enchanted by her scent. I opened the door to return her ring and I was prompted with a horrific sight. Her radiance was massacred across the walls. Her poetry slaughtered against the floor. Her glow was salvaged in bottles. Tiny little vessels. I was dumbfounded and in shock. Her beautiful soul was shattered.

“There, little princess, your soul will be ripe for our General. Your energy is the fuel for our war on heaven” the lieutenant in charge was whimsically singing while squeezing her essence lifelessly.

“What happened here?!” I exclaimed.

“Soldier, what are you doing here? This is restricted area!” The Lieutenant yelled back while charging at me.

Ring still in my hand, I threw a punch in his direction and felt his bones crack. I ran through the door evading looks from all the other soldiers.

“Stop him! He’s a traitor” Someone bellowed.

Traitor? What did I do? I felt my lungs implode in my chest as my feet felt heavier. I ran and ran until I got into the library. I snuck to the back between the aisles and tried to restore my heart rate. I looked around and realized that I was in the restricted area of the library. This area was only authorized to soldiers of a higher ranking than me. Great, from the pan to the fire, or so I’ve heard a similar saying.

“How could you let this happen?” I heard a familiar voice ask.

“Sir, I… I apologize Sir” Said the sergeant.

“What does he know”

“Nothing Sir”

“Lieutenant , I will not tolerate these lies”

“He… he may have heard that we are preparing for a war against the Heavenly General and are using souls to harness our weapons” He whispered almost too low for me to hear. Almost.

I felt my heart beat against my rib cage. Weapons? War against the Heavenly General? What the…?

“Hunt him down, we’ve been careful to only extract the souls of the pure and innocent without being detected so far. We can’t have Heaven or Hell know of our plans”

I recognized the voice. How could I have taken so long. It is our leader, the General of Purgatory. He is behind this scheme? Fuck.

“Sooner or later, these humans were going to ruin their realm, its time we take over it and all the other realms for ultimate power!” The General said confidently.

“But Sir..” The Lieutenant protested.

“But nothing, you are ordered to bring me this… this.. soldier and show him what really happens to the souls he’s been retrieving for us”. I did not have to see him to feel his evil smile creep.

I turned away and snuck to the Gardens of Fragments to enter the portal to Earth. With a hard fall onto the pavement, I limped away from the scene with one thought. I must save them. I must protect them. For her.

Dawned in an over sized black hooded cape, I put on her ring and expanded my blade into a scythe to help me walk. My name burnt across the staff battered from the centuries of fights identified me in this world.

Grim Reaper.

Maybe I should have stuck with carving initials.

#Story #Short Story #Love Story #Love #For Her #Overcome #Soldier #Heaven #Hell #Power #InBetween #Light #Black #Purgatory #Hope #Rebel #Mission

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geekmama · 7 years

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Everything

Part six of Aftermath, in which Sherlock tells Molly everything -- or actually half of everything, since there is a lot to tell. Many thanks to arianedevere on LJ/Dreamwidth for the transcripts of the show that are such an invaluable resource in writing Sherlock fanfiction.

For a while, he lay silent in her arms. He was still tired, she knew, and heartsick on top of it, and so she just held him quietly, only occasionally moving her little finger slightly against his dark curls. It was enough, just to lie with him there, in the deep shadows-- they had left the drapes drawn against the midday sun. She wished courage and forgiveness could be conveyed through osmosis, for she had enough for the two of them, she thought, even without knowing the details that comprised his anguish.

And maybe those qualities could, in a sense, be passed through the skin, from one being to another, for at last he moved, settling himself on the pillow facing her, just as they had been a few hours before, when dawn was breaking over London.

She took his hand in hers, and gave him the hint of a smile.

“You have to understand,” he finally said, his voice low but steady, “that there are many things I am only beginning to remember. Much of my childhood was largely a blank to me for many years, and what I did recall seemed remote, like the memory of a dream. But now, what with the events that took place yesterday, and some truths almost literally pried from Mycroft, I am beginning to remember. Just flashes -- but being at Musgrave last night brought much into the realm of reality.

“We lived at Musgrave until I was eight years old. Mycroft is seven years my senior, but Eurus was only a year older than I. She… exhibited evidence of psychoses from an early age, apparently, along with the intelligence that Mycroft terms incandescent. And she was very attached to me -- and I to her, I believe. Yet, as I grew older, I formed outside friendships, as children do. Well, most children. Eurus was… unsuited to the day school where I attended. And Musgrave is quite isolated. I’m sure our parents attempted to have other children visit, but Eurus would not have been able to relate to them -- perhaps would have harmed them, in fact. I, however, formed a close friendship with another boy who lived fairly close by and went to the same school. His name was Victor Trevor, but in our play -- our adventures as pirates, during which we roved the length and breadth of the estate -- my name was Yellowbeard, and his was… Redbeard.”

She stiffened, and Sherlock raised his eyes to hers. “I never had a dog, Molly. Victor was Redbeard, and one day, when I was too busy playing with Victor to have any time to spare for her, Eurus killed Victor by trapping him in a long-abandoned well. He was never found, and though it was suspected that my sister had caused his disappearance somehow, it was never proven, until last night, when John was trapped in the same well and found some of Victor’s bones.”

Molly stared at Sherlock’s grief-stricken face and could not help choking, “Oh, Sherlock, how… how horrible! For him, and you, and… and everyone!”

“Yes.” He paused as though gathering himself together once more. “I don’t remember much detail of the aftermath, just a deep sense of grief. And isolation. I… Mycroft says I was… an emotional child. I did not return to the day school. But I was estranged from Eurus as well. It was suspected she had been behind Victor’s disappearance. There was a song she would sing, something she had made up, and the answer was in it, but neither Mycroft nor I could work out the puzzle, and Mummy and Dad thought it nonsense. They could not allow themselves to believe their beautiful little daughter a murderer, even with all the evidence that she was… other. But a month later, she set a fire in the house. It started in my room, but spread through much of the upper story, and that, and the subsequent water damage, rendered the house uninhabitable. My uncle stepped in at that time. He occupied a position in government similar to the one that Mycroft now occupies. He took Eurus away to what he assumed was a secure institution, and assisted my parents’ move to their new home -- the one you’ve apparently visited.”

“And Musgrave is still abandoned?” Molly asked.

“A great many repairs would have been needed to make it livable again, and my parents never had the heart for that, not after everything that had happened. Their current home is, perhaps, not as grand, but it is comfortable, as you must have seen.”

“Oh, yes. I liked it very much. And it seems to suit them.”

“Yes. I doubt if my parents ever considered selling the estate -- it’s been in the family for generations and, from what Mycroft says, it still brings in enough income from several leaseholders to cover the taxes. But they settled into their new home, and I began to attend a new school -- though there were difficulties. And when I began referring to Redbeard as… as a dog… a deceased family pet… they… they all thought it best to encourage that particular delusion. I had also convinced myself that I had never had a sister. And then Mycroft began teaching me that emotion -- sentiment -- was something that would only impede my ability to thrive and succeed. Very likely he thought he was telling me the truth, though whether he took his own precept to heart is another matter. He’s not as hard and cold as he would like one to believe.”

Molly could not help the wry laughter in her voice as she said, emphatically, “No!”

Sherlock’s eyes met hers and he smiled a little. “How,” he said in quite another voice, “have I been fortunate enough to retain your friendship -- and more than friendship -- when you can see so clearly? It makes me inclined to question your judgement, Dr. Hooper.”

She sniffed. “My judgement, Mr. Holmes, is as sound as it ever was -- or sounder, since I am no longer blinded by your devastating good looks, or your flair for the dramatic.”

“Not at all?” he asked, feigning dismay.

She fought down a smirk. “Just a little, perhaps. Now go on: Mycroft is not hard and cold.”

He sighed, but resigned himself and said, “Well, he is, of course, though much of it is an act.” He grinned when she rolled her eyes and added, “I know, I know: pot vs. kettle. But even you have to admit it’s extremely useful at times. Still, repression of emotion often backfires. I don’t excuse myself from culpability, but I believe much of my appetite for drugs at university stemmed from the painful and often discouraging effort to eliminate sentiment from my life -- not to mention the way in which said efforts isolated me from my peers long before that, which only added to the problem.

“But, to go on: Eurus had died in a fire, as I said. I was told nothing of it, but that was the lie told to my parents, to account for the lack of a body, I presume. For she had indeed set a fire at the institution where she was being held, and there were several persons killed and injured, but my sister was not among them. So my uncle had Eurus moved, to a very secret maximum security facility off the coast: Sherrinford. It… it’s not a good place. Dreadful, in fact. But it was thought to be secure enough to hold her for the duration of her life, and moreover, as a government facility, my uncle -- and in more recent years, Mycroft -- would have easy access to Eurus, to ensure her safety and welfare, of course, but also -- and probably more importantly, knowing my uncle -- to allow them to exploit that incandescent intelligence. That’s where it was supposed to end. But obviously it did not.. We don’t know precisely how long Sherrinford has been compromised, but… well, my uncle died under suspicious circumstances over ten years ago, and I fear that many of my games with Moriarty -- or Jim, as you like to call him--”

“I can’t call him Moriarty,” she objected, hurt at his snide tone. “It makes me sick enough to think of him as Jim!”

“Yes, well, you were certainly ready to bite my head off for warning you about him that first time you introduced us.”

She groaned at this dredging up of ancient history, and said tartly, “That’s because you were a bloody git -- and probably jealous, to boot!”

“I was not!”

She huffed, “Whatever. Go on: what about your games?”

His amused satisfaction at ruffling her feathers died away as he got back on track. “Those games may have originated in the mind of my sister. Some of them, at least. Somewhere along the way she started demanding presents from Mycroft, in exchange for her services, such as they were, and one of those presents was five minutes, unsupervised, with Moriarty. Mycroft, intelligent as he is, had no notion what an impact that five minutes would have on all of us. And after Moriarty’s death and my eventual return from the dead, Eurus became far bolder. She has a talent for disguises and mimicry, as all three of us do, but she also has an uncanny ability to persuade. Moriarty was only one of her dupes. The whole security and administration of Sherrinford was eventually compromised, and she was able to leave and return without hindrance. It was she who created the Moriarty broadcast that saved me from exile and certain death--”

“What?” Molly yelped, half rising on her elbow.

“Oh,” said Sherlock. “I’d forgot I hadn’t told you about that.”

“You mean… but you didn’t even say goodbye!”

He stared at her, tense and suddenly barely in command of himself. But then he pulled himself together and said, eyes on her chin, “Molly, do you remember Charles Augustus Magnussen?”

She said, quietly, “Yes, of course. You… you did kill him, then.”

He looked up quickly, his face very pale. “You knew?”

She said carefully, “I thought… when you didn’t come back to town right away. After Christmas. But then, after the broadcast you reappeared and… and seemed back to your usual self. Or more so. But you did kill him, then. And Mycroft couldn’t… couldn’t help?”

“That was his way of helping. They couldn’t very well put me in prison -- I’d have been dead in a week, what with the many I’ve helped put behind bars. So he got me six months in Eastern Europe. Or at least that was his estimate. Originally he’d advised me against taking that assignment, but in light of… of Magnussen…”

Molly bent her forehead to his and said softly, “Oh my God. It seems I have one more thing to thank Eurus for.”

“Then you… Molly, I murdered a man. In cold blood.”

She backed away again and looked at him solemnly. “In cold blood? You planned it in advance?”

“W-well, no! I had another plan -- which in retrospect was fairly asinine. It hinged on betraying Mycroft, and by extension the British government, in order to obtain some papers Magnussen was using to blackmail… a client.”

“It was Mary, wasn’t it?” Molly asked in a small voice.

Sherlock stared. “Did she tell you?”

“Well, not that there were any papers involved.”

“There weren’t. He had a Mind Palace. The same memory technique I use.”

“Oh. How.. how awful for you!”

“I… well, yes. But… Mary told you?”

“Yes. Not long after Rosie was born. She felt I should know something of her past, since I was to be Rosie’s godmother. She said you knew, and that it might prove important. I think she suspected that she might… might not live to see Rosie grow up.” A tear slipped from Molly’s eye, but she brushed it away, impatiently and looked straight at Sherlock. “So your plan fell apart and you couldn’t think of anything else to do?”

“Yes!”

“Yes,” Molly said, sadly. “She said that’s what happened to her, too. When she shot you. I… I almost couldn’t forgive her that. But you so obviously had, almost immediately. The way you helped her, and cared for her when John had virtually abandoned her -- as soon as you were able, at least. And you told me yourself that you were hoping Christmas would finally bring them together once more. So, in the end, I did forgive her.”

Sherlock pulled her down then, into his embrace, and they clung together for long moments. Molly shed a few more tears, and she knew Sherlock was trying very hard to hold himself together. Finally, he said, unsteadily “So, you don’t think I’m a horrible old murderer?”

She smiled, sadly. “No. I know you. But… does it haunt you?”

“Yes. Sometimes I ask myself what I could have done differently.”

“And do you ever give yourself a reasonable reply?”

“No.”

She moved a bit, and kissed him, and he responded hesitantly at first, and then not hesitantly at all. Turned them so that he was half on top of her, and she melted beneath him, opening her lips, tasting him, breathing the same air.

But then she began to sense -- or felt, actually -- a new urgency in him, and though she could not help smiling beneath his kiss, she presently moved her mouth toward his ear and murmured, “Are you certain you have no direct experience of this?”

It was like a dash of cold water -- a very small dash, but enough that he stopped, and gave a kind of gasping laugh. “Pretty certain, though when I was at university there were more than a few nights I don’t remember very clearly.”

She found that her cheeks were burning, but the time for dissimulation was past. She said, “Well… of course I’m quite willing -- and indeed, anxious -- to assist you in expanding your horizons in this area. But can you finish telling me what you need to, first?”

To be continued...

#Sherlock #sherlolly

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steve0discusses · 5 years

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Yugioh S2 Ep 42 : Hello, Darkness, my Old and Also Relatively New Teenage Shadow Magic Friend

Recently, on Yugioh, we asked ourselves, (well, I asked myself since I assume most of you have seen this show before) how does it matter at all if you lose your memories of someone for like, ten minutes, when you will obviously have to run into them again once the duel is over? And if you have lost the memories that they ever existed then what would it matter since you would not know that you had known them?

This is how - They become shadow people and you literally can’t see them anymore for what I assume is the rest of your life. I don’t know how that works since they can still like write things down on pieces of paper or I dunno, communicate entirely through texting like most kids do who haven’t been cursed with eternal invisibility.

But don’t think too much about the logic, because people can now be erased from your life via cards, AKA Yugioh is gonna throw us another heavy handed take on depression, get ready. And honestly, it’s not a bad take. Good on Yugioh for this fairly accurate metaphor of what sadness can feel like. Like, sometimes people feel like their friends don't like them anymore, although they may be surrounded by people the entire time who are rooting for them and want to help them, but they just can’t see them. I think every person in the world has been through that at some point. You don’t often see it addressed in a kid’s show, although it really should be, because it happens so often.

Probably shouldn’t have started out with Tea for this example though. Like for reals, when have Mai and Tea ever hung out? That one time Mai told Tea to take a shower because she smelled like a boy? Or...

...That’s it. That’s the last conversation I remember these two having one-on-one. Most of the time Mai has been on screen is with Yugi and Joey instead. Mai and Tea shared a tent once. That’s it.

Lolmao I can’t believe Mime came back.

So now, canonically, BDSM Mime got stranded somewhere in Japan and now Marik doesn’t have any memories to even go and pick him up. He’s just forever trapped in this country now like Shenmue.

(read more)

Mai seems to remember that she used to know someone, so it’s more of like you get the feeling of losing a friend. Like basically every time you lose a monster you feel like you broke up with someone, but you can’t remember who. I can’t really relate to that feeling, but I’m sure this has happened to Mai at least once or twice for reals before this tournament. This is the girl who forgot she set herself up to get engaged.

Again, if you just thought it through for like 3 seconds, you’d have enough evidence to say “Yeah but this is all in my mind, I am standing in weird ass purple fog” but that’s the Shadow Realm.

After Tea’s memory is dissolved, next comes the threat of losing the memories of Joey Wheeler, AKA the vague love interest that she was very mad at up until about 5 seconds ago.

Also please admire how far the storyboarder went out of their way to avoid looking up Mai’s skirt. Straight up, they did not even bother to try and cover up those panty upskirts in Sailor Moon, but the storyboarder for Yugioh was so extra that they said “Hell with it, I’m gonna try” and so Mai’s legs are like double jointed and sprawled in the weirdest ways sometimes to cover that crack.

I mean, it’s still a pinup--there’s no way around this character design--but I really think they were trying to not go too far, but then ended up making it kind of worse sometimes. It’s just what happens when you have a love affair a lot of extreme low angle shots but none of your girls wear pants because it’s 2001 and everyone’s wearing tube tops and minis.

Which was a thing. I’ll admit it, I lived through it, 2001 was kind of a slutty time, it was the era of the glittery backless diamond shaped halter top. Which, while time has tried to forget, I will never forget the 20 minutes I spent in a dressing room trying to figure out how to put on a backless diamond shaped halter top only to realize that I was putting it on sideways.

Now, stepping away from confusing 00′s fashion and back to the show. Mai losing these pile of kids might mean more to me if Mai had been hanging out with them this whole time, but it really does feel like they’re closer to Duke Devlin than they are to Mai Valentine, because Duke at least shared a school with them so I can assume that in the past they’ve passed each other in the hallway or talked on occasion. But, Mai is an adult who never comes in contact outside of cards, and when she does, she only ever pushes them away.

It’s especially that-Yugioh-brand-of-tragic because in the mind of all of the characters on this show, we’ve just kind of assumed Mai has had a life and friendships outside of these couple of kids. But this episode we realize there’s just...no one else but the people she sees at these rare tourneys. As we see here in this flashback to her childhood, in the most anime PJ’s ever drawn.

Why does every flashback look like everyone's straight out the American Girl Doll collection? Like Pegasus and Cecilia were in turn of the century clothes. the Kaibas were dressed like little newsies when they were orphans, little Mai looks like she owns a horse in matching ribbons.

And as it turns out, do you know the reason why Mai hates friendship? You’ll never guess--her Parents. Ah, Neglectful Parents, strikes again, that old Yugioh chestnut. It’s like I’m watching Once Upon a Time again. At least these neglectful parents didn’t lock her up underground and tattoo her eyes. Instead, these ones just worked a lot and she got kinda lonely.

Are there any good parents on this show? I assume if anyone’s parents are good we just never see them, right? Is that why we never see Mr Muto?

Anyway, Mai moved around a lot, her parents were always busy, and it rained like constantly--so Mai decided to get a job on a cruise line, where she became a card shark. And also where she randomly got engaged and then forgot.

I don't remember her tent looking like that but I’ll allow it.

You could have chosen any friends out there Mai, traveling the world on a cruise line, doing cards all over the planet, and you chose these guys? The ones with multiple curses? Like you nabbed both Yugi and Bakura in one go? Congrats!

Anyway she very quickly forgets Joey so Rip MaixJoey that was a good one and half episodes, surely the longest relationship on Yugioh!

So, Yugi decides to activate the millennium item chatroom, where apparently he could just butt into whoever is getting cursed at the moment. And mind you, he could just solve the duel but like, there is a card game going on, and although it’s super duper cursed, we gotta make it fair. Yugi’s just here to give some good advice and then bounce.

No laser fights today. He still isn’t aware he can do that.

freakin love this blue yellow color combo PS.

So something that I do like about this, is that the real threat here in these Shadow Duels is not the duel really--it’s to Mai’s relationships more than injury Mai herself. Yes, she does die if she loses, but the more she loses, the more she loses people in her life, even if she wins. The loss of the people is more scary to her more than the fear of dying.

And this hearkens back to the first time we dealt with the Shadow Realm with Yugi and his Grandfather. Yugi was over that duel in about 15 minutes or whatever the time limit was, and after the initial shock he brushed himself off and may have appeared fully recovered, but it took him almost an entire season to get his Grandpa back in his life.

So if you look at these curses as akin to getting an illness, when you lose a relationship because of illness, that can be a pretty terrible symptom that you don’t really see coming. Happens a whole lot though. In Mai’s case, if she does lose, she also loses the opportunity to repair what she’s lost, which is probably the greatest fear of someone who may be going through A Time.

Like honestly, the Mai duel is *kind of a downer* and I was just talking to my Bro about how of all the shadow duels so far, this is the one that is most clearly “I’m just going to fight you with straight up depression” and how apparently Marik is just so far into his own downward spiral that he no longer cares about who he drags down with him. He’s just given up trying to be better at this point. Like his only ‘friend’ left is BDSM Mime clown. That’s a pretty intense rock bottom, honestly.

But on a positive note, what Yugi points out to Mai is “You’re in this now, but we will get you out of it, no matter what he curses you to believe.” and of anyone here, Yugi’s the only one that can actually reach out and speak to her because he’s the only one who has been through it before and thus knows how it works.

Being cursed with heavy handed illness imagery AKA Shadow Magic does have that perk. You can help out the similarly cursed. Even though he could have probably launched at least a couple fireballs at the problem to help her out also.

Holy hell they actually edited out all the little details on this duel disk here. Good on you, animators. Good on you. I’m glad someone did it. Hope that saved at least one of you from carpal tunnel, you poor overworked animators that had to draw every line on these crazy complicated character designs.

So Mai, spurned onward by the ghostly voices of her forgotten friends figures out how to steal Marik’s God Card.

Again, everyone on this show is obsessed with these awful cards and they feel like they must play them to win when honestly--look how much this card sucks.

If this God Card ends up killing her it’ll only prove my point that all these cards are just fundamentally hella bad.

Same with Odion, he could’ve won just fine without playing a God Card but leave it to these dummies to just go crazy with the one of three cards that has been prophecies to kill them. Like, when Odysseus gives you a bag of wind, just don’t open the bag. That easy.

Anyway, tune in next week to see if Mai ends up blown overboard like the servants of Odysseus, or if she ends up devoured by a giant creature also like the servants of Odysseus. Or if she ends up dating Joey Wheeler. That part didn’t happen in the Odyssey, but I’ve read enough people comparing fanfic to Homer that I guess you could make it happen if you really wanted to.

Link to read these recaps from S1 Ep1

#yugioh #yugioh recap #photo recap #recap #s2 ep 42 #tw depression #mai valentine #yugi muto #marik ishtar #joey wheeler #tea gardner #seto kaiba #this dumb ass god card #So we got a Mai Flashback where we found out that she's got like no backstory #her backstory is that she's depressed she has no backstory #like all that was there was living on a boat for a couple years #that's it

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labourpress · 7 years

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Jonathan Ashworth, Shadow Health Secretary, speech to Unison’s conference

**Check against delivery**

It is my pleasure to be here. As a Labour MP, a trade union member. As a member of your shadow Cabinet and – I hope – as the next Labour Secretary of State for Health.

And it is a pleasure to be here with UNISON a great trade union led by one of the great General Secretaries Dave Prentis. I congratulate all of you for your campaign on public services and the work of public servants.

Dave spoke with great eloquence earlier this week.

And when Dave said that funding’s becoming scarcer – he was right.

When Dave said you’re all asked to do more with less – he was right

And when Dave said you cannot trust the Tories with the National Health Service – he was right.

And that’s what I want to talk to you about this morning.

But my first duty this morning on behalf of the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn is to say thank you to this union and your members and indeed all who work in the NHS.

So to the nurses, the midwives and the health care assistants – we say thank you

And because we don’t always remember them but I’ve seen for myself the difference you make when a few years ago I had the honour of shadowing your stewards on facility time at Lewisham hospital. To all your stewards representing you in hospitals we say thank you.

To the porters, the cleaners and the IT administrators – we say thank you

To the medical secretaries, therapists, paramedics and managers – we say thank you too.

For your care, your dedication, your self-sacrifice, every day, your extraordinary efforts, literally often the difference between life and death.

Friends, we are here today. In our various vocations and in this union because we believe in something bigger than ourselves, because we are driven by solidarity not selfishness and we understand, and indeed value the ethos of public service. An ethos that not only runs deep in our history as a trade union movement but defines the character of our country as well.

Because when you look at every stage of life, whether we call it cradle to the grave – or as Shakespeare wrote of the 7 ages of man.

At every stage public servants have been there for us, have cared for us, have nurtured us and made us all what we are today.

Each and every one of them transforming hopelessness into hope.

From the midwives and clinicians who bring us into the world, the teachers who inspire us, the community workers improving our quality of life, to our care workers who look after our frail, weak and vulnerable.

All represented across this union, all everyday showing the value of public services at the heart of a civilized society

And nowhere is that clearer, than in the NHS

A National Health Service is truly visionary – a central part of the values we share as a society.

So today in the run up to this General Election I want to talk to you about the attack on our NHS and on our values by this Conservative Government.

And in this campaign let’s be resolute to not let any Tory run away from their record on the NHS.

Theresa May can insist problems with the NHS are nothing more than a ‘small number of incidents’ but she can’t deny what we see with our eyes to be happening.

The winter crisis we’ve just been through, with ambulances backed up outside of hospitals, patients on trolleys in corridors, operations cancelled, elderly people trapped in beds with nowhere to go.

Ever lengthening queues of the sick and elderly across the land.

Nearly 4 million people waiting for an operation;

Over 200,000 people waiting for four hours of more in A&E in February alone;

The number of people waiting for 12 hours or more on trolleys doubled in a year. Sometimes patients wait over 30 hours on a trolley.

Call it a ‘humanitarian crisis’ as the Red Cross did.

Call it the NHS on a ‘burning platform’ as the CQC Chief Executive did

Call it an ‘existential crisis’ as Sir Robert Francis did

I simply call it what it is – this is a Tory NHS crisis and that’s why the future of the NHS is at stake in this general election.

We have a Prime Minister who even yesterday still refuses to see the truth that the NHS is overstretched, understaffed and under threat.

We have a Prime Minister imposing on the NHS the largest financial squeeze in history.

Who allows hospital trusts to fall into deficit like never before.

We have a Prime Minister who next year will be cutting NHS spending per head.

Yesterday we heard that the NHS has a backlog of £5 billion in repairs for crumbling hospitals and out of date equipment.

They expect the NHS to find £22 billion of so called efficiency savings which no one believes can be found without cutting frontline care.

A health system buckling under the strain of huge financial and operational pressures.

And what does it tell you about the state of 21st century Britain under these Conservatives that the number of hospital beds take by patients being treated for malnutrition – yes malnutrition - has trebled in recent years.

Malnutrition on the rise in Tory Britain; isn’t that a national disgrace; isn’t that a badge of shame.

And because of the pressures on beds in the last few years a million patients have been discharged in the middle of the night.

And the numbers of elderly and vulnerable people trapped in hospital with nowhere to go at record levels.

And why? Because we have a care system that has been savaged by 7 years of spending cuts. We have a care system on the brink of tipping point.

We have over a million of the most elderly and vulnerable people denied the care they deserve. Some maybe our own grandparents or parents, our own relatives.

And yet we have a Prime Minister who walks by on the other side, refuses to face up to the problems and says to councils in the most deprived parts of the country: you can raise your council tax even though it will go nowhere near meeting your social care needs.

Unless of course it happens to be Surrey County Council where you can get a special secret sweetheart deal with Downing Street.

Well I tell you something, under Labour these dodgy deals that demean Downing Street will be gone. We’ll bring back honour and integrity to policy and decision making in No 10. No more special access and mates’ rates but fairness instead for all.

And while this Prime Minister ignores the social care needs of the many she can find millions to build new grammar schools,

She can find billions to cuts taxes for the biggest corporations, but she won’t recognise the demands of the elderly or treatment requirements of the sick.

So let us be absolutely clear – what prevents this Prime Minister from acting is not the financial constraints of the economy but the dogmatic constraints of her ideology.

Things are so bad that even Andrew Lansley – remember him – even Andrew Lansley has complained it isn’t getting the money it needs.

Talking of Lord Lansley, never forget that the priority of these Conservatives – including Theresa May - was always a top down reorganization in the Health and Social Care Act whose very aim was to drive our NHS into the realms of privatisation;

And I can tell you today we will not yield, we will not buckle.

Labour will defend the National Health Service and axe that Health and Social Care legislation that allows the NHS to be fragmented and sold off.

Privatisation of the NHS will come to an end.

And I tell you what else we will do:

We will reinstate the Secretary of State’s responsibilities. We will reinstate the NHS – publicly funded, publicly administered and yes publicly provided.

And I want our NHS staff and patients to be given an actual real genuine voice in the running of our NHS too.

So I can announce we will also put healthcare professionals, staff and patients on the Board of any organisation providing NHS care.

And yes this will apply to all private companies currently providing services or we will insist they hand back their contracts.

But we will go further than that too and insist that Board level representation of professionals, staff and patients is on every organisation providing NHS care - including Clinical Commissioning Groups and all NHS Trusts.

So Labour will deliver staff reps on boards with voting rights at the heart of our NHS.

Better services

Over this campaign Labour will be setting out our plans to deliver the improvements that patients need.

We want to see hospitals properly staffed, waiting times coming down and emergency care available to those who need it, operating to the standards that patients expect.

Under the Conservatives the 18 week target has been dumped for what they call non-urgent operations.

To paraphrase a famous pre-election speech from time gone by: I warn you that if the Tories win again not to get old, not to get sick.

I warn you that the real cost of the Tories winning again will be felt in longer waiting times, and people spending longer in pain and discomfort for knee replacements and hip replacements.

Let’s be clear what’s happening, step by step, bit by bit.

The NHS under Tories is being pushed back to the bad old days and it will fall to Labour to save the NHS like we have done throughout our history.

So we confirm our commitment to hitting the targets for A&E,

We’ll do so by investing in our NHS, in our community services, and renewing the focus on keeping people well and out of hospital, delivering care closer to home at the time when people need it.

Because those who have given so much all their life deserve security and dignity in retirement we’ll integrate health and social care

And when it comes to the planning and delivery of local services we will always ask what is in the interest of local needs not what is in the interests of filling financial holes.

And we will deliver long overdue improvements to mental health care as well.

We know that mental ill health is the leading cause of sickness absence at work, costing the economy £105bn every year.

And that one in four of us in this room will experience a mental health problem this year.

And yet all we get from Theresa May is warm words and empty promises, but no real meaningful action.

Unlike the Tories, Labour will tackle the underfunded and understaffed mental health system.

We want to see mental health services properly resourced and focused on prevention, rather than just asking the NHS to intervene once a person is already in crisis.

We will give our mental health services the money they desperately need to look after us all, because there can be no health without mental health.

The next Labour government will deliver true parity of esteem between mental and physical health.

We won’t just talk about equality – we will deliver it.

And if we are to deliver these improvements for Britain’s patients, then our starting point will be delivering improvements for our health and care workforce.

Standing up for staff

So today I want to set out Labour’s plans for the staff of our NHS and social care system.

You are the lifeblood of the NHS. You have committed your working lives to caring for others in our times of need.

You deserve to be cared for yourselves, but for too long this Government has taken you for granted.

A pay freeze has seen NHS wages fall 14% below inflation.

Cut backs to training places have meant units are even more short-staffed.

And now Brexit threatens the ability of our NHS to recruit from abroad, and threatens thousands of good, kind European staff who are working in our country already.

So let me make it clear, Labour would make the NHS a priority in the Brexit negotiations, and as Keir Starmer said yesterday we would give an immediate NHS guarantee to all European NHS staff.

Let us send a clear message to the thousands of NHS and social care staff from the EU. You are welcome, needed and your rights will be guaranteed in the UK under a Labour government

You know because you see it every day that staff are being forced by this Government to do more and more with less and less

Giving ever more of your free time to keep the service running – working through your breaks and often long past the end of your shift.

It’s why I say that our NHS staff are the pride of Britain.

Yet you are ignored, insulted, undervalued, overworked and underpaid by this Tory government.

Well not any more. Enough is enough.

NHS staff have been taken for granted for too long by the Conservative Government.

Cuts to pay and training mean hard working staff are being forced from NHS professions and young people are being put off before they have even started.

What is bad for NHS staff is bad for patients too. Short staffing means reduced services and a threat to patient safety.

So I can announce a Labour Government will step in with a long term plan for our NHS which gives NHS staff the support they need to do the best possible job for patients.

NHS staff deserve to be rewarded for the complex, difficult and highly specialized professional work that they do.

So I can confirm today that a Labour government will scrap the pay cap, put pay decisions back into the hands of the independent pay review body and give our NHS workers the pay they deserve.

It’s fair to staff and it’s in the interest of patients too.

And it’s also in the interests of patients that we invest in the potential of our staff.

My long term ambition is for our NHS staff to have the best trained staff in the world ready to deal with whatever they face in the years to come.

As a first step that means giving those who want to enter nursing, midwifery and allied health profession a step up, not kick the ladder away.

So let me commit here today that we will re-introduce bursaries. We will reinstate funding for health related degrees so that people who want to get into health professions – whether they are young people starting out or older students who want a new career after starting a family – don’t feel put off by financial considerations.

Safe Staffing

I know that whenever we need the NHS it’s there for all of us and our families. But all of us are naturally anxious when our loved ones or ourselves need to spend time in hospital.

Quite simply Labour will never compromise on patient safety.

After seven years of Tory mismanagement our health services dangerously understaffed.

We are thousands short on the numbers of nurses, midwives, and paramedics that we need.

And yet the attitude of this Prime Minister remains blinkered in the extreme. Her head buried in the sand. A casual dismissal of the concerns of patients and their families.

So just as I’m passionate about investing in our NHS staff, I will be the real patients’ champion too

Time and again expert reports - including the groundbreaking survey UNISON published this week - have told us that staffing levels are linked to patient safety but this Conservative Government has failed to deliver staffing levels which keep up with demand.

So the next Labour government will legislate to ensure safe staffing levels in England’s NHS.

We will immediately ask NICE to undertake work to set out how safety can be determined in different settings, including looking at legally enforced staffing ratios.

So conference with a Labour government a new law to guarantee safe staffing, so that finances never again take precedent over patient safety.

And unlike the current Secretary of State I don’t make promises on behalf of the NHS while refusing to give the NHS the resources and tools to deliver those promises.

The NHS under Labour will get the funding needed. Over the coming days we will outline a long term plans for the NHS; for how we integrate health and social care.

For too long, NHS staff have been taken for granted by the Conservative Government. Wages falling, workloads rising. Staffing shortages getting worse.

So I’m pleased to be able to launch here today Labour’s three point pledge for NHS staff: better pay, safer staffing and fully funded education.

So yes this election is about the future of the NHS.

And yes, it falls to this movement as it has throughout our history to make the case with passion and yes pride for a National Health Service – free at the point of need for every man, woman and child.

It falls to us again as it has throughout our history to make the argument for collective provision not just for a basic health service but for the very best health service.

Throughout our history, we never lost our ideals and we never faltered in our ambitions for the best health care for everyone.

Because we know that a National Health Service funded through taxation; with treatment free at the point of delivery; where everyone is treated equally based on clinical need not ability to pay is not only the right thing to do but it’s also the most efficient, effective and safest system of health are across the world.

Friends one of favourites poets WB Yeats wrote ‘in dreams begins responsibility” –

Inspired by the solidarity of the communities of Tredegar and motivated by the dream of a fairer society not just for some but for all Nye Bevan took responsibility to bring it about the Health Service

In doing so we escaped from a world of patch work provision and charges for healthcare

So let’s never forget that in that speech introducing the National Health Service Bill he said the NHS, would

“lift the shadow from millions of homes”

“It will keep very many people alive who might otherwise be dead”

And:

“No society can legitimately call itself civilised” he said, “if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means”

They were words that still inspire

And of a cause that still endures;

And now the responsibility falls to us.

So the choice in this election on June 8th is clear

A rebuilt the National Health Service and social care service for the millions who depend on it with Labour

Or cut backs, sell offs and nothing but a rump service under the Tories.

A world class NHS providing the best quality of care –

Or waiting times get longer, staff demoralised, standards of care plummeting

The choice is clear.

Labour’s commitment; that is our purpose.

Our Values, Labour Values,

Our Policies will protect the future for the NHS and standards of NHS care

Let’s go out and win.

Thank you

Ends

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multifandombitxh · 7 years

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Title: Not Much of a Life, But It Has Its Perks Pairing: Dwight Fairfield x Jake Park Summary: Life in the Entity’s realm is cold and unforgiving but sometimes it’s not so bad. Chapter Genre: Angst/Fluff Chapter Warnings: Blood Chapter Summary: A new face shows up at the fire and the Jake struggles to trust him. A/N: Idk man I was feelin’ stuff. This was all I had the motivation to write. I know you guys have been asking for the next chapter of Devil In The Details but I just can’t bring myself to keep up with it. I’ll keep trying though. <3

I: New Arrival

Jake was upset, and understandably so. Any time someone new showed up at the campfire, there was always some new place they were sent to, accompanied by a new monstrous being. So when Claudette helped Bill onto one of the benches, Jake turned his back on the group, stewing in his thoughts and trying to decide how to go about it all.

It was bad enough with Ace around, constantly hurting the girl’s feelings or making Dwight feel useless to the team. It didn’t matter to Jake whether or not Ace was nice to him, or even tolerated him. But the moment he saw tears come to Meg’s eyes after hearing Ace talk about having to be left behind by her, he knew they would have problems. Talk shit about him? Fine. Jake was thick-skinned, growing up with his father made sure of that. Talk shit about anyone in the group? Hell no. Jake wouldn’t excuse that.

He heard Bill mutter a thank you to Claudette as she finished with his injuries and Jake smiled, but only slightly. Leave it to Claudette to take care of the new arrivals; she was good at that.

“How long have you all been here?” Bill asked the group, his voice coarse and rough like sand paper.

Meg shrugged. “We don’t really know. It’s... been a long time.”

“Too long,” Jake mumbled into the wind.

The others turned to stare at his back and Dwight was the first to speak up. “Jake, come sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

“It wasn’t really a question.”

With a roll of his eyes, Jake joined the others, taking a place between Dwight and Nea. He stared into the flames in silence, waiting for the conversation to start back up, but it didn’t. When he raised his gaze, his eyes met with Bill’s; soft, understanding, and with a hint of sadness. A stark contrast to what he’d seen before. Jake watched with drawn eyebrows as he pulled the cigarette from his lips and held it between his fingers.

“You’re a stubborn one, aren’t ya?”

Just like that, any hope Jake had of liking this guy was thrown into the metaphorical trash. He sighed and tore his gaze away. Perfect, another Ace.

“He’s about as stubborn as they come,” Meg joked, shooting him a smile from across the fire. Jake couldn’t help but return it, even though he was still irked. It was hard not to smile when Meg poked fun.

“Comes in handy when you’re trying not to die,” he chuckled, pulling off his gloves and placing them in his lap, flexing his fingers.

“Speaking of which...” Laurie chimed in, coming to stand behind the bench and placing a hand on Nea’s shoulder. “I bet you’re pretty confused about all of this, Bill.”

“What, being chased by monsters?” Bill scoffed, “Nothing new there.”

The group exchanged looks and Dwight leaned forward on his elbows. “What do you mean?”

“Only ever been good at two things; killing shit, and avoiding being killed by shit,” Bill said, “I dunno how I got here or for what reason, but I’m here now, so there’s no use fightin’ it. May as well get used to it and do what I do best.”

“You’re saying you don’t care one way or another,” Jake said, meeting his gaze once more. “You’re saying all of this is nothing to you.”

Bill shrugged and placed his cigarette back in his mouth. “I’ve been through worse than this, kid. I think I’ll be all right.”

“We’ve been here for God knows how long, fighting for our lives against these... these things, and you think it’s just some walk in the park? You seriously don’t want to just go home?” Jake asked. He could feel himself growing angrier and more impatient, which wasn’t uncommon these days. The longer they spent in the Entity’s realm, the harder it was for him to keep his cool. Especially when it came to people like Ace- and now Bill- who got on his every last nerve.

Bill narrowed his eyes at Jake. “I dunno what ‘home’ is to you, kid, but to me, it’s a lot worse than this. So no, I don’t want to ‘just go home.’“

Jake shook his head and dropped his gaze, not wanting to carry on the conversation. He was beginning to feel a headache coming on, and his shoulder ached. The last thing he needed was to argue with some old war vet; he didn’t have the energy.

There was a rustling in the bushes and everyone stood, eyes wide and waiting for the worst. It wasn’t uncommon to see the Trapper or the Wraith wandering around in the shadows of the woods, but they’d never approached the fire; only stalked from a distance. Once Meg stepped in a trap while walking around during the daytime and ever since then, they never wandered too far from camp. It seemed like even in their safe haven, the Entity couldn’t let them have even a little peace of mind. Must be trying to keep them on their toes, Jake guessed.

A figure emerged from the greenery, clutching its side and chuckling loudly. “Sorry I’m late!”

Jake felt his stomach turn and sat back down. He would have taken the Trapper over Ace any day, and that was saying something.

“What happened?” Claudette asked, approaching Ace and holding out a bundle of bandages. He waved her away and coughed a few times, smirk still seated on his face.

“Kept getting caught,” he said, making his way to the fire. “I managed to get out of there eventually.”

“How did you get away?” Meg asked, pulling her legs up onto the bench.

“Weren’t any hooks left,” he said, clapping Jake on the shoulder and he passed him. “Thanks to you, kiddo.”

Jake winced and refused to respond. He didn’t have the patience for him either. He was spent after being sacrificed and just wanted to be left alone. Laurie glared at Ace as he he did this, then gave Jake an apologetic look, which he returned with a small smile.

If anyone had a harder time getting along with Ace than Jake, it was Laurie. His arrogant nature didn’t sit well with her, and she was one of the few people to actually call him out on it. She knew how much he bothered Jake, as well as the others, so she took it upon herself to dish out some much needed justice any time he acted out. Jake was thankful for that.

Nea helped Claudette patch up Ace as Bill watched on, observing how the others interacted and spoke to one another. In a strange way, it seemed almost familial, how they treated each other. It settled his nerves to know that they had each others backs.

“You okay?” Dwight muttered to Jake as the others conversed.

“Fine,” Jake said shortly, rubbing small circles into the front of his shoulder where the hook had pnce been. It was a dull, phantom-like pain, despite the fact that there was a literal hole in his skin. The fact that Ace was the only one to escape made it hurt that much worse; especially since Jake had basically given himself up to take out the hooks.

Things went a lot slower when he didn’t do generators. Hooks were much harder to find and didn’t take a long to finish in comparison, but when you take down so many, it really puts a target on your back. There were times where he’d only taken down two hooks before being put in the dungeon. Sometimes he didn’t think it was worth it, but if it meant the others- even Ace- could get away, it was.

He was just really tired of being left behind.

“We should get some sleep while we can,” Nea said, glancing around the group. The others nodded in response and stood, saying their goodnights and wandering off. Not too far, of course. It wasn’t smart to risk sleeping too close to the treeline. Some just liked what little privacy they could get their hands on.

Jake leaned back against the bench and let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair and wincing as a finger got caught in a knot. He heard Dwight stifle a laugh next to him, so he turned and shot him a look as he untanged the knot in his locks.

“What?” Jake asked, his voice bemused.

“Nothing,” Dwight said, grinning and holding up his hands in defense. “I didn’t say anything.”

Jake narrowed his eyes at him and smirked, then shook his head and leaned back again. He rested one hand over his stomach and the other at his side, the coarse wood scratching his fingertips. Dwight stayed up quietly talking to Laurie for a while, and Jake listened in silence, not even close to falling asleep. After a while, the two said goodnight and Jake felt Dwight shift next to him, so he opened one eye and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.

Dwight had his head resting to the side, chin almost on his shoulder, his eyes shut and his chest rising and falling steadily. He’d removed his glasses and placed them neatly in his lap. Jake felt his heart jump into his throat and he smiled, unable to help thinking about how adorable Dwight looked when he was trying to sleep. He looked down and noticed Dwight’s hand resting on the bench dangerously close next to his, and thought about taking it for a moment, but shook the thought and went back to trying to sleep as well.

Except, he wasn’t really trying to sleep. He was thinking of Dwight, against his better judgement. Ever since day one, Dwight had been there for him through everything and had yet to let him down. Then, even if he tried, he couldn’t disappoint Jake, not in a million years. He put 100% of himself into everything he did and Jake knew that he wouldn’t do anything unless he absolutely had to. That included leaving people behind.

Jake would never forget the time it had happened. As he often did, he had taken down one too many hooks and was left to bleed on the ground until fate- or in this case, the Entity- finally took him. Dwight had been busting his ass trying to save Jake, but he just couldn’t reach him in time. Any time Dwight got close, the killer would return, chasing him off, guarding Jake like a dog until he’d lost every last drop of blood in his body.

Just as Dwight finally reached him, he was two seconds too late, not that Jake knew that until he was back at the fire. Meg told him everything, but made him promise not to tell Dwight she said anything. Apparently, just after Jake had closed his eyes for good, Dwight stayed with him until he was chased off by the killer once again. He’d tried to bring him back, to help him up, but he was already gone. The only thing that got him to leave was when the killer herded him into the exit gates. Meg recalled the tears in his eyes when they got back to camp; how frustrated he was with himself.

“I should have been faster,” he’d said, hands locked tightly in his hair. “I could have saved him, I could have!”

Though he didn’t know it, Jake held the story close to his heart. To him, it meant everything. It was what finally made him realize that he felt something for Dwight, really felt something. Not just because he tried to save him, not just because he protected him every chance he got. It was simply because of how much he cared; and how deeply it hurt him when Jake was the last to make it back. Beyond that, it made his heart flutter any time he saw Dwight smile, or heard him laugh. It was rare for any of them to do, and was always nice to hear, but when Dwight did it, it was different. Jake wondered if he felt the same way.

A few minutes passed and Jake felt a pinky finger link with his own, and he smiled.

Maybe he did.

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