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requie-blog · 6 years

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right, so, old meta from old blog, but honestly i can’t see myself writing this any better than i did back then, so?

While it’s not a headcanon that I can apply into my writing, it deals heavily with Ace’s character, namely with the actual weight of one of his character traits——one that much of the fandom and fanon interpretations really reduce to just a quirk, when actually it’s hinting at something more symbolic. And yeah, that’s the fact that he likes chocobos.

Because there is a reason, one with plenty of literary merit that gets overlooked in its english adaptation, that this detail is included and is so heavily connected to Ace’s character in particular. It is not merely chance nor coincidence that it’s a central aspect of Izana’s relationship with Ace——it is, in fact, critical to the point that Ace’s friendship with him attempts to draw out into the open.

Now, in the world of Orience, chocobos are not seen with the same characteristic fondness that we’re used to them having in many other Final Fantasy titles. It’s not like they’re hated across the board——many NPC’s, ergo civilians, in various towns remark on how cute chocobos are or how they make nice pets, but within the Peristylium, the attitude taken toward them is very, very different. They are, first and foremost, equipment for the military, a means for transportation, devoid of feelings or thoughts. They are seen as replaceable objects, and that same ideology is an expectation and standard held by all the people who work within the Peristylium itself, perhaps with an exception of the chocobokeeps. During Izana’s initial meeting with Ace in the light novel, the cadet remarks that he’s, “the exception. [He’s] often told ‘It’s unreasonable to shower the army’s equipment with affection’.” Prior to this, Izana states that soldiers rarely visit the stables for this reason, especially simply for reasons to pet or feed their trusted partners——people like themselves are a minority, faced with plenty of scrutiny from their peers. Why this matters, when the classes at this point are treated as separate entities from the military is also elaborated on:

“In other words, the cadets were not ordinary students, but existed alongside the military personnel and civil officials. The classes were one organization that always mobilized together, so the relationships between comrades in the classes were extremely close. If he denied those classmates’ opinions, then his standing among them would also decline.”

Which is something we see in the game, but is also a huge concept that we see in Japanese society as a whole outside the game. There’s a really excellent post on the matter using the framework of Persona 4 to explain how it exists in reality (see here.), but for the aspect of time, I’ll hit the highlights. Essentially, in Japan, like in Rubrum, people are taught to view themselves as part of a machine, so to speak. Each individual is a cog in the machine, and therefore unless everybody works together, the machine itself will fail or jam——as such, it is looked down upon to be different from other people in a way that inconveniences the people around you. The individualistic sort of traits that Westerners tend to pride themselves on are more openly found in certain hobbies for them, including gaming, where it becomes an escape to be more unique. Otherwise, it’s best to behave accordingly and not do anything that might bother anybody else. Now, take that framework and apply it to the individual classes within the Peristylium Suzaku, and it draws a near-perfect parallel regarding behavior: those who score lowly, don’t commit themselves to extracurricular activities or clubs, or are generally negative are not popular and are, henceforth, bullied.

So, what does this have to do with Ace’s love of chocobos? Well, give me a second to really explain where Class Zero actually stands in regards to the other classes.

We’re led under false pretenses to believe that Class Zero is beloved by the entirety of the Peristylium for around half the game, excluding many members of Parliament, if we simply proceed with the story and don’t actually talk to the other cadets. However, at the game’s beginning, Class Zero is new and because of their status and adoptive mother being the head of the Sorcery Department, are cast as the most important and powerful class, knocking Class First down a peg (a fact that their moogle is never happy about and constantly challenges you on) seemingly overnight. Now, this doesn’t have an effect until later on in the plot, when Class Zero is branded as traitors and more and more cadets are asking if they’re really all that and so strong, but that’s because in those initial battles, after Class Zero saved the Peristylium, they had no reason to complain. Class Zero was contributing in a beneficial way to the whole of the country and the war effort——it isn’t until they start becoming an “inconvenience” that the hatred and bullying towards them becomes a problem.

And we even witness just how fickle the Peristylium cadets are about it, given in the final chapter when Class Zero returns after defeating Qator in Ingram and everything has gone to shit because of Finis, these other kids are outright screaming the blame at Class Zero from the moment they arrive——blaming them wholly for the end of the world despite the fact they never did anything other than what they were told. These cadets are bullies, unable to do much other than speak slanderous remarks in the face of Class Zero’s proven strength. And what’s worse, they don’t even care if Class Zero actually dies like they’re telling them to do, because they believe they won’t remember them anyway thanks to the Crystal’s Blessing. At that point, it’s more desirable for Class Zero to die and make everything better with their absence from these cadets’ perspective.

In essence, Class Zero is only the top class in name alone. As far as the majority of the cadets believe, these new kids are deplorables if they don’t properly contribute and make everybody’s lives easier, and they only got their high ranking status because of Arecia Al-Rashia handing it to them on a silver platter, which makes it that much more annoying to them. And as we know incredibly well from the incidents at both Ingram and Big Bridge, to boot, Parliament has no issue with using Class Zero as pawns for their own gain, keeping them only as long as they’re useful and ready to leave them for dead the second they get the chance.

Starting to sound familiar? It should——because it’s the same way the Peristylium staff and cadets treat the chocobos: like tools to be disposed of and replaced with no concern for their emotional or psychological states. And within Class Zero stands a greater example of all the societal constraints we see above in Ace himself. He behaves differently to receive the approval of his classmates and streamline their tasks as a class, and also on the larger scale in order to properly fit in among his fellow cadets——even though he doesn’t actually agree with their views or actions. He does still challenge the established norm, as Cater remarks that a “red-mantled cadet was seen at the chocobo stables” in annoyance, claiming that they were, essentially, sullying Class Zero’s name by doing so, and though she doesn’t realize it herself, there’s little belief that the cadet is anybody other than Ace to the player. But, regardless of his attempts to escape and enjoy the things that make him happy, he does ultimately cave to societal expectations of himself, out of a desire to maintain the bonds with his allies and, dare he even call them his friends, even if it means sacrificing a bit of his identity to do so.

Ace, himself, however, is also the symbolic equivalent of the chocobos. In particular, he’s the symbolic equivalent of a chocobo from his own past.

“When he was very young, Ace saved a Chocobo chick he found that had been abandoned by its mother. Unfortunately, the chick later died due to illness. Even though Ace has little recollection of this, he still feels a pinch of sentiment for the lively creatures.” — Crimson Codex; Ace’s character page; Page 2.

Now, whether you personally consider the events in Chapter 8 to be abandonment or not isn’t really relevant for debate. Arecia Al-Rashia did leave her children on their own to combat the events of Finis and to complete the final pages of the Akashic Record from within the dungeon Pandemonium. She was nowhere to be found, and she had little intention of interfering in the game’s cycle, as she hadn’t done in every cycle prior. In this cycle, the Lulusath Arbiter (Rursus Arbiter, for the localization people) is defeated only once Class Zero is saved from death’s door by Machina and Rem using their l’Cie abilities to empower them from within their respective crystals. And as we all know pretty well, this only saved them temporarily from death, as with their own phantoma expended, Class Zero succumbed to their wounds shortly after the battle once they returned to their classroom. At which the revived/freed Machina and Rem enter the room and, suddenly, overcome with grief, Machina manages to forgive them for Izana’s death and the two of them carry the memory of their fallen classmates forward. Despite the twist on the ending, it’s an intentionally similar narrative in the baseline of how the events play out.

Obviously, Ace is not an actual chocobo, though, he does possess many similar traits to them: steadfast loyalty, strength, speed, a desire to remain with others of its kind like family or friends, and a pretty similar color scheme to the chocobo from Chocobo Dungeon (that chocobo even has a satchel like Ace does!). It’s the sheer weight that this particular character trait holds in the overarching world of Orience, however, that makes it important to note, because the birds themselves hold such a particular reputation that it’s hard to believe it’s merely coincidence. Ace’s character is constantly put in comparison or in juxtaposition to the birds he likes (and admires) so much, yet we never see the same compassion from similar individuals, except Machina. It’s a smaller detail that, when looked alongside its entire whole, begins to connect the patches that seem irrelevant and fill the voids in this game’s already incredibly elaborate tapestry.

#♠. ( ooc. )#♠. akashic record. ( headcanon. )#[ going back through my old blog for inspo stuff keeps revealing the good gems... ]

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ks-caster · 4 years

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Meet Your Maker

Fandom: One Piece

Characters: Portgas D Ace, Portgas D Rogue, Gol D Roger

Summary: When Ace is thrown into Impel Down, he is immediately sent to the lowest level to await execution. Surrounding him are some of the world’s worst criminals - and in the cell next door, a woman with a mysterious past. When his ill-fated rescue is about to go south, the strange woman appears at his defense - and says that she’s his long-lost mother! Ace’s family history is not what he’s been told, but now the truth comes out...

Part of Chapter 1 and my outline are available under the cut.

Bad Things Shouldn’t Happen to Good People

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, but nevertheless they do.

Gol Roger was born in Logue Town, a thriving trade center on the Red Line continent. His family lived in a little apartment on eighth and seventeenth; his mother played second violin in the local orchestra, and his father taught astronomy. He liked drawing pictures and listening to his dad tell the stories behind the names of stars and going to the market with his mother to pick out food. He was four, and he was content.

When the Bad Men came, he knew something was wrong instantly; they smiled and offered the children candy and said they were having a party on their boat for all the good little boys and girls. He told his friends not to go, but they wouldn’t listen. They’d told him not to tell their parents, because it would spoil all the fun, and he didn’t want to be teased for being a snitch, so he didn’t tell anyone.

He followed after them at a distance because he was worried, hiding himself (badly) in alleys and behind lamp posts. The other children got on the Bad Men’s ship, and Roger waited on the dock, nervously toddling back and forth until a pair of unfamiliar arms scooped him up and covered his mouth so he couldn’t yell.

-0-

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, but that’s not the way things work, is it?

The phrase “Human Trafficking” was a little too sophisticated for Gol Roger as he sat uncomfortably in a cell packed with other crying children as the ship made its way far, far away from Logue Town, gathering a new dozen children every couple of days. Through the four months at sea, their group grew from thirty or so to over two-hundred, and Roger quickly grew used to feeling hungry and frightened, as well as the constant background noise of the other children—mostly the newest group—whimpering or sobbing.

He'd just started to read in school—sounding out basic words and such—and his readers were the Tales of Captain Adventure. He’d had a few in his backpack when he was taken, and he read them until his little sweaty fingers wore the edges of the pages ragged. Sometimes he’d read them aloud to the other kids in his cell, and only then would the background noise lower as the human cargos of the hold tuned their hearing in to the little boy’s voice.

When he ran out of stories, he started to make up his own. They weren’t very good, but some of the others would request that he tell them. It was nice to realize that he could quite the other children’s fears just with his voice, although if he was too loud or made them laugh too much, the Bad Men would come down to shut them up, shouting at them or hitting those closest to the doors of their cells.

One day a mean-looking woman in a formal kimono with a huge bubble over her head boarded the ship, and they were all made to scrub themselves clean with cold water and scratchy rags, then line up on the deck. She never spoke, but glanced over each child, and either pointed at them or waved them off with her index finger. The ones she waved off were immediately removed to below decks; the ones to whom she pointed—twenty-three in total, with Roger included—were led down the gang plank and into a large wagon.

Twenty-three pairs of lungs worked overtime, twenty-three hearts thundered in tiny chests.

Roger swallowed, then took a deep breath.

“Have you ever heard the story of Captain Adventure and the Evil Scuba Diver?” he began. The lady’s weird headgear had made him think of it, and apparently he wasn’t the only one—the tension broke with a few hushed chuckles.

“It starts like this: Captain Adventure was on vacation after a long day of saving the world. He was lying on a beach, watching on the ocean, but suddenly…”

-0-

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, but the sun burned Roger’s skin on the long days working in the fields, and exhaustion wore him to the ground by nightfall, he didn’t have the energy to wonder why his karma was so bad. It wasn’t until a full year had passed that he realized he’d missed his birthday—he knew it was in the summer, but that was it. His mom and dad would always surprise him—he wasn’t expected to remember the date until he was older.

“For Captain Adventure’s Birthday,” he muttered as he dragged his hoe through the hard, dry dirt, “his crew decided to surprise him with a cake and presents. But danger lurks around all—”

“If you’ve got time to talk, you’re not workin’ hard enough!” the field supervisor growled, whacking him across the head. He clenched his teeth and kept his footing.

‘Danger lurks around all corners,’ he continued silently, gripping the hoe and working it against the ground as hard as he could.

-0-

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, but Roger was making the best of a raw deal, that was for certain. He had a growth spurt when he was about eight, and after the first few summers, his skin baked to a medium brown with a spattering of freckles and neither paled nor burned. His muscles filled in and he grew in strength, and eventually learned more about his surroundings.

He and about three-hundred other slaves were owned by the T’hlisi family—one of the 19 Celestial Dragon families. Although human trafficking was illegal in most parts of the world, it was fairly common knowledge that the Celestial Dragons were an exception to that. The T’hlisi family had eighteen members, ranging from the family’s patriarch down to his great-grandchildren. They were ridiculously wealthy, with gold and jewels and miles of farms dedicated solely to producing only the highest quality food just for them.

He didn’t get much chance to practice his reading, but he’d squirrel away scraps of paper or bark and little bits of charcoal and practice his letters by the light of the moon. Captain Adventure had gotten him through the worst parts of his life, so with what little free will he had left, he pursued creating and recording stories. By the time he was about thirteen, he could carry a barrel of water on one shoulder, balance well enough to run along the rafters of a half-built barn, and write two or three pages before falling asleep at night. He thought he was doing pretty well, considering.

That was, until he collapsed one day.

When it became apparent that no amount of shouting or beating or his fellow farm-hands trying desperately to rouse him would get him back on his feet, the overseers allowed an old man named Gonju to haul him over his hunched shoulders and hobble away with him. He regained consciousness after a few hours, drank some water, ate a crust of bread, and reported back to work in the morning.

The guards demanded that he make up for his absence by doing double work, and amused themselves throughout the day by tripping him and spoiling his work. He resolved to base his newest story villains off of them that night, but by the time he returned to the hut he shared with nine others, he was too tired to think straight. The next morning, his whole body was seized with crippling pains, and he couldn’t even roll over unassisted, let alone rise from his pallet. Tycho, a hunched old man who’d been a doctor until he’d displeased the T’hlisi patriarch, took a look at him and asked him a series of questions once the pain had faded to the point where he could speak.

With each answer, the doctor’s expression grew more grave, the lines on his face deepening and his shoulder sinking.

-0-

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, and on a badness scale of 1 to 10, +XYZ+ syndrome was about a 97. He hadn’t understood it all, but the description of how he was going to die was burned into his brain—a festering wound on his every conscious thought, which he traced over and over, irritating it when he tried to soothe it. Without medication, Tycho expected him to last about two years, in ever-increasing levels of pain and immobilization. If he’d been able to access the medication, he might make it another ten, but said medicine was prohibitively expensive in and around Mariejois, even for people who earned income.

The next two months were a blur of exhaustion, pain, and despair. Roger collapsed six more times, and began to think that the resulting bruises would become dyed permanently into his skin. He’d never been heavy, but somehow he started losing weight—his body started to wane into the realm of spindly and fragile.

Between his illness and the guards’ harsh treatment of him, he might have expired by the end of the year, having lost the will to fight. After all, even if he could resist the disease, what was there left for him, in life? A few more decades of hard labor before dying of exhaustion and age, his body tossed into an unmarked grave? What was the point of struggling to survive?

Luckily for our story’s hero, sometimes the littlest things can have an incredible impact on the world. One day, his legs gave out from under him, and he fell like a stone, his face pressed into the dry earth. It didn’t even really phase him anymore, so he lay there in a state of detached disinterest, letting the pain wash over him as he waited for more when the guards noticed him. But this time, the head guard barked at his underlings, “he’s practically dead, leave him.”

He lay there, eyes following a string of ants

-Roger decides to rob the Celestial Dragons, because really, what does he have to lose?

Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, but as any fool will tell you, diamonds are only formed under immense pressure.

Original Outline:

Prologue: Two people, a man and a woman, sit slightly awkwardly at a restaurant. The woman says that she’ll tell him the story, but not all of it. After all, spoiling the true nature of the One Piece might jeopardize the Great Pirate Era, and what sort of a way is that to honor Gold Roger’s dying act? No, I can’t tell you the whole story. But I can give you the beginning. And I can give you the end. You think you know this story, but I promise you don’t.

Gol Roger, a sweet, friendly farm who is generally a rule-follower and loves making up and telling stories—the sort you imagine growing a long beard and sitting around in a rocking chair in fifty years, amusing his grandchildren—is kidnapped by slave-traders when they raid Logue Town. He’s sold to the Celestial Dragoons, and within a few years is diagnosed with a terminal illness. While there’s no cure, there is medicine that will prolong his life; however it is extremely expensive, and as a slave he can’t amass that kind of money. Bad things shouldn’t happen to good people, but the world is a cruel place. The initial “D” (basically meaning “defective”) is slapped onto his identification.

Meanwhile, in the local Celestial Dragon’s palace, Princess Ashura is bored and lonely. One night she’s on her way back to her room from the library extremely late, and she finds a boy who broke into the palace. She says dispassionately that if he’s found, he’ll be killed. He responds that he’s going to die anyway, so he’s not afraid. Ashura makes him a deal—she’ll give him money and gold, whatever he came to steal, but he has to take her on an adventure.

Gol and Ashura sneak out of the palace, he goes to the doctor, and Ashura has a Prince Siddhartha experience where she sees the suffering of the world. Gol promises to take her to his favorite spot in town—the tavern by the water, where the deep-sea traders come to tell their stories. Gol also tells her about a book he read, about someone named Captain Adventure, which spurs plenty of other traders to tell their hilarious and improbable stories.

After they leave—with Ashura feeling sad towards the world but warm towards Gol—they are chased and cornered by her father’s private guard, an elite group of devil-fruit users who protect the royal family. Ashura tries to protect Gol by saying that she paid him to take her out of the palace and show her around, but they say that they’ll still take him before her father. She remarks that he’ll have Gol killed, and he’s her only friend. The guards say they have no choice. Just then a ship passes by, and Ashura asks Gol if he can swim. She pushes them both into the ocean, knowing that the guards won’t be able to follow, and only one of them has a power that could stop her, and it won’t work on more than one person at a time. Ashura is pulled back and returned to the castle. Gol is pulled aboard the ship, and dizzily notices the jolly roger before he passes out.

Five years pass. During this time:

Gol becomes the cabin boy for the pirates, who are cruel to him, but he learns from them, and eventually escapes and forms his own crew. His fighting style is extremely daredevil, because he’s 100% down for dying, and every day he lives is sort of a bonus. This makes him learn quickly and become a formidable opponent. He says that the “D” in his name means that Death stands by his side, so nothing can kill him unless his dear friend Death wishes it. He also gains the catchphrase “I’ve got an ace up my sleeve.”

Ashura begins speaking out against the Celestial Dragons’ treatment of the commoners, and as punishment her father shuns her, forbidding the other members of her family from speaking to her. The servants all love her now because she’s been campaigning for their rights, but some of them are executed for speaking with her, and after that, she refuses to speak to them to keep them safe. One, named Lorna, tries to comfort her while she’s crying, and is also executed.) Isolated, she spends all her time in the library, building herself a blanket fort and taking all of her meals in there. She reads nearly all the books, and while the staff can’t talk to her, they sometimes bring her more books. She learns all kinds of things, and even invents a better, faster way to navigate—the logue pose. (At the time, the only way to reliably navigate the Grand Line was with Land Birds—relations of the South Birds, which always fly towards land, but are impossible to breed in captivity, and don’t have long life-spans. They’re hunted to extinction before Luffy is born.

Five years later, there’s another break-in; Gol D. Roger arrives with a flourish and tells Ashura that he still owes her that adventure. She happily goes with him, the servants, who are loyal to her, choose to conceal her disappearance (possibly they reached out to Gol as he gained infamy, begging him to rescue her before she loses herself entirely from isolation). THIS CHAPTER IS ALSO WRITTEN AND IS IN THIS POST AT THE END OF THE OUTLINE. In order to conceal her identity, Ashura shaves off her distinctive long red hair.

What “Rogue” lacks in real-world skills, she makes up for in both her general book knowledge and her complete willingness to fling herself heedlessly into danger, just like Gol. They make quite the pair, and she soaks up experiences like a sponge. She decides to go by the name Rogue, because it sounds bad-ass and not at all noble. They get into it with Monkey Garp, who is just a captain at the time.

Gol’s crew decide to go through the Grand Line, because no one’s ever done it and comeback before; it’s too hard to navigate. Rogue’s Logue Pose (note: Logue Pose and Logue Town could also be called Rogue Pose and Rogue Town, based on Japanese spelling using R and L.) They have many great adventures, thieving from the wealthy, paying for Gol’s medicine, living the high life and telling stories wherever they go. They differ from normal pirates in that they tend to steal only from the wealthy, and that they wind up saving as many people as they rob, mostly for the lolz. The World Government becomes concerned when they realize that the news traveling from island to island is making the people of different nations realize when their rulers suck and also get the idea that they might have more power than they do. There’s also a rise of copycat criminals—adventurer pirates who rob from the haves but champion the have-nots.

Mention Ashura tapping the ash into the crystal tabako-bon** on the table; a tabako-bon is basically the ash tray that goes with said pipe. Obviously she has to cut the story short, in order not to spoil the One Piece.

Edward Newgate is about to be executed. He recognizes Rogue in the crowd and knows that if she’s there, that means there’s a plan. Even though the floor drops out from under his feet and he swings from the rope before someone manages to cut him down, he isn’t at all afraid. Later, he and his crew, along with Gol and his crew, run from a harried looking Garp and the Marines, and we get to see them interact a bit—we note that Rogue has a shaved head, Gol wears a straw hat, and Gol says that “Death will have to wait a bit for you, old friend.”

Gol’s health has deteriorated. He compensates with Haki and his reputation, but his crew—and more importantly Rogue—know that he perhaps only has a year or two left. Rogue becomes pregnant, and Gol tells her he wants to die as a pirate, not as an invalid. After a while, Gol is captured, and Rogue visits him in prison. They decide that this is the end—and he says he’s got an Ace up his sleve; one more adventure. She also says that if her family discovers their child, they’ll stop at nothing to have him killed. She has decided to fake her own death, entrust their baby to someone else, and go home and try and take down the government from inside. Rogue says goodbye, and then heavily medicates herself so that her child won’t be born with the same disease as Gol.

After Gol’s death, the Great Pirate Era kicks off. Ace is born, Garp takes him, and Red-Foot Zeff helps Rogue—now Ashura again—fake her own death. For ten years, her loyal servants have been hiding her disappearance. She slips back in, lets her hair grow back, and then asks for an audience with her father, to beg his forgiveness. She plays the part of a loyal daughter, while plotting a coup, discrediting her siblings, and generally acting Lelouche-like. Every year, on the anniversary, she visits Red Foot Zeff’s restaurant, and quietly inquires about her son.

Ten years prior to Ace’s imprisonment, Ashura’s betrayal is discovered and she’s thrown into Impel Down to be tortured until she gives up the names of everyone who helped her. However, she naturally won’t do so. Ivanov and the New Kama folks rescue her at one point, but then other prisoners are being tortured/killed for refusing to say where she’d gone, so even though she’s exhausted and in pain and terrified, she returns and pretends she broke out on her own but didn’t get very far.

The guards at Impel Down place Ace and (the fish guy??) in Ashura’s cell, knowing that you cannot torture someone who has nothing left to lose. She’s lost track of time while imprisoned, so upon hearing only Ace’s first name and seeing his age, she thinks he’s too old to be her son.

In the present, Whitebeard & Co. are trying to save Ace from execution with little success, only for a stranger in a long cloak to appear seemingly from nowhere, save him, turn the tide of the battle, and vanish. Everyone speculates about the Mystery Lady. Whitebeard figures out who she is and is horrified.

Ace doesn’t know what to think, after learning the truth about his mother. Sanji recognized her as Zeff’s old friend and investor, and they contact Zeff, who comes clean about his involvement, and Ashura/Rogue’s past. Ace wants to speak with his mother, and asks if Zeff can arrange a meeting without ruining her plan.

Epilogue: Four months later, Rogue comes to Baratié as usual, only this time it’s to meet Ace. It’s emotional. Near the end of the scene, she says “I can tell you the beginning, and I can tell you the end, but if you’re searching for the One Piece, then the middle will have to stay my little secret.”

Second Break-In Chapter:

Ashura thumbed listlessly through a reference book on predatory freshwater fish as she slowly paced along the length of one of the aisles of the royal library, eyes not really taking in any of the words or careful illustrations on the page.

She’d grown in her five years of solitude, and since she hadn’t had occasion to be seen by anyone, the only new clothes she’d ordered were pajamas. Tonight she wore loose, baggy pants, carpet slippers that made no sound on the clean tiles, and a thick, comfortable robe over her shirt. She looked decidedly un-princess-like—and that was without considering the nest of blankets and pillows that occupied a corner in the Maritime History section and had served as her bed for the last few years.

She absentmindedly tucked a strand of her hair into the ribbon-knotted birds’ nest at the back of her head, making a mental note to take it down and wash it sometime this week.

At first, she didn’t respond to the approaching footsteps; after five years, she’d gotten quite skilled at ignoring the slaves and other castle inhabitants who weren’t allowed to speak to her. However, the intruder didn’t head for the trash can to empty it or the bookshelves to reorganize them or even her bedding nest to professionally—and she sometimes imagined a bit affectionately—put it in some semblance of order. That was her first indication that something was different—the second one was when she looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows, noticed the height of the moon, and realized that it was three in the morning.

Slowly, her eyes descended the glass to view her own reflection—shabby, unwashed and mildly crazed-looking—and then slid to the side to glance at the reflection of the man behind her.

He was tall, and broad in the shoulder, with shaggy dark hair and a sword hanging at his side. The stranger made a reasonably imposing figure, and she wondered with a detached sort of interest if he was there to kidnap her for ransom.

Snapping her book quietly shut, she reached out without looking and unerringly returned it to its place on the shelf, before pivoting to face the intruder.

“Hello,” she greeted him simply.

“Hello, Princess,” he responded warmly, and from the first syllable she knew him, even five years later, even with the unnatural amount of gravel in his maturing voice.

“Roger?” she whispered incredulously. “What are you doing here!” she demanded as he grinned at her. “Do you know what will happen if you’re caught?”

“Actually, I do,” he reminded her. “And in answer to your first question, I’m here to kidnap you, so let’s get going.”

After five years of almost no human interaction, the flood of unfamiliar emotions was too strong and too jumbled for her to sort it out into what it all meant, but her knees went weak and her pulse thundered in her ears. She didn’t realize that she’d collapsed until her bodyweight was resting against Roger’s chest and he was holding her up while holding an urgent-sounding conversation with someone else… who else?

Coming back to her senses, she turned her head and focused her eyes to see two members of the Imperial Guard, one looking over his shoulder while saying something about sentry schedules and the other unfolding a pile of cloth that looked like a guard’s cloak. She swallowed experimentally, biting down on her tongue to see if she was awake. Roger shouldn’t be in the Imperial library and the Imperial Guard should not be calmly discussing escape plans with him and she should probably be able to stand unsupported, yet none of those things were happening. Her tongue hurt. This was definitely real.

“What…” she got out blearily, before another person hobbled onto the scene.

“Your majesty,” _NAME_ greeted her as her sense of gravity returned and she got her feet under her at last.

“_NAME_,” she whispered, fear rushing through her veins, clearing out whatever she’d been feeling before and sharply defining the scene. Roger released her and stepped back, still discussing his exit strategy with the guards in low voices. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Your majesty,” _NAME_ responded, “We were the ones who called the pirate Gold Roger here.”

“Go—?” she choked out in confusion before thinking about how his name could be read. “What do you suppose will happen when my father discovers I am missing without any sign of breakage? He’ll lay the blame on all of you for failing to stop me—protect me, whatever.”

“Not if he doesn’t discover your disappearance,” one of the guards piped up helpfully, draping the unfolded cloak over her shoulders.

“And when he eventually does, and learns of your deception? Because he will; maybe not now, maybe not this year, but he will.”

“Princess Ashura,” _NAME_ said firmly, her tone suddenly dark and urgent, “we have a plan, I promise. But in order to implement it, you must escape, tonight, with this man. Cut your hair, change your name, leave the past and all its nightmares behind you.”

Ashura’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as her brain finally caught up.

“You’re plotting a revolution,” she surmised.

“And there is no need for you to be collateral damage,” _NAME_ agreed.

“I can help—I want to…” she started, but Roger cut her off.

“Not like this, you can’t.” She whipped around to glare up at him—in the last five years, he’d surpassed her in height. “You’re little more than a prisoner here, Ashura,” he reminded her. “I think it’s evident by now that they won’t listen to you, and when you push for change, they just hide you away so they don’t have to listen to you.”

Ashura exhaled silently, knowing that he was right. As she was now, a lonely teenager in a library unable to talk to anyone because it would mean their execution, she wasn’t exactly useful to anyone.

“Where are we going?” she asked Roger, buttoning the cloak shut and pulling up the hood.

“Everywhere,” he announced with a broad grin, “but we’ll start with the Trade Harbor up north—about two hours by rowboat. There’s a merchant there named Sully whose ship is equipped to make it through the Calm Belt and into the East Blue—my pirate ship is waiting for us there.”

“Your pirate ship?” Ashura checked as the guards led them out into the deserted hall, their measured tread unusually noisy against the flagstones, while her slippers and Roger’s soft boots made almost no sound. Anyone listening would think it was just a couple of guards doing their job, nothing to wake up for.

“My pirate ship,” Roger breathed, pulling another guard cloak over his head. “She’s not much, but she’s home. And she goes on plenty of adventures.”

“Good enough for me,” Ashura murmured before falling silent and following the men out the side gate that led to the canal.

“Keep your heads covered for at least the next two miles,” one of the guards cautioned them. “We use these boats routinely for sentry work; no one should question you.”

“Thanks guys,” Roger grinned, taking the oars and settling them into the rowlocks.

“Wait a minute,” Ashura muttered, struggling to maneuver the second set of oars from to bottom of the boat to the rowlocks without hitting either of them in the legs, “why are they giving you instructions? How’d you get in if not this same way?”

“I swam up the freshwater feed to the pump room in the basement,” Roger explained casually, as if it was as simple a task as rowing the little boat, which he was propelling at a comfortable professional speed while Ashura continued to struggle with the oars. “Then I climbed out the window-well and up the outside building to the guardroom where those fellows were waiting for me.” He shipped his oars for a moment to guide the ends of hers out from under the seat he occupied.

“How?” she exclaimed, trying to mentally recalculate the length of the swim that she’d already calculated and declared humanly impossible. “That’s four-hundred meters—the human record is two hundred!”

“Let’s just say I had an ace up my sleeve,” he responded with a conspiratorial grin, but then paused, and looked down at where she gripped her paddles.

“Let me check your hands for a minute,” he murmured, and she paused and held her palms up for his inspection. “Oh, never mind,” he corrected when his eyes fell on the rough, hardened skin. “Where’d you get the callouses?” he asked in surprise.

“Weight room, first floor,” she explained simply. “Where’d you get the pirate ship?”

“Well, it was a spice merchant’s ship until me and my guys took it off their hands, along with all their gold and merchandise. She’s called the Green Serpent*. She’s a Clipper, so not great for cargo; we have to drop off our haul pretty often, but she makes up for it in speed. She can sail circles around the Navy.

Um, is something wrong?” he cut off suddenly, and Ashura tried to feel her face from the inside to figure out what he was talking about. She’d been caught up in the way his face looked—the big, excited grin that reminded her of when they’d first met, and he’d talked so animatedly about the Captain Adventure. The way he talked was so beautiful it hurt…

Oh, that was why. There were tears running down her face for the first time in she wasn’t sure how long. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry since the disaster with Lorna. She sniffed and cleared her throat.

“I’m fine,” she rasped. “I’m fine… I’m just—” words wouldn’t come. How could she possibly express how agonizingly lonely she’d been? How happy it made her that there were people who would come for her, that suddenly she wasn’t alone anymore?

“Excited?” Roger suggested with a shrug, giving her an easy out.

“Yeah!” she exclaimed gratefully, wiping her eyes on her cloak and continuing to row. “So, we have two hours—tell me all about where you’ve been.”

-0-

The Dance-Powder** merchant’s ship Roger steered them towards was a Penteconter, propelled almost exclusively by huge oars, making it perfect to travel unmolested the normally impassable calm belt. Roger had purchased a large supply of Dance Powder, along with passage for two people; the captain and crew’s silence came with the package, as was typical of Dance Powder merchants.

“Being able to manufacture our own fresh water helps us stay at sea longer with less weight to store,” Roger explained as he demonstrated how to use a straight razor. Ashura worked shaving soap through what little hair she hadn’t hacked off yet while she watched. “Plus, we can mix it with a couple other ingredients and create heavy storms if we’re in a pinch; the Serpent will sail right through them, but the Navy has to shorten sail, since they’re all using Galleons. We can win a lot of sea battles without even firing a shot.

“Okay, that’s about all there is to it,” he added, washing the last of the shaving soap from his face, rinsing off the razor and handing it to her. She carefully held it at precisely 30 degrees from her skin as he’d shown her, and began to rid herself of the last of her hair. She knew shaving her head was a little extreme, but then, so was running away from the palace to join a pirate gang.

“What have you told them about me?” she asked.

“Not much,” he responded. “I said that I was going to rescue a friend from back home, but all they know about my home is that I grew up on a farm on the Red Line near the South Blue. None of them read _NAME_’s message, so you can basically use any back story you want.”

“Think they’ll believe librarian?” she asked with a shrug, shaving carefully near her left ear.

“Sure,” Roger shrugged. “You do have the experience for it. But how will you explain the callouses—or those thigh muscles?” Ashura smirked. Once onboard the ship she’d burned the pajamas she’d worn and both their cloaks, ridding them of any evidence of the palace. Since it was mid-summer, she’d cut off a pair of canvas trousers and rolled them up to make short-shorts—exposing unusually developed thighs for a librarian—or a princess.

“I guess the truth? I worked out a lot so that I could climb ladders more easily and carry big piles of books?”

“Well, I guess it’s not the weirdest reason I’ve heard for someone to be musclebound,” he snorted. “There was this guy we met way up North who accidentally placed first in a marathon because he was too awkward to run near anyone else, so he kept passing them.” He laughed, remembering, and Ashura watched in the mirror how he’d laugh with his whole body, wrapping his arms around his stomach and throwing his head back like he couldn’t contain it. She finished shaving and rinsed her smooth head in the sink. It was a stranger feeling than she’d expected.

“I kinda like it,” she muttered thoughtfully.

“You won’t when your head sunburns,” Roger snorted, and she rolled her eyes.

“My whole body’s going to sunburn—I haven’t been outside in five years,” she reminded him. “I doubt my head can be any worse.” Roger reached behind him and pulled a wide-brimmed straw hat from his things, tossing it with a flick of his wrist so that it settled on his friend’s now bald head.

“Well, borrow this for now,” he suggested. “Should keep the worst of it off you until your body adjusts.”

“A pirate with a straw hat?” she snickered. “Is this part of a disguise or is it actually yours?”

“It’s actually mine,” he admitted blithely. “It’s my good-luck charm, so I’ll want it back.”

“It’s an itchy good luck charm,” she complained, trying to adjust it so the straw was less irritating.

“Not as itchy as your first sunburn will be,” the young pirate retorted. “They really didn’t let you outside?” he added quietly.

“Harder to keep me under surveillance and make sure I didn’t leave or talk to anyone,” she explained coolly. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she frowned.

“Solitary confinement is a form of torture,” he muttered, and she noticed that he was clenching his fists.

“I don’t think that applies to people who have their own libraries to keep them occupied,” she assured him quickly. “It sucked, but I wouldn’t call it torture.”

“Still,” he growled, “I would have liked to punch your dad in the nose a few times.”

“Get in line, farmer boy,” she responded, a cold light in her eyes which vanished a moment later. “Anyhow, there’s going to be a revolution, remember? He’ll get his, I’m sure.”

“So,” Roger transitioned a little awkwardly, sensing that the matter was closed, “are you still going to call yourself Ashura? It’s not a common name.”

“I was thinking of Rogue,” she responded, stepping into a pair of soft leather boots and adjusting the laces to a comfortable tightness. “That’s what it’s called when someone leaves an organization and does their own thing, right? Like a rogue marine or a rogue soldier. I’m a rogue princess.”

“Rogue Princess, huh?” Roger said experimentally. “‘Rogue.’ It suits you.

“Welcome to my crew, Rogue.”

#Beth's New Year's Cleaning Queue #free to a good home #Any and all parts available for general use with credit #fanfiction #fanfic #one piece #one piece fanfiction #writing #writing ideas

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ricardosousalemos · 7 years

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Neil Young: Trans

It’s the end of the world. The sky is an ominous shade of red, and the air is thick with poisonous fumes. Some people are silhouetted with an eerie glow while others are dying of radiation poisoning. “It shoulda been me that died,” Neil Young says, riding a bike alongside actor Russ Tamblyn. Tamblyn shrugs him off, and the two make plans for the evening. Tomorrow may never come, but tonight they’ll take their dates to the drive-in, where Tamblyn begs Neil not to play his ukulele or to sing “in that high squeaky voice.” So goes the opening scene of the 1982 film Human Highway, an apocalyptic comedy written and directed by Neil Young under his long-standing nom de plume Bernard Shakey. It’s a muddled and paranoid work, filled with forced slapstick humor and wild jams with Devo. In one scene, the members of the Ohio new wave group haul toxic waste in a flatbed truck down a lonesome highway. “I don’t know what’s going on in the world today,” Devo’s Booji Boy says to himself as images of skulls flash across his bandmates’ faces, “People don’t seem to care about their fellow man.”

This is where Neil Young’s head was at the top of the ’80s. Human Highway—Young’s third picture, following the psychedelic Journey Through the Past and his quasi-concert film Rust Never Sleeps—shares a title with a song from 1978’s Comes a Time. “Take my head, and change my mind,” he sang in its chorus, “How could people get so unkind?.” With its gentle acoustic guitars and fantasies of misty mountains, “Human Highway” plays like a eulogy to a specific type of Neil Young song. The Canadian hippie who sings in a high squeaky voice about packin’ it in and buyin’ a pick-up is only one side of Young. In fact, a decade into his solo career, Neil Young had developed a reputation more like an actor, someone remembered more for the parts he played than the unifying presence behind them all. After Comes a Time, he stepped away from his role as a ’70s folk singer, with 1979’s Rust Never Sleeps introducing a decade of restless exploration. The world was getting meaner, and Neil Young was tired of being typecast as merely an observer: He wanted to take part in the madness.

Although they both speak to the increasingly uneasy state of Young’s mind, “Human Highway,” the song, never appears in Human Highway, the film. Instead, the movie is mostly soundtracked by a record called Trans, released that same year. In the film, Young gets into character by contorting his face, wearing a pair of dorky glasses, and slapping motor oil on his cheeks. On Trans, he transforms himself by setting his songs in a distant future and filtering his voice through a variety of synthesizers, most notably (and infamously) a vocoder. The warped new wave of Trans suits the movie’s otherworldly (if endearingly chintzy) backdrops. You believe that this is the music that would play in the film’s shoddy roadside diner, where Dennis Hopper cooks sausage patties and swats at radioactive, laser-pointer flies. In fact, the movie might be the best context to hear Trans—an album that’s often treated more like a symbol (for artistic reinvention, for failed experimentation, for creative self-sabotage) than an actual entry in a body of work characterized by prolificacy and versatility.

Part of what makes Neil Young’s discography so rewarding for new listeners is that it’s filled with great entry points: the classic rock radio staples with more depth than you imagined (After the Goldrush, Harvest); the intimate passages that, even after all these years, feel like uncovered secrets (Tonight’s the Night, On the Beach); and the bizarre left-turns like Trans that inspire cult fandom just for existing. And while Trans sits comfortably along with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait in a lineage of puzzling-if-fascinating failures, its mythology is only part of the appeal. Reed and Dylan always felt like provocateurs—for Dylan, even finding Jesus felt like a means of snapping back at critics. But Young’s transformations have always felt less divisive, more natural and earnest and instinctual. Even when he followed Trans with Everybody’s Rockin’, a slight collection of anti-capitalist rockabilly songs, he held the latter record in high esteem: “As good as Tonight's The Night, as far as I'm concerned,” he’s said.

Young has made similar claims about Trans. “This is one of my favorites,” he said grimly, holding the album art to the camera during a 2012 interview, “If you listen to this now, it makes a lot more sense than it did then.” Even if Trans is still confusing, it’s a point well taken. In the context of Young’s discography—rich with remakes and sequels, major reunions and minor pet projects—Trans has only grown more triumphant and singular as it’s aged. He would do new wave again, he’d mess with his voice some more, and he’d even return to the idea of full-on concept albums. But he would never make anything quite so conceptually confrontational—a challenge to even his most ardent followers’ understanding of what a Neil Young album sounds like. “If I build something up, I have to systematically tear it right down,” he’s said, referring to his penchant for moving quickly from one project to another, carrying with him few traces of the previous work. It’s remarkable, then, that Trans—an album ostensibly designed to “tear down” a specific image of Neil Young—ends up standing for exactly what’s great about him.

Like so many of Neil Young’s albums, Trans is filled with mysteries and unanswered questions (Why is his 1967 Buffalo Springfield song “Mr. Soul” on here? Why is a track called “If You Got Love” listed in the lyric sheet but not on the actual album?) It’s hard to think of an artist with as many classic albums who has wrestled so constantly against the medium: even his canonized work has a raw, unfinished quality to it. “If anything is wrong, then it’s down to the mixing,” he’s said about Trans, “We had a lot of technical problems on that record.” Fittingly, much of Trans concerns man’s fight against technology. A song called “Computer Cowboy (aka Syscrusher)” details a team of rogue computers robbing a bank, with Young’s voice zapped down to a digital squelch. In “We R in Control,” a choir of robots lists the aspects of daily life—traffic lights, the FBI, even the flow of air—in which humans no longer have a say. Thematically, these songs—with their dystopian images of a world run by screens and numbers, where humans have everything at their fingertips but remain unhappy—have aged pretty well.

It’s the sound of the record that makes it more of an ’80s relic. No matter what format you listen to the album on (and it’s still never been released on CD in the U.S.), you feel as though you’re hearing it from the tape deck of a passing car. Even with longtime collaborators like producer David Briggs, guitarist Ben Keith, and drummer Ralph Molina, these songs sound very little like Young’s timeless ’70s work. The goofier, beat-centric tracks from his previous release, 1981’s shaky Re-ac-tor, certainly set a precedent. But despite its reputation for being aggressive and inscrutable, Trans is, at its heart, a pop record. It’s filled with hooks and beats and synths informed equally by krautrock and MTV. In “Sample and Hold,” guitarist Nils Lofgren—whose solos added an element of bluesy desperation to Tonight’s the Night but would soon light up football stadiums on Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. tour—points to future hits like Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” and Oingo Boingo’s “Weird Science.” When the Trans Band played “Sample and Hold” during the album’s comically over-the-top tour—an endeavor that Young claims in Jimmy McDonough's authorized biography Shakey lost him $750,000 (“And we sold out every show,” he adds)—Neil and Nils stalk the stage with rock star charisma, trading solos and bleating into their talkboxes. In the sweet, melodic “Transformer Man,” Neil’s vocoder actually adds an element of purity to his voice, as layers of wordless choruses shower him. Listening to these songs, it’s not impossible to imagine that Trans could have maybe, possibly, in another world, been a pop hit.

But that world is in a galaxy far from this one. While the critical reception to Trans was not nearly as harsh as legend would have you think (Rolling Stone compared it to Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy; Robert Christgau gave it a higher mark than Harvest), it was a commercial dud—a rough start for the fledgling Geffen Records label, who also released Joni Mitchell’s adult contemporary turn Wild Things Run Fast the same year. Trans wasn’t the album that convinced David Geffen to sue Neil Young for making uncharacteristic records—that would be its follow-ups Everybody’s Rockin’ and Old Ways, the country record that plays like a made-for-TV adaptation of Harvest. But the idea had to be floating through David Geffen’s head when he first heard this record. At once Young’s coldest sounding album and his most vulnerable, Trans makes its flaws immediately apparent as soon as you press play—from the murky production to the mixed-bag tracklist.

When you listen to Trans, you’re really only hearing two-thirds of it. Only six of the album’s nine songs were intended for the actual project. The other three came from a different album entirely, one that concerned young love and ancient civilizations. It was to be titled Island in the Sun, and Geffen Records quickly steered him away from the concept. Album opener “Little Thing Called Love” stems from those sessions, and it’s the record’s clearest connection to Young’s more celebrated talents. Its chorus riffs on the title of one of his most beloved songs (“Only love,” he barks in a chipper tone, “Brings you the blues”) and the ensuing chord progression would eventually find a new home in the title track of 1992’s Harvest Moon. While demonstrating the fluidity of Neil’s catalog, the song also makes for a striking introduction in its own right: a singalong before the apocalypse, when human connection would become as archaic as LaserDisc copies of the Solo Trans live show are today.

The Island songs also help highlight a major theme of Trans: it’s an album about affection. At the start of the decade, Neil Young and his wife were enrolled in intensive therapy with their son Ben, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The program’s long hours slowed Young’s hectic work schedule and opened him up to writing about fatherhood. His struggles to communicate with his child and the technology that connected them inspired the lyrics of Trans and even informed the way he recorded his vocals: “You can’t understand the words, and I can’t understand my son’s words,” he explained in Shakey. In that context, Young’s naked voice in respective side-openers “Little Thing Called Love” and “Hold on to Your Love” represents the catharsis of an emotional breakthrough. You understand the words he wants you to understand—and most of them just say, “I love you.”

Even with Human Highway serving as a vehicle for the album, Trans was originally conceived with a different film project in mind. “I had a big concept,” Young said in Shakey, “All of the electronic-voice people were working in a hospital, and the one thing they were trying to do is teach this little baby to push a button.” That metaphor pops up a few times throughout the record, most squarely in “Transformer Man,” a song Young's openly dedicated to his son. “You run the show,” he sings to him, “Direct the action with the push of a button.” The Trans film might not have moved the album to the commercial heights Neil and Geffen imagined, but available evidence suggests that it would have at least made its digital world feel warmer, more grounded and productive—the qualities fans had come to expect from Young’s work. Instead, the songs would have to stand on their own, their meaning buried inside them, like a constellation of stars you have to connect based on your own perception.

Near the end of Human Highway, a concussed Young enters a long, inscrutable dream sequence in which he, among other things, gets bathed in milk, attends a desert ritual, and becomes a world-renowned rock star. When Russ Tamblyn wakes him, they celebrate the mere fact that he’s alive. For the film’s final 10 minutes, Neil lives with a newfound sense of purpose and ambition (“We could do it,” he says, “We could be rhythm and bluesers, we could go on the road!”). Even with the fiery explosion on its way to squash his dreams and reduce the world to a pile of ash, it’s a brighter ending than what Trans leaves us with. In the lost paradise of “Like an Inca,” Young envisions himself in the aftermath of a nuclear bomb, crossing the bridge to the afterlife, at once happy and sad and totally alone. It’s a fitting finale for a heavy album, one whose only brief glimmers of hope come from our connection to one another. “I need you to let me know that there’s a heartbeat/Let it pound and pound,” Young sings in “Computer Age.” His voice is masked beyond recognition, but the pulse—steady and wild—is unmistakably his own.

#reviews-albums

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littleyappydog · 7 years

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Chocolate Box: Round 2

Dear writer,

Yay! Fanfic exchanges! I love these so much! I also love chocolate, and exploring ‘ships (and genships) among some of my favourite fictional people through the work of fellow fans. You’re all so awesome, and you bring me great joy.

Thank you so much for writing a gift fic for me! I hope you have as much fun as I know I will. If you have already landed on some ideas, please feel free to pick them up and run with them! I have included some guidelines/prompts below for my requests, as well as some Do Not Wants (DNWs). But in terms of the prompts/ideas, please feel free to ignore them completely, or to just use them as a rough guideline. These may also spark some even more awesome ideas of your own!

I like to think I’m a pretty easy recipient to please, and apart from a few Do Not Wants (DNWs) I think I am. I honestly love fanfics and fanworks in all shapes and forms. I love the community of it all, and the love that goes into fanworks. So I honestly will enjoy and be thrilled to receive anything at all in these fandoms!

My DNWs are: A/B/O; BDSM; D/s; non/dub-con; adultery (I will happily accept spouses/families being handwaved away to avoid this); incest; characters being presented as poly/ace/demisexual/trans/etc when they are not in canon, emotional/sexual/financial abuse; unequal relationships featuring a serious imbalance of power due to position/age/financial position (eg: a teacher abusing their student; a boss creeping on their colleague that they directly supervise at work. This may be relevant to my Back to the Future request below).

Onto the fandoms!

Request 1: Back to the Future (film series)

Ship: Emmett “Doc” Brown/Marty McFly

I've loved this movie franchise since I was little. Oh, Marty! What are you up to as an adult? And I admit it, I'd love to see him reunite with Doc. And I do slash them, although I do have serious issues with Doc and Marty being a couple before Marty is of age. So please don’t do that. I also don’t think Doc would be the one to make the first move: I think that would very firmly lie in Marty’s hands, and that it fits his character that he would make the first move anyhow.

Does Marty travel back in time again and meet Doc as a young man, perhaps with Doc and Marty being the same age? Does the series end differently, with Doc ending up with Marty instead? (Perhaps Doc travels forward in the future to be with Marty, or ends up with Marty when Marty is an adult?) Does Doc travel forward in time to visit Marty as an old man, and then realise he needs to travel back because Marty needs his help, or because Marty always loved him?

Flashbacks to Marty’s childhood or earlier teenage years, or any glimpse into the future would be great, too! How did Marty first meet Doc? How did Doc feel when he first saw Marty in the 1970s or 80s, knowing (in the Lone Pine Mall timeline, at least, Doc knew) that he and Marty were destined to be friends? How did the 1950s Doc feel about Marty?

Does Marty live in the 2016 of our timeline? Or, where he lives, is Jaws 19 a thing? Is Marty a rockstar? A musician? An accountant? A time traveller with Doc? Did he marry Jennifer? Are they divorced? What has happened to Clara, Jules and Verne? Do they even exist in this fic, or is it set in an alternate timeline?

I'm happy with Doc and Marty being presented as friends/found family, but would prefer to see them written as a couple, or that they are at least heading in that direction. I love happy (or at least hopeful) endings to stories, and I’m a sucker for hurt/comfort and loving, caring touches (both during sex and just in general, everyday life). If you'd like to write porn, or not write porn, I'm happy with both. I do prefer emotional sex over anything rough, please, and if the sex is fun and light with an emotional foundation, I'm a happy camper.

Request 2: Zootopia

Ship: Judy Hopps/Nick Wilde

These two are just wonderful! I love their relationship: it's deep and emotional and based on a solid foundation of friendship.

And I ship them. Am I concerned this movie might have turned me into a furry? Eh, I've been in fandom too long to care about that!

I'd love to find out what these two are up to after the movie, or between them cracking the big case and Nick's graduation into the police. Would I like to see romance between these two? Yep! But I’d love to see their strong friendship as that relationship’s foundation.

How do they get together? Who admits their feelings to who? Do they both spend time stressing when they realise how they feel about the other person? Are they terrified to admit it in case it ruins the friendship and work partnership? How does the other one find out about how they feel?

I love happy (or at least hopeful) endings to stories, and I’m a sucker for hurt/comfort and loving, caring touches (both during sex and just in general, everyday life).

If you'd like to write porn, or not write porn, I'm happy with both. I do prefer emotional sex over anything rough, please, and (particularly in het sex scenes) I like to read about a man who knows how to show a lady a good time, and who uses his whole body (especially his tongue, both with words and the physical use of it). Winkwink! Basically, if sex is fun and light with an emotional foundation, I'm a happy camper.

Request 3: The Martian - All Media Types (preference for the 2015 film)

Ship: Mark Watney & the Ares III crew

I was really surprised by how much I loved this movie. The book had been recommended to me, and I still need to read it, but I just loved Mark and how important his relationships are to him and his story, despite the fact he is alone on Mars for about 98% of the film’s running time.

Mark is obviously incredibly intelligent, and obviously loves his crew. It’s clear they had a close, loving bond with each other, and that the crew all love and care about Mark, too. The crew are devastated when they think he has died, and blame themselves, and vote unanimously to go back for him, despite the time and resources it takes (and that they’re technically going against orders, and do so more than once in order to ensure he gets back to them safely).

I’d love to know what happens once he’s back on the ship with them. He hasn’t seen another living being in 18 months, and hearing their voices for the first time (the first voices he’s heard in 18 months, too) reduced him to understandable tears of joy while he was waiting in the lander. He’s emotionally damaged, touch-deprived, incredibly stressed, and slowly starving to death. How do the crew react to the state he’s in? How do they help him? How do they help him to adjust, to eat normally again, to be able to talk to others again, to be able to touch others again?

These guys are very much a found family, and I’m happy for it to be genfic, or for Mark to be paired with either Melissa Lewis or Chris Beck. Please no OT3s. But sex isn’t necessary: I’d love to look into their emotions, and for the focus to be on connection. I don’t think Mark’s system would respond well to the entire crew touching his bare skin all at once for hours on end after he’s been alone for a year and a half, after all.

Request 4: Backstreet Boys

Ships: Kevin Richardson/Nick Carter; Kevin Richardson & Nick Carter; AJ McLean & Kevin Richardson; AJ McLean & Kevin Richardson & Brian Littrell & Nick Carter & Howie Dorough

Ah, the boyband mania of the 1990s and early 2000s! BSB was always my favourite, and as lot of that came from two things: firstly, they could actually sing, and secondly that the relationships between the boys were real and genuine.

Unlike basically all the other bands of the era (and even newer ones, such as One Direction and the Jonas Brothers), these guys are still together after more than 20 years, still making new music, and still touring as a band. Kevin did leave for several years in 2006, but he came back to the band in 2012, and still kept in touch with (and even performed on stage with) the other four guys during that break.

There was some fallout among the group around 2001, when AJ hit his lowest point with his alcohol and substance abuse and depression, and when Nick produced his first solo album. Nick felt the guys weren’t supporting his solo efforts, which hurt and confused him; the other guys felt they hadn’t been told that Nick would be away and unable to work with them as a group for so long. The fact that the record label, Jive, was not communicating things properly to anyone was not realised until later, of course. But the fact that much of the fault here (which was mostly just confusion and hurt caused by misinformation from Jive and general miscommunication) lay with Jive did not come out until later, and the damage was done for the time being. Later, they did sort it out, and all the boys have worked on solo stuff as well as group stuff since.

Relations were strained among the band members for a while: Kevin literally broke down AJ’s hotel room door to stage an intervention in the middle of one of the band’s tours, and infamously told AJ “you are DEAD to me!” if he didn’t get himself cleaned up. AJ credits Kevin with pretty much saving his life, and his ‘brothers’ (the BSB guys) for helping him put his life back together. This was also all in the midst of the exhausting round-the-clock touring for Millennium and Black and Blue, which left everyone exhausted.

When the boys appeared on Oprah to talk about AJ being out of rehab in 2003, the strain between them is clear: Nick had just flown in from London where he was working on his solo album, and barely makes eye contact with the other guys the entire time. AJ is clearly awkward and uncomfortable with this very public reunion when they hadn’t had time to sit down together and talk it out properly. Obviously, they did sort it all out. Jive screwed Nick over rather infamously (Jive focused their publicity machine and money on Justin Timberlake’s first solo effort over Nick’s album, basically throwing Nick to the dogs and placing the blame on him when his album didn’t perform as hoped, especially in comparison to Timberlake’s), and Nick returned to the boys and they all talked it out.

So while BSB were a “manufactured” band to a degree, those relationships that didn’t exist before the band was formed (remember, Kevin and Brian are first cousins) were forged in fire in their early days of endless rehearsals and touring. So I love the dynamic between all five band members. As Howie D says, they love each other like brothers...and often fight as blood brothers do. But they always resolve their differences and end up a stronger unit for it.

So anything about the relationship between all five of the boys would be great, as well as any genfic about Kevin and AJ or Kevin and Nick would be great. I also do ship Kevin and Nick, but of course, only after Nick is an adult.

Kevin has always been my favourite Backstreet Boy, followed by Everyone’s Favourite, Nick. Kevin is the protector and big brother in the band, according to the other members. He ensured AJ went to rehab, stayed there, and got back together. He gave Nick a book many years ago to help him through a dark period, with a handwritten note inside. Nick still has the book, and treasures it. Kevin gave it as a peace offering when he realised that Jive were mostly to blame for the issues with Nick’s workload during the recording of his solo album and was immediately supportive.

There are blood families who aren’t as functional as these guys! And I’d just love to see anything about their bond.

Request 5: Futurama

Ship: Philip J. Fry/Turanga Leela

I love these two way more than I probably should. Fry is immature, irresponsible, and sometimes unforgivably stupid. Yet he loves Leela, and he does so unselfishly. He doesn’t whine and stamp his foot and yell, “but I’m such a nice guy! Why won’t she go out with me?!”

When Leela refuses to date him, he accepts it. He always does ask her again, of course, at a later time, but doesn’t believe that he is entitled to Leela’s affection and love purely because he’s nice to her. Which is really refreshing. Yes, he wants her. But he wants her to be happy more.

I do think the writers of DVD movies or the second run of Futurama didn’t handle Fry and Leela’s relationship once they started dating as well as they either could or should have. What brought Fry to his final realisation that he still loved Leela aboce everyone else in Into the Wild Green Yonder, after their relationship was completely ignored in Bender’s Game? And, more importantly, why did Leela have her realisation in Into the Wild Green Yonder that she did love Fry?

The first episode of the Comedy Central run of the show, Rebirth, was great and really handled their relationship well, but it was pretty patchy after that. some episodes handled it well (The Late Philip J Fry is a standout), others didn’t (In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela, I’m looking at you!), and it just seemed like the writers couldn’t decided what to do when the relationship was portrayed as so on-and-off. Although Meanwhile, the (current) series finale, was nicely done.

But the writers, likely through executive meddling, just said, “fuck it!” during the last season, and put Leela and Fry together as a couple without showing any of the growth that Fry and Leela both should have had to go through in order for a relationship between them to work at all. Basically, Fry would have to mature at least a bit, and Leela would probably have to learn to relax at least a bit. Remember, Leela has said point-blank that she loves Fry’s “boyish charm” but finds his childishness a major turn-off. Leela did, however, fall for Lars, who was simply an older (and importantly, more emotionally mature) Fry in Bender’s Big Score (which is, hands down, one of my favourite bits of Futurama ever and my favourite of the DVD films).

So basically, I’d love to see these two have some more time together. I don’t mind when. Earlier in the series, before they’re a couple: why and when did Fry first figure out he was in love with Leela, and not just in lust? What happens after Meanwhile? Do they still get married? When and why and how during the series does Leela realise she’s in love with Fry? What makes her willing to take the leap and the risk? Where are they in ten years’ time? What would have happened had Lars not died, and he and Leela got married? Would Leela and/or Fry ever have found out who Lars really was?

Go nuts!

Request 6: Mulan

Ship: Fa Mulan/Li Shang

Request 7: Beauty and the Beast

Ship: Belle/Prince Adam

I love strong, well-rounded, well-written characters who just happen to be female. They move through life without needing to be married or to have a boyfriend just because they’re meant to. They have their own dreams and ideas. They’re educated and well-read. And they’re awesome.

Mulan and Belle are two such characters, and it’s no coincidence that I loved them both when I was growing up. Mulan’s relationship with Shang, in particular, was very much the result of the events of the film, wherein Mulan takes control of her own destiny and does not spend the film mooning over Shang or trying to get his attention. She certainly thinks he’s attractive, but it’s not “love at first sight”. She wants Shang to be impressed and proud of her abilities as a soldier whom he fights alongside, not for him to fall in love with her. Which he does anyway. (And probably after a period of thinking, “holy crap! Am I gay?!).

But that’s not the point.

Marriage and romance are not her main goals in the film. The only time she even thinks about marriage is when she’s sent to the matchmaker, and that’s only because she has to go, not because she wants to. Mulan’s main goal in the film is to fight in her father’s place, because she believes he is too ill to fight having been injured in previous wars he fought for his country. Her only other real goals in the film is to fight well and defend her country, and then to get home in one piece.

Belle is the same: she has no interest in marriage, refusing Gaston’s proposal both when he shows up at her door with the whole village in tow, and when he threatens to have her father, Maurice, falsely imprisoned in an asylum unless she marries Gaston.

The Beast (originally a human prince named Adam) is cursed by an Enchantress to spend all time as a Beast unless he can learn to love, and earn someone’s love in return, before the enchanted rose loses all its petals. Adam must find love during the film. But all Belle wants to do is save her father, and then to get home to him. She has bigger fish to fry than marriage.

The film is problematic, to say the least, when it comes to the whole Adam-imprisoning-Belle-in-his-castle, Stockholm-Syndrome thing. But he does let her go, even when it is against his best interests to do so. Adam does save her from the wolves when she leaves the castle (although it is creepy to think he ran out after her if he didn’t already know she was in danger, which he may have thanks to the magic mirror). Belle takes Adam back to the castle to tend his wounds after he saves her from the wolves, even though she could have left him for dead. And she does come back to save him when she realises he is in danger when the villagers are storming the castle. So they get bonus points for that.

But how do they navigate marriage? How long was their engagement? I doubt Belle is the type to get married straight away, and that wedding must have taken some planning. How does Adam adjust to being human again? As a prince, does he actually rule over the kingdom Belle lives in? Where are his parents? How do the staff adjust to being human again?

Request 8: Aladdin

Ships: Aladdin & Genie; Aladdin/Genie; Jasmine & Rajah; Jasmine & Sultan of Agrabah; Abu & Rajah & Carpet & Iago; Genie & Iago

Jasmine was another of my favourite Strong Ladies when I was a little girl, although marriage was a goal she was required (by law, no less) to meet during the story. But her main goal was actually to live life on her own terms, rather than to be married. She tells her father, “if I do marry, I want it to be for love”. Which distresses her father, who clearly loves her, and clearly thinks what he’s doing is best for her: if she is married, he believe she will always be taken care of and provided for, even if something happens to him. Their world is hardly welcoming to women, after all. (As if ours is!)

However, in the end, the Sultan realises his error and changes the law: Jasmine may now marry “whomever she deems worthy”. She may she she chooses Aladdin as soon as the words leave her father’s mouth, but the two do not marry for some time, and in the sequel films and TV series, Jasmine joins Aladdin on his adventures, and is (rarely) the damsel in distress, which is refreshing.

I’d love to see any genfic between Jasmine and her father, or between Jasmine and Rajah, her devoted friend and companion. How did Jasmine come to have Rajah, anyway?

The bond between Abu, Rajah, Iago and Carpet (particularly in the sequel films and TV series) is interesting, as is the relationship between Genie and Iago, so any genfic exploring their hijinks or chill time would be great.

But the relationship that carries this series is certainly that between the Genie and Aladdin. The Genie is the first person who believes in Aladdin. Jafar may know Aladdin is the Diamond in the Rough, but doesn’t care about what that means beyond the Cave of Wonders allowing Aladdin to enter it. But the Genie (and, later, Jasmine) see Aladdin for who he truly is: a good-hearted person who has been dealt some tough cards via accident of birth.

I’m be happy for genfic between the Genie and Aladdin at any point - before, during or after the film and series - or for slash between the two but only after the Genie has been freed of his servitude by Aladdin. These two clearly love each other, after all.

Request 9: Star Trek: TNG

Ships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q; Jean-Luc Picard/William Riker; William Riker & Thomas Riker; Jean-Luc Picard & William Riker; Data & Jean-Luc Picard; Data/Geordi La Forge

This was the very first Star Trek series I ever watched, and I discovered it purely by accident. To say I was thrilled when I discovered there was a whole franchise of TV series and films is putting it mildly. My parents are not sci-fi orientated at all, which is just weird, considering how much I love it.

I love these characters, and how they are very much a family. It’s far more of an ensemble show that TOS was, which focused on thew triad of Kirk, Spock and Bones more than anything else.

I love Picard, even when he’s being a moody grump, and how he relates to Q, Riker and Data are some of my favourite moments in the series. I slash Picard and Q, and Picard and Will Riker, as well as Geordi and Data (who are also adorable as besties). I love how Geordi helps Data to understand things and is patient with him (espeically when it comes to that damn emotion chip). I love that Data recognises that Geordi is important to him, and is one of the most important and treasured people in his life. Any fic featuring any of these relationships would be great. Although if focus on the power Q has over Picard as an all-powerful entity, and the power Picard has over Riker as the captain could be avoided, that would be great, please.

One minor character I find fascinating is Thomas Riker, Will Riker’s transporter-malfunction created duplicate. I was furious he was only in one episode of TNG and would love to know what happens next to him, including how he goes forward in his relationship with Will and also with Deanna Troi. What would have happened had Thomas stayed on the Enterprise for longer? What happened to him when he was stranded alone for eight years?

Request 10: Star Trek: TOS

Ships: James T. Kirk (TOS)/Spock; James T. Kirk/Spock & Leonard McCoy

What can I say? I am a Trekkie stereotype: I love Star Trek, I love my ‘ships, I love my slash, and I very much grok Spock (paired with Kirk). Ahem.

I love these two characters. I love the depth of their friendship. I love that they are th’y’’la and that Gene Roddenberry (Trek’s creator, for any newbies) created this word and defined it the way he did. I love that Kirk accepts Spock wholly and completely (even when Spock is being so very Vulcan), and that Spock does the same in return, despite his Vulcan training to feel no emotions. In Devil in the Dark, Spock infamously spouts comments about treating the rampaging Horta with care and to not harm it...until the Horta turns her attentions to Kirk, and almost mamims and kills him. Then Spock blows his top and screeches for the Horta to be blown apart before it can hurt Jim Kirk. And do we even need to go into Amok Time, or the hand-holding in The Motion Picture? I think not.

I love the Shat. I love Leonard Nimoy. I love DeForrest Kelley, who is so underappreciated. And damn if Shat weren’t hot when he was a pup. So yep, anything slashy between Kirk and Spock would be great. Before the series, during the series, between the series and the films, during the films, after them. Don’t mind. Go nuts! How do they become a couple? What do other members of the crew think? What does Bones think? (I am a sucker for outsider POVs regarding my favourite characters and couples).

In closing: thank you so much!

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