#It’s nostalgic seeing everyone like this. She realises how much they’ve all grown over their journey. Even her. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

we-all-have-magic-inside-us · 3 years

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Hi, this is very random but I'm actually writing a dissertation on Harry Potter Fanfiction and I'm looking for the 'big' fics, i.e. fics that lots of people in the fandom read - the most popular/famous ones that might even have their own sub-fandom (All The Young Dudes for example). Do you know of any Drarry ones like this? Thanks in advance!

What a wonderful topic for a dissertation @realistic-but-optimistic - I would LOVE to read it if you ever publish/want to share. And I definitely have some recs for fics that have their own mini fandom and/or are ‘The Drarry Classics’

What We Pretend We Can't See by @gyzym [131k words]

Seven years out from the war, Harry learns the hard truth of old history: it’s never quite as far behind you as you thought

This is THE fandom classic almost everyone has read and talks about. It features a redeemed, slightly obsessive, charming Draco. Grimmauld Place plays a huge role in the fic and Ron/Hermione are wonderful. Overall 10/10.

Running on Air by @tinyhistory [75k]

Draco Malfoy has been missing for three years. Harry is assigned the cold case and finds himself slowly falling in love with the memories he collects.

I genuinely do not know if any fic rec can do justice to this masterpiece. It’s so beautiful and poignant and somehow nostalgic. The language, the plot, the pining and the mystery are all breathtaking. You have to read this one yourself to believe me. This is definitely a major fandom classic.

Tea and No Sympathy [70k] by who_la_hoop

It's Potter's fault, of course, that Draco finds himself trapped in the same twenty-four-hour period, repeating itself over and over again. It's been nearly a year since the unpleasant business at Hogwarts, and Draco's getting on with his life quite nicely, thank you, until Harry sodding Potter steps in and ruins it all, just like always. At first, though, the time loop seems liberating. For the first time in his life, he can do anything, say anything, be anything, without consequence. But the more Draco repeats the day, the more he realises the uncomfortable truth: he's falling head over heels for the speccy git. And suddenly, the time loop feels like a trap. For how can he ever get Harry to love him back when time is, quite literally, against him?

If you like Groundhog Day style fics, this is the winner! It has over 32k kudos on AO3 which is INSANE! It’s super well written and keeps you hooked until the very end. And it’s not just this one, every fic by this author is a classic in its own right. Especially ‘written on the heart.’

Right Hand Red [73k] by @lqtraintracks

Harry felt Malfoy's breath on his lips as they came together over the bottle, hands firmly planted on the floor as though they each needed their familiar soil, refusing to cross into enemy territory.

Except that Malfoy no longer felt like his enemy.

Malfoy felt inevitable.

No rec list can be complete without an eighth year fic. The fandom is FULL of eighth year fics and they’re perfect for anyone craving a Harry Potter continuation but with Drarry. This is one of my absolute favourite ones. It features a lot of party games and it’s really nice to see Harry and Draco have a chance at a normal school year for once, something they’ve been robbed of for so many years. There’s a lot of pining and healing in this one and I felt all the feels when I read it.

Away Childish Things [151k] by @letteredlettered

Harry gets de-aged. Malfoy has to help him.

This one. This one. THERE ARE NO WORDS BUT I WILL VALIANTLY ATTEMPT. I love it. It explores Harry’s childhood in a way very few fics have managed to and it really really tugs at the heartstrings. It’s gorgeously written and evokes so many emotions. Please read this one.

Stop All the Clocks (This Is the Last Time I’m Leaving Without You) [44k] by @firethesound

Living with Draco was difficult; living without him is unbearable. But if there’s one thing Harry learned from the war, it’s that even when one life ends, the rest of the world goes right on living.

Full disclosure- I haven’t read this and I don’t know if I ever can. It features MCD (main character death) and I really struggle with reading fics that don’t have a happy ending. Having said that, it is a fandom classic and everyone who has read it, RAVES about it. They say it’s gorgeous and beautiful and devastating. What I can confirm is that firethesound is an amazing author and I have read several other fics by them which could also be considered fandom classics. Especially ‘All Our Secrets Laid Bare’ which is the ultimate Auror partners fic and ‘A Convenient Impracticality’ which is the ultimate fake dating/friends-with-benefits fic.

Dwelling [83k] by aideomai

Curses, James and Lily Potter ride again, several Ministry balls, a teenage Summer of Love, a grim young adult dystopian winter, a few different Draco Malfoys, secrets and the problems re: not having any, alternate lives, impossible lives, real lives, allusions to Dirty Dancing, and just because it's not called the Mirror of Erised doesn't mean you shouldn't know better.

Oh my goodness, this fic ruined me. In the best possible way. If you want a glimpse into how Harry’s life could have been if his parents had been alive and if Harry and Draco had been friends from the start, this is the one. There's a huge twist which makes the fic EVEN better. I don’t want to spoil too much but this one is worth a read. Another fic by the same author, ‘Far From The Tree’ is also gorgeous. It’s a newer fic so I wouldn’t say it’s a classic yet but the plot is SO unique. It features Harry’s grown up kids coming back into the past and how that could affect Harry/Draco’s relationship. All the characters are super well written and it’s one of my personal favourites!

Other notes:

I made a Drarry rec list when I first got into the fandom. I would say almost all the fics on this list are also classics/very well liked.

Another great way to find classics are through this link. They are Drarry fics on Ao3 (30k+ words) sorted by the number of kudos they’ve received. I would say all fics on the first five pages can be considered classics.

Here are three other SUPER adored authors in the Ao3 fandom: Bixgirl, Saras_Girl and GallaPlacidia

All works by Bix and Saras_Girl are considered classics. GallaPlacidia started writing for the fandom only a couple of years back but she has such a knack for writing both these boys, it’s absolutely insane. I’m 100% confident her fics will be considered classics in a few years! Especially ‘The Bucket List’ and ‘Ship of Theseus.’

Enjoy and hope this helps!!

#drarry #drarry fics #drarry squad #draco x harry #drarry fic search #drarry fic recs #drarry fandom #classics #harry x draco #drarry fic rec masterlist

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jeremys-blogs · 4 years

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Villainess: Isekai and Harems Done Right

If you were to look at the anime industry as a whole, you'll probably find that two genres, above all, hold massive sway over the medium. The harem comedy, where the main protagonist is the centre of affection for everyone around them, and the Isekai (or person stuck in another world) genre, where our hero much contend with a new and often dangerous environment. The number of shows and movies centred around these two overall genres has been truly staggering, and I, as someone who was right there at the time anime started getting big here in the UK in the 90s, has seen more than his fair share of those works. But while I may have certain nostalgic fondness for particular titles, harem comedies like Tenchi Muyo or Isekai outings like Vision of Escaflowne, I can't deny that, for the most part, the genres simply haven't grabbed me. Oh, I'll enjoy a good fantasy adventure or comedy as much as the next guy, but suffice to say that few have ever managed to really grab or entertain me as much as I'd like them to. That is, until very recently, when I happened upon a title from earlier this year. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

The story of this one is that a young girl, having recently passed away, finds herself reincarnated into the world of one of her favourite video games. However, to her horror, she discovers that the character she's been reincarnated as is none other than the childhood version of the game's central antagonist, Catarina Claes. Realising that fate has nothing but either death or exile in store for her, our protagonist endeavours to do everything in her power to ensure that she avoids the terrible ending this character is meant to face. And so she goes about, forming positive relationships with those Catarina was supposed to have enmity and rivalry with, including the game's designated main character, Maria. The result of all of this is that, by the time the characters have all grown up and started the time period in which the game was properly set, all of them have become completely different people to the ones the protagonist remembers, and more than that, they've all gone from being potential romantic options and/or rivals for Maria, and instead all fallen in love for Catarina instead, with Maria herself most definitely included in that. So while she may have avoided her scripted doom, Catarina now has a whole mess of other problems to deal with as a consequence of her meddling in the events of the story.

So, as you can probably tell from that synopsis, Villainess is a combination of both Isekai and harem comedies, and as I said before, I've enjoyed it far more than most entries in either genre. There's probably a whole slew of reasons as to why this is, but one of the main points that really interested me was how it basically undermines a lot of the tropes that characterises both types of story. Isekai, for example, is often used as a power fantasy, to give the audience a feeling of escapism into a world where they're suddenly a hero or more capable than they otherwise would have been. Villainess does away with that in a big way. Because not only is Catarina not the hero of the story, or at least not the one the game wanted as a hero, but she's also pretty incompetent in most things she tries her hand at. Combat, magic, no matter what it is she just can't do well at any of it. So this is by no means a power fantasy where the main character is just completely OP and rises to every challenge. And like many a great comedy before it, haplessness certainly adds to the laughs you'll be getting, and trust me, there are more than a few.

And on the harem comedy side of things, Villainess buffs tradition by having the harem in question portrayed with nary an ounce of raunchiness to it. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with this particular genre will know that a lot of it functions as a quick and easy way to excite and entice its respective audiences. And their casts are women and men presented with impossibly stunning figures and abs as far as the eye can see to, again, fulfill the fantasies of those watching. Sexiness and risque imagery is the order of the day for most harem anime, so Villainess distinguishes itself quite a bit by being pretty much completely devoid of that sort of thing. Oh, the show is filled with beautiful ladies and handsome dudes, don't get me wrong, and I would not blame anyone for looking at any of the girls and guys in this one and falling for them, but not once will you ever find any of them shown in any kind of objectifying way that so many other harem characters tend to be. No beach or pool episodes to show off some skin, nobody unexpectedly walking in when someone is changing, none of it. This is, quite possibly, the least sexualised harem anime in history, and I adore it for that.

But like any truly great show, it's all for naught if your main character isn't a good one, and I'm happy to say that Villainess absolutely shines in this regard. While most isekai and harem shows will follow the trend of making their central figure something of a tabula rasa (or "blank slate") for the audience to project onto, Catarina has a very well-defined personality. She's optimistic, friendly, nice to everyone she meets, and she has absolutely zero sense of social grace when it comes to the high-class situation she's found herself in. And unlike, say, in other harem comedies where the central lead is so without personality that you can never understand why so many other characters fall for them, here you know exactly why. Catarina is, by far and a way, the nicest person any of these other men and women have ever known, and through her they've become better people than they would have otherwise been, and even if she's unable to really spot their feelings, she's too endearing for any of them to really be bothered by it. She's probably the best character in the entire cast, and that alone is noteworthy, as the number of anime I've seen where the main character was also my favourite could be counted on one hand and still leave me with fingers to spare.

Now, a harem comedy is, after all, a comedy, so while this praise I've been giving is all well and good, it all needs to be in service of entertaining us. And I'm happy to report that Villainess is very capable on that front. Now, these might not be the raucous, laugh-out-loud guffaws that you'd find is some of the more absurdist comedies in the medium, but there are still plenty of great laughs to be had. Catarina, being the aforementioned loveable doofus that she is, is the chief source of most of the humour in this story. As someone reincarnated from another world, she's completely at odds with the stuffy, reserved mannerisms that tend to be shown by aristocratic characters. She speaks her mind, she acts in ways that her peers would never think to act in a million years and she's so blunt and forward in what she does and what she wants that she's more akin to a typhoon, a disruptive and chaotic element introduced into this quiet and keep-it-to-yourself world. Now, acting out of step with those around you is a tried-and-true method of comedy, but damn if it doesn't work really well here. And of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that Catarina will have her occasional moments of amusing panic whenever she enters a situation that she think will lead to her character's scripted doom ending.

When it comes to anime as a whole, there are some things that just instantly click with me more than others. Humour, wholesomeness, niceness. These are the things I look out for and which I find the most enjoyment. Villainess covers all of these and more, and does it in such a way that it stands out as perhaps the best of its two primary genres that I've seen in some time. A harem where the romance, rivalry and attraction is all subtle and understated, and an isekai where the protagonists gets by not because of great power and skill but because of genuine kindness and a desire to be friends with those around her. Stakes might rise up in the latter half of the show, but on the whole this anime just ticks all of my personal boxes for an easygoing ride. Is it the funniest or the best-animated? No, nor do I think it's going to be winning any wards in that regard, especially with big comedies like Konosuba or animation giants like Tower of God to contend with. But if all you want is a nice and gentle twelve-episode anime, then look no further than this charming outing, headed by one of the most likeable anime leads I've seen in far too long a time 🥰

#essay #writing #my stuff #anime #my next life as a villainess #my next life as a villianess all routes lead to doom

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xxx-cat-xxx · 4 years

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Vacation

This is my very fluffy @marveltrumpshate fic for @twentyghosts, whose wonderful stories made me fall in love with Science Bros. I hope you like it.

Many thanks to @whumphoarder and @sallyidss for beta reading!

___________

“This is ridiculous,” Tony moans, letting himself sink down on his backside to slide down a steep passage of the hill, his injured foot carefully stretched out in front of him. “For the record, this is the last time you get to plan our vacation.”

“You know, this is easily my fifth hiking trip in the Himalayas and the first time someone managed to get injured by tripping over their own feet on a perfectly straight road,” counters Bruce.

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in...” Tony mutters, then winces when his ankle bounces on a stone and pain shoots up his leg.

“Hey.” Bruce’s expression sobers. “You sure you don’t want me to call for medevac?”

“I am not calling for medevac because I sprained my ankle on a vacation,” Tony retorts, already picturing the field day Barton would have upon hearing about it. Then seeing as Bruce is about to protest, adds, “And no, Bruce, it’s not broken. I think by now I should know what a broken bone feels like.” He uses a nearby branch to lever himself back upright and grits his teeth when he puts weight on his right foot. “Besides, we’re almost back—I think I can see the village down there.”

That was a bit optimistic. By the time they reach the village where they stayed the previous night, it’s already late evening and the sun has long since set. Tony is glad for his arc technology-powered flashlight that makes it possible for them to find a path in the dark forest covering the mountains.

They slowly make their way back through the village road—Tony’s arm slung around Bruce’s shoulders and his lips pressed tightly together, politely declining any offers of help from the few villagers that are still awake—before finally reaching their rental car.

Tony leans heavily against the driver’s side, glad to take the weight off his foot for a bit. He’s exhausted and feeling kind of shaky, which, he realises after hearing a loud growl from his stomach, might be because the last thing he ate was breakfast at the homestay that morning. It was only supposed to be a short hike up the mountain; they’d planned to leave for the city before dark after eating in the village, but then Tony’s foot had thwarted their plans.

Tony fumbles for the car keys in his pocket, then opens the door and lets himself fall inside with a groan. “Okay, let’s go,” he announces. “I hope the restaurants will still be open by the time we arrive—I’m fucking starving.” Then he realises that Bruce hasn’t made a move to get into the vehicle.

“Brucie?” In the rearview mirror, he sees his partner take their suitcase out of the trunk. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Bruce says in the tone of someone talking to a very stubborn child.

“I’m driving us back.”

Bruce scoffs. “No, not with that foot of yours, you’re not. How are you gonna work the pedals?”

“Fine,” Tony says in the most provocative tone he can muster, “then you drive us back.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “You know I don’t drive on these mountain roads, Tony. Especially not at night.”

Tony shrugs. “It’s your choice, darling.”

“This is not a choice at all!” Bruce says in frustration. “Don’t be ridiculous. Neither of us can drive tonight. You can barely walk.”

“You’re the one being ridiculous,” Tony declares. “If you’re not driving, then I am. This is nothing compared to what I’ve worked through on missions.”

“But this is not a mission.” Bruce bends down to the window, a softer expression on his face now. “Come on, Tony, there’s no need for you to prove anything to anyone. Let’s just spend another night at the homestay. We’ll ice your ankle and see how it’s looking tomorrow morning. I’d feel terrible making you drive for three hours while being in pain like this.”

Tony’s pride tells him (in Howard’s voice, of course) to just suck it up and drive anyway. But then his eyes meet Bruce’s warm ones and he feels his resistance melt. “Fine, whatever,” he agrees. “But I hope we can get a decent dinner there...”

When they reach the homestay, the lights are already out, and Tony’s hope for dinner extinguishes with them.

“Didn’t you want to go back to the city?” their host’s grown-up daughter, Radhika, asks them when she opens the door. She is dressed in a colourful long nightshirt and a warm shawl, her usually braided black hair falling over her shoulder.

“Yeah, we had a small…incident,” Bruce replies. He gestures to Tony’s foot, which is held awkwardly out in front of him.

“Oh, I see,” Radhika replies with a frown, then turns to shout over her shoulder, “Mata!”

Moments later, her mother—an elderly woman wearing the same combination of clothes—appears in the doorway and ushers them inside. She, Bruce, and Radhika start a conversation in Hindi, with Bruce evidently explaining their situation.

“She says her older daughter is a doctor in the hospital down in the city—it’s about four or five hours from here if we take a bus that leaves at six in the morning,” Bruce translates to Tony. “We can stay here overnight, but the room we had yesterday is already taken by other guests. They are offering us their spare room.”

“Fantastic...” Tony grumbles, grimacing both at the prospect of having to get up before sunrise and the word “spare room”, but it’s not like they have many other options. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Bruce nods and turns back to their hosts. Tony can’t understand the words, but he definitely makes out some English numbers in between.

“Bruce, are you seriously haggling right now?” he interrupts. “Maybe you’ve forgotten in the last few hours, but I am an actual billionaire.”

“Sorry, sorry, force of habit…” Bruce mutters, rubbing a hand over his brow. A few sentences later they seemed to have agreed on a price and Radhika takes the suitcase from Bruce’s hand to bring it to the spare room.

“Are you hungry?” the elder woman asks in heavily-accented English.

“Starving,” Tony agrees immediately.

“Tony!” Bruce scolds. “They’ve already had their dinner—they were about to go to sleep.”

He says something in Hindi to their host and another discussion ensues, which Bruce apparently loses.

“Great, now she’s staying up later to cook for us.” Bruce sighs, visibly uncomfortable.

Tony knows that Bruce doesn’t like anyone working for him, but Tony’s stomach is so empty that, combined with the pain in his foot, he feels almost nauseous. He’s sure that Bruce must be hungry as well. “We’ll give them a big tip, okay?”

Bruce bites his lip and nods.

Twenty minutes later, Tony is sitting on a plastic chair next to the freshly-lit fire in the middle of the family’s courtyard, His foot is resting on a pillow on a small stool with an ice pack (made from actual ice, thanks to the Himalayas) wrapped around the ankle. Now that the hiking boot has come off, it’s visibly swollen and pulsing in time with his heartbeat, and although Tony hasn’t admitted it to Bruce, he thinks that maybe he’ll have to correct his earlier statement about being sure that it’s not broken. According to Bruce, nothing can be done except for keeping it still and iced until they can get an x-ray done at the hospital tomorrow.

“Isn’t Indian food supposed to be spicy?” Tony mutters under his breath, slashing his spoon around in something that looks suspiciously like algae soup, except that it can’t be algae, because, well, Himalayas. “And tasty?”

Bruce frowns and gestures for him to keep his voice down. “I told you before, different regions have different dishes. India’s more of a continent than a country—things here are different than in Delhi or Mumbai. There is actually no such thing as Indian food, you know.”

“Still, I could have done with spicy now…” Tony grumbles. “This tastes like the stuff Steve makes when he gets nostalgic about the 40s.”

Bruce gestures him to be quiet and this time Tony obeys. He eats a bit more, and, despite the rather bland taste, feels his bad mood receding more the fuller his stomach gets. After dinner, Radhika brings them chai—for which Bruce thanks her profusely—and then settles down next to them, followed soon by her mother.

India, in Tony’s head, has always been a synonym for poverty, which is a bit weird because compared to Tony, almost everyone on the planet is poor. But as Bruce has been slowly showing him since their arrival, there is no one such thing as poverty—its appearance varies from city to village. Poverty can mean anything from not being able to afford a place to stay or sturdy shoes to wear, to living in a large farmhouse but going hungry because the crops were ruined by the last thunderstorm, to having a comfortable life but still being unable to afford a life-saving surgery due to lack of health insurance (which, as Bruce added, is not actually very different from the US).

Tony has seen his fair share of India’s high society—which, to be frank, is not much different from US high society (except for prettier, more colourful clothing and better food). He’s always imagined the rest of the country outside of luxurious hotels and glamourous wedding celebrations to be a mixture of the slums he’s seen from his car window while driving through the city and international aid commercials with dirty children begging for someone to feed them.

While all these realities certainly exist somewhere in India, he hasn’t really ever thought of everyone living in between both of the extremes—people like Radhika and her family, who don’t seem to fit into any of the stereotypes shown on CNN. He knows that one of the reasons Bruce took him on this low-budget holiday was to show him some of those realities, and Tony has to admit that he now has a much better idea about why Bruce sometimes misses the country so much—chai definitely being one of them, he thinks while watching his partner blow into the steam curling up from his cup.

They are sitting quietly, sipping their tea. Tony notices a black cat watching them from the shadow of the other side of the patio. He stretches out his hand and idly wiggles his fingers to make it come closer, but the cat just keeps on sitting, its gaze now slightly judgemental.

“Oh, she doesn’t like to cuddle,” Radhika comments. “But she knows everything that’s going on in the village, I tell you. She’s a spy.”

“Natasha,” Tony states, turning towards Bruce, who snickers into his chai. “We found Natasha’s Indian counterpart.”

“I wonder how the cat’s interrogation techniques compare,” muses Bruce.

“Let’s not find out,” replies Tony. “I’ve already got one injured joint, thank you.”

Radhika giggles at that.

“What’s so funny?” Tony asks, slightly irritated.

“It’s just…” she hesitates, visibly trying to contain a grin. “You are Iron Man. I mean, you defeated aliens and supervillains and all that…and then you sprain your ankle during a hiking trip.”

“Very funny,” Tony huffs. The corners of Bruce’s lips twitch.

“So if we take the bus in the morning, what about the car?” he changes the topic, suddenly realising the flaw in their plan. He gestures at his foot, then at Bruce. “You won’t let me drive, you won’t drive on your own—how are we supposed to get it back to the rental company?”

Radhika looks at her mother and says something. The woman shrugs and then gives one of those sideways head shakes Tony has seen Bruce do when he’s getting interrupted deep in his thoughts and forgets he’s not in Kolkata anymore—it means yes, he’s learned. “I can drive the car,” Radhika offers.

Tony looks at her critically. “No offence, but I was kinda planning to get back to New York in one piece.”

“Most people born in the village know the mountain roads by heart,” she says, “My sister visits us once a month and drives all the way with her tata, and sometimes I drive her back when I go to the city. I’ll drive the route regularly once I start my engineering college next year. With your fancy car it will be even easier.”

“Then we wouldn’t have to get up at five…” Bruce thinks aloud with a side glance at Tony.

“Well, that’s a compelling argument,” Tony agrees with a sigh. “Fine, kid, just try not to kill us.” He gets an angry look from Bruce for this.

Radhika smiles. Her mother collects the now empty cups and disappears towards the kitchen, shaking her head at Bruce’s offer to help her.

Radhika disappears for a few minutes and returns with a deck of cards. “Do you know Court Piece?”

They spend the next hour playing cards with Radhika, her mother, and eventually her father, who joins after being woken up by their laughter. Her mother turns out to be a cunning player, and together with Tony, their team wins the majority of rounds. Eventually, the family turns in, leaving Bruce, Tony, and Natasha-The-Cat at the smoldering campfire.

“The sky is so clear in the mountains,” Bruce states, leaning back in his plastic chair and gazing upwards. “You can see the Milky Way.”

Tony nods, looking straight ahead. Ever since the Battle of New York, stargazing isn’t really on the list of his favourite activities anymore—but then, seeing Bruce’s fascination, he takes a deep breath and holds onto his partner’s jacket a bit to ground himself before turning his head upwards. The Milky Way is clearly visible, and he has to admit, breathtakingly beautiful.

They stay out for a while longer until the fire dies down and the mountain cold starts to seep through their layers of high-quality hiking clothes and into their bones. The toes of Tony’s bad foot have gone from painful to numb and they decide to turn in before they start to fall off. Bruce helps Tony to their spare room, Tony teasingly kissing his neck and earlobe while leaning on him.

Radhika had told them that she put an electric heater in their room, but when they enter, they find it colder than outside, the heater dead on the ground. Bruce’s attempt to switch it on doesn’t yield any results.

“We can’t wake them up again,” Bruce says with a look at Tony, visibly steeling himself for an argument. “It’s the middle of the night and they already stayed up so long to cook for us.”

“What are you saying, Bruce? You’re travelling with your own personal on-call mechanic.” Tony grunts, already lowering himself down to the ground. “Let me take care of this baby.”

The device, however, proves to be as stubborn as the engineer trying to fix it. Fifteen minutes later, Tony is literally shaking and by now it’s not just his toes he can’t feel anymore, but also his fingers.

“I would need a soldering iron for this,” he complains. “The fuse is blown and it’s impossible to reconnect the wires without it.”

“Shh...” Bruce lays a warm palm over his lips and hugs Tony from behind. His body heat is wonderful—Tony feels himself melting into his partner. “Come to bed,” Bruce admonishes.

“Well, that’s a sentence I love to hear,” Tony replies with a lascivious grin. Stretching his arm behind himself and letting his fingers run down Bruce’s neck, Tony finds himself suddenly not having any issue leaving the device alone.

However, having sex turns out to be harder than it reasonably should.

The blanket is warm, but it seems to be filled with living geese instead of feathers since it weighs approximately 20 pounds. After wiggling his head free to stop the threatening feeling of suffocation, Tony manages to actually enjoy Bruce’s teasing and reciprocate appropriately. They have worked their way out of their shirts and Bruce is in the process of removing their pants when he jostles Tony’s foot and the engineer can’t suppress a yelp of pain.

“I’m sorry!” Bruce exclaims, “I’m so sorry, Tony, are you okay?”

“Yes,” Tony grunts, angry at himself for letting it slip. “Just, get on with it.”

Bruce frees himself from his half-lying position on Tony and almost topples down from the bed. Tony pulls him back in, biting his lip when his injured foot acts up again, but then concentrates on the arguably very distracting other things he’s got to do. After another five intense minutes of making out, Bruce pauses in the middle of a kiss.

“What?” Tony moans, his teeth impatiently reaching for his partner’s lower lip.

“Just remembered that the condoms are at the bottom of the suitcase,” Bruce mumbles.

“For god’s sake,” Tony curses. “It’s fine, I’ll go get them.”

“No, stay there, you’re not supposed to put weight on your foot…” Bruce extricates himself from both his partner’s embrace and the blanket before Tony can stop him.

Tony watches his boyfriend tiptoe over the ice-cold floor towards the suitcases, goosebumps forming all over his body, and start rummaging around. Then he notices the cursed cat has been sitting right next to their bags since god-knows-when, watching their mostly-naked forms with slitted eyes and definitely judging them now.

“I am s-so sure that I packed them back in after w-we used them in that hotel in D-Delhi…” Bruce sighs, rummaging through their belongings.

“God, Bruce, get back in here—I can hear your teeth chattering…” Tony sighs.

Bruce looks up with a guilty expression and definitely blue lips. “I don’t even know if I can do anything with the cat watching us,” he admits.

Tony opens the blankets half an inch in what is supposed to be an inviting gesture and his partner crawls back in, pressing himself against Tony as his whole body shakes.

“I can still try to do so-something nice for you with my h-hands,” Bruce whispers, “just l-let me warm up a little.”

“Sure, Bruciebear…” Tony teases, his voice the kind of sugarcoated that he’d never thought he’d use in any way except sarcasm. He feels a little saccharine though as he lies there, holding tightly onto Bruce’s soft body somewhere in the middle of the cold mountains.

Bruce’s shivering stops after a bit and a few minutes later, his breaths even out. Tony knows he won’t be able to sleep—the pounding in his injured foot is harder to ignore now that there is no distraction, and he’s not sleepy at all. It’s not that Tony doesn’t get tired; it’s just that the times he is and the times he is lying in an actual bed rarely ever coincide.

As he lies in the darkness listening to Bruce’s quiet snores, it occurs to him that he hasn’t checked his emails once since they left Delhi. Bruce would probably count this as a win in his plan to take Tony on a different kind of holiday and get his mind off SI-related projects and Iron Man. Tony briefly considers taking out his tablet and catching up with work, but then decides against it. It’s mostly because the thought of getting out of the blanket is not at all appealing, but also because he realises it’s been a while since Bruce slept like that in his arms and holding him feels... well, not bad.

Tony’s frequent nightmares always make themselves known—he will squirm and shift in his sleep, sometimes mumble or even moan when they get really bad—and if Bruce is around, he always wakes him up before it comes to that point. Bruce, on the other hand, dreams absolutely silently. It’s only when he takes in a short, sharp breath and stiffens in Tony’s embrace that he realises his partner is awake.

“You okay, Big Green?” Tony asks softly.

“Hmm,” Bruce mumbles, not very convincingly. He takes a few moments to ground himself, shift around and calm his now quick and shallow breaths, before his eyes settle on Tony. “You know, I always say I liked my time in Kolkata,” he says. “And I did. But I was still on the run, and it was never… never safe, you know? I always felt like I might have to leave any day. Sometimes it’s just hard to shake that feeling.”

"Well, this time you get to stay right here," Tony says, reaching for his partner’s hand under the blanket and squeezing it tight. "And thank god for that because we're not fleeing anywhere fast on this ankle," he adds with a huff of humour.

"Is it bad?" Bruce sounds concerned again—the exact opposite of what Tony was going for. "Do you need some more ice?"

"Nah," Tony dismisses with a flap of his hand. "I'll just stick it out of the blanket and let that famous Indian-Arctic air take care of it."

Bruce finally gives a short laugh at that and starts to settle down again before stopping suddenly. "We've got company," he observes.

“What?” Tony’s eyes dart to the door.

Bruce motions his head to the foot of the bed, where that damn Natasha-Cat has curled into a ball, a foot’s distance from Tony’s toes. “I guess that’s a compliment?” Bruce ventures. “She’s watching over us.”

“Or maybe she’s making sure that we don’t go anywhere else before she and her feline associates can kill us in the morning,” Tony retorts. “Cats are unpredictable.”

“I think you’re thinking of Nats, not cats,” Bruce says, curling back up under the blanket and shifting closer to Tony.

“Telling her you said that,” Tony mutters.

“Just go to sleep, Tony…”

The morning comes with rays of sunlight creeping through the gap under the door and the dusty window. Tony did get bored in the night after all and, after a couple of fruitless attempts to train Natasha to bring over his bag, he crept out of the bed himself to gather his StarkPad. Now the cat is sitting on the window pane above the bed, intently watching the light reflections on his screen.

Bruce wakes up when Radhika knocks on the door to bring them two cups of steaming chai and biscuits.

“Did you sleep at all after my nightmare?” he asks after thanking her and setting the tray on the bed.

“I was watching over you,” Tony replies cheesily. “Well, that and saving our Nigerian subsidiary from a diplomatic crisis.” Tony takes the cup of tea and carefully sits fully up against the headboard.

“How’s your foot?”

Tony grimaces. “Trying to win the competition for the world's largest eggplant.”

The ankle is swollen even more than the previous day and now a mottled green and blue colour. Bruce prods a few places and then decides that driving is not an option and getting to the hospital is the priority.

After having breakfast and packing (under Natasha’s watchful gaze), Tony thanks the family for their hospitality and leaves a generous tip before getting into the car.

Bruce sits on the passenger seat next to Radhika and Tony positions himself sideways on the backseat, the injured ankle stretched out. It quickly becomes evident that Radhika wasn’t exaggerating about her driving skills. She makes her way down the steep mountain safely, and admittedly, takes the sudden sharp turns much smoother than Tony did on their way up.

Radhika and Bruce start talking about Arundhati Roy’s newest book and then get into an argument about whether one should give money to beggars, only half of which is led in English. Tony feels himself zone out, tiredness finally taking over. He lets his head rest back against the window and watches the mountains slowly give way to hills as they get closer to the city.

Half asleep already, he thinks that despite everything, maybe he will let Bruce choose their next vacation after all.

____________

All my fics

#science bros #hurt tony #vacation #fanfic #tony stark #bruce banner #india #fuck caa #fuck ncr #which has nothing to do with the fic #but needs to be said

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shortqueershakespeare · 4 years

Note

Gonna take a page out of the other anon's book and ask you to do all the harry potter questions...

so this took forever, but i’ve finally finished them all (and of course pasting them fucked up the formatting fml) Amortentia: Talk about 3 things you love.

- I love languages, I love being able to see into someone’s soul by talking the language of their heart. I love the different sides of my identity that emerge with different languages, how you can only see fragments of my whole soul without comprehension of each language that forms a part of my heart.

- I love the LGBT community, love feeling free and whole and myself. I love seeing people realise who they are and seeing unabashed, queer love in the face of a world that does not want us. I love seeing that we are stronger together and that no one can take our identities away, no matter how much they try. I love seeing boys fall in love with boys and girls fall for girls for the first time.

- I love the pure, unadulterated joy of learning, of education and finding out something new. The feeling of discovery and the sensation of having accomplished something when you understand a new concept is incomparable.

Ageing Potion: imagine yourself 50-60 years from now. how would you like a typical day to go? where do you see yourself?

In fifty years, my body would be my own, covered in marks from misadventure and splashes of colourful memories. At 61, my kids would be grown up and moved out, my house would be filled with a different kind of sound, with puppies and bunnies and any other pets that fit. I hope I’d have a man to share this life with, we spend our weekends baking and devising obstacle courses for the pets to fall over, getting calls from our kids on how to be an adult (as if we’ve figured that out, even at our age). My sisters still haven’t let go of the habit of calling me a kid, and I try to see them when I can. The seasons change, the leaves fall, and I spend them all, content.

Alihotsy Draught: name and write about a few topics you’re really passionate about.

Oh god we already did things I love though

Lets go specific instead and say fictional characters/ships

Drarry - The lion and the snake clash together, fire and ice raging a passionate war against each other, until they manage to blend their voices into one harmony.

Wolfstar - the dog and the wolf, the moon and the star. Something poetic about their love. Sure, they’ve pushed against it, shouted angry words and slammed doors, but through it all, they gravitate back to each other.

Ballum - by all accounts they shouldn’t work. A criminal and an aspiring cop, they’re a recipe for disaster, doomed to fail. But no-one, not even them, thought that they would become their own priority, above parental expectations, above the world they grew up in. they hold on tight, breathe each other in, relish in their found family.

Antidote to Veritaserum: what is the biggest/most memorable lie you’ve told?

I genuinely can’t think of one at all?? Oh lol not a lie but lie by omission i guess?? The fact that my gran still thinks i’m cishet lolll

Babbling Beverage: what kind of person are you when you’re drunk/hyped up on caffeine?

I’m so fucking affectionate and talkative, i wanna cuddle everyone and I will absolutely tell you my opinions on/feelings about people. I’m a drunk disaster, but a fun drunk disaster. I also find a lot of things funny when drunk, and buy lots of presents for people.

Barufflo’s Brain Elixir: if you could master one skill instantly, what would it be?

Right now the goddamn Russian language so my degree would be easier lol. I’d love to be able to whistle actually, or draw.

Bloodroot Potion: describe a time you felt heartbroken.

Well we’re gonna stick with creative writing so: I had a dream about us, both in matching suits. We were dancing at sunset, holding each other close as the songs played on. I woke up happy and content, and then I remembered that you weren’t mine anymore. You’re dancing with someone else while I sit, sobbing in my bed, longing for what should have been our future. I went through my room, finding every little thing that belonged to you, and put them to one side, in case you ever wanted them back. Holding on to the hope of one last conversation I guess. I miss you, and I hate you. And I love you. It hurts so much, like my heart stayed with you and I won’t last long without it.

Bruise removal paste: after you were heartbroken, what healed you?

The first time, it was love from family and friends and eventually falling in love again. And time. Now, i don’t know what’s gonna finish healing me, but love from other people and the promise that I’m worth more has done a lot to get me there.

Burn healing paste: are you cautious or are you impulsive?

Both I think? I think I could do with being a lil more spontaneous though.

Calming Draught: what do you do on a rainy day?

I like to sit with a cup of tea or coffee, legs under a blanket, watching TV or writing or reading.

Caxambu: Style

I don’t think I have a recognisable style that can be described as anything other than gay.

Borborygmus Potion: what’s your favorite food?

Right now I could really go for roast dinner tbh. Confusing Concoction: What do you struggle most with?

Prioritising myself and believing in my own worth. Cough Potion: What do you do to get better when you’re sick?

I sleep a lot, and I like to eat chicken soup and have lots of warm drinks. Cure for Boils: Write about three pet peeves.

People NOT WEARING HEADPHONES Hypocrisy Not respecting personal space Death potion: If you were told you were going to die in 24 hours, what would you do?

Depends if I knew the cause of death/if i was infectious or not. If I wasn’t infectious I’d visit as many friends and family as possible, and probably get drunk. Deflating draught: Would you call yourself arrogant/modest?

I like to think I’m modest but then again I don’t think that’s a super modest thought. Developing Solution: What’s the best photo you’ve taken? Which one’s your favorite?

I took a nice one of my uni room, and some good ones at pride. Dogbreath Potion: What superpower would you have and why?

Shapeshifting because my god would that make being trans more bearable. Doxycide: are you more clean or messy?

Messy, but I do like to clean sometimes. Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction: are you critical of yourself? if you are, how do you want to work on it?

Yes I am, and I try to work on it by talking to myself as I would to a friend or my puppy. Draught of Living Death: How would you like your funeral to go?

I’d like it to be a reflection of me, but equally I’d want it to be good for the people I’m leaving behind - I’d like Bye Bye Darling to be one of the songs though. Draught of Peace: What relaxes you?

Watching familiar TV, listening to dodie, Maisie Peters, Orla Gartland, the puppy sleeping on me, hugs from friends. Drink of Despair: What’s your biggest regret?

Not breaking up with my exes sooner, it would’ve been so much less painful and better all round. Drowsiness Draught: What’s your bedtime routine?

So after my sister and dad go to bed, I stay down with the pup, take her out to the loo, and then sit on the sofa with her sleeping for a bit. Then I put her to bed and tidy a bit, I go up to my room and get into pjs, brush my teeth and wash my face, I put on my dim fairy lights and put on a chill playlist, then sleep. Elixir of life: Would you rather live five ok/mediocre years or one incredible year?

I think it kinda depends, like it its five mediocre years where each day is mediocre, then definitely one incredible year. Elixir to Induce Euphoria: What makes you feel alive?

Dancing, love, running with the pup. Essence of Dittany: what’s the worst scar you currently have?

I scar quite easily, but they also fade quite well - at the moment I have one on my elbow from catching it on chicken wire. Exploding Potion: Do you like fireworks?

Yeah! They’re super pretty - I prefer the ones without a bang though. Fatiguing Infusion: Describe a recent/memorable dream.

I had a dream about being physically back at uni, it wasn’t super eventful but it was really calming and nostalgic. Felix Felicis: Do you believe in luck?

I guess?? Flesh-Eating Slug Repellent: How do you keep bad thoughts away?

Antidepressants lol. No but if I’m anxious I’ll write out everything I’m stressed about to get it out of my head. If I’m depressed I try to distract myself. Forgetfulness Potion: What is your favorite memory?

Maybe my first time getting drunk, it was the cast afterparty for my favourite show and it was so fun being able to chill with all my friends and being treated like an adult. (Plus it was fucking hilarious watching everyone come to the set strike the next day where most people were hungover as all hell)

My first gay night out was also pretty memorable, if only for the amount I drank lol. Fungiface Potion: What’s the greatest prank you’ve pulled?

Legitimately don’t know if I ever have pulled one? At school we once turned our whole classroom backwards, and at uni my friends and I spent about two years putting any spam mail we got into our friends pigeonhole after he proudly told us how empty he always kept it. That was fun. Gregory’s Unctuous Unction: Describe your best friend(s).

Okay we’re gonna go for 3 people (all of whom have featured in poems of mine) - I started off writing about 5 and then got bored (and also vaguely embarrassed about calling people best friends) so we’re going down to three I’m also gonna make it vague ish So the first is a friend I’ve known for ten years and we’ve been equal parts immature and grown up throughout those ten years - last time I saw her we went to a inflatable park and then to spoons. She’s funny and sweet and chaotic and a lot shorter than I think (she used to be a head taller than me but hasn’t grown since we met, so even though we’re the same height neither of us quite believes it). She’s talented and reliable and So very committed to being a good friend (she drove to pick my ex and I up from a festival so she could meet him and took a 3-4 hour train to come celebrate my 21st). The second is possibly the first friend I made at uni because we bonded over being terrified of going to Russia and now we communicate almost solely through animal crossing. I love her, she’s hilarious, about as much of a mess as I am and an incredibly sweet person. She’s the first person I text in a crisis because she knows the exact right balance of taking the piss and actually helping and is always available to talk in foreign when I need to forget about the people I’m with or avoid an ex lol. The third is one of my favourite people at uni, he’s super supportive and understanding but also the best fucking person for a night out or a laugh. I used to think he was intimidating but honestly he’s just so sweet and has always made me feel welcome in my new year groups and always makes sure I have someone to pre with. Hair-Raising Potion: What scares you?

Fucking clowns man. Also not living life to the fullest, I’m really trying to put myself first nowadays and make sure I’m not staying in bad situations out of anxiety. It’s definitely helped me feel better about myself and have more energy to think about other people as well. Hate potion: If you had to name your worst trait, what would it be?

Either stubbornness or being too self-sacrificing. It’s not a good combo tbh. Herbicide Potion: do you have a green thumb?

I have owned (1) plant and I think I killed it so no. I am absolutely terrified every time my dad asks me to water the garden because I feel like I can only over or under water. Hiccoughing Solution: what’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you?

Funny situations involving me tend to end in injury, maybe when I fell over the tennis net that didn’t even come up to my knees and got stuck in it? Or when I fell over skiing and couldn’t get up because I’d done a roly poly which ended up with my skis trapped under my back. Invigoration Draught: how do you wake up in the mornings?

Lately my sister brings the puppy up to wake me up which is nice. Invisibility Potion: What would you do if you were invisible for a day?

Ooh that’s a good question, I think I’d probably take a bunch of photos of me holding stuff and probably scare the shit out of my family. Jawbind Potion: Are you talkative? What do you like to talk about?

Yes, very. I like talking about anything and everything, I love finding stuff out about people, which is part of the reason I do so many of these things. Laugh-Inducing Potion: Tell a funny story.

I am not a very funny person. I don’t have many funny stories!! When I was younger and my mum would get milkshakes and stuff, we were only allowed a glass each (I have 3 siblings) so that we each got the same amount and my sister was being sneaky, tried to drink from the carton to cheat the rule, ended up drinking mouldy milk. Karma. Mandrake Restorative Draught: How long can you stand still?

Probably quite a while, I’ve never thought about it to be honest. Manegro Potion: How do you like to cut your hair? I cut mine myself, I usually leave the top a few inches long, and the back and sides are usually tapered from a 3 to a 1. Mopsus Potion: What do you want to be doing 5 years from now?

Hopefully be working in translation or LGBT activism, living with a flatmate or partner. I’d like to have had top surgery and be acting or stage managing again and playing tennis and maybe football again. Muffling Draught: Favorite genre of music?

Idk, indie pop maybe? Or alternative? Oculus Potion: would you rather see the distant past or the distant future?

Distant future. Pepperup Potion: what makes you feel alive?

Sport, playing with the puppy, talking to friends. Polyjuice Potion: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would remove my chest lol. Quodpot Solution: What’s your opinion on sports (are you a fan of any specific teams/sport)?

Tennis is my favourite sport, I also like football, judo, rounders, swimming, sailing and skiing. Rat Tonic: Do you have any pets?

Yes! I have a tiny bunny called Teddy, two chickens called Miss Sussex and Babs and a boxer puppy called Pickle. Shrinking Solution: How tall are you? Do you like your height (why/why not)?

I honestly don’t know, I think I’m 5’ 3” ish?? After 5’ I just kinda stopped paying attention. I’d like to be taller because it would help me pass better, but I also kind of like my limbs the way they are?? Like additional muscle from T is already making tennis weird to adjust to so I don’t wanna make that worse tbh. Skele-Gro: What helps you feel better?

Hugs, alcohol, chocolate, familiar TV, reading my favourite books. Sleakeazy’s Hair Potion: Describe yourself in 6 words or less.

Queer, loud, chatty, empathetic, caring, stubborn. Veritaserum: What is one truth you’ve wanted to get off your chest?

I wish I had broken up with my exes sooner/not got together with the last one at all. We weren’t a good fit and I like to think we’d still be friends otherwise. Volubilis Potion: Can you/do you like to sing?

I love to sing, I’m decent but struggling to adjust to my voice drop tbh. Wide eye Potion: What time do you usually go to bed?

12/1am, depends on when I take the dog out. Wolfsbane: What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced in the past year? Going on testosterone!

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theclaravoyant · 5 years

Text

a Noble tradition

The Doctor loves Christmas, so Ryan, Yaz, and Graham take her to a local Christmas market on Earth, where she runs into some unexpected old friends. (*Very* old friends.)

AN ~ I was prompted to write a fic where Thirteen meets Donna, and I really got into a nostalgic Noble family mood with it. I wouldn't technically call this fluff, but it's bittersweet with a positive outlook and lots of wholesome platonic goodness. Enjoy <3 (but please note Donna doesn't remember the Doctor, because I enjoy suffering too much)

Relationships: The Doctor & Wilf, The Doctor & Donna, Team Tardis 13/The Fam

Read on AO3 or Pillowfort (word count ~1900)

a Noble tradition

“I love Christmas,” the Doctor remarks cheerfully, beaming as she looks around at the market Yaz, Graham and Ryan have brought her to. There are baubles and strips of tinsel draped from every snow-and-pine-covered surface, bells jingling, and carols warbling over a distant speaker. “So colourful. And everybody’s nice to each other, mostly. Not that people should need an excuse, but…”

She trails off, distracted by a tray of gingerbread men someone is carrying past. She follows it to a patisserie stall and Graham, ever grateful for the opportunity for food, jumps at the chance to follow her while Yaz and Ryan trail a few steps behind, admiring the handmade wreaths and glowing lights and hats with unnecessarily long ear flaps that decorate the nearby stalls. By the time they reach the Doctor, she has already picked out their gingerbread folk, and passes them around enthusiastically. They are fresh and warm in the frosty air, and Yaz and Ryan accept them with delight as the Doctor begins to regale them with a story of a town called Christmas on a planet oh so far away from here - a tale Graham briefly interrupts to pass her a jam donut shaped and decorated like a Christmas tree, and which as a result, diverges into one about the time a Christmas tree nearly killed her. Naturally.

“Hold on,” Graham remarks. “All that funny business at Christmas in London a few years back, was that all you?”

“Well-“

“Oh yeah!” Yaz cries. “Pig in a spaceship? Disappearing hospital? My cousin was in there, you know. Said something about alien rhinoceros?”

“Well, it was- I mean, I was there,” the Doctor explains as all three of them look around at each other, impressed. “And it was actually more of a space vampire. The space rhinoceros were just looking for her.”

“Oh, well that’s alright then,” Ryan shrugs, smirking as the illustrious, ancient, alien defender of earth takes a gigantic bite out of the tree-shaped donut and in doing so, all but buries her nose in jam and bright green icing. Her eyes are bright with mirth for a moment and then - mid-chew, like a deer on high alert - she pauses.

Graham, Yaz and Ryan eye each other warily.

“I know that voice,” the Doctor whispers.

“We about to become one of those stories then, Doc?” Graham offers. “Assassin Santas running about or something?”

He glances up and down the fairway of the market. Ryan is wondering how effective a nearby baguette would be as a weapon. Depends what they’re facing, he supposes. He can already see Yaz mapping the exits, figuring out which would be best to heard civilians toward in the case of an emergency, but then the Doctor leaps into action.

“Quick!” she orders. “Hide me!”

“What?”

She runs a lap around the display table, trying to figure out where to go, and settles for nicking one of those beanies from the neighbouring stall instead, with the really long ear flaps. This one is deliberately designed to look like a cartoonish reindeer, with stuffed antlers sewn on and all, and it really would look utterly ridiculous if they weren’t all so busy trying to gauge the danger as the Doctor bustled around and muttered to herself. Probably not all that dangerous then, or she’d be rallying them instead, but try as they might to ask her what is going on she - as per usual with the first go round of things - doesn’t quite have time to clearly explain.

“What’s the point of that?” she frets, tugging at the hat. “He doesn’t know what I look like. It’s fine. It’ll be -“

She cuts herself of when she realises that the man in question is already at the stall, staring her in the face. He’s got on an old hand-knitted sweater with pine trees stitched into it, and red foam antlers around his head. He beams, full of merriment, and gestures to the treats on the table.

“These yours then?” he asks. “Love the hat!”

“Wilf.” She doesn’t mean to say it, doesn’t mean to give herself away, but how can she not? She has missed this family for so long, and this is the man she died for all those years ago. She just knows that he’s been watching the sky for her, all this time, and she wonders if he knows how grateful she is for that constant reminder that she is not alone.

Wilf, of course, is good natured but confused by all the carryings-on. He laughs it off as the Doctor releases him from the hug, and watches her with a strange expression. But he is very bright, and there’s something about this strange woman, so he tries something. Nods to Graham and suggests -

“All these young whippersnappers with you? You should take them round the corner, there’s one of them police boxes, like the ones from when we were young. Amazing. It’s like going back in time.”

He sets his eyes very deliberately back on the Doctor for that last part, and she’s smiling and almost crying at the same time. Oh, she has missed him. But now he knows, so she opens her arms and gestures to her new self.

“I told you I was going to change, didn’t I?”

“Blimey,” Wilf remarks. “Did a good job of it. Even if you are dressed like a rainbow upchucked on a fisherman.”

“Told you,” Ryan mutters. Yaz elbows him.

Wilf’s face lights up upon seeing they’re with the Doctor, and he gleefully shakes everyone’s hands and introduces himself to the full circle.

“This is Wilf, he’s an old friend,” the Doctor adds. “Very old friend.”

“How long’s it been?” Wilf wonders.

“A long time,” the Doctor breathes. “Decades. Centuries. Depends who you ask, really.”

“And you still remember us old things?”

He looks so surprised, it almost hurts, and the Doctor wonders if he’ll ever know what it feels like not just to miss someone, but to miss missing them… and then to get them back, if only for the briefest of moments. A smile touches her lips and she promises -

“Always.”

Wilf smiles back, with a solemnity that suggests he knows something of what she’s going through, at least enough to begin to imagine, and without further prompting he offers -

“She’s good, you know. Doing well. Started up her own contracting place a few years back, business services they call it - managing temps, bookkeepers, IT, all that stuff. She’s in charge of the whole thing, and getting quite a good reputation too.”

“Good on her,” the Doctor praises, and she can’t help but smile. “Helping people, and ordering them around all day. Sounds right up Donna’s alley.” Wilf laughs. “It’s a struggle sometimes, but she’s really grown, you know. I thought it would all go away after… after you left… but she is finding her feet again. Really taking responsibility for herself and grabbing life by the horns, eh? Bloody fierce, she is, I knew she could do it.”

“THERE you are!”

Before the Doctor can so much as open her mouth to respond, there is an interruption. It’s a new voice, but an old one. It’s seared into the Doctor’s soul. (Speak of the devil, Wilf remarks fondly.) Upon hearing it, the Doctor freezes. Should she run? Hide? Dive behind the table? Suddenly it’s too late and that red hair is already here. A quiet voice whispers in her head: she doesn’t know what you look like. It is going to be okay. She doesn’t know. She can never know.

“What’s all this, then?” Donna wonders, looking around the gathering that has formed. Only half-jokingly, she points at Wilf and asks the Doctor, “Is he bothering you?”

She can never know. Words freeze on the Doctor’s tongue.

“I wasn’t bothering anyone, sweetheart,” Wilf insists. “We just got to talking, that’s all.”

“Bonding over crazy Christmas headgear, I see,” Donna remarks, eyeing the Doctor’s hat. Just as the Doctor is about to regain control of her voice, a pattering of tiny footsteps come crunching through the snow, and Donna sweeps a little blonde boy into her arms.

“This is my great-grandson Devon,” Wilf introduces, because of course, as far as Donna is concerned there’s no need. What is puzzling is the gestures he is making, until he explains a moment later, “He is deaf. Donna adopted him earlier this year. This is our first Christmas all together as a family!”

The Doctor beams, but finally manages to stumble into a response. Quite convincingly if she does say so herself, and with signs to boot.

“That’s brilliant! Merry Christmas! Have some gingerbread, on me!”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Donna jests. “Devon, what do we say to the nice lady?”

Blushing, Devon musters up the courage to say:

“… I like your hat, Nice Lady.”

The Doctor laughs. “He’ll fit right in, this one.”

Ryan hands her a cookie, which she passes onto Devon with pride. Donna nudges him.

“What do we say?”

“Thank youuuuuuuu,” Devon recites.

“Thank you,” Donna repeats genuinely as she takes a cookie for herself and, at this collection of strangers’ insistence, another for Wilf. “We should be going before Mum loses her head. Come on, Granddad.”

“Come on, Granddad!” Devon mimics in an exasperated tone. Yaz grins and hides it behind her hand, and Wilf sighs dramatically and makes a show of adhering to his dear family’s wishes. He spares one last glance for the Doctor, and a fond nod; a promise of all the things they’ve left unspoken. The Doctor stares after him for a long moment, until bittersweet tears fill her eyes beyond seeing, and then she wrenches the hat off her head because if she thinks of how Wilf-like it is for one more second…

She blinks the tears away, and turns back to her friends.

Ryan, Yaz, and Graham say nothing, and they’re all looking at her with such sympathy in their eyes it almost makes her tear up again. Instead, the Doctor takes a deep breath.

“I warned you to be sure when you travel with me,” she reminds them. “It doesn’t always end well.”

The others share a look. They could take this moment to ask any number of questions - was it Wilf who had travelled with the Doctor, or just Donna? Why did Wilf remember, and not Donna? What exactly did Donna not remember and why did the Doctor look like that about it all?

Instead, Ryan offers encouragingly; “I dunno, she looks alright to me."

The others nod in agreement and the Doctor finds her spirit is lifted. Donna is driven, successful, and loving, and so very loved, and as painful as things had been ending between them, the Doctor could hardly ask for a better life, even for her best friends in the world.

Gingerbread, surely, is the least she can do.

“Shall we get a box of these to go, then?” she suggests.

“I don’t know about you, Doc,” Graham puts in, “but right now I could go for something a little stronger than gingerbread.”

Yaz nods. “Here here.”

“They do mulled wine at the pop-up round the corner,” Ryan informs them. “Tis the season and all that, right?”

“Right,” Graham agrees. “I’m sold.”

“Me too,” Yaz says, and all three of them turn to look at the Doctor, who tucks a gift box full of gingerbread under her arm for good measure, dumps a frankly ridiculous amount of money into the cashbox, and gestures for her friends to lead the way.

#doctor who #dwfic #thirteen #thirteenth doctor #the doctor & donna noble #the doctor & wilfred mott #teamtardis13 #clara's fic tag

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drewcanwrite · 6 years

Text

Masked Intentions

The worn aged wood table feels coarse under my hands. My fingers feel for every divot and imperfection upon the surface of the authentic wood. Clattering beer mugs and cheering laughter complete the atmosphere with a cheery, welcoming, and fun attitude. The kitchen doors swing wide open as servers carrying giant plates of aromatic food hurry out of the boiling kitchen, a trail of steam follows. A bard donned in a flashy, pompous outfit sits in the dusty, cobweb-ridden corner as he plucks notes to himself on an old lute as he warms up. The man next to me hastily pounds on the counter again as he slurs incoherent words together. The tired bartender understands and slides the drunkard another mug of foamy beer.

Choosing to go to Wilhelm’s tavern on a Friday night, in hindsight, was a bad decision. I originally came here to think, but I can hardly keep my thoughts together with all of this noise filling such a tiny space. I open my satchel to fetch a few coins for the bartender and head for the exit. Some eyes turn to me, and then to what I was wearing. I was outcasted in my full body of armor, as everyone else wore tunics and other casual garb. For gods’ sake, even a satyr gave me a dirty look while he was wearing nothing but a loincloth.

The cool midnight air washes over my red and flushed face as I step outside of the tavern. The dull stars slightly twinkle between the soft rolling clouds. I can’t help but think of the cottage I grew up in back home. Pale moonlight softly reflects off of steel my chestplate. I vaguely remember nights like this back home, where I could just sit outside in the cool moonlight and just relax and count the stars. My mind has cleared and calmed, I begin to think about the prospects of my current mission.

I was originally sent by the council of Roseview Kingdom to retrieve a stolen artifact. The Dryad’s mask is an ancient ritual tool used for mass prayer or religious ceremonies of the ancient Arezyad people. The council elders told me they believed that it was stolen by Duskvale thieves, archaic enemies of the holy lineage of Roseview.

The mission, thus far, has led me on a wild goose chase and landed me in this small village on the edge of the Duskvale border. I’ve already grown weary of it all, but I know that I must keep persevering.

I allow myself to nostalgically reminisque the stars a few moments until reality sets back in, and I’m still standing on the damp, swampy ground outside of a noisy tavern. Looking back down from the constellations, my eyes catch a sludgy, shadowy figure leaning by a wall of a textile shop, underneath the sign. I couldn’t see the features of their face from where I was standing as the shadow casted by the shop perfectly concealed their identity.

The sign above the shop was stained, and I barely made out the words “Needle & Thread”. It was just only being held up by a couple of rusted chains attached to a small wooden beam.

The figure turned to face me as I walked by, only revealing the color of blood red eyes. I’m caught off guard as if their gaze was enough to penetrate through me. Their eyes had a redeemable sense of familiarity in them, yet cold and unforgiving. Stopping in my stride, a single lock of platinum white hair peeked from behind their ear and strung across their face. My intuition tells me to keep walking and forget I ever saw this person, but my mission details say otherwise. “Interrogate any and all suspicious persons.”

“Good evening, err,” their eyes shift metallic as I spoke to them, “may I ask wha-”

“It’s midnight,” a higher pitched voice abrupts from the cloak, “and why are you talking to me, aren’t you supposed to be on a dumb mission?” she turns to face me in the full moonlight. Her face was small and round, and she had serious eyebrows. Locks of pure platinum hair framed her face and fell down her back. A silky bow, matching her eyes in color, was snuggly fitted to the neck of her shirt. One of her hands was in the pocket of her skirt, the other one clutching the side of her cloak.

“Dumb? I’ll have you know that my mission isn’t dumb. It’s very important!” I can feel myself getting flustered. She looks to the side and smirks to herself. “How did you even know I was on a mission, kid?”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that I’m not a kid. Besides, who else but a Roseview oaf would come to this vacant village in a full body of armor?” she gestures towards the Roseview crest on my chestplate with her hand. A dull charcoal colored, scale-plated gauntlet wraps around both of her arms from the elbow down. “It’s basically written on your face that you’ve come here to investigate.” Heat rushes to my face and into my cheeks. My hand feels for the sheathed sword at my waist. “What are you even looking for anyways?”

“An artifact was stolen from the Roseview museum, a very important mask.” I respond. Why am I even telling her about this?

“A mask?” she looks me in the eyes. Those blood red eyes again. “What mask?”

“The Dryad’s mask, do you know anything perhaps?” I respond, unenthusiastically.

“Tsk, tsk, Duskvale thieves. They’ll risk their lives for a pencil sharpener,” she softly laughs to herself. “Yeah, I know where it is. Whatever they steal, they don’t hide it very well. On multiple occasions I’ve been able to find their loot.” I should apprehend this thief for just disclosing her past crimes, but I feel like she is now a very important asset to this case.

“I feel like you’re obliged to show me their hiding place now.” I firmly rebuked.

“Well, they’ve got many different hiding places,” she starts to quiet her voice. She pushes back a stray strand of hair, “but I definitely know where their main one is. Not too far from here, in fact.”

“So, can you help me?” I say.

She pauses to think. Distant hootin’ and hollerin’ leak from the tavern doors.

“Eh, why not,” she finally bursts out, breaking the silence. “But don’t report me to the authorities if there’s less treasure in there than when we came in.” she points a stern finger at me.

Without hesitation she grabs me by the wrist, her gauntlet making a minor scratching-clunk noise against my own, and leads me down the alleyway of the thread shop and around a dark corner. Around the shadowed corner is a dimly lit brick road with some other small shops and houses along the sides. Only a couple candles stay lit inside the windows.

Her rapid footsteps make tiny splashes in the muddy, dreary puddles that spot the road. Her grip on my wrist slightly becomes stronger, and I can feel her putting more effort into holding on. She cranes her neck, “Why are you so slow?”, she shouts behind her shoulder.

Running out of breath, I try to get out some words. “Running in a full suit of armor like this isn’t easy, you know.” Gasps of air intertwine every other word. The sound of wind accompanies the melody of running footsteps and splashing. “Sorry, ma'am, but I just realised I never asked for your name.” we are full on sprinting now. My boots make a rhythmic chink with every pound against the brick.

“Just call me Kali.” she responds, without hesitation. Then, it’s quiet again.

“Er, nice to meet you Kali,” I say trying to fill the void, “I am Octave Lovell, high knight of the Roseview court.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t care less.” she snaps back, “could you quit the yappin’? We’re almost there.” The brick road takes us to the woodland edge of an inky, wet forest. Our momentum stops and we walk along the edge of the brush away from the brick road. The treeline stretches for miles into the horizon. We continue to march along for what seems like eternity. I look up into the sky, looking for constellations to entertain me. I reach into my leather satchel feeling for my compass. Pulling it out, I rub my thumb over the smooth, cold metal backing. It’s red needled hand pointed West.

“We’re looking for a stone mausoleum,” Kali whispers. The first time she’s spoken to me in almost an hour. I nod my head to agree. “But keep quiet. You never know who could be lurking around.”

“Like us? I don’t even see a mausoleum anywhere.” I butt in, “We’ve been walking for, what an hour? When-” Kali quickly turns around and presses her cold metal finger to my lips. Her eyes widen and her eyebrows furrow. The hood of her cloak fell down as she turned around, revealing her full head of pure white hair. Even with no discernable source of light, except the twinkling stars, her hair seemed to radiate. She puts her hands on my shoulders and pulls me down, face-level.

“Do you know how much trouble we could get into if we’re caught by somebody? We’re not in Roseview anymore, we’re officially on Duskvale territory,” she angrily whispers, her hot breath bouncing off my skin. “You need to keep it down, unless you want us dead.” She gives me a scalding look. “Trust me, okay?”

Relentlessly, Kali orders us to continue moving along, bringing us to a side winding path that leads into the forest. Entering the forest I feel immediately cooler. Moss covered the broken stones of the path, and the forest smelled of rotting carcass and fire. I resist the urge to gag. Kali doesn’t seem to mind.

Almost immediately after passing the treeline, I spot the stone mausoleum. It’s foundation was crumbling and there were deep cracks in the stone. Moss and vines stuck to the side. The entrance was completely sealed, as I couldn’t see any sign of an entrance anywhere, it looked completely seamless from all sides. Walking around the mausoleum I found a fissure along the length of the rear. I place my hands against the cold stone, looking for any sort of entrance.

“You’re truly clueless, aren’t you, Lovell?” Kali says, “It’s obviously an entrapment spell.”

“How would I know? I never studied enchantment.” I rebuttal. She scoffs at me.

Kali’s gauntlets start to glow a deep, ominous purple. Flames of fuschia wash over her fingertips and slowly up to her wrist. The flames lick at the air and grow brighter. Slowly, Kali strides up to the rear wall of the mausoleum. Extending her arms with her palms facing the wall, a current of raw energy bursts from her gauntlet and spreads over the stone. The light spreads and disperses over the entire building. Kali’s magic etches into the stone, leaving a purple glow from within.

The mausoleum pillars start to shake and crumble, it’s walls giving into Kali’s power. One by one, the pillars dissipate into a plume of dust, and turn into cinder. The ashy particles slowly fall down onto the ground, coating the dead leaves and dewy moss. Everything that was inside the mausoleum appears to be covered in a fine layer of dust and broken stone.

“Okay muscles,” Kali turns to me, “my jobs done.”

“What do you mean? Where’s the mask?” I express, “there’s nothing here.”

“It’s in there, it’s just under all that rubble,” she gestures towards the remnants of broken pillar and wall, “oops.” Her face dons a blank expression.

“Can’t you just move all of it with your magic something-or-other?” I respond bitterly.

“I can, but I’m not going to.” She crosses her arms and shoots me a deadly look.

Seeing no other way out, I steadily pick up the remnants of broken wall and pillar and move them to the side, carelessly throwing them off to the side. The chunks of stone tumble downhill, rashly grazing wildflowers on the way. Beads of sweat drip down my brow and crawl across my cheek. I peer over to see Kali sitting daintily on a rotten fallen log, like a perfectly bloomed sapling. She’s looking off into the distance.

Bending down, I get on my knees to get a closer look. I sift the coarse rubble through my fingers, searching for any stolen artifacts or other contraband.

After a couple minutes of sifting, my fingers graze a wooden, oblong object. Picking it up, I recognize the shape and outline of the Dryad’s mask. Butterflies of excitement wave up through my stomach and into my chest. I hastily brush off all the debris and fragments off of the ancient mask.

“Kali, I can’t believe you were right! For a while I was starting to doubt you.” I say over my shoulder. I turn around to see the log that Kali was previously sitting on is bare, and Kali has disappeared. “Kali?” I uttered. My words echoed throughout the dense forest.

A crackle of electricity emanates behind me, and a white aura envelopes my body. I’m blinded and something knocks me over the head.

My muscles twitch sporadically, and an intense burning sensation encompasses my being. Electricity continues to flow between my armor pieces and my skin, piercing my nerves. Excruciating pain swells my entire body. I try to get up, but my efforts are futile. My armor becomes two-thousand times more heavy, and it feels like the weight of the world is resting on my spine. I am completely stunned.

“K-Kali” I mumble, my face squishing against the cool, earthy mud, “I can’t move.” Kali swirls around into my vision, carelessly waving the Dryad’s mask in her hand.

“You made it so easy for me,” she chuckles to herself, “almost too easy.”

“I trusted you.” I mutter between trembling lips.

“Well, then you can’t exactly blame me, can you? After all, it was your mistake.”

“Why would you do this?” I spat through gritted teeth.

She kneels down to get closer to my face, “The truth is, I was already planning on coming here whether or not you asked me about that stupid mask,” she faintly whispered, “I was only using you for protection, in case I encountered any ruffians along the way.” She takes her finger and runs it along my jawline.

“Now stay down.” she disdainfully spoke down, “Good dog.”

She smirked at me, and flipped the dull charcoal colored hood over her head. She turned around, still clutching the mask to her chest, and sprinted away deeper into the woods of Duskvale.

#oc #kali #octave #prompt #nightmare #short story

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adventure-hearts · 7 years

Text

tri. Chapter 5 - Recap, Analysis, Review [part two]

I’m sorry for the delay (and not reacting to the feedback), but it’s been a busy weekend. Hope you like it!

(Check out part one!)

Taichi consoles Meiko, and if you needed any proof that he's had amazing development in this series – and how much he's grown since Adventure – this scene is a great example. He's empathic, he's caring, he says the right things at the right moment. Fulfilling his role as a leader, he assures Meiko that she (and Meicoomon) are now part of the group.

Again, this proves that the trip to the hot springs and similar scenes were absolutely essential to the story. You had to show them becoming friends and welcoming Meiko, in order to explain why the Chosen Children care so much about her, and why they don’t see her as an outsider, but as one of them.

(By the way, the new instrumental version of "Butter-fly" that plays during this scene is beautiful!)

And for everyone still complaining about Sora's arc last Chapter, here's the moment when the resolution to her conflict is actually verbalised for the audience.

Not only has Sora’s learned something about herself (which, if you go back, has been a problem since Adventure), and now she’s putting it into practice, by admitting it openly to others. Moreover, she's using that same information to help Meiko, asking her not to repeat her old mistakes, and not to close herself off from her friends. (This also shows that “character arcs” can span multiple movies, so Hikari will probably receive a far sgare of attention in the next one).

Hikari intervenes too, affirming her faith in the almost mystical connection between partners.

The message the group conveys to Meiko is solid: trust Meicoomon and trust yourself, don’t give up, and everything will turn out well.

This view may seem a bit idealistic, but it truly reflects the profound conviction these kids have about the special bond between them and their partners. This the reason why they came back, why they're sticking together even though the Reboot erased the digimon's memories.

Their absolute faith in the group and in their friendship is also stronger than ever, and you see how much they stick out for each other. They take care of their own, no matter what.

These are beliefs that made them succeed so many times over the years, and they've seen how they can do miracles. So it's a tested assumption... even if it's starting to look dangerously naïve.

It can't be a coincidence that Hikari is the one giving the more important speech in the movie. Again, the sequence is telling us a lot about her – not only exploring her sensitivity and empathy, but also her strength of purpose and her wisdom beyond her years, which allows her to speak for everyone and verbalise the deeper values of the group. It may be subtle, but this is character development for Hikari, and it’s giving her a type of focus we’ve rarely seen in Adventure or 02. And it all comes into play later, when Hikari’s certainties receive an incredible blow near the end of the movie.

Another important motivation established here is Taichi’s decision to protect their digimon friends, even in the face of criticism. Again, it’s another indication that Taichi is overcoming the hesitation he was facing earlier, and is ready to step up into the fight.

Basically, the scene around the fire shows Meiko’s current emotional state, but it’s also very much about the core motivations of the other Chosen Children.

This isn't a just a pep talk for Meiko; it’s telling us what these kids are fighting for, what they believe in, and why they make the decisions they make later on. Moreover, their certainties and their idealism are heavily contrasted with Meiko’s bleaker outlook.

Hackmon announces Homeostasis’ decision to remove Libra, now that the Reboot failed, before things get worse. He also ads a bit of clarity regarding Meicoomon’s different forms: she hasn't been evolving, but rather mutating.

Daigo is isn't accepting this sudden change of strategy, because he thought they were protecting Meicoomon. Especially when Hackmon also reveals that Homeostasis is cooperating with the government to destroy Meicoomon. Daigo's position is too low for him to have any influence. He’s confused, angry, and he's probably feeling used – and now that Maki is out of the picture, his loyalties aren’t certain anymore. And Hackmon rubs salt in the wound by making allusions to what happened when he was a Chosen Child. (Does this suggest that Homeostasis considers that previous mission a failure?)

Finally, Hackmon reiterates Homeostasis’ agenda – they're on the side of stability and don't care about anything else, much less the feelings of a bunch of petty humans regarding a "contaminant".

It's starting to look that Maki isn't the only former chosen with unresolved issues...

Whatever, Tentomon. (I laughed, but he’s a bad influence on Koushirou.)

Oh, and let’s discuss how Tailmon is still able to stay an Adult level permanently, despite having lost all of her memories of being abused and trained under Vamdemon. This is a pretty glaring contradictions that needs be explained. Is this just a lazy overview by the writers? Or are we're supposed to accept that "old" Tailmon is still there somewhere, unconciscously holding back to her former self? This is really ambiguous regarding all the Digimon – but remember Nyaromon and the whistle? Is this a set up for the inevitable scene where everyone regains their memories?

The Chosen children speculate that the reboot as changed things somehow. Hikari states that they're going to be kicked out. and then, they’re lured outside the cave by a very familiar setting...

The sudden appearance of the nostalgic scenario could suggest that maybe there's a small part of the DW that's still on their side. On the other hand, it could very well be a way to lure them out of the cave in order to expel them. As they leave the Digital World, we immediately get a reaction from Mystery Man, which I think suggests that the latter is more likely.

After all, they are being returned to a world in the middle of a digimon crisis, which they know nothing about, plunged directly into a crowded street of hostile, scared people and police...

Food for thought: at this moment it seems that the populace identifies the monsters as digimon – which didn't happen in Chapter 1&2. Could it be that the government has changed its policy (under Homeostasis?) and is now publicly identifying the monsters as digimon in public and though the media?

Oh, and as they escape the police, Taichi keeps holding Meiko's hand at random situations so Taichi/Meiko is officially not a crack ship anymore!

This entire sequence of the escape, the interrogation, and the scene between Daigo and the cop is something we haven’t seen before in this universe and I found it super compelling. It's the first time the kids are actually confronted with the authorities over their involvement with the Digimon, which is something I've wanted to see for a very long time. It’s a pity it was solved so quickly.

At this point, however, the Chosen Children’s status in the real world is going through siginificant changes.

First, it seems that Daigo has gone rogue to help the Chosen Children and is acting on his own – which is perfectly consistent with him no longer trusting Homeostasis or his superiors, but it’s also possibly illegal. He has the parents’ consents, but does he have the Agency’s consent? Did Daigo just turn the Chosen Children into outlaws?

It's also very interesting to wonder who leaked their identities and addresses to the media, and why. If their identities are finally being revealed to the public at large, this will have very serious consequences in their personal lives.

By the way, where did Meiko get that new pair of glasses?!

Stuck at the school, the Chosen Children realise how serious the situation is, we continue to see how far Taichi has gone since the start of the series.

His first reaction is to urge is urging the others to stay calm, saying they can't fight randomly or things will get bad. Yamato immediately interprets this as Taichi falling back into his previous hesitation and inability to fight -- and gets angry at him. But Taichi explains that he's just acting cautious, for the sake of the world and everyone. He’s not running away anymore. Yamato gets this, and agrees.

Again, this shows that Taichi has actually listened to what Yamato has been telling him since Chapter 1. He’s no longer questioning the need to fight or running away from problems - but he’s also no longer the reckless 11-year-old he used to be. Taichi’s grown up - and Yamato has played a crucial role in this.

After Daigo tells them about Homeostasis' plans for Meicoomon, Meiko (who's still not convinced) concludes that Meicoomon is an undesired existence, and therefore she is an undesired partner. Taichi intervenes by telling Meikomon that Meicoomon desires her, and everyone agrees.

Considering the destruction Meicoomon has caused, she's now questioning her friend’s optimism and their plan, which is to to somehow “get to” Meicoomon through Meiko, stopping her, and saving the day. Once again, Meiko isn’t being mopey and defeatist – this is a reasonable standpoint, and possibly the more pragmatic one. While the Chosen Children are still placing their hope on Meicoomon’s ability to be redeemed as a partner Digimon and are apparently unable to conceive a scenario where this plan doesn’t work, Meiko is willing to imagine the opposite.

Again, this conversation establishes the growing division between Meiko and the other Chosen Children’s optimism. Meiko’s starting to consider the worst possible scenario, while the others are still fixed on their enduring belief that the “sacred partner” bond will solve everything -- and even Daigo is in the same boat! Meiko’s dilemma is that, after what she’s seen, she can’t quite believe all their talk about hope.

The way I see it, this shows that Meiko’s actually being fairly reasonable here in the face of an incredibly painful dilemma for her, and it’s *the other kids* are still far too stuck in their naïve worldview.

#digimon #digimon adventure tri #kyousei #review / recap #meta #sorry for typos and lack of clarity it's late and tumblr kept crashing on me!

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