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hedgehog-moss · 7 months

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Today felt like the last day of summer... I spent a long time following a little stream, looking for the spot where I'd found wild currants last year. They had clearly moved to a different spot, or maybe I'm just bad at finding things again because the only landmarks my brain finds worth remembering are stuff like "there were two baby cows to the left" or "there was a majestic hawk perched on a fencepost." I did know the currants grew near a waterfall that's near a little hamlet, and (unlike the baby cows) both were still here one year later.

Half an hour into our quest Pandolf had decided we must be looking for water, so he stopped like "Here!!" every time he found a noteworthy watery spot, it was very sweet.

Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to find my favourite berries this year, and I went back to the road—and found raspberries instead! The last ones of the summer...

I was like "I accept this consolation prize, world, thank you" and had started picking raspberries when I heard soft dainty footsteps on the road behind me. On reflex I said "Bonjour !" as I was turning around and then realised I'd just said bonjour to this lady:

She walked up to me like she was about to ask me for directions, but then went right past me and walked on with the same purposeful air.

She stopped to admire the view above the waterfall like an old lady on her routine evening walk, then she was on her way.

Pandolf and I went in the opposite direction, to go home, and we soon found another pony who was clearly the first one's pasture mate. This one was in her pasture and she looked sad and abandoned (and/or outraged). She kept pacing and then stopping behind the fence and whinnying.

After we crossed the hamlet we saw a guy on his tractor on the road—he was on his way to a pasture where you could see a little herd of cows who had formed an orderly queue in front of their milking parlour. It was evening milking time and the ladies knew it.

Cows queue like British citizens, I mean very politely and patiently, but still I didn't want to keep them waiting so I hesitated to stop the guy to tell him about the fugitive. I chose the compromise of trotting besides his tractor to give him the news, and the tractor was very loud so he couldn't hear me well and I had to sort of convey the concept of escaped ponyhood with hand gestures. The guy looked in the direction I was indicating and then nodded and moved his arms in a philosophical gesture of total acceptance, like, "Such is life." Or maybe it was "Not my pony, not my problem."

I on the other hand feel a deep sense of community with people who have escape artist animals, so I ended up turning back to see if I could at least orient the pony in the vague direction of her pasture. I found her at a crossroads, wondering where tonight's walk would take her.

When I tried to go around her and shoo her back in the right direction, she went off the road and down by the stream, which wasn't the plan, and Pandolf happily followed her then barked at me like "hey!! water!!" Our search for water had ended but I followed them to humour him—and! I found some wild currants! down by the little bridge that the pony was waiting for me to notice like some mystical guide.

There were no actual berries to be found, I'm a bit too late for that, but I got some cuttings to transplant near my house and since I thought I was going to go home empty-handed it made me feel successful anyway.

So maybe the pony saw me meandering near her pasture looking for currants and decided to escape so she could help me out. A criminal with a heart of gold. If I'd walked by the bridge I might have seen the currants without her help because, guess what, last year's hawk, Guardian of the Gooseberries, was still there on his fencepost nearby. What a good landmark! But I wouldn't have walked by the bridge without the pony's prompting as I had already given up on my search, so she did escape for a good cause.

I tried to use the currants as bait to attract the pony (let's call her Mrs Berry) towards her pasture, but after I pulled the leaves out of her reach for the third time I lost her trust and she stopped paying attention to me. So I had to go back to the good old method to make shetland ponies move, i.e. walk behind her and occasionally pretend-kick in the direction of her bum, the way you'd shepherd a reticent pigeon.

Her friend looked pretty indifferent upon seeing her again, so I think she wasn't whinnying out of worry but because she's a Pirlouit (a snitch).

I opened the pasture gate but Mrs Berry had absolutely no intention of going home so early. She went in the opposite direction, for a little stroll around her hamlet. (Look at Pandolf merrily leading the way! He loves escape artist animals, he thinks they're so much more fun than everybody else.)

Nobody was home in the house by the pasture and I decided to let Mrs Berry stroll, now that she was no longer on the road walking away towards the distant horizon. I figured she must be a Pampérigouste, a known local personage who goes out for an adventure every now and then. We let her have her harmless fun in the two and a half streets of her little village, and since we had lost some time following this pony round, the sun was now quite low and Pan was all prettily backlit as he frolicked on the way home <3

#crawling along #another very long post to say not much at all but i loved this little encounter!

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sempersirens · 3 months

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the fig tree | rotten

pairing: therapist!joel x f!reader

warnings: 18+ mdni. discussion of heavy and potentially triggering topics such as sa, self-harm, infertility, various mental illnesses, self-hatred and drug use. these topics are only mentioned and do not occur in real-time.

chapter summary: a twenty-something, seemingly lost cause, meets her match in the form of psychotherapist: dr. joel miller.

dividers by @saradika-graphics

updates: @sempersirenswrites

series masterlist

Maybe it was time to accept you were never as good as you'd always thought you'd been.

For four long years, you had spent most of your waking hours dissecting epic poetry and papyrology.

Still, the most your degree had done for you was rouse a satisfying disappointment from your mother’s side of the family when they realised you weren’t actually going to be that kind of doctor.

Not to say such in a self-deprecation; you hardly suffered from any semblance of an imposter syndrome. Your mother used to frequently remind you that you were far too vain to not believe in yourself.

It was more of a philosophical framework. Platonic realism. Knowing your muted beauty could earn you a free drink from below-average men who felt their trousers tighten when you addressed them through your eyelashes.

But it wasn't an obvious enough beauty for the attention of the men you imagined exchanging bodily fluids with between stops on the underground.

Besides, you had been a student of Classical Studies; a degree that doesn’t require the intellectual strain of learning Latin or Ancient Greek. The inclusive way for people like you, having attended a run-down state-funded school, to get a glimpse into the Bullingdon boys' and grammar schoolgirls’ fallback plans.

It wasn't even that you disliked Classics; you'd borderline gotten off on reading plays written by men about wicked women; but that was because the brilliant women were always the wicked ones.

You particularly enjoyed the assumptions men made about the female condition – how women were too wet, too porous; couldn’t keep their wombs from wandering. And assumptions they were. No Greek physician ever sliced a woman from chin to cunt to confirm their hypotheses. Although, ancient men hadn't been all too familiar with the insides of a woman anyway.

Sometimes, you thought you would quite simply die if you were reduced to only understanding people through your assumptions of them.

It was just that you could never stop thinking about what people thought. It was all you could ever think about. You wanted to peel people's skulls apart and scream at their horribly grey frontal lobe:

Are you ok? Have I done something to upset you? Do you still love me? Do I look like someone that has been raped? Do you think that girl we just walked past has a firmer ass than me? Do you like my new bangs?

For a short period of time, you'd been desperate to know how your therapist felt and thought of you. There is a sick irony in baring your bones to a stranger in the reclined chair opposite you who never even takes off their cardigan.

You needed to know if your traumas made him sad, or if he saw things that made him think of you outside of your sessions. You supposed he both pitied and admired you in a twisted, surrogate-daughter kind of way.

Then again, he probably wouldn’t have been a very good therapist did he not pity his clients.

At one point you thought you might be in love with him.

You'd met weekly in his high-ceiling office on a busy street. It was a romantic setting to unload twenty-four years of trauma to a kind man wearing a knitted cardigan. The sun would peak through clouds and shine onto the both of you through two large windows, between which sat a Japanese peace lily.

You soon realised he was just the first man to let you speak uninterrupted.

You spoke at him mostly, finishing observations that had been years in the making with “Does that make sense?” Even though you knew it made sense. You were certain, actually, that everything you had articulated came from somewhere deeper inside of you than any man could reach. You just couldn't leave it hanging there like an exposed nerve.

Maybe it was because he didn't speak much that you liked him. Sometimes he would offer anecdotes or remedies for PTSD-induced panic attacks that you both knew you would never use.

In most sessions, you had simply basked in the divinity of being listened to. You wondered if this was how devout Catholics like your grandmother felt at confession, or perhaps it was how all of your ex-boyfriends had felt.

You weren't even particularly attracted to him. He had been ten years older than you, and when your sessions first began, you'd been casually fucking someone a year older than him – but he didn't need to know that.

There were a lot of things you'd decided he didn't need to know. Like the fact you snorted cocaine until your nose bled, sliced into your thighs a couple of evenings a week, and let men use your body to masturbate as a feeble attempt to reclaim your sexuality - as if it had ever been anyone's for the taking.

Had he known the dirtier parts of your life, you feared he would have crossed out the word victim in his black Moleskin notebook and replaced it with bystander.

Maybe he would think you were a pathological liar and diagnose you with a personality disorder. This was something you'd been warned about by the first friend you had made at university.

“My mother is a therapist, you know. Don’t tell them you cut yourself or that you’ve told anyone you cut yourself – they’ll diagnose you with BPD.”

“But I’ve told you.”

“Trust me. They’ll put you on an SSRI and you’ll never be able to orgasm again.”

You were freshly eighteen and had never had a real orgasm anyway, but this terrified you enough to reel in your catalogue of symptoms for the GP appointment you had scheduled later that day.

In the end, you'd buckled and sobbed as the doctor sat adjacent to you. You didn’t mention the self-harming or the suicidal thoughts, but did tell her that you didn’t know where to go from here.

She'd slid a leaflet from the university's self-help website across the table before pushing her chair back and motioning toward the door.

“Call 999 if things get worse," she had said. "But let’s just hope it doesn’t get to that point. A&E is very overwhelmed at the moment.”

So you got on with it. Boats against the current, or whatever. You made the hurt so small and buried it so deep within you and swore you'd never let anyone get close enough to pick at the stray thread to your undoing.

And for a little while it worked. You became what you knew you should be; you presented your face for fucking and never let the door slam on your way out.

These days, you'd felt as though you were slowly becoming rotten.

It started on the surface; a bizarre case of adult acne that no dermatologist could diagnose for love nor money. Blood tests, topical steroids, antibiotics, potentially-baby-deforming drugs. You tried them all to little avail. In the end, it was simply the passing of time that had rid you of the rot.

Next, it had been your womb. Decomposing from the inside out. Your body had made the decision for you that goodness couldn't form in your guts.

The final straw had, embarrassingly, been your heart.

You hated to say it aloud. So much so that you hadn't. But it had been a quiet promise of yours; one you'd kept quietly close to your chest - that your suffering would never turn you ugly.

But here you were, alone and swearing at the wind, the rage beneath your skin growing like a tumour.

You hated it.

You hated yourself.

You hated that you were angry but had never been taught how to be angry, because anger wasn't a pretty emotion; it was one that should be starved and kept in the corner of your wardrobe to rot like black mould.

So here you stood: before a Victorian townhouse with your scarf furiously fighting the wind, droplets of rain threatening your freshly straightened hair, scanning various names scrawled on the building's buzzer.

S. PHYSIOTHERAPY

A & R SOLICITORS

J. MILLER PSYCHOTHERAPY

You bit the inside of your cheek and ducked further into the doorway, pressing the buzzer for the last option.

A voice had answered quicker than you'd anticipated, soon followed by a harsh buzz of the intercom.

"Come on up."

Dr. Miller's office was on the third floor.

You huffed, struggling with the combination of the stairs and attempting to wrangle your wet coat from your back. Amidst your struggle, you hear a door open somewhere above you, followed by a couple of soft and slow footsteps.

Your chin instinctively lifted toward the source of the noise, feet carrying you round and round the spiral staircase.

Light poured around his silhouette from the window behind him. It was ridiculous, actually. The sight was almost holy.

Neither of you spoke as you made your way up toward him. You felt as though you were on your knees beneath him, transfixed in supplication.

The sleeves of his blue cotton shirt were haphazardly pushed up just before his elbows, arms outstretched and fingers wrapped around the wooden bannister.

You were supposed to be actually trying with this one, not fantasising about the ways the veins in his arms probably bulged with his hand around your throat.

After being politely let go by your previous therapist, you'd promised yourself that the colleague he'd recommended to you, Dr. Miller, would be the one to fix you for good.

"Hello." He nodded, not quite managing a smile.

He reached a hand toward you, which you shook with the little strength left in your body.

"Hello." You tried your best to imitate his stoic cadence, your hand still tightly in his.

You let him break the handshake first, playing a petulant, one-sided game to see how quick he would be to scare.

"After you." He gestured to the room behind him. "Take a seat wherever you feel most comfortable."

"If there is any cowboy paraphernalia in that room I am not paying for this session."

"Excuse me?" His eyebrows knitted together, no sign of humour registering on his face.

"Your accent - it was a joke. I mean, I paid already anyway." You fumbled your words awkwardly. "Jokes are always much funnier when you explain them."

He cocked his head slightly. Hesitant to embarrass yourself further, you saw yourself into his office.

The room was dim for a space endowed with Victorian-style floor-to-ceiling windows. It felt like you could get lost in it, hide away, tuck yourself into a corner and be lost for days.

"I have your notes from Dr. Hughes." He said.

"Anything juicy?" You asked, still surveying the room.

You couldn't put your finger on the specifics of his scent, but it was familiar; like passing a man in the street wearing the same aftershave as your father, or a boyfriend you hadn't seen for years.

"I'd like to figure that out myself."

You'd eventually settled on the armchair positioned opposite his own.

You had briefly wondered if this was a test, that he would be psychoanalysing whether you chose the armchair or the adjacent sofa.

Maybe you'd failed already.

For the majority of the session, you'd gone through the necessary motions of admin, confidentiality, and what you eventually wanted to get out of therapy.

"I don't have the ability to fix you, y'know that right?" His question had caught you off guard.

"I know that." You'd replied meekly.

"It's just, I don't know what kind of promises Dr. Hughes made you. We trained together, you see. He had always been more, how do I put this, hopeful than I am."

"Oh wow. Forty minutes into our first session and you're already hopeless?" You were only partly joking.

"I'm a big believer in transparency, and I can see you were meeting on and off for a few years. I'm just intrigued as to what your end goal here is."

You bit down on your cheek, swallowing the ember of rage that was burning in your throat.

"Do you think I do this for fun? Carve out an hour a week to relive my deepest, darkest traumas?"

"Not at all. I just find it interesting that after almost three years of therapy, you still can't use the word rape. You've referred to it as the thing that happened four times already."

The rot crept up your throat, threatening to pour out of your mouth and fill the room with the ugliness that grew inside of you.

"What is this, some kind of tough love therapy?" You scoffed. Was he trying to get a rise out of you?

"It can be whatever you want it to be."

He was kind of annoying, actually.

The two of you sat in silence, defiantly holding eye contact with one another to see who would be the first to break. And when he finally spoke, it was more of a statement than a question.

"That's time. I'll see you at the same time next week."

"How are you so sure I'll come back?"

He smiled for the first time that afternoon.

"I'm not."

#my fic #the last of us #joel miller x f!reader #joel tlou #joel miller x reader #tlou fanfiction #pedro pascal #joel miller x female reader #pedro pascal characters #tlou hbo #tlou #joel miller fanfic #joel x reader #the last of us hbo #the last of us fanfiction #pedro pascal fanfic #pedrohub #pedrostories

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goodnightmemes · 6 months

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INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (1994) SENTENCE STARTERS

❛ So you want me to tell you the story of my life. ❜

❛ What were you going to do? Kill me, drink my blood? ❜

❛ I'm flesh and blood, but not human. I haven't been human for 200 years. ❜

❛ I couldn't bear the pain of their loss. I longed to be released from it. ❜

❛ You lack the courage of your convictions. Do it! ❜

❛ Don't be afraid. I'm going to give you the choice l never had. ❜

❛ Your body's dying. Pay no attention. It happens to us all. ❜

❛ No words can describe it. Might as well ask Heaven what it sees. No human can know. ❜

❛ You'll get used to killing. Just forget about that mortal coil. You'll become accustomed to it, all too quickly. ❜

❛ There's nothing in the world now that doesn't hold some...Fascination. ❜

❛ The dark gift is different for each of us. But one thing is true of everyone. We grow stronger as we go along. ❜

❛ That's more like it! Anger! Fury! ❜

❛ Remember: Life without me would be even more unbearable. ❜

❛ You must know something about the meaning of it all. ❜

❛ They know about us. They watch us dine on empty plates and drink from empty glasses. ❜

❛ Forgive me if I have a lingering respect for life. ❜

❛ Perfect! Just burn the place! Burn everything we own! Have us living in a field, like cattle! ❜

❛ What if there is no Hell? Or they don't want us there? Ever think of that? ❜

❛ You're in love with your mortal nature. You resist what can bring you peace. ❜

❛ We're predators, whose all-seeing eyes give them detachment! ❜

❛ It's your coffin, enjoy it. Most of us never get to know what it feels like. ❜

❛ Kill them swiftly if you will, but do it! For do not doubt you are a killer! ❜

❛ My philosopher. My martyr. "Never take a human life.” ❜

❛ Pain is terrible for you. You feel it like no other creature, because you're a vampire. ❜

❛ Evil is a point of view. God kills indiscriminately, and so shall we. ❜

❛ A little child, she was. But also a fierce killer, now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child's demanding. ❜

❛ Remember, never in our home! ❜

❛ Time can pass quickly for mortals when they're happy. With us, it was the same. The years flew by like minutes. ❜

❛ More melancholy nonsense. You grow more like [name] daily! ❜

❛ Do you want me to be a doll forever? ❜

❛ Can't I change like everyone else? ❜

❛ Be glad I made you what you are. You'd be dead now if I hadn't. ❜

❛ You will never grow old. And you will never die. ❜

❛ I thought of all the things I'd done and couldn't undo. And I longed for one second's peace. ❜

❛ He will never let us go. ❜

❛ What is it now? You irritate me. Your very presence irritates me! ❜

❛ Is that supposed to frighten me? ❜

❛ I came to make peace with you. Even though you're the father of lies. I want things to be as they were. ❜

❛ Why do you say such things? ❜

❛ I promise I'll get rid of the bodies. ❜

❛ We forgive each other then? ❜

❛ Good night, sweet prince. May flights of devils wing you to your rest. ❜

❛ Should we burn him? Bury him? What would he have liked? ❜

❛ You've been a very, very naughty little girl. ❜

❛ We deserve your vengeance. ❜

❛ For what could the damned really have to say to the damned? ❜

❛ There are no vampires in Transylvania? No Count Dracula? ❜

❛ I've searched the world for an immortal and this is what I find! ❜

❛ No one will harm you. I won't allow it. ❜

❛ Vampires who pretend to be humans pretending to be vampires. How avant-garde. ❜

❛ Do you know what it means to be loved by Death? ❜

❛ You die when you kill. You feel you deserve to die and you stint on nothing. ❜

❛ But perhaps...this is the only real evil left. ❜

❛ I know nothing of God. Or the Devil. I have never seen a vision, nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul. ❜

❛ You fear too much. So much you make me fear. ❜

❛ There is but one crime among us vampires here. It is the crime that means death to any vampire: To kill your own kind. ❜

❛ Danger holds you to me. ❜

❛ Love holds you to me. ❜

❛ You would leave me for [name] if he beckoned you. ❜

❛ Is that what I should do? Let you go? ❜

❛ If you want to save her, send her away! ❜

❛ The world changes. We do not. Therein lies the irony that finally kills us. ❜

❛ I need you to make contact with this age. ❜

❛ A vampire with a human soul. An immortal with a mortal's passion. ❜

❛ You are beautiful, my friend. [name] must have wept when he made you. ❜

❛ I knew him. Knew him well enough not to mourn his passing. ❜

❛ Your evil is that you cannot be evil! And I shall suffer for it no longer! ❜

❛ I haven't tears enough for what you've done to me! ❜

❛ Oh, God! I love you still! That's the torment of it! ❜

❛ Who'll care for me, my love, my dark angel, when you are gone? ❜

❛ Bear me no ill will, my love. We are now even. ❜

❛ What has died is the last breath in me that was human. ❜

❛ Your only company will be your screams. ❜

❛ Maybe it was to quench those tears forever that I took such revenge. ❜

❛ You can teach me this? To be without regret? ❜

❛ What if all I have is my suffering? My regret? ❜

❛ I know you regret nothing. You feel nothing. If that's all I have left to learn, I can do that on my own. ❜

❛ You've come home to me then? ❜

❛ I'm a spirit of preternatural flesh. Detached. Unchangeable. Empty. ❜

❛ That's it? No, it can't end like that. ❜

❛ What I wouldn't give to be like you, to have your power, to have seen the things you have seen. ❜

❛ You want a companion. You want a link to the outside world. That's me. Take me.❜

❛ Do you like this? Do you like being food for the immortals? Do you like dying? ❜

❛ I assume I need no introduction. ❜

❛ Still whining. Heard enough? I've had to listen to that for centuries. ❜

#rp meme #rp prompt #inbox meme #ask meme #askbox meme #roleplay prompts #roleplay meme #sentence starters #rp memes #rp prompts #*movie

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bronzeagepizzeria · 8 months

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A COMPREHENSIVE DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING TENTOO (PART 1)

Because unfortunately there’s a lot of stuff out there to refute.

so i guess a lot of people are watching doctor who right now because of good omens. and that, for some reason, means the tags are being constantly subjected to Certain tentoo takes so...it's meta time.

in this meta, i'll be rehashing how, exactly, tentoo is the doctor, and answering some other commonly posed objections to the pairing that is tentoo x rose.

But he's not the Doctor! Rose ended up with a copy!

First things first. The entire show revolves around the philosophical concept of Cartesian Dualism--the idea that the soul/spirit/mind has an entirely separate existence from the physical body. This is the basic principle of regeneration; when the Doctor regenerates, every organ, every cell in his body changes, and yet he remains the same man. What makes the Ninth Doctor the same man as the Tenth Doctor? There's something underlying here---the memories, the mind, the spirit. The body, has absolutely no significance.

In S6E6, The Almost People, we are introduced to the Ganger!Doctor. This is a man made out of like, slime, but he has the Eleventh Doctor's memories. Thus, he IS the Doctor. The Doctor himself says this.

In S9E11, Heaven Sent, the Twelfth Doctor is reduced to ashes millions and millions of times, and yet each time his body is 'recreated' or 'cloned', he remains the same person. Why? Because the memories persist. The soul lives on.

Here, have it straight from the horse's mouth.

"A man is the sum of his memories. A Time Lord even more so." - The Fifth Doctor, The Five Doctors, 1983

More evidence? What's the first thing the Tenth Doctor tries to do in Born Again to convince Rose that he really is the Doctor she knows?

DOCTOR: Very first word I ever said to you. Trapped in that cellar...Surrounded by shop window dummies. Oh...such a long time ago. I took your hand...I said one word. Just one word...Run.

Right. He shows her that he has the same memories.

Now cast your minds back to S4E13. What does the Metacrisis Doctor say when he's trying to convince Rose he's the same man?

Therefore, according to the lore established by the show itself, his missing heart has no significance to who he is. He is the Doctor.

2. But he's a CLONE.

Okay, first of all, he's not. He's a biological metacrisis, the only one of his kind. He has only one heart, i.e, he is not biologically identical to the Time Lord Doctor.

Second, even if he was, he would STILL be the Doctor. As established above.

Third, we see a Martha clone in S4E4, The Sontaran Stratagem, and she is a far cry from what we see of Tentoo.

3. Alright so he's not a copy. He's still only A Doctor! He isn't Ten, he's Half-Donna!

So. We've established that what makes a man is his memories.

If the Doctor had Donna's memories, he wouldn't be the Doctor anymore--which makes him ending up with Rose redundant. Here's the silver lining though.

Tentoo has only ten's memories. His own memories.

'How do we know this?' you may ask. Let's examine the script of S4E13, Journey's End.

(The Daleks spin around on the spot.) DALEK: Help me. Help me! DONNA: And the other way. NEW DOCTOR: What did you do? DONNA: Trip switch circuit-breaker in the psychokinetic threshold manipulator. NEW DOCTOR: But that's brilliant! DOCTOR: Why did we never think of that? DONNA: Because you two were just Time Lords, you dumbos, lacking that little bit of human. That gut instinct that comes hand in hand with planet Earth. I can think of ideas you two couldn't dream of in a million years.

Not very likely if Tentoo had her memories, right? This happens again, in the TARDIS Coral deleted scene:

DONNA: If you shatterfry the plasmic shell....you accelerate the growth power by fifty-nine. DOCTOR & NEW DOCTOR: We never thought of that.

There we go. Canon evidence that Tentoo does not have Donna's mind/memory/thought process. Instead, we see his mind being constantly referred to as that of his Time Lord counterpart.

4. So what exactly happened during the 'metacrisis' then? Why was Donna unable to sustain the change whereas we're meant to assume Tentoo is doing fine?

What happened in JE was a two-way metacrisis.

Tentoo is a biological metacrisis, i.e his mind remained the same, but the regeneration energy in his hand picked up on Donna's human biology and grew a human body. (His body is PART human, as in the ageing part. He'll grow old, and never regenerate.)

Whereas, Donna's body remained the same; she got the Doctor's mind, becoming the DoctorDonna. She is essentially the Doctor AND Donna, at this point in time.

At one point in JE, there are three Doctors ("There's three of you?") because as proved earlier, anybody that has the Doctor's memories, is the Doctor. There is: the Time Lord Doctor (Ten), the Human Doctor (Tentoo) and the Doctor Donna.

Since Donna was a human, she could not sustain the Doctor's mind alongside her own, which is what led to it burning up. It was simply too much for a human brain to take.

Tentoo, as proven earlier, does not have Donna's mind.

5. But he talks funny.

We are shown the Doctor picking up her mannerisms. The Doctor regularly picks up things from people he travels with. He "imprints" on Rose as a newly regenerated being and is shown to pick up on his companions' accents very often.

On a more analytical level, the "Donna mannerisms" bit is obviously comedic relief in an extremely action packed episode (evidenced by the fact that he literally never sounds like Donna again throughout the episode) and isn't meant to be taken that seriously. In every other scene, he is played by David Tennant, exactly as ten.

Tentoo is the Tenth Doctor, but human. In every way that matters, he is exactly Ten.

6. But he's Season 2 Ten! He doesn't have any of the character development Time-Lord Ten does!

Erm. Yeah. You've got to watch the show again.

7. Alright. Okay. If Tentoo is the exact same man, he would get bored of a life on earth with Rose. They'd never last.

Now we've got to address a key aspect of the Doctor's arc. (Keep in mind, when I refer to the Doctor herein, I only mean the Ninth and Tenth, the ones written by Russell T. Davies.)

The Doctor always wanted to be human.

The Doctor, and the Tenth Doctor in particular, wants to be human. It’s peppered here and there throughout the first four seasons, but if you watch closely, there’s this underlying current of wistfulness in him (“I’ve never had a life like that”; “The one adventure I can never have”), not to mention the entirety of the Human Nature two parter.

I think to some extent Rose made him feel human, and it’s his alienness that’s the big barrier in their relationship. He doesn't allow himself to love her the way he wants to because of the difference in their life spans. Because he's a Time-Lord, and he has a responsibility to the Universe, and he can't be more selfish than he's being already, keeping her with him.

She makes him want to be human, to be loved and to be free to love her as he wants to. She even helps him forget, sometimes, that he isn't human. Remember his expression in The Stolen Earth when he sees her again? He is so glad to see her. In that moment, it doesn't matter that they can never be together, because Rose loves him so much she came back.

I'm reminded of a quote from Buffy The Vampire Slayer:

I know that I'm a monster. But you treat me like a man.

And then bam. The almost-regeneration. The crushing reminder that he is intrinsically different from her species, from what he aches to be. Constant and selfish and free. Human.

Giving Rose up to his other self was the most selfless, loving thing he could’ve done. His other self, who is uninhibited, unburdened from the responsibilities of a Time Lord—can and will give Rose everything she deserves.

8. Just make Rose immortal then! Happy endings all around.

Now you might say, the earlier problem could be solved simply by making Rose immortal—she’d stay with the Doctor forever and she’d never have to leave him!

Here's the thing. Being immortal is Not Good.

A constant theme throughout seasons 1-4 is that immortality is not desirable. There is a constant motif of “living too long”, whether it be from Jack, the Face of Boe (cough), or the Doctor himself.

Things are only precious and meaningful because they end—the human way of doing things? Fast, and bright, and temporary? It’s the right way.

One of the many reasons the Doctor loves Rose is because she’s human—it’s a big part of why he’s attracted to her in the first place.

Besides, an immortal Rose would mean having to outlive her family, her friends, everyone she’s ever known—who else has experienced that? Oh, yeah. The Doctor. I can’t imagine him wanting her to go through the same thing under any circumstances.

9. Rose would never accept him. She wanted the adventure too, not just the Doctor.

This is the Rose who instantly felt connected to a parallel version of her parents. Remember, this Pete and Jackie had NO memory of her, and yet, she loved them. Tentoo IS Ten.

She also constantly refers to Tentoo as The Doctor, so I have faith in her figuring it out just fine.

As for the adventure, being human doesn't mean they're suddenly going to become accountants or work in childcare or something. (Looking at you, Jenny Colgan.)

Canon (Big Finish) tells us that they both work with UNIT/Torchwood, so we know that they're out there, defending Pete's World together.

'What about the TARDIS?' you may ask. Well, the writer considers it canon that the previously linked TARDIS coral scene did take place, so we can imagine that they're out there, exploring a new Universe.

But even if they didn’t have a TARDIS, we only need to look to S1E13, The Parting of the Ways, to understand that Rose cares about the Doctor above all else.

ROSE: But what do I do every day, mum? What do I do? Get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, eat chips and go to bed? Is that it? MICKEY: It's what the rest of us do. ROSE: But I can't! MICKEY: Why, because you're better than us? ROSE: No, I didn't mean that. But it was. It was a better life. And I don't mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things. That don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know he showed you too. That you don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no. You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away.

Of course Rose loves the TARDIS. She just loves the Doctor more.

More evidence? S2E8, The Impossible Planet:

DOCTOR: ....They were grown, not built. And with my own planet gone, we're kind of stuck. ROSE: Well, it could be worse. This lot said they'd give us a lift. DOCTOR: And then what? ROSE: I don't know. Find a planet, get a job, live a life, same as the rest of the universe.

Clearly, she doesn't mind settling down---not if it means staying with the Doctor.

DOCTOR: I promised Jackie I'd always take you back home. ROSE: Everyone leaves home in the end. DOCTOR: Not to end up stuck here. ROSE: Yeah, but stuck with you, that's not so bad. DOCTOR: Yeah? ROSE: Yes.

Here's another conversation she has with Jackie in S2E12, Army of Ghosts:

JACKIE: No, but really. When I'm dead and buried, you won't have any reason to come back home. What happens then? ROSE: I don't know. JACKIE: Do you think you'll ever settle down? ROSE: The Doctor never will, so I can't. I'll just keep on travelling.

"I can't." Not I don't want to, or I'm not interested---I can't. Rose is in love with the Doctor, and she knows at some level that the feeling is mutual. She also knows, he will never fully act on it.

But that's alright, because she loves him so much she's made her peace with it and with his limitations.

And instead of the typical female protagonist sacrificing things for her love interest trope, we get RTD flipping it on its head and letting Ten deliver the ultimate sacrifice, perform the ultimate act of love---letting Rose go.

By doing this, he's giving her everything he never could. It's beautiful. It's heartbreaking. It's the best love story ever put to television.

Let me conclude with this quote:

“Firstly, Rose is neither shallow nor stupid. She doesn’t settle for second best. She gets the person she fell in love with. And, as a bonus, he’s now able to spend the rest of his life with her, as she with him. Secondly, the very same person who experienced the heartbreak of losing Rose for the first time now experiences joy at the prospect of a lifetime in her company. In this full sense, the Doctor who lost, finally wins.” - Paul Dawson, Doctor Who and Philosophy.

10. But the Doctor and Rose ending up together is disgusting! They were platonic!

…..

Part 2 coming soon. I have loads more to say, but feel free to send in any other tentoo questions you want answered here. There's no such thing as too much meta!

#nothing brings me back to dw faster than tentoo hate #no one touches my boy #my meta #meta #rose tyler #tentoorose #tentoo #tenrose #tenth doctor #doctor who #ten x rose #tentoo x rose #timepetals #doctor x rose #ninerose #nine x rose

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spikezonebby · 5 months

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hi !! saw requests for song fics are open, may I request something angsty with fem!human!reader x megatron (idw) to ‘young and beautiful’ by lana del rey ? 🥹 <3 thank you in advancee

Young and Beautiful (IDW Megatron x Fem!Human!reader)

Word count: 1,070

Eighty years. Humans lived for a measly eighty years.

You change right before Megatron’s optics. Your hair grays, your skin sags, your bones grow thinner. Like the very universe was sapping you away from him. Vector Prime alone could grant him all the time he needed to write a poem about all of the moments he lived with you.

But how could he begin to write when every time he picked up his stylus, you were that much further from him? He longed to capture the feeling of you and immortalize it in a data pad, but then you’d touch your tiny, soft servo along his gray bottom lip plate and take him away. Remind him that you were his moment. Here for a second, gone in a blink.

You flare, you flicker, you fade.

You asked him once, if he’d love you even after you weren’t so soft. You weren’t so pretty. And your mind wasn’t as intact as it once was.

Megatron’s answer was immediate.

“Even once the spark of your life extinguishes, and I won’t stop even for a klik after.”

You may have lamented the way time and age changed you, but Megatron learns to see unique beauty in it. There was something beautiful in a life lived so long that you COULD age, it was a promise of peace and resilience. You lived, you fought, you came back again and again. A force so strong that it took time itself to put you down.

Megatron thought that was romantic. Not in the way of kisses in summer or dancing in the moonlight, but the cosmic way. In the way that atoms and space dust collect together and become new stars, or how he realizes, in the grand scheme of things, so, so many tiny and nearly impossible things had to happen for you to be his.

As you grew older, you grew more rapt by his poetry. You blamed it on growing old and sentimental, he argued you were always sentimental. You had always found it fascinating, but Megatron believed that perhaps you took some comfort in it.

“Do you think, because I love you… I’ll be there in the Afterspark waiting for you?”

You were resting against his neck cables, curled up between his shoulder armor and helm vents like a tiny glitch mouse. The ardent heat of energon pulsing up the lines of his throat felt good and helped soothe some of the arthritis in your hands. He had to rest his chin on his servo, propping his helm up at an angle to keep from squishing you, but he hadn’t the spark to stop you.

It’s a question that he’d pondered many times. For he who often pondered the nature of all things grand, the question of life after death was a philosophist’s energon and mineral tablets.

“You do not have a spark,” He points out, shifting his helm minutely to a position slightly more comfortable for you to tuck yourself under, “So I would not expect you to be held to the same rules and expectations of Primus.”

“But, your God is real.” You raise as a counterpoint, “Any proof that various human gods are real could be considered dubious at best.”

“That is a point for the high queries of gods, but what of your lack-there-of spark?”

“What is a spark but life?” You offer, gesturing with your hands and making the round shape of a spark before your breast. Megatron loathed to move you from your warm perch, so instead he tips the data pad in his servo so he can see your tiny reflection. You look comfortable, hidden securely in his collar fairings. “Perhaps I DO have a spark, but it’s simply just a different form. After all, energy cannot be destroyed. It merely changes form.”

You chuckle, knocking your knuckles against his neck cables. “Julius Robert Mayer.”

“A human philosopher?” Megatron asks, setting his datapad aside to instead settle for reaching up and touching his digit to your lap. You take the hint immediately, and hold his huge digit between your two itty bitty hands.

“Founder of the laws of energy conservation. Suppose most of us are philosophers in some way, though.”

You have to be, with lives so short and bright. Megatron keeps that thought private to himself, gently rubbing his thumb against the back of your hand. You were feeling thinner and thinner these days. He hoped you ate well enough.

“So, what have we come to the conclusion of in this conversation?” You prompt, bringing back your point, “That there is no true way to say I do not have a spark, and that it’s ultimately far more likely that Primus and his Afterspark wait for me than say… The Christian or Hebrew concept of God.”

“For there are too many to count.”

“For there are too many to count.” You agree, “But it is the most commonly applicable and the most similar to Primus.”

“But,” Megatron clicks his glossa, a smile coming to his face. He loved it so when he could have these in-depth conversations with you. “That is also dismissing that humanity is a much younger culture than Cybertron was. Perhaps you will find proof that these things are indeed true, or perhaps something you had not even considered. Perhaps in the afterlife, you will have a veritable plethora of ‘heavens’ to choose from.”

“Then I’d choose to wait for you.” You say, “Or I’d choose some religion where I’d be reborn and I could fall in love with you again.”

“You could live again, redo all of the things you had missed. Unmake all of your mistakes.”

“You talk as if I considered you a mistake.”

He feels your tiny, cool lips press to the pulsing line of energon that is connected directly to his spark chamber. You laugh, giddy and sounding just as young as you were when he first met you. There’s a well of emotion there in his chest and, if not for millions of years of carefully cultivated control, he might have sobbed.

Instead, he settles for curling the whole of his huge, warm servo against your body, and recording this moment for all of time. The moment he writes on his spark that you wanted to be his in any life.

“I suppose it is not a mistake then, if you do not regret it.”

#transformers #mtmte transformers #idw transformers #idw megatron #reader insert #megatron x reader #request fill #song fic #Thank you for requesting!!#this got a lot more philosophical than i expected tbh

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ineffable-endearments · 25 days

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The Crow Road by Iain Banks

I finished The Crow Road and had a little time to think about it. I'll put my thoughts under a Keep Reading in case anyone is trying to avoid spoilers.

As I speculated before, I think it's likely that The Crow Road is more related to Good Omens in philosophy than in plot. I mean, it's not that the plots necessarily have nothing in common, and we could be very surprised in the end of course, but now that I've read the whole book, its philosophical commonalities with GO are both apparent and kind of inspiring. Also, if I were a writer, I'd be more interested in dropping hints about what themes are important than telegraphing my whole plot ahead of time.

So here, I will describe the book and point out themes that I believe may reappear in Good Omens 3.

This is a long post. If you read it, make a cup of [beverage of choice].

Below are mentions of suicide, death/murder, and sexual acts.

The Crow Road centers around a character named Prentice McHoan, a university student in Scotland who starts to sort out his complicated relationship with his complicated family as he explores the mystery of his uncle Rory's disappearance. Although the book is mostly from Prentice's perspective, the narration jumps around in time with the McHoan family. There are quite a lot of important characters to keep track of; the bare-bones summary I put below doesn't even include some of the important ones. I wanted to make the summary even shorter and simpler than this, but the truth is that this book is not short or simple, and if I made the summary any simpler, it might be downright misleading.

There are at least three major cultural aspects of The Crow Road that I am inexperienced with: the overall culture in the 1950s-1980s (I was born in 1988, so of course wasn't here for the relevant decades), the international experience of the Gulf War (again, born in 1988), and the history and culture of Scotland itself (I'm USAmerican with only reading as a source). As a result, I'm sure there are important dimensions to the book that I've missed. If someone has a different perspective taking some of these things into account, I'd love to know about it.

Also, keep in mind, there is a great deal of descriptive writing in this book. There are a lot of pages about the geography of Scotland, and about Prentice as a kid, and about Prentice's father and uncles hanging out together in their youth, and about various family incidents, and about Prentice spending time with his brothers and friends. At first, these passages seem to just make things more confusing, and in my head, I accused them of being "filler." But they definitely serve a purpose. They're a way of showing and not telling the characters' attitudes and relationships to each other. More importantly, because we get to actually live these experiences with the characters, they are what give all the plot points below their deeper emotional impacts. In other words, the everyday experiences give the plot its deeper meaning. They resonate with one of the core themes in the novel: that our experiences in life, rather than any supposed existence after death, are what matters.

The Crow Road's story is like this:

Prentice is rather directionless in life, and he seems to have trouble investing any energy in his own future as he moons over his unrequited feelings for an idealized young woman named Verity. Soon, Verity ends up in a romance with Prentice's brother, Lewis, and Prentice feels that Lewis "stole" her from him. Prentice has also become estranged from his father, Kenneth, over spirituality. Prentice believes there has to be something more after death because he feels it would be incredibly unfair if people didn't get anything other than this one life; Kenneth is not only a passionate atheist, but is offended by the notion of an afterlife.

Prentice's uncle Hamish, Kenneth's brother, has always been religious, although his religion involves a number of bizarre and offbeat ideas of his own, with inspiration from more traditional Christian notions. Prentice is not really sure about this ideology, but he's willing to talk to Hamish about it and even participates during Hamish's prayers, whereas Kenneth is openly scornful of Hamish's beliefs. Hamish interprets this as Prentice being on "his side."

Prentice has a few opportunities to go back and talk to his father, and is begged to do so by his mom, Mary, with whom his relationship is still good. Mary doesn't want either of the men to give up their inner ideas about the universe; she just wants them to agree to disagree and move on as a family. Prentice says he will visit, but he just keeps putting it off and off and off.

Prentice acquires a folder containing some of his missing uncle Rory's notes in the process of hooking up with Rory's former girlfriend, Janice Rae, who seems to have taken a shine to Prentice because he reminds her of Rory. Using the contents of the folder, Prentice wants to piece together the great literary work that Rory left unfinished, which Rory titled Crow Road; however, it becomes apparent that Rory didn't turn his concepts into anything substantial and only had a bunch of disconnected notes and ideas. He hadn't even decided whether Crow Road would be a novel, a play, or something else. The few bits of Rory's poetry for Crow Road read are bleak and depressing.

Prentice also spends a lot of time with a young woman named Ash. They've been good friends since childhood and seem to have a somewhat flirtatious dynamic now, but they aren't in a romantic relationship; mostly, they drink and hang out together. Ash tells Prentice bluntly to get his life back on track when she finds out he's failing at school, avoiding his family, and engaging in shoplifting. She is a voice of reason, and when Prentice insists to her that he's just a failure, she reminds him that actually, he's just a kid.

Prentice's efforts to figure out Rory's story or location stagnate, and he continues to fail at school and avoid his father. He then receives word that Kenneth was killed while debating faith with Hamish. In fact, Kenneth dies after a fall from a church lightning rod, which he was climbing in an act of defiance against Hamish's philosophy when it was struck by lightning; Hamish is convinced that Kenneth had incurred God's wrath. Ash is there for support when Prentice finds out about the death.

With Ash's help, Prentice returns to his hometown again to help manage Kenneth's affairs. Prentice speaks with a very shaken Hamish, who is handling Kenneth's death with extreme drama and making it all about his own feelings. Hamish tells Prentice that Kenneth was jealous that Prentice shared more in common with Hamish's faith than with Kenneth's lack of faith. However, this isn't really true, and as he contemplates his father's death, Prentice begins to internalize one of the last things Hamish reported that Kenneth had argued: "All the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry."

As the chapters go on, Prentice is compelled by some of the meaningful items related to Rory that he discovers in his father's belongings. He gains a renewed sense of purpose trying to solve the mystery of where Rory went and what happened to him. Among the interesting items are an ancient computer disk of Rory's that Prentice can't access with any equipment he can find; Ash uses her connections in the US and Canada to find a computer expert who can finally open the files on it. This takes quite a while, since the disk has to be mailed and Ash's connection is investigating the disk only in his free time.

Prentice also discovers that his feelings for Verity have changed. He no longer feels angry with Lewis for "stealing her." At first, Prentice's narration describes this as his feelings "cooling" as a result of the trauma of losing his father, but interestingly, this soon means Prentice gets to know Verity as a sister-in-law without getting caught up in jealous romantic feelings. Verity gets along well with the family, and Prentice is actually happy to discover that she and Lewis have a baby on the way. Prentice's relationship with Lewis improves greatly as well, partly because he is no longer jealous and partly because he realizes he does not want to lose Lewis, too.

Ash's connection who was looking at Rory's computer disk comes through and sends the printed contents of the files to Prentice. The files reveal to him that Rory likely knew Prentice's uncle, Fergus, murdered his wife by unbuckling her seat belt and crashing their car. Rory had written out a fictional version of events and considered using it in Crow Road. I'm not clear on exactly how certain Rory was about Fergus's crime, or whether Rory would have intentionally reported Ferg, or whether Rory even had enough proof to publicly accuse Ferg of murder, but people would likely have connected the dots in Rory's work and become suspicious of Ferg. For this reason, Prentice believes Ferg murdered Rory as well.

Prentice confronts Ferg. He doesn't get a confession and leaves Ferg's home with no concrete proof of anything; Ferg denies it all. But Prentice is soon physically assaulted in the night, and it seems Ferg was almost certainly the culprit, because he hadn't been home that same night, and he had injuries (probably from being fought off) the next day. A day or two later, Ferg's body is found unconscious in the cockpit of a plane, which crashes into the ocean. It's uncertain whether this was a suicide, but Prentice suspects it was. Rory's body is then soon recovered from the bottom of a waterway near Prentice's home, where Ferg had sunk it years ago.

As the mysteries are solved, Prentice realizes his feelings for Ash are romantic love. However, it's too late, he thinks, because Ash is about to take a job in Canada, where she may or may not stay. Prentice also hesitates to approach her because he's embarrassed about his previous behavior, venting all his angst about Verity and his father. He isn't sure she would even want to be in a relationship with him after that. But the very night before Ash leaves, she kisses Prentice on the cheek, which leads to a deeper kiss. They finally connect, have sex, and confess their mutual feelings. Ash still goes to her job in Canada, but says she'll come back when Prentice is done with his studies that summer.

The relationship's future is somewhat uncertain because something could come up while Ash is in Canada, but Prentice is hopeful. The book ends with Prentice getting ready to graduate with his grades on track as a history scholar, fully renouncing his belief in an afterlife while he acknowledges the inherent importance of our experiences in our lives now, and enjoying his time with Lewis and Verity and his other family members.

What's the point of all these hundreds of pages?

Well, look at all of the above; there's definitely more than one point. But the main point I took away is that we get this one life, with our loved ones in this world here and now, and this is where we make our meanings. There is no other meaning, but that doesn't mean there's no meaning at all. It means the meaning is here.

It's not death that gives life its meaning. It's the things we do while alive that give life its deeper meaning.

The Crow Road is described (on Wikipedia) as a Bildungsroman, a story focusing on the moral and philosophical growth and change of its main character as they transition from childhood to adulthood ("coming-of-age novel" is a similar term that is interchangeable, but more vague and not necessarily focused on morality/philosophy). And, indeed, all of the plots ultimately tie into Prentice's changed philosophy.

After his argument with Kenneth, Prentice feels childish and humiliated, and as a result, he refuses to go back home, which leads to a spiral of shame and depression. Kenneth dies and Prentice realizes it's too late to repair the relationship, which also leads him to realize it's what we do in life that matters, and that therefore, his father's argument was correct after all.

At the end of the novel, Prentice outright describes his new philosophy. However, I can't recall one specific passage where Prentice describes the process of how he changed his mind (if anyone else can remember something I missed, do let me know). There is, however, a moment when his narration indicates that Hamish seems less disturbed by his own part in the incident that led to Kenneth's death and more disturbed by the notion that his beliefs might actually be true: there might actually be an angry, vengeful God. In other words, Hamish's philosophy is selfish at its core.

My interpretation is that when his father died, Prentice realized three things: how utterly self-serving Hamish's devout faith is, how Kenneth's untimely death proves the importance of working things out now rather than in an imaginary afterlife, and how much profound meaning Kenneth had left behind despite having no faith at all. After these realizations, a determined belief in an afterlife no longer makes our lives here more profound like Prentice once thought it did.

Also, it's worth noting that this incident changes Prentice's idea of partnership, too. He loses interest in this distant, idealized woman he's been after. In love as in the rest of life, Prentice lets go of his ideals, and in doing so, he makes room for true meaning, both in a sincere familial, platonic connection with Verity and a sincere intimate, romantic connection with Ash.

But what about the sex scene?!

Yes, indeed, at the tail end of the story, Prentice and Ash have sex and admit they want to be in a relationship together. Prentice's narration describes them sleeping together and having intercourse not just once, but many times, including some slow and relaxed couplings during which they flex the muscles in their private parts to spell out "I.L.Y." and "I.L.Y.T." to each other in Morse code. This is relevant because earlier, they had been surprised and delighted to discover that they both knew Morse code; it isn't a detail that came from nowhere.

I didn't get the impression that this scene was trying to be especially titillating to the reader. It was mostly just a list of stuff the characters did together. I felt the point was that they were still anxious about being emotionally honest, a little desperate to convey their feelings without having to speak them out loud, and awkward in a way that made it obvious that their primary concern was the feelings, not the sexual performance. They cared about each other, but they weren't trying to be impressive or put on a show; contrast this with previous scenes where Prentice would act like a clown in front of Ash to diffuse his own anxiety. I've always thought that being able to have awkward sex and still enjoy it is a good sign.

Okay, so what does this all have to do with Good Omens?

Here's where I have to get especially interpretive. I'm doing my best, but of course, not everyone reading this will have the same perspective on Good Omens, the Final Fifteen especially. I believe similar themes are going to resonate between The Crow Road and Good Omens regardless of our particular interpretations of the characters' behavior and motivations, but I suppose it could hit differently for some people.

The TL;DR: I see similar themes between The Crow Road and Good Omens in:

The importance of mortal life on Earth

Meaning (or purpose) as something that we create as we live, not something that is handed to us by a supreme being

Sincere connection and love/passion (for people, causes, arts, life's work, etc) as a type of meaning/purpose

Relationships as reflections of philosophy

The dual nature of humanity

Life on Earth as the important part of existence is a core theme in Good Omens, and has been since the very beginning. We all already know Adam chose to preserve the world as it already is because he figured this out, and we all already know Aziraphale and Crowley have been shaped for the better by their experiences on Earth. But Good Omens isn't done with this theme by a long shot. I think this is the most important thematic commonality Good Omens will have with The Crow Road. Closely related is the notion that we create our meanings as we live, rather than having them handed to us. Isn't this, in a way, what Aziraphale struggles with in A Companion to Owls? He's been given this meaning, this identity, that doesn't fit him. But does he have anything else to be? Not yet.

Partnerships as a parallel to the characters' philosophical development also resonates as a commonality that The Crow Road may have with Good Omens. Prentice's obsession with Verity goes away when he starts to embrace the importance of life on Earth and makes room for his sincere relationship with Ash. Note their names: "Verity" is truth, an ideal Prentice's father instills in him; "Ashley" means "dweller in the ash tree meadow" in Anglo-Saxon, according to Wikipedia, and "ash" is one of the things people return to after death. Prentice literally trades his high ideals for life on Earth. We see in Aziraphale a similar tug-o'-war between Heaven's distant ideals and Crowley's Earthly pleasures, so I can see a similar process potentially playing out for him.

I don't particularly recall a ton of thematic exploration of free will in The Crow Road. However, there is a glimmer of something there: Prentice feels excessively controlled by Kenneth's desire to pass down his beliefs, and part of the reason Prentice is so resistant to change is simply his frustration with feeling censored and not being taken seriously. As the reader, I do get the feeling that while Prentice is immature, Kenneth made major mistakes in handling their conflict, too. And Kenneth's mistakes come from trying to dictate Prentice's thoughts. There is likely some crossover with Good Omens in the sense that I'm pretty sure both stories are going to take the position that people need to be allowed to make mistakes, and to do things that one perceives as mistakes, without getting written off as "stupid" or "bad" or otherwise "unworthy."

Suffice it to say that the human characters in Good Omens will also certainly play into these themes, but it's hard to write about them when we don't know much about them except that one of them is almost certainly the reincarnation of Jesus. This also makes me suspect perhaps the human cast will be 100% entirely all-new, or mostly new, symbolic of how Aziraphale and Crowley have immersed themselves in the ever-evolving, ever-changing world of life on Earth. Alternatively, if we encounter human characters again from Season 1 or 2, perhaps the ways they've grown and changed will be highlighted. For example, even in real-world time, Adam and Warlock have already, as of the time I'm writing this, gone through at least one entire life stage (from 11 in 2019 to 16 in 2024). They'll be legal adults in a couple of years, and if there's a significant time skip, they could be much older. If characters from Season 1 do reappear and themes from The Crow Road are prominent, I would expect either some key scenes highlighting contrasts and changes from their younger selves or for stagnation and growth to be a central part of their plot.

The more I write, the more I just interpret everything in circles. Hopefully this post has at least given you a decent idea of what The Crow Road is like and how it may relate to Good Omens.

I'll end this post with a quotation that feels relevant:

Telling us straight or through his stories, my father taught us that there was, generally, a fire at the core of things, and that change was the only constant, and that we – like everybody else – were both the most important people in the universe, and utterly without significance, depending, and that individuals mattered before their institutions, and that people were people, much the same everywhere, and when they appeared to do things that were stupid or evil, often you hadn’t been told the whole story, but that sometimes people did behave badly, usually because some idea had taken hold of them and given them an excuse to regard other people as expendable (or bad), and that was part of who we were too, as a species, and it wasn’t always possible to know that you were right and they were wrong, but the important thing was to keep trying to find out, and always to face the truth. Because truth mattered. Iain Banks, The Crow Road

#good omens #the crow road #good omens book club #go3 speculation #s3 speculation #good omens 2 spoilers #go s2 spoilers

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loremaster · 16 days

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happy birthday to the guy i've been drawing nonstop for the past several months - here's proof!!! he's a lot of fun to draw!

vivia is also a very important character to me for very personal reasons... (cw: family death)

it didn't take long for me to realize he was gonna be my favorite character in the game - seeing him lounging in places he shouldn't be cracked me up, and so did his morbid catchphrase... i totally related to his autistic tendencies, and his eagerness to dwell on depressing philosophical thoughts. i especially love and relate to his love for literature and literary analysis, especially because my eighth grade english teacher was my dad, who introduced me to so many of what are now my favorite books, and showed me how to look closer into what makes them so good. his story structure classes were unforgettable.

my dad passed away in 2020 and i've been going through fluctuating stages of grief since. it ebbs and flows but never really leaves. a lot of my art and stories from the past 3+ years have been ways to process and try to heal from that trauma (especially my pokemon sword nuzlocke comic, which i'm hoping to finish this summer)

so seeing the strange way vivia deals with death - in general, and the death of a loved one - fascinated me and destroyed me. i've spent many nights curled up in bed sobbing myself to sleep thinking about the heartbreak he goes through in the story, the regrets, the destructive cycle of grief, the depths of the emotions he feels in such a unique way (he's so desensitized he never cries once in the whole game!) and the ways he is able to start to grow and heal from it afterwards.

exploring the queer romantic angle of vivia's character arc is also so so so important to me, not only because i'm a queer person who's wanted to tell queer stories since i was a teen, but because my dad was also a queer person, who didn't get to come out as bisexual until the tail end of his too-short life. i know he connected to a lot of the same Boys In Love stories that I did, and i wish we'd had the opportunity to explore that common ground further. but since i can't, all i can do is the next best thing - making art about it and inspired by it. i think my dad would really like vivia and the stories i've been trying to tell about him. (harold and maude was one of his favorite movies - and if you're a vivia fan and you've never seen it GO WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. suicidal teen forms an unlikely friendship with a cheerful old lady. you will cry your eyes out. you will want to LIVE)

so, i guess... thanks kodaka for making this specific character that spoke so deeply to me at this specific time in my life and letting me use him as a vehicle to process my own grief in the gayest ways possible. and happy birthday veeva <3

#rain code #master detective archives #mdarc #vivia twilight #abcd art #also a personal story about queer grieving

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lampochkaart · 6 months

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Kokichi is asexual and you can't change my mind (and Kaito is an ace too 'cause i said so)

Here is why i think that way

Disclaimer! This post is not created to judge or shame anyone. I created it to explain why i think about them in that way and maybe try to make this headcanon to be more popular. I might sound kinda salty at times here but in general I don't mean to hurt anybody.

It kinda confuses me why so often Kokichi portrayed a little bit too intrested in making sexual comments and jokes. I probably shouldn't be surprised, because I know that we live in a sex obsessed world. I'm kinda used to it at this point. But I think people kinda exaggerate it.

In actual game he doesn't make sexual comments and jokes THAT often and 90% of the time they are directed at Miu who is the MAIN sourse of them in game. I even think that he would not say so many of those things if Miu wouldn't be starting it first.

He even get's confused for a second when Gonta tells him he couldn't catch Miu for Insect Meet and Greet because his "face got hot".

And in bonus mode Dangan Salmon Team he isn't particularly intrested in that either. In most cases when the player chooses sexual option even though the game states that it was a good option Kokichi will often just change the coversation to a different topic. Yeah, they had fun, but they didn't really talk that much about initial chosen option.

"Let's read a dirty book."

"How about joining my organization instead?" *starts rambling about his organization*

And yes, I REFUSE to call this protag Shuichi. This is NOT my favorite protagonist. He would not fucking say this.

Look how they massacred my boy *cries*

One thing Kokichi also does very often is being sarcastic. I really like this scene. But surprisingly I've seen people taking his excitement as genuine and was like ??? How? Have you gone so crazy after you've seen his first phrase that you blacked out and missed part when he went "nope :)". He literally was like "Is that what you wanted me to say? You wish😊🖕"

I also like how sometimes when the protagonist say something sexual Ouma redirects topic from himself. And he often suggests Tenko as alternative. For a long time I couldn't understand why it was her specifically. And then I realised. It's because Tenko will beat up any man who says something like that to her. He literally indirectly tells player to fuck off.

I can't belive how often those moments are overlooked.

I think that's all my main points regarding Kokichi. Everything else is not very convincing and can be dismissed. But I just want to point out that his color palette basically resembles asexual flag, because I think that's a neat detail.

Now Kaito. I'm gonna be honest. The main reason I headcanon him as ace is because I headcanon all my favorite characters as asexual. But there is a reason I fully accepted him as ace.

The scene in Talent Development Plan where he's discussing "man's passion" with Leon and Teruteru. While they were talking about girls it turned out Kaito this whole time was talking about chasing passion in more philosophical sense. And by exploring "unknown worlds" he probably meant space (they really should've seen that coming).

That's pretty much it. I just saw 1 (one) reason to make it canon for me and immediatly jumped on it.

I think that's it for both of them. They're not the only characters i headcanon to be on the ace spectrum (and i also have some on the aro spectrum too!) but they're the ones I think about the most, so I thought I'd explain it.

#my art #artists on tumblr #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 killing harmony #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #drv3 kokichi #drv3 kaito #kokichi ouma #kokichi oma #kaito momota #asexual characters #asexual #using this tag feels kinda scary #i'm afraid i'm crowding the tag with my silly little post about this silly little characters #edit: tumblr was being mean and messed up post but i fixed it #analysis by lampochka #can i call it that??

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multific · 9 months

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Changed Man

Spencer Reid x Reader

Summary: After an appointment with your therapist, you want to speak with Spencer.

"And how's life with your husband, Y/N?" you let out a long sigh before you looked at your therapist.

"I have noticed a lot of changes in him. I honestly thought that this talk about how jail changes people were fake, but I’m afraid it's true." you let out a long sigh.

"What about him did change? Did you notice anything specific?" you were more than comfortable talking about this with her.

"At first, I didn't even notice. It is hard to explain but I noticed it when we were having sex the other day. He was more dominant."

"Did he hurt you? Or do something you didn't like perhaps?"

"Nothing like that! It just struck me, he used to be almost nervous every time, but now he was so confident. I liked it, I just don't know what to do with it."

"Did you mention it to him?"

"No. I was afraid he would call me paranoid."

"Then why don't you just have a sit-down with him? Try to tell him about your side of things, he is a smart man, I'm sure he will understand."

"Yeah, I’ll try that. Thank you." you offered her a smile and just as the session ended, you were on your way home.

---

"Hi Babe." you said into the house as you locked the front door.

"Hi." came the voice from inside, you soon entered the living room and found Spencer reading.

You headed over to him and placed a kiss to his cheek, he offered you a smile.

"How was your day?" he asked.

"Busy. Very busy."

"That's what you get for being a CEO I suppose. Did you eat already?"

"No, did you?"

"Nope, let's order then." you heard as he called and ordered some pizza while you took a quick shower.

You let out a long sigh as you finally put up your feet and eat something.

After eating, you felt pain as you groaned a little as you started to rub your neck.

"Do you want a massage?"

"No, no I'm good Spencer, thank you."

"It's okay really." he tried to get closer to you but you jump up from the couch. "What's wrong?" you basically heard his heart break as he asked and looked at you.

But to be honest, you weren't too sure either.

"Everything? No, not everything... it's just, I have to figure this thing out and I'm... I don't know."

"What are you saying Y/N?"

"I'm scared Spencer."

"Of me?" he asked, surprised and hurt.

"No! Not of you." you were quick to reply.

"Then what is it Y/N?" he started to raise his voice out of frustration. "Do you not want to be married to a criminal anymore? Is that why you visited me so often in jail? To justify your thoughts of wanting to leave me out of shame?"

"I'm scared that you changed and you won't want me anymore!" as you said that your hands started to shake. All the past months came crashing down on you. "I'm scared you will realize you don't love me anymore, I'm scared that you will find someone better. I'm terrified that you will leave me." as you said that, all of your tears began to fall.

"Sweetheart," he hugged you and calmed you before he began to speak. "I will never leave you. I love you much." when he pulled back he could see you searching his eyes, trying to figure out on your own if he was lying or not.

"Promise?"

"I married you for a reason. I have loved you and I will continue to do so."

"Please don't quote some philosopher who said something about love. Just kiss me and never leave me."

And he did.

"I'm sorry, Sweetheart." he whispered as he put his forehead against yours.

"You have nothing to apologise for. You went through something terrible, I should be more understanding, but my insecurities got the best of me."

"It's okay. I'm just happy we are here together. I love you."

"I love you too." you put your hand on his neck and pulled him in for another kiss.

Letting your insecurities wash away.

Taglist: @fleursirvart @greenarrowhead @thisismysecrethappyplace @sincerelyfan @theoneanna @aestheticsandmarvel @rororo06 @castellandiangelo @destynelseclipsa @spilledinkindumpster @capsiclesdoll @puknow @alwayshave-faith @alex12948 @lxdyred @imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl @anonymoussherlockandmarvelgeek @praline357 @trshngyn @avengers-r-us @violet-19999 @top1bbgloak @manduse @jacalineiscomingforyou @mandoloriancookie @noname2246

~Masterlist~

ˇAO3ˇ

DO NOT STEAL, REPOST OR TRANSLATE ANY OF MY WORKS

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x female reader #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x fem reader #spencer reid x fanfiction #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #criminal minds imagines #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid imagines

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frodo-with-glasses · 5 months

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More Reading Thoughts: A Shortcut to Mushrooms

"[Frodo] was lying in a bower made by a living tree with branches laced and drooping to the ground; his bed was of fern and grass, deep and soft and strangely fragrant. The sun was shining through the fluttering leaves, which were still green upon the tree." HELLO I WANT A BED LIKE THIS HOLY COW

LOL Pippin like "I would've eaten all the bread and not saved any for you if Sam didn't stop me" 🤣

"I don't want to answer a string of questions while I am eating. I want to think!" "Good heavens! At breakfast?" Have I mentioned that I love Frodo and Pippin—

Frodo sees his kid cousin running in the grass and singing and thinks to himself "🥺 oh I can't possibly take him and Sam into danger with me, look at them"

I love Frodo's entire conversation with Sam here. If I tried to list my favorite lines, I'd be copying the whole thing. Frodo doesn't want to put Sam in danger, because he loves him, but Sam is extremely loyal and willing to walk into hellfire for Frodo, because he loves him. It's just such a sweet exchange that tells you so much about these characters. I'm love them boys.

Also Frodo being surprised that Sam's become so philosophical haha

Frodo: "We'd best get going; we slept late." Pippin: "You mean you slept late." HAVE I MENTIONED—

Frodo: "I'm not going to take the road. I'll cut straight across country to the Ferry." Pippin: "What, can you fly??"

Pippin: "Short cuts make long delays! Besides, I was hoping to stop at the inn for some good beer." Frodo: "Well, that settles it! Short cuts make long delays, but inns make longer ones."

Also Sam stalwartly like "I'll go with you, Mr. Frodo," but also inwardly like ":-C but the beer tho"

And now we return to another hiking section, about which I have very little to say except that Tolkien's description of the natural environments of the Shire is extremely beautiful and I too would want to hike there

And now we interrupt your regularly scheduled pleasant hike for some bone-chilling horror

It's hard to imagine in the modern age—when tornado sirens and jet planes and faulty car brakes all probably make noises not unlike that of a Ringwraith's call—but to hobbits who have never heard a noise louder or more frightening than a thunderclap, a high, sustained, almost industrial screech like this must seem like the most terrifying and otherworldly thing.

(Also nobody tell Pippin about the white bellbird, which has a call like the emergency alert system at a volume comparable to a pneumatic drill)

Pippin: "Oh good, it's Farmer Maggot :-D" Frodo: "OH NO IT'S FARMER MAGGOT D-8"

It's such a shame that we know so little of Frodo's childhood, but the fact that he was a Certified Scoundrel(TM) who was prone to stealing mushrooms and got his butt whooped over it is absolutely hilarious 🤣 How ever did a naughty kid like him become the erudite sweetheart we know and love??

Pippin like "chill bro, he's a mutual friend of mine and Merry's, we're good!" Meanwhile Frodo is sweating buckets LOL

It's so cool that Pippin gets to be the leader in this section. And what a fearless leader he is! Of course he's not in any danger at all, but it just says so much about him that he waltzes down the lane to Farmer Maggot's house without a care in the world while Frodo and Sam are both terrified 🤣

Also I adore Farmer Maggot's hospitality

Sam giving Farmer Maggot the side eye because he whooped Frodo over the mushrooms years ago X-D

"I recollect the time when young Frodo Baggins was one of the worst young rascals of Buckland." I MEAN JUST IMAGINE

Farmer Maggot's story about the Ringwraith is SO GOOD. I love how much courage this round old hobbit has in him.

Farmer Maggot: "Moral of the story, ya never should've gone to Hobbiton. Clearly ya got mixed up with weird people." Sam: >:-C

Also Farmer Maggot cheerfully being like "don't worry, if they come after ya again, I'll deal with 'em for ya!" is so sweet and so ballsy X-D

Also Farmer Maggot is SO FREAKING SMART, and so generous. I think it's Merry who says later that he's got a lot more going on in his head than his genial appearance might let on, and he's right. He can see that Frodo and co. are in trouble, and he immediately offers his help. What a solid dude.

And here we see Frodo's silver tongue at work once again!

"I've been in terror of you and your dogs for over thirty years... It's a pity: for I've missed a good friend."

This line actually made me stop and think, bruh. How many friendships do we miss out on because we let the mistakes of our younger selves dictate our future?? I can think of lots of dumb things I did as a kid, and I'd be so embarrassed to run into the people that I wronged in my stupidity...but who knows? Maybe they're good people. Maybe they'd even be my best friends, if I got over myself. Food for thought.

And speaking of food, I want to have dinner with Farmer Maggot and his family and farm hands X-D

Ohhhh the suspense of the hoof-falls in the foggy lane is SOOO GOOD

WHO'S THAT POKEMON??

IT'S MERRY BRANDYBUCK!!

And his humor is in absolute top form LOLOL

"When it grew foggy I came across and rode up towards Stock to see if you had fallen in any ditches. ... Where did you find them, Mr. Maggot? In your duck-pond?"

HAVE I MENTIONED THAT MERRY IS MY FAVORITE HOBBIT

Also, the fact that Mrs. Maggot packed a basket of mushrooms for Frodo makes me very happy X-D

#chapter review #frodo baggins #peregrin took #pippin #samwise gamgee #farmer maggot #meriadoc brandybuck #merry #lord of the rings #lotr #my writing #also happy thanksgiving to those who celebrate!

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loveemagicpeace · 5 months

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⭐️Sagittarius Season⭐️

💕Sun in Sagittarius- this will bring more inspiration, motivation, enthusiasm, exploration and discovery of things. You will have more confidence and hope. Positive things will begin to happen. Maybe you can feel happier. It always brings a new way of looking at things and learning. It can also bring more travel or spirituality. Sagittarius during this time you will be very confident and courageous. Your relationship with your younger sibling will be good even if they will achieve success in their life which will make you proud of them. Nothing feels ordinary—it's all about embracing every moment. The biggest impact will be on Sagittarius, pisces, virgos and gemini placements. But most of all on sagittarius. It is often a time to let loose and have fun, this one will be a bit more dramatic than usual.

🍸Sagittarius season there will also be the final Mercury retrograde of 2023 on December 12. Lasting until January 1, this retrograde of the planet of communication is set to help us review not only our goals, but overall life strategy before we enter 2024.

🌙The new moon in Sagittarius on Dec. 12 offers a chance at finding meaning in our lives by exploring soulful and spiritual endeavors. You will look back and see how much you grow and learn from things also you'll start the new path in the spiritual way or maybe you will find some kind of new fate into something. This moon draws our attention to our spirit of adventure and how we interact with new perspectives. This new Moon in Sagittarius is an opportunity to step away from your fear and ask yourself, what if the best case happens? What if it all works out? Who would I be then? Sagittarius represents truth. Its energy is always in search of truth and reminds us that sometimes our inner truths need to be rewritten. Sagittarius is all about the direct experience with life. As you explore your truths and stories, it’s important to ask yourself if they are something you directly experienced or if they were taught to you.

⚡️Mercury in Sagittarius- Communication will be much more direct and expressed. You will feel more assertive and confident in communicating with others. It is a favorable period for attaining your beauty, youthfulness, health and fitness. So, you are advised to eat a healthy diet and adopt a good lifestyle. Thoughts become bigger, more optimistic and in some cases more exaggerated. It's a wonderful time for an intellectual adventure. This is a great astrological transit for shifting your position on an ethical, moral or philosophical point.

♐️Mars in Sagittarius- Now it will start happening. There will be many more experiences and fun things. Maybe random trips, stuff. Things will become more alive and there may be more adventure. This is the time when you spontaneously go to a club, go on a trip for a day, see a friend after a long time, do something crazy. This is the time to enjoy things without a bad conscience. You just do things and feel good about them. Lots of laughter and positive energy. It's like coming home and forgetting your keys and then sleeping over at your friend's house. Doing something with someone and feeling great. Do crazy things and don't regret it. There is only one life. Life in the moment. This transition encourages us to step out of our comfort zones and welcome new experiences eagerly. Instead of feeling adrift, this period acts as a guide, pointing us toward goals that ignite our passions.

🏹Sagittarius is all about honesty and being real, and when Mars teams up with it, it's like a big push to be yourself. This is the time to let your true self shine. You might feel more confident to talk openly and do things that really show who you are. This time can make our relationships feel stronger. There might be a lot of excitement and closeness with the people we care about. It's a great time to add a bit of excitement to romantic relationships, making things feel fresh and adventurous.

🥂What I love about sagittarius season is that you always learn to be confident in the things you do, you see how much you've grown and how smart you are now. And above all, that you feel young and optimistic. To learn to live as you should live every day. Life for this moment because you may never experience again🥂

-Rebekah🐚⭐️

#astrology #energy #zodiac signs #planets #astrological houses #sagittarius season #lucky star

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oodlyenough · 6 months

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I've been pretty critical of AAI so far but I'm mid 1-4 and enjoying the bit I'm playing right now so I feel I should give credit where it's due

Calisto Yew is hilarious

finally... someone willing to laugh in edgeworth's face. lmfao. deserved. sometimes I worry this game has forgotten miles edgeworth is a ridiculous person. calisto yew never has. god bless her

i'm with her, that was hilarious. bully those (post)minors ms yew

This post got really long so here's a cut. More on Yew & Franziska below:

it also meant we got to hear edgeworth and franziska talk about how awful and disgusting defense attorneys are, how could they defend someone who might be GUILTY, the HORROR, because in this universe the actual role of a criminal defense lawyer is arcane knowledge lost to time.

i've found myself wishing AAI got into the defense/prosecution philosophical debate more, the mainline games spend a lot of time positioning the prosecution as the enemy and i thought the alternate perspective here would be compelling. but so far it's mostly been edgeworth "inspecting every nook and cranny" while court has no role to play at all. so this is nice.

2. baby franziska

a lot of why I wanted to play this game at all is because I am obsessed w Franziska and hoped it would continue her story after it kind of unceremoniously ends in AA3. then I ... wasn't thrilled with how she was written in the airline case, so my hopes for baby franziska were not high.

But I'm liking her actually. Her put-on maturity and insane competitive streak really suit a 13 year old, lmao. And I don't have to wonder why she has fire extinguisher amnesia re: everything with her father and DL6. She and Miles are pretty funny, but there's some nice moments too. I really loved this one:

I cut the MVK/Franziska exchange in between for readability, and I'd seen that first screenshot float around plenty before, but I'd never seen the follow up. The progression of MVK is a huge dick to Miles for no reason -> Franziska intervenes in a way that makes MVK change his mind, but, crucially, without revealing any particular sentimentality -> Edgeworth recognizes it for what it is and thanks her anyway -> Franziska brushes it off in a way that lets them go back to competing in lieu of talking about their feelings, phew. Really good and felt very true to the relationship I think these two would have and the ways I think Franziska would demonstrate her care. The rituals are intricate but she loves her idiot little brother.

Also: matching sprites. Hehe.

3. This MVK line specifically, in response to why he wants Edgeworth to be a "top tier prosecutor"

Cracked me the fuck up. What an insane thing to say, and no one in-universe even knows what he's talking about. An inside joke to himself about his 15 year elaborate 5d chess child abuse revenge plan. Nobody's doing it like MVK. His ridiculously circuitous plan is 1/4 complete

Anyway, I'm not done this case yet, but it's the most I've enjoyed AAI so far so I felt I should give it a shout-out, lol. I wish Franziska could be my weird girl all the time 😔

#ace attorney investigations #oodly plays AAI #franziska von karma #miles edgeworth #von karma siblings #calisto yew

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mistressoftheelderitchwhorehouse · 1 year

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As I was taking down my braids I began to wonder how different BSD characters would react after seeing your natural hair. Can I ask for headcanons about that? IDC what characters as long as Dazai is there.

(Unrelated but kinda related but it makes me think of how there are so many things that are just commonplace in my culture that I wouldn't think twice about. But those who aren't of said culture who would find the things I do as new and intriguing. Humanity is very fascinating. Sorry for getting philosophical. I just like to think a lot)

Deadass the different culture things is always so fun. Like I explain things about my own curly hair to my white friends all the time, and when they tell me what is and isn't acceptable in their culture with their straight hair? It's interesting.

Anyway! Here we goooooo~~

______________________________

Hair and Coffee

Dazai flipped over in his futon, half expecting to flop onto another human being, only to feel cold blankets. He groaned and continued rolling until he was on the tatami mat instead of the futon. After almost six months of sleeping with another person, his futon felt strangely big when he was alone.

"Belladonna?"

"Kitchen, Dummy."

With some effort he stumbled to his feet, and went out to the kitchen. The coffee maker gurgled, but Dazai couldn't smell the tell tale dark roast that he kept on hand. Instead, he smelled something fruity and creamy. His thoughts immediately jumped to you, as he swore you always smelled like a sorbet stand.

"Down here."

Lo and behold there you were on the kitchen floor.

You were surrounded by different bottles that were slick with the left overs from your hands. Half your hair was clipped out of your face, while the rest was in your hands while you ran a wide tooth comb through it.

It wasn't often that Dazai got to see your hair outside of twists. You said it was a protective style, especially against the salt of the ocean that constantly beat against Yokohama.

How interesting.

Dazai leaned against the counter with a raised eyebrow. "Comfy?"

"Yes, actually." You tilted your head up to look at him. "Coffee's gonna be ready soon. Could you pour me some too?"

"I could."

"Dazai c'mon, please?"

"Well if you beg that nicely."

He moved around the counter, and knelt down to your level. You raised an eyebrow, and he could feel discomfort radiating off you. Even your work on your hair had stopped, and yet you gripped the comb so tight he could he the plastic creak.

He shook his head before he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your lips. When he pulled back, that discomfort seemed to have melted a bit.

Good.

He stood up and went to grab the coffee mugs. "Sugar?"

"You know it."

Shower Me in Love

Chuuya twisted the water on, before holding his hand under the cascading water. When it no longer singed his hands, he began to strip out of his clothes.

"Shower's on!"

"Coming!"

By the time he heard you walk into the bathroom, Chuuya had already stripped and was standing under the showers spray. Suds went down the drain while he rinsed out his hair.

"Took you long enough. Was about to get in the bath."

"Sorry! I had to take down my hair."

You finally stepped into the shower beside him, and he was surprised to find your hair had become a puff of tight, black curls. Chuuya knew your hair naturally curled like that, but he rarely saw it outside your braids.

He grinned as you reached out for your hair product. "Wash day for you too?"

"Yes and it's the worst! My deep conditioner didn't ship, but I'm tired of having dirty hair. Knew I should have just gotten the other one."

"They couldn't express ship?"

"I mean yeah, but-"

"If it's expensive charge it to my card." Chuuya said. "Your hair's too pretty to fuck it up on shitty products."

Your eyes widened a bit, before you bumped him with your hip. "Hush!"

He allowed himself to sway from your "violence" as he snickered at your bashful expression. "So fucking pretty."

A New Side

Atsushi hurried up the steps two at a time, humming along to the song that had been playing at the supermarket. When he finally got to your door number, he straightened up a bit, and knocked on the door.

"It's open, Atsushi!"

He opened the door, and toed out off his shoes. "I'm back, Darling! They didn't have olive oil, but they did have the coconut oil."

He went to your living room, and found you in the same spot that you were in half an hour ago. Your legs were under you, bottles of colorful creams were on the coffee table, and you had a comb in hand.

Now, however, your many bantu knots had been taken down in exchange for the puffs of tight curls that you were combing.

You looked up from the show you were watching on your phone with a smile. "Thanks! Can you set it on the table for me? I'll need it in a bit."

He did as instructed, his gaze never quite leaving your hair. He had learned a lot about you in the past two months. He knew you needed caffeine in the morning, and that you hated washing dishes, amd that he should get you flowers if you cried after an argument between you both. However, this ritual was new to him.

As he watched your hair do things his couldn’t, he was once more reminded how different the two of you were.

"Does it hurt?"

"Hm?"

He gestured to his own hair. "When you pull on it like that, does it hurt?"

"It can if you're not careful."

He watched you continue the movement. Careful, calculated pull of the comb through thick curls. Every so often you would stop, and add one of the creams or coconut oil to your hair, before running the comb through your hair once more.

After almost an hour of that, you paused and rolled your wrists til they popped.

Atsushi reached out, and gently took your hand. You tilted your head, but he didn't answer as he brought your wrist to his lips. You sighed and leaned your head back, eyes shut and a smile on your face.

"You're so sweet, Stripes."

Atsushi kept his lips over your pulse. "You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen in my entire life. Thank you for showing me another side of you."

You smiled and kissed his temple. "Thank you for accepting me for me."

Fin

#bungo stray dogs #chuuya nakahara #bungo stray dogs x reader #chuuya x reader #chuuya x you #bungou stray dogs #bsd #dazai x fem reader #dazai x black reader #dazai x y/n #atsushi x reader #atsushi nakajima #atsushi nakajima x reader #curly hair #atsushi bsd #teawiththemadam

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heliads · 1 year

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Heyyy I would like to make a request. So let's say there is a small pond in the glade and Minho and the reader are friends with hidden feelings and one day the reader finds out about that pond on the Deadheads so she takes Minho there and they swim in there, all playing and stuff and then somehow they confess?

aren't we all called to the small pond in the glade

masterlist

It is not easy to make do in the Glade. No one said it would be. No one said much of anything, not when you first came up in the Box. At that point, they were still grappling with the issues of what to do when left to their own devices in the middle of a massive Maze. Talking to newcomers and easing their fears was never the top priority.

You’ve been here about six months now, the fifth arrival. There are some who’ve been here before you: Nick, Alby, Minho, Newt, and then those who came after you. No one knows how long kids will keep showing up, if you’ll ever get to a point in which things stop and everything is over. At least now, with the Glade still growing, you can entertain the hope that the outside world hasn’t given up on you. At least now, you can still harbor the illusion that someone out there is in control, even if it isn’t you.

Such hope for prolonged life or even rescue will continue being pushed off for the time being, though. If there are people out there, they refuse to do anything but send up newcomers and supplies in the Box about once a month. You were one of the first Gladers to arrive, and, if the consistent time schedules are to be believed, certainly far from the last. You assumed that meant more girls were coming. You’re starting to be proven wrong.

That’ll get to you at some point, you think, when survival stops being all you think about and you can finally let your guard down a little more. Some of the earlier arrivals have already started. They recognize the patterns in how life in the Glade works and stick to them. That way, there aren't any unfortunate surprises. That way, you can give up your fear and pretend it never haunted you in the first place.

When that day comes and you learn to relax at last, you’ll hate the Creators for making you what seems to be the only girl in this whole place. Maybe more will come, but it doesn’t seem likely, and the chances shrink with each Box that rattles up carrying yet another scared boy. If you ever get out, you think you’ll treat your makers to a thorough screaming match.

The thought makes you smile, even if it’s not the pinnacle of optimism. That involves you getting out of here, a future which also seems less likely by the month. The Runners are tearing themselves to pieces trying to find a solution to the Maze, bless their exhausted hearts, but you can tell by the strain of their faces and the weariness in their eyes that their prolonged dry spells of answers aren’t doing them any favors.

Still, life in the Glade will continue on the way it’s always been. The sun will rise in the morning, then set at night. Food will be rustled up out of ill-conceived places. Idle chatter will replace stressful murmurings, and one day you’ll look up and realize that this is your home, whether you like it or not. That truth is easier to bear on certain days rather than others.

You have plenty of time for such philosophical musings; it’s your off day, a rarity that only started coming around once first-in-command Nick decided there were enough Gladers that everyone could stop working at the typical helter skelter pace. He says it’s better for community morale. You’re not about to argue with him, so you accept your rest days with reckless abandon and do your best to abuse those blessed hours as much as possible.

Today seems to be shaping up to be as good as any. There’s one boy out there who’s off day coincides with yours; he planned it that way, always has. He’s the one you’d consider your best friend, although it’s not as if there are a ton of competitors for that title. Even still, you think you’d rather have Minho by your side as opposed to anyone else.

There’s just something about him that makes you feel better, regardless of a terrible day or unreasonably awful work shift. You could go to bed wishing you were dead, but so long as his was the first face you saw in the morning, you’d open your eyes and know you were alright within moments. Minho makes you laugh when you’re storming through your worst hours. Minho is the one you look for in a crowd, or when you’re all alone, or wherever you go, and that means far more than you’d ever care to admit.

You would never say it to his face, at least, but you can whisper it to yourself. Of course there is a reason you prefer his company over the others by a long shot, even though you met all of them at the same time on your first day. With every old friend and new arrival to the Glade, no one manages to have half the sway on your heart as him. You love Minho, how could you not?

As if there was any world in which you did not care for him. As if there was any world in which such a thing would be possible. You are trapped in the purgatory of survival and certain death, where each day could be your last and each night could bring you closer to escape. This is not a place for sweethearts, nor chosen lovers, nor giddy fools. If you’re lucky, both of you will manage to stay alive at least a few months more, and you’ll be able to admire Minho from afar just like you always do.

So, you keep your mouth shut, and let the simple action of spending time with him be enough to settle your restless heart. It is never enough for you, how could it be; but you have to accept it. You will never bring up the matter of your heart to Minho, he will never bring it up to you, and the two of you will continue dancing around the issue until the end of time. A painful scenario, to be sure, but the only feasible one.

He’s here now, testing your patience once again. You might break at some point and let the confession flow from your throat like a blessing or a curse, but hopefully, that won’t be today. Minho shades his eyes from the scorching sun, raising a hand in greeting. Before you know it, he’s by your side, absentmindedly slinging an arm around your shoulders just like he always does.

“Y/N, I have a feeling that today is going to be an excellent day,” Minho pronounces.

You arch a brow, fighting a wild grin. “Why’s that? Are you hallucinating from heatstroke?”

Minho snorts. “No, but it’s hot enough that I’m still holding out hope for that to happen at last. I’m just happy because you’re the one coming up with the plan for our joint day off and not me for once.”

You chuckle. “I was wondering if you forgot about that.”

Minho throws his free hand in the air. “How could I possibly? Rest days are a sacred tradition, Y/N. I won’t have you breaking routine for nothing.”

You roll your eyes, unable to keep your laughter at bay. Minho isn’t wrong, the two of you have been keeping careful schedules for every one of your shared days off. They don’t come all that frequently, so each one has to be properly appreciated. Usually, that means you’ll alternate coming up with ideas of what to do with your copious free time. The last time this happened, Minho had the brilliant plan to steal fruit from the garden and eat it before falling asleep somewhere Nick couldn’t find you. It was fun, but the two hours’ penance in the Slammer was less good. At least he let the two of you relax in the same cell.

It’s your turn now, but luckily for Minho, your plots won’t involve any time spent behind bars. Always one to let your friends suffer whenever possible, you decide to torment Minho by withholding details of the day’s expeditions for a little longer.

“Oh, right, can’t believe I forgot about that. Yes, rest day. I’m aware.”

Minho’s face drops. “That can’t be right. Y/N, I know you didn’t forget. I know you wouldn’t do that to me.”

You hold your stoic expression for a few more moments, then crack at last. “Alright, I’m just messing with you. Yes, I have a plan. Now follow me.”

Minho mumbles something about how you’d better not try to trick him again before jogging after you into the shade of the Deadheads. Few people like to linger around the woods, which makes it perfect for avoiding extra work and curious eyes as much as possible.

Minho takes an uneasy glance around the further you walk into the scraggly forest. “Don’t tell me visiting the graveyard is your idea of a good time.”

“Don’t worry,” you assure him, “I’m not here for the headstones. Far from it.”

Minho looks like he wants some answers, but you’ve always favored a bit of mystery, so you keep walking until you stop once more by the edge of a clearing. Minho, the hero, the intrepid voyager, keeps going. He is used to mapping out the unknown, making sense of the blank unknown, so you let him go first. It also makes for a better view when you see his face twist with joy when he realizes what you’ve found.

“No way,” he breathes out slowly, “there’s a pond?”

You grin. “Stumbled upon it just the other day, no one else knows. Figured we could lay claim first. You know, since we’re the ones with the break day.”

Minho turns back to you, grin unable to leave his cheeks. “You’re amazing. Fantastic. Forget I ever doubted you for a second.”

“You doubted me?” You ask, feigning hurt.

Minho swats you on the shoulder before reaching down and grabbing your hand to pull you forward towards the glimmering water. “Never.”

You laugh as you plunge through the tall grass surrounding the banks. The pond itself isn’t too large, just big enough for five or so people to sit comfortably in its sparkling depths. For you and Minho, though, it’s nothing short of paradise. You never thought you’d be this happy in the Glade unless someone found a way out, but here, this pocket of joy is enough to completely change your day around.

Minho lingers on the banks, staring into the depths of the small lake. “You know this means we have to go swimming. There’s no way we couldn’t.”

You nod solemnly. “That’s why you’re going in first.”

Minho starts to frown, but before he can form his question, you’re shoving him in the side. Minho seems to hang in the air for a moment before he hits the water with a loud splash. He comes up almost immediately, shaking droplets from his dark hair.

“You pushed me in?” He asks, absolutely shocked by your act of betrayal.

“Of course I did,” you say gleefully, “someone had to see if the water was cold, didn’t they?”

Minho’s jaw drops in outrage, and seconds later he’s grabbed your ankles, pulling you in as well. Although you know you probably rose back to the surface within moments, it feels like you spend an eternity there, looking at him through the tinted water, the weight of the liquid pulling you down and towards him all at once.

Then your head is breaking through the surface and you’re gasping for air through incredulous laughter. “You pulled me in?”

“Hey, you pushed me,” Minho defends himself, “I felt it was only fair.”

Unable to think of a fitting retort to this admittedly true accusation, you settle for the classic answer of splashing him. Minho blinks the water out of his eyes for a moment, stock still, then fixes you with his most devastating stare yet.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” he begins.

“I can,” you answer him proudly.

“Oh yeah?” Minho says, pushing through the water to stand even closer to you, “that means it’s so on.”

You raise an incredulous brow. “And what are you going to do, splash me back? There’s nothing you could do to actually make this even.”

Minho leans towards you, his breath hot on your cheek. “Actually,” he says slowly, “you have no idea what I would do.”

It is silent for a moment then, still and silent. The wind presses against your skin, cooling you until you think you could be frozen in place. Slowly, carefully, Minho brings you back to life. You don’t know exactly how long you’ve been waiting for him to kiss you, only that it has been far, far too long.

The kiss ends far too early in your opinion; Minho stays there still, forehead pressed against yours. You breathe in time with him, then listen to him as he says, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You smile in spite of yourself. “I didn’t think you would want to hear it.”

“Of course I’d want to hear it,” Minho says simply, “it’s you, I’d want to hear anything.”

“What if I said I hated you?” You ask, ever the pessimist.

Minho laughs quietly. “Impossible.”

He’s right, and both of you know it. For once, that difficult task of someone knowing your deepest secrets is not the worst burden in the world to bear. It never will be.

requested by @toomuchofafungirl, i hope you enjoy!

maze runner tag list: @rogueanschel, @ellobruv, @retvenkos, @thatfangirl42, @neewtmas, @hiya-its-amber, @gods-fools-heroes, @hope92100, @23victoria, @w1shes43, @ilovexavierthrope, @fadedver

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thebibutterflyao3 · 1 month

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Day Seventeen - Prompt: Height @rosekiller-microfic

March Daily Series - 717 words

<<<Previous Part OR Start Here

Throughout the two hours that Barty spent sprawled on Frank’s table with the machine’s steady hum as it drilled ink beneath his skin, he spent the majority of it thinking about Evan. There were brief interludes when his thoughts meandered down random trails, such as the usefulness of a rabbit’s cotton ball-like tail or the murderous face of a shoebill stork, a human-sized bird that eats crocodiles.

Then, he wondered if Evan’s furious face resembled the stork’s. Particularly when he was telling Barty off over the phone yesterday. Barty hadn’t actually seen Evan angry yet.

Annoyed? Yes.

Bored? Sure.

Angry? Not yet.

It was only a matter of time though. If Barty persisted invading Evan’s space like this, which he had every intention of continuing to do, he was likely to experience the cold fury of Evan’s wrath in-person soon enough. There was a small part of him that revelled in the intoxicating mental image of Evan’s soft, sweet features contorted in anger. Using his full height to intimidate.

From the deepest desires often came the deadliest hate.

Nonsense, Socrates. Evan didn’t hate anyone. He was the epitome of calm and collected, cheerful and indulgent, unless Barty was actively breaking him apart. Then again, Socrates and his contemporaries never met the Evan Rosier, so the philosophers could only speak in generalities. Still, he didn’t believe Evan hated him. Refused to believe it, actually.

Barty was many things, but he wasn’t oblivious. There were signs that Evan felt the same way that he did. Whether it was the first sparks of “love” or simply pure adoration, a bit of that magic was still there. He was certain of it.

Unearthing that magic, if it were even possible, wouldn’t happen overnight. After a long night of deliberation, Barty now had a plausible plan stored in the notes app of his phone and its success hinged on testing Evan’s patience.

This plan required a delicate balance of persistence and patience, which posed a challenge considering Barty was as subtle as a chainsaw. He was far better at ripping the problem open and exposing the innards rather than gently prodding at it until he was let in. Barty couldn’t force his way through this time. That strategy didn’t work with Evan.

For him, I will make it right. Even if it breaks me.

As much as he hated to admit it, Barty was going to have to crawl his way back into Evan’s good graces. The concept made his skin itch horribly. It was as if it didn’t fit his bones quite right anymore.

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature.

His nonna’s stern voice spouting her wisdom halted his panic. She was long dead, but her devotion to philosophy lived on his mind. It was the only way Barty had to keep her close.

Unlike his sweet, gentle mother, his nonna would have slapped him upside the head if she was here to see what a mess he’d made of things. Integrity was as vital as air to her. To her, lies were traitorous, devilish things.

The words soured on his tongue alongside the bile creeping up his throat. Barty swallowed it down and internally pleaded with his stomach to keep it there. He closed his eyes and sighed in resignation.

She was right, he was a traitor. He’d betrayed his partners and himself. Nonna had justification to slap sense into him. Fuck, Regulus and Evan did too.

“Alright, you’re done,” Frank announced, swatting his hip. “Now get out.”

Barty gingerly lifted from the table and stretched. “What did you pick?”

“Have a look.”

He turned toward the mirror and studied the frenzied pattern of tattoos that covered the back of his leg. Directly over the calf muscle, Frank added a four inch tall, anatomically accurate heart that was squeezed mercilessly by a hand. Crimson blood gushed over the splayed fingers and coated the phantom wrist.

“Interesting choice,” he choked out.

“I figured that your monumental fuck-up should be added to the tapestry.” Frank gestured vaguely over his patchwork skin. “The good and the bad, the hope and the pain, it’s all there.”

Barty’s chest clenched hard. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Next Part>>>

#barty crouch jr x evan rosier #evan x barty #barty x evan #barty crouch junior #barty crouch jr #barty jr #evan rosier #rosekiller #rosekiller microfic #slytherin skittles #marauders era #frank longbottom

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