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bsd-bibliophile · 3 years

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Survey Dates: November 15, 2020 - December 15, 2020 Number of Participants: 331

You can view and download the full results here.

Comments:

#BringBackYumeno2020

How cool you included translators in this! You ROCK.

bsd kunikida needs a vacation

Bungou Stray Dogs have been a blessing for me ever since I started watching the series last year. I had lost my drive for reading and writing as a hobby, university and disillusionment with the publishing industry killed that, but now I have been revitalized thanks to the series. Not only did it drive me to go back to writing original works, but I have started writing fanfiction again after almost ten years of hiatus from story writing. The BSD online library has been a blessing not only as a source of research for the writers for my fanfic, but also has been the only way that I have been easily been able to get a hold of some works by the authors in English, my preferred reading language. Please keep up the good work! Thank you so much for everything that you have provided for this fandom.

Buraiha,,,, just them

Do not make me choose between Dazai and Chuuya, I cannot, they are both my favs lol.

for the question about how many books by japanese authors i own, i responded with more

Hello friend! Twain’s my favourite in bsd but this is about japanese literature soooo than 10, but to clarify: they are not all from bsd authors.

hello!! just a quick thank you note!! im polish and variety here in japanese literature (either in polish or english) is very limited, but thanks to your website it's very easy to find works i want to read both by japanese or russian authors. i also like the fact that i can read abt the authors' connections and how they influenced each other in their works, and get some historical context. i want to be a translator in the future, so i'm incredibly grateful for this kind of accessibility. keep up the good work and thank you once again!!! <333 - julia sz

I will like to thank you for all the information that you have supplied us on the tumblr page. Also I will like to know if you have any information about "A New Hamlet" the adaptation Dazai made of Hamlet. You will really help me if you know anything about it.

hi, i really enjoy your blog and "no longer human" as well as "the moon over the mountain" are on my christmas list. i hope to learn more about these authors and i wish you a good day!

Hi! Just hope you have a great day!

I am currently learning Japanese and I hope one day I can read these authors works in Japanese instead of a translation

I am interested in reading literary works translated into languages other than English, but have difficulty finding ways to read them. For BSD, I also watch the recordings of stage plays. Also, BSD and the authors have sparked my interest in other Japanese literature (I really like Banana Yoshimoto's books). Lastly, thanks for the online library, it's such a huge help!

I am sad to have to answer that I’ve not read these authors. I just watched the whole anime in the last two weeks and am going to go read some of these authors now. I actually have two literature degrees from US institutions and have become increasingly aware of how awfully western they are. I love this anime and am glad it’s opened me up to these authors. I’m excited to read them.

I can't wait to see what you do with these results!!

I cannot thank you & your blog enough for helping me fall further in love with Bungou Stray Dogs. Keeping so many works in an easy-to-access place is also a total lifesaver--and you just made it all the more easier to realize my love for literature. I know I'm rambling, but thank you so much!

I have a question, is it better to read these Japanese novels in their original language (Japanese) or does it not really matter if you read the English translation? I guess it's a given that reading it in Japanese is more authentic, but I'm just wondering if it's really worth it to learn such a complex language just for the sake of authenticity. Are English translations at least 90% legit anyway?

I have read most Japanese works in English except for the poetry of Nakahara Chūya, which I read in/translated from Japanese.

I have very mixed feeling towards BSD, I prefer the side stories rather than the main plot and I only like a small choice of characters, but I appreciate the series for introducing me to many great authors that I hadn't known.

I hope you have a great day!!

I just found BSD Biblio blog recently, but still I get to know about the real life authors a lot. I can't understand japanese much, so this blog truly helps me to know more about the authors and their remarkable works. I'm greatly appreciate the efforts that had been put on this blog ^^ My deepest gratitude to the translators~♡

I just wanted to say thank you for your big interest in sharing japanese literary œuvres on the internet. Here in Spain there aren't many works translated in spanish, and those that are translated, have a poor translation, except the works of Dazai. Your page lets me enjoy many pieces of art from the great japanese writers!

I love bsd and bsd-bibliophile is a great blog

I love the blog and my favorite things are the quotes! Keep up the good work. <3

I love the universe that taught me to love books.

I love this blog and thank you sm for all the love and hard work you put into it. Thank you.

I love your blog, but I didn't know you had a library! I'm definitely checking it out, since where I live it's not easy to find the books of all the authors and I want to read at least one book of each! ❤️

I love your blog:)

I love your blog!

I love your tumblr! Thank you so much for collecting all the information about the authors!

I LOVE YOUR WEBSITE ITS AMAZING THANK YOUUUU

I love your work and dedication!

I mostly make do with the books that are available in my public library, thus the only physical copy I own is "the key" bu tanizaki (if that's the correct translation of the novel)

I play the BSD mobage; that is about as far as I am into BSD as a fandom, as I've only began a couple months ago.

I prefer print, but ebooks are good when that's what's available. I started reading the BSD manga, but stopped. I enjoy it much more just vicariously through my friends who read the manga and novels. Thanks for providing Japanese lit content all the time! I'm trying to learn Japanese, but I've a long way to go, so it's cool to learn about authors and possible English translations.

I read a lot more Japanese authors than I used to before, due to the anime Bungo Stray Dogs

I really adore what you do. Though I have not been very active in the library due to real life issues, I look forward to sitting down and looking through it!

I really appreciate BSD-Bibliophile. I've learned a lot and I know without it, I might not have gotten this into Japanese literature!

i really enjoy seeing your posts on my feed and reading quotes from various writers. thank you for your effort, i really appreciate it :)

I really like that you share quotes of these authors, they're really interesting to read! :) It also helps me to decide what I want to read next haha

I really want to read the light novels, I wish one day you can upload them! Love this page so much!!

I saw a few posts from your blog on Twitter and I'll definitely follow it from now on! What you all are doing is truly amazing and I wish you and your blog only the best! (I don't have enough free time to dive into as many books as I wish I could, so your blog is really helpful)

I think Asagiri-sensei try to promote these famous Japanese authors and I really glad he did because I actually like the poems and story by these authors and whenever I read you guys post a quote from any of their books, I feels the need to buy the book. Thank you for your hardwork!

I think your work in organizing and encouraging people to engage in Japanese literature beyond the series that introduced them to it is awesome.

I use BSD-Bibliophile so much and am very grateful to have it!

I wanted to read some of Dazai's, Kenji's and Akutagawa's works, but they are hard to find in physical stores

I wanted to thank for both the blog and the online library for granting me acess to works that are either too expensive or not available in my country <3

I'm following BSD for 4 years and I read literature of BSD authors as much as I can. I'm deeply in love with its characters, and I'm delighted every time I discover the references from the real life authors and their works. I recommend for those who want to go in-depth with BSD to read the literature, or at least learn about the real life authors. It worths the time. You'll love BSD even more, and maybe the real life authors and their works as well.

I'm new to Bungou Stray Dogs, and I plan on getting my hands on the manga soon! and also the works of the real authors the characters are based off of. :)

I'm so thankful for the site! Since I can't afford the actual book, I am able to read them thru here and if you don't mind, please add Hagiwara Sakutaro's Hownling at The Moon and Kikuchi Kan's Beyond the Pale of Vengeance. Thank you!

I'm so thankful to the amount of effort put into this blog. Thank you so much.

I've been following you for years, your blog is one of my favorites. Thanks for all you do!

I've come by this website a few times, but today is the first time I've really read anything on here. The posts provide a lot of insight. I'll definitely be coming back here to make use of the online library. Thanks for making this available!

I've read and enjoyed Dazai's works, and he's the one I choose for favourite, but it's hard - if I had to choose a second I'd go with Chuuya's poetry. I've somehow wound up reading and re-reading it both for reference in my own works, and just because I want to, when I like.

I've thoroughly enjoyed all the works I've found through this series and I highly recommend people look into Tachihara's poetry! He's my favorite poet ever and his work is highly underrated.

I'm very thankful for this blog. It's heaven-sent for a booklover and fan of Japanese literature for me. I'm sure you're constantly trying to update the library, but there are a few very rare books I've always wanted to read but I'm not sure if I'll get to. Can you add "Azamukazaru no Ki" by Kunikida Doppo? I'm not sure if there exists an English translation, but I'd be eternally grateful even if you uploaded the original Japanese (actually, I would prefer that to the translation, even though it would take a million years for me to decipher the whole of it, at my level of knowledge of the Japanese language. Japanese and English being poles apart in grammatical structure, a lot of the nuances of a Japanese piece is lost in a translation, and this being a record of Kunikida's innermost feelings, I would prefer to read the original.) I also want to read the reports Kunikida made while he was a war correspondent during the Sino-Japanese war, that made him famous as a writer and journalist, but I'm not sure if those could be available. Please include Kunikida's wonderful poetry too. I have mostly read some them in the original Japanese, or Bengali translations made by a senpai of mine, but I would love to read more. As you can probably tell, Kunikida is one of my favourite Japanese authors (although I selected Akutagawa as my favourite in the survey... I love both of their writings equally, but the survey only wanted one answer, so I chose Akutagawa.) Please include writings of other Japanese authors who are not featured in BSD as well, if that is possible (you could maybe create a different section for them?) One of my favourite Japanese authors is Komatsu Sakyou, but I've only been able to read one book of his ("Japan Sinks"). I also want to read "Virus: the Day of Resurrection", "Take Your Choice" and assorted short stories written by him, but Japanese literature is unfortunately not at all easily available where I live. Which is all the more reason I'm so thankful for your blog. I wouldn't have been able to read so many amazing books of some of my favourite authors if it hadn't been for your blog. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope you will read this and consider my requests. Have a nice day :)

it is through bsd-bibliophile's blog that i am able to go in-depth about japanese authors, so thank you so much! and just a little suggestion, though you don't have to do this if you don't have time or there's simply not any reason for you to do it, i would really love to answer a survey not only featuring japanese authors but all authors across different literatures (japanese, american, english, russian) who are featured in bsd because i think that would be fun as well. and this is really a fun survey~ thank you so much!

It was very fun to fill this list.

It's too hard to choose only one character or author

Keep doing what you do, it's amazing!

keep the great works!

Loved this!!! 💕

Nothing in particular. I just wanna thank you for having this survey. Loving BSD forever.

Since I only recently fell into the world of BSD and Japanese literature I haven't been able to read many of the works I want. I'm quite eager to read "No Longer Human" by Dazai-sensei since I really liked his style. An interesting thing is that I wasn't very fond of reading poetry until I discovered Yosano-sensei and Miyazawa-sensei, I enjoyed their work a lot. I'm very grateful to this blog, I wouldn't have been able to immerse myself this much into Japanese literature and read all this wonderful works if it wasn't for you so thank you so much! Keep up the good work!! ♡

Thank you for all of your hard work in these translations; reading Japanese literature has always been my wish. Being able to find and read their works in English is the greatest thing that's happened to me.

Thank you for all the hard work! You all curate the content so carefully and do so much for the fandom. It's one of my favorite bsd

Thank you for all the work you do~ and thank you for the library as well~

Thank you for all the work you’ve done💕✨

Thank you for all your hard work!

Thank you for continuing your work on this blog!

Thank you for everything you do!

Thank you for helping me find the translated copy of Return to Tsugaru by Osamu Dazai a while back!

Thank you for making the online library available! It's a great way to read some of these works that are not easily found elsewhere.

Thank you for providing the PDF's of these books, I don't want to buy them until I know I like them because it's hard for me to read because of my ADHD, so thank you for providing them in English!!!!

Thank you for the survey!

Thank you for this site! It really helps me to learn more about the Japanese Literature. Thank you to everyone who worked hard to translate the manga and light novels! I cannot decide which author I liked the best nor which book I liked most. It really is hard for me too choose! *sends love to everyone in this site*

thank you for this site! this really feeds my reading and BSD obsession <3

Thank you for your hard work :)

Thank you for your hard work, BSD Bibliophile! You are amazing! ;)

Thank you for your hard work!

Thank you for your work ♥

thank you so much for all that you do!!

Thank you so much for all your work on the BSD Bibliophile website!

Thank you so much for both your blog and the online library!!

Thank you so much for bringing closer the translated works and thanks for the authors who translated them

thank you so much for creating this special blog! I love it and really adore it

Thank you so much for your great work! your blog is a treasure for those who don't speak Japanese but are in love with Japanese literature (─‿‿─)♡

thank you so much for your website!!! sending love from hk!! :DD

Thank you so much for your wonderful work in making Japanese literature more accessible, so people who cannot find them in their country are also able to enjoy them <3

Thank you very much for your efforts in providing information and reading materials for everyone! I find your blog and website especially useful since I can't seem to find any physical copies here where I'm from.

Thank you!

Thank you.

Thanks for all of your hardwork!

thanks for ur hard work <3

Thankyou so much for this amazing collection of Japanese writers and BSD!

The translations from the BSD Library are amazing.

there's always more than one favorite character or author but it is hard to pick between them

This blog is has so many posts that have helped me to read these literary work and became an important part of my life. Thank you for all moderators for sharing these beautiful works.

This is an interesting survey for bsd franchise also for the people who like and read Japanese literature. As a casual franchise wanderer, I'd like to fill this for showing my country existence//slaps wwwwwwwww. Thank you for providing this survey. Salam Literasi!

This library is amazing!

This was fun!! I use the bsd-bibliophile tumblr a lot - reading the quotes helps me pick which book to read next!! Through reading the Japanese literature written by BSD characters, I’ve since found other Japanese authors I love like Sakutarō Hagiwara and Dan Kazou, too!!!! <3

To clarify some of my answers, The Japanese books I own are mostly children's books. My parents however, have some Japanese novels and short stories as they are from Japan (for example my mom has a copy of Kumo no Ito by Akutagawa). I never finished Setting Sun nor Kokoro. I got about halfway through both before I had to return it to the library. The only other jp lit I've read not including poems is like a quarter of Snow Country by Kawabata Yasunari.

would just like to thank you for always providing the resources for BSD fans! i have been introduced to some of my favourite all-time works since discovering your blog and your resources!

You have a great blog, thank you all!

You're doing amazing work. Thank you so much for all you do for this fandom and the Japanese literary sphere in general.

You’re the best!

Your blog is absolutely amazing and if i hadn't found it i wouldn't have been able to read any of the BSD authors' works, i downloaded each one that interested me in PDF from your blog, hence why i admire it so much and i am so grateful for it. It is obvious that you put a huge amount of work into this blog and i love to wake up to new quotes and fragments every day. Keep up the great work, with love, a reader from Romania!

Your blog is amazing. Keep up the great work! Much support ♥️

your blog is SO helpful for my master's thesis on japanese literature. there is basically nothing in my country about japanese authors and i cannot thank you enough for the work you have done. seriously you are saving my life !!!!!!!!!! i really hope you have a good day!!!! you are really awesome™

Your BSD Library is very helpful for me, thank you for your efforts on creating it!

Your website is great, and I really appreciate your work, it’s makes it so much easier to find Japanese literature and to find new authors.

Your work is beautiful and you have expanded my knowledge of international literature so much; thank you :)

#survey #results #2020 #japanese literature #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd-bibliophile

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zillennial97 · 3 years

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My All-Time Favorites | Larry Fanfic Recs

*these works are the closest to my heart and my best recommendations*

Hiding Place by alivingfire | 365k | Explicit

Louis never wanted a soulmate, didn’t really care for the whole Bonding thing at all, really. Enter Harry Styles, who’s wanted to be Bonded for as long as he could remember. With one fateful meeting in an X Factor bathroom, Louis gets a dagger on his arm and the realization that just because Harry is his soulmate doesn’t mean it’s mutual.

From the X Factor house to Madison Square Garden, from the Fountain Studios stage to stadiums across the world, Louis has to learn to love without losing himself completely, because someday his best friend will Bond to someone and replace Louis as the center of his universe. Meanwhile, Harry begins to think that maybe fate doesn’t actually know what it’s doing after all, because his other half has clearly been right in front of him the whole time. All he has to do now is convince Louis to give them a chance.

Or, the canon compliant Harry and Louis love story from the very beginning, where the only difference is that the love between them is literally written on their skin, and there’s only so much they can hide.

And Then a Bit by infinitelymint | 158k | Explicit

“We’d like to give the fans what they want.” Magee states, placing his hand on the table in front of him and leaning forward. “We want to give them Larry Stylinson.”

Or, take a parallel universe where Louis and Harry were never together, mix in a two year hiatus and an impending comeback, pour in a dash of lost fans, two tablespoons of strong friendship and a Modest! employee with a good idea. Add a squeeze of pretending to be a couple, lots of kisses and a tattoo or two. Stir. Serve: the mother of all publicity stunts.

(aka Harry and Louis fake a relationship for publicity. Eventually it becomes a lot less fake and a lot more real.)

Walk That Mile by purpledaisy | 149k | Explicit

Harry stares at him, the line of his jaw standing out scarily. “I wanted to get the most out of this trip so I planned it carefully.” His voice is low and steady and somehow that’s worse than when he was yelling. “So far, you’ve put your sticky fingers on everything I’ve tried to do.”

“Sticky fingers?” Louis repeats, offended. “Are you saying it’s my fault you got stung by a bee? Had you been alone you would have gotten halfway to the Dotty Diner and ran the car off the road because of an allergic reaction, so don’t go blaming me.”

“Polk-A-Dot Drive In,” Harry spits before getting out of the car. He slams the door shut with a deafening reverb and Louis rolls his eyes.- A Route 66 AU where falling in love was never part of the plan.

Unbelievers by isthatyoularry | 136k | Explicit

It’s Louis’ senior year, and he’s dead set on doing it right. However, along with his pair of cleats, a healthy dose of sarcasm and his ridiculous best friend, he’s also got a complicated family, a terrifyingly uncertain future, and a mortal enemy making his life just that much worse. Mortal enemies “with benefits” was not exactly the plan.

Or: The one where Louis and Harry definitely aren’t friends, and football is everything.

California Sold by isthatyoularry | 123k | Mature

Notoriously closeted boyband member Harry Styles is famous on a global scale, meanwhile Louis, as his best friend, is back home in Manchester, living the typical life of a 24 year old. When Harry needs Louis with him in LA, a publicity stunt gone wrong changes their friendship forever.

A fake-relationship AU between two lifelong best friends.

Fucking Animals by pointerbrother | 116k | Explicit

“Just, off the record,” she says, voice lower, eyes sharper, crook of her mouth quirking up a little, “don’t you ever miss it? A good knot? You must.”

Louis blinks and then swallows, thickly. “No,” he exclaims, offended that she’d even ask, “I love my husband. And anyway, how could I miss something I’ve never had?”

---

Louis is the frontman of an equal rights-movement, author of a book about beta-omega marriage and the struggles of being born and boxed into a personality you don't necessarily feel you fit. The notion that an omega must want to be with an alpha or else he or she's just settling for less, is bullshit.

But, fucking hell.

we're not friends, we could be anything by nooelgallagher, yoursongonmyheart | 115k | Explicit

Louis narrows his eyes at Harry. “What that supposed to be a fucking joke?”

Harry narrows his eyes right back. “It was a good joke.”

Louis rolls his eyes. “Jokes require laughter, Curls.” Louis glances down at Harry’s thighs again, Christ. “Your pants must be so tight they’re restricting airflow to your brain.”

Harry wipes a bead of sweat off his forehead. “Pretty sure yoga is supposed to increase airflow, blood flow, and all that,” he responds dryly, finally jumpstarting himself and walking away from Louis towards his own bedroom.

Louis can’t help but stare at his broad back, still sheen with drying sweat, and his perky bum in the tight yoga pants.

Louis swallows. Christ.

...Or, the one where Harry and Louis are unlikely uni flatmates who definitely don't like each other and definitely won't fall in love (even if Liam and Niall think otherwise).

Tired Tired Sea by MediaWhore | 113k | Mature

As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

Our Lives, Non-Fiction by indiaalphawhiskey | 113k | Explicit

Heralded as the next Neil Gaiman, Louis Tomlinson does not appreciate being told that his very serious novel is in dire need of a PR boost. Even worse, that it comes in the form of a joint book tour with the UK’s #1 online romance-writing sensation Marcel Styles. Already turbulent at best, their partnership takes a drastic turn when, overly stressed about his looming deadline, Marcel accidentally blurts out a secret: though he’s famed for his scorching hot literary love scenes, he is, actually, a virgin.

Convinced that the only way to rid himself of writer’s block is to gain some experience, Marcel asks Louis, author-to-author, to sleep with him – for Science. And of course Louis agrees because, well, what on Earth could possibly go wrong?

Or, a lesson in romance that proves that sometimes the best love stories aren’t always by the book.

You’ve Got My Devotion (Hate You Sometimes) by lucythegoosey | 95k | Explicit

Harry was in the biggest boy band in the world. He was also one half of the best (or worst, depends on who you ask) kept secret relationship in the music industry.

Now, almost five years on, after One Direction has broken up, and Harry and Louis' relationship has as well, a video threatens to put everything at risk.

One determined Irishman, a massive publicity stunt and two begrudging exes are all it takes to bring One Direction back to life and maybe, just maybe, Harry and Louis' mangled love life too.

Or: Harry and Louis are forced to fake-date after an old video from when they were dating emerges.

This Wicked Game by cherrystreet | 70k | Explicit

An AU in which The Bachelor is gay, Louis is a contestant, Harry is the bachelor, everyone drinks a lot of champagne, the entire world gets to watch them fall in love, and no one plays by the rules.

Christmas-ing With You by dolce_piccante | 65k | Mature

Two writers from Loving Heart Television, the premiere network for holiday romance films, find that, sometimes, love is not only in their works of fiction.

Barefoot in Blue Jeans by indiaalphawhiskey | 24k | Explicit

AU. Louis Tomlinson is trying desperately hard not to fall for his son’s au pair, but he can’t, for the life of him, remember why.

475. The hope that this fear is unfounded.

#larry fanfiction recommendations #larry fanfic rec #larry fic #larry fanfiction #larry stylinson #louis tomlinson #harry styles #one direction fanfiction #one direction fanfic recs #larry fanfiction masterpost

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imagine-loki · 3 years

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You Have Heart

TITLE: You Have Heart CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 6/?

AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine finding out that your soulmate is Loki and your very first kiss is interrupted by Thor shouting “Yeeessss”

RATING: M NOTES/WARNINGS: Also on AO3 here

Loki stiffened at Stark’s words. His entire body tensed for a moment. It was nearly indiscernible, but you were close enough to sense it and notice the slight change in his body. Or perhaps it was a soulmate thing. You hadn’t really done much research on the soulmate bonds. You hadn’t had a soulmate, so it hadn’t been a priority to research exactly what abilities you could gain from finding your soulmate.

It was quickly becoming a priority in your life.

You noticed Loki stiffen, but Thor seemed to be the only other one who did. And he didn’t react quickly enough. Loki was on his feet in a moment. “Pardon me for a moment, drotning,” he told you while you stared up at him in shock. He gave a meaningful look to Thor, one you couldn’t quite decipher at the moment, then strode toward Stark all in one graceful movement.

You barely had time to comprehend what had happened before Loki had strode across the room. Thor moved closer to you and you finally understood the look Loki had given him. He was telling Thor to look after you while he did… whatever he was going to do. You were going to have to have a conversation with him about his perception of you being a helpless mortal. That wasn’t going to fly, though you understood his concern now that he finally had found you. Still, you weren’t going to put up with him treating you like a fragile porcelain doll.

You didn’t have long to wait to find out what Loki was up to. By the time you’d figured out the look he’d given Thor, Loki was across the room and had grabbed Stark by the throat, easily lifting him off the ground with one hand.

You jumped to your feet. “Loki!” You protested. You started to go to him to get him to stop strangling Stark. You were halted after a single step by unmovable warm arms around you, holding you to an equally warm unmovable Thor. You squirmed, but were no match for the god’s strength. “Thor! Let me go!” You protested

“No, lady. Wait a moment. Everything is alright,” Thor reassured you as he held you tightly to him. His arms were a vice around you and your back was pressed against his warm chest, your arms pinned to your sides.

“How is everything alright?” You demanded.

Loki was holding Stark in the air. By the throat. Stark’s hands scrabbled at Loki’s on his neck. “I put up with your unwarranted derogatory comments toward me,” Loki growled, glaring daggers at the mortal man. “I will not tolerate any such negativity toward my soulmate. She has done nothing to deserve it,” his grip tightened on Stark and he strode toward the wall of windows, carrying Stark easily with one hand. His voice was a snarl and he was using his patented murder strut as he was literally going to murder Stark.

Before you could do anything to get out of Thor’s freakishly strong grip, Loki threw Stark out of the window. Loki threw Stark out of the window. Loki defenestrated Stark.

Fuck!

Loki had thrown Stark out of the window.

No one seemed to care.

Loki calmly stepped to the side and observed his handiwork as Stark fell toward the ground yelling.

You somehow managed to squirm out of Thor’s arms and ran over to the window. “Loki! Stark! What did you-?” You demanded. The window was definitely broken and you saw Stark falling toward the street below.

Loki’s cold arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you away from the window. “Easy, drotning,” he soothed when you were safely away from the broken glass. “The tin man will be just fine,” he told you. You looked up at him with panic and horror in your eyes.

You didn’t understand how Stark would be alright and would survive being fucking defenestrated from like thirty stories up. At least, you didn’t understand until something red and gold went flying out of the window after Stark. One of the famous Iron Man suits.

That was also why Loki had pulled you out of the way, so the suit wouldn’t knock you out of the window after Stark.

Loki shifted to wrap an arm around your shoulders and lead you back toward the couch. “It’s alright, drotning,” he reassured you again.

“Yes, the suit will save him,” a female voice said from the elevator as it dinged. You looked over and saw two men and the female speaker. You recognized them all from interviews and pictures of the team: Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, and Clint Barton. There was absolutely no doubt then that this really was the Avengers’ tower. The Avengers were here.

You had to fight not to fangirl over them all being there.

“Yeah, he tends to get defenestrated a lot when he annoys people. I think Lokes here is going for a record already,” Barton teased. You expected that he wouldn’t be on Loki’s side after the mind-control thing, but apparently he’d forgiven Loki, or realized that Loki was mind controlled too at the time.

Loki rolled his eyes. “Not nicknames from you too, hawk,” he grumbled, puffing up like an affronted cat. Names seemed important to the god. You’d keep that in mind. Though you had a feeling that there were different rules for you than for the others.

Still, you would have to be careful not to be defenestrated too.

“Stark programmed the suit to save him after the first time he was thrown out the window,” Natasha explained as the three of them approached. Loki’s grip on you tightened a little protectively. He didn’t quite trust Thor’s friends, it seemed. Stark had mentioned something about the short time he’d been there. And something else about house arrest.

You looked over at the window again as Tony flew back in wearing his Iron Man suit. “Reindeer Games, fix the window,” he told Loki grumpily when the faceplate lifted.

Loki rolled his eyes again, but gestured to the window, which repaired itself with a shimmer of green magic.

“So, when’s your soulmate moving in?” Stark asked.

Moving in?

Wait-

What??

#Loki #Lover #Submitted fic #submission #you have heart #chapter 6 #nekoamamori

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thestylesindependent · 3 years

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The following is an excerpt from A Field Guide to Internet Boyfriends: Meme-Worthy Celebrity Crushes From A to Z (Running Press) by Esther Zuckerman, senior entertainment writer at Thrillist. Opinions expressed are those of the author.

It’s virtually impossible to dig into the history of celebrity crushes without discussing boy bands. Stemming back to the days of the Beatles, boy bands have been crush incubators, known as much for their music as for their ability to pose on posters that hang on teenage bedroom walls. While the modern idea of boy bands existed before the ’90s, the decade turned boy bands into an industry with the likes of Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC eliciting mobs of screaming fans. For the first decade of the 2000s—after the leftovers from the ’90s faded from relevance—it seemed like the era of the boy band was over. And then a couple of lads from England—and one from Ireland—came along.

One Direction was not born organically. Each member of the fivesome auditioned for The X Factor as a solo act. Then Simon Cowell had a genius idea: Individually, they would probably generate some amount of buzz. Together, they would be unstoppable. Cowell was right. One Direction mania jumped across the pond and initiated a new era of boy band worship. This group was different from its ’90s predecessors. They were shaggy and didn’t really dance. But their fans were also different. These were kids raised by the internet, and they expressed their love for Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Niall Horan as such. Stanning for One Direction involved slash fiction and Tumblr.

But when the time came, One Direction faced an age-old boy band question: What happens when they break up? Who becomes famous? For years, the pinnacle of post–boy band success had always been Justin Timberlake, crying a river all over the radio. (He also found controversy along the way. No, we will never forgive him for throwing Janet Jackson under the bus at the Super Bowl.) But who becomes the Joey Fatone? One thing was always certain: Harry Styles was a goddamn star. Styles had always been the likeliest candidate for post-One D fame. He was the most rambunctious of the group, as at home palling around on talk shows as he was crooning on the stage.

Still, no one could have predicted what he was about to unleash. Styles, on his own, somehow surpassed the prom¬ise of his early career. The individual that emerged was like the love child of David Bowie and Stevie Nicks, all flowing blouses, wide-legged pants, and funky vibes. He occupies a space in between the masculine and the feminine and is an ally without being obnoxious about it.

When he left the womb of One Direction, his goal was to write his own material. The sound that emerged was not Timberlake’s white boy soul or the radio-ready pop of his bandmate Zayn Malik. Instead, it was a throwback hybrid of folk rock and pop—not a complete copy of an era that was not his own, but more indebted to his predecessors than his contemporaries.

The narrative around Harry Styles is that he is a Very Good Boy. It starts with his devotion to his mother, with whom he is reportedly very close. More proof of his sweet¬heart status can be found in the story about how he ended up being a polite houseguest to his friend The Late Late Show with James Corden producer Ben Winston for twenty months. As his star was rising in One Direction, he was crashing with an Orthodox Jewish family. “That period of time, he was living with us in the most mundane suburban situation,” Winston once explained. “No one ever found out, really. Even when we went out for a meal, it’s such a sweet family neighborhood, no one dreamed it was actually him. But he made our house a home. And when he moved out, we were gutted.”

It’s anecdotes like this—revealed in the singer’s first Rolling Stone cover story, written by none other than Almost Famous director Cameron Crowe—that frame Styles as a superstar who is relatively down to earth, a nice person who cares about being good to those around him. I mean, one of the songs on his recent album Fine Line is titled “Treat People with Kindness.” Styles once said: “There are others. People who are successful, and still nice. It’s when you meet the people who are successful and aren’t nice, you think: What’s yer excuse? Cos I’ve met the other sort.”

Styles gives off the impression that if you were to hang out with him you’d probably have a pretty pleasant and slightly wild time. Profiles of Styles tend to include stories about parties on beaches where nudity or clothes swapping is involved. He’s spoken about how doing mushrooms influenced his latest record, Fine Line, and once led him to bite off the tip of his tongue. But even though that detail sounds like it might belong in an outtake from a seedier history of rock ’n’ roll—think: Mötley Crüe—it’s bizarrely wholesome coming from Styles, who has gone out of his way to promote a message of inclusion.

Though he’s publicly only been linked to women, he’s never exactly declared himself straight, either, and has alluded to bisexuality in his lyrics. One time, he declared, “We’re all a little bit gay, aren’t we?” Regardless of how he himself identifies, he’s made it a mission to promote a safe-for-all environment at his shows. On one tour stop, he took note of a girl in the crowd’s sign which declared she was going to come out to her parents because of him. He asked her mom’s name, quieted the room, and shouted, “Tina, she’s gay,” triumphantly. It’s an especially welcome development for someone whose early celebrity was defined by slash fiction with which some of his bandmates were openly uncomfortable.

His style started to evolve with his own fluidity as well. He took to wearing ruffles and low-cut shirts with wide-legged trousers. The effect was circus ringmaster mixed with ’70s Laurel Canyon chic. There’s a cheekiness to the look, evidenced by photo shoots in which he affects like he just told a dirty joke. He has said he dresses this way not because he’s trying to allude to anything, just because he thinks it looks cool. And, the thing is, it does.

Harry Styles may have been made in the confines of the boy band universe, but when he struck out on his own, his message became freedom. He makes the music he wants, wears the clothes he wants, and encourages everyone around him to love who they want—even if that’s just Harry Styles.

#harry styles #a field guide to internet boyfriends #nov2020 #billboard

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crowdvscritic · 3 years

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round up // JULY 21

‘Tis the season to beat the heat at the always-cold theatres and next to fans set at turbo speed. While my movie watching slowed a bit with the launch of the Summer Olympics on July 23rd, I’ve still got plenty of popcorn-ready and artsy recommendations for you. A few themes in the new-to-me pop culture I’m recommending this month:

Casts oozing with embarrassing levels of talent (sometimes overqualified for the movies they’re in)

Pop culture that is responding or reinterpreting past pop culture

Stories that get weEeEeird

Keep on-a-scrollin’ to see which is which!

July Crowd-Pleasers

1. Double Feature – ‘90s Rom-Coms feat. Lots of Lies: Mystery Date (1991) + The Pallbearer (1996)

In Mystery Date (Crowd: 7.5/10 // Critic: 6/10), Ethan Hawke and Teri Polo get set up on a blind date that gets so bizarre and crime-y I’m not sure how this didn’t come out in the ‘80s. In The Pallbearer (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7/10), David Schwimmer and Gwyneth Paltrow try to combine The Graduate with Four Weddings and a Funeral in a story about lost twentysomethings. If you don’t like rom-coms in which circumstances depend on lots of lies and misunderstandings, these won’t be your jam, but if you’re like me and don’t mind these somewhat-cliché devices, you’ll be hooked by likeable casts and plenty of rom and com.

2. The Tomorrow War (2021)

I thought of no fewer movies than this list while watching: Alien, Aliens, Angel Has Fallen, Cloverfield, Interstellar, Kong: Skull Island, Prometheus, A Quiet Place: Part II, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith, The Silence of the Lambs, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and World War Z. And you know what? I like all those movies! (Okay, maybe I just have a healthy respect/fear of The Silence of the Lambs.) The Tomorrow War may not be original, but it borrows some of the best tropes and beats from the sci-fi and action genres, so much so I wish I could’ve seen Chris Pratt and Co. fight those gross monsters on a big screen. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 6/10

3. Dream a Little Dream (1989)

My July pick for the Dumb Rom-Com I Nevertheless Enjoyed! I CANNOT explain the mechanics of this body switch comedy to you—nor can the back of the DVD case above—but, boy, what an ‘80s MOOD. I did not know I needed to see a choreographed dance routine starring Jason Robards and Corey Feldman, but I DID. All I know is some movies are made for me and that I’m now a card-carrying member of the Two Coreys fan club. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 6.5/10

4. Black Widow (2021)

The braids! The Pugh! Black Widow worked for me both as an exciting action adventure and as a respite from the Marvel adventures dependent on a long memory of the franchise. (Well, mostly—keep reading for a second MCU rec much more dependent on the gobs of previous releases.) Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 7.5/10

5. Liar Liar (1997)

Guys, Jim Carrey is hilarious. That’s it—that’s the review. Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 7/10

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6. Sob Rock by John Mayer (2021)

It’s very possible I’ve already listened to this record more than all other John Mayer records. It doesn’t surpass the capital-G Greatness of Continuum, but it’s a little bit of old school Mayer, a little bit ‘80s soft rock/pop, and I’ve had it on repeat most of the two weeks since it’s been out. Featuring the boppiest bop that ever bopped, at least one lyrical gem in every track, and an ad campaign focused on Walkmans, this record skirts the line between Crowd faves and Critic-worthy musicianship.

7. Double Feature – ‘00s Ben Affleck Political Thrillers: The Sum of All Fears (2002) + State of Play (2009)

In The Sum of All Fears (Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 7.5/10), Ben Affleck is Jack Ryan caught up in yet another international incident. In State of Play (Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7/10), he’s a hotshot Congressman caught up in a scandal. Both are full of plot twists and unexpected turns, and in both, Affleck is accompanied by actors you’re always happy to see, like Jason Bateman, James Cromwell, Russell Crowe, Jeff Daniels, Viola Davis, Morgan Freeman, Philip Baker Hall, David Harbour, Rachel McAdams, Helen Mirren, Liev Schreiber, and Robin Wright—yes, I swear all of those people are in just those two movies.

8. Loki (2021-)

Unlike Black Widow, you can’t go into Loki with no MCU experience. The show finds clever ways to nudge us with reminders (and did better at it than Falcon and the Winter Soldier), but be forewarned that at some point, you’re just going to have to let go and accept wherever this timeline-hopper is taking you. An ever-charismatic cast keeps us grounded (Owen Wilson, Jonathan Majors, and an alligator almost steal the show from Tom Hiddleston in some eps), but while Falcon lasted an episode or two too long, Loki could’ve used a few more to flesh out its complicated plot and develop its characters. Thankfully, the jokes matter almost as much as the sci-fi, so you can still have fun even if you have no idea what’s going on.

9. Double Feature – Bruce Willis: Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995) + The Whole Nine Yards (2000)

Before Bruce Willis began starring in many random direct-to-DVD movies I only ever hear about in my Redbox emails, he was a Movie Star smirking his way up the box office charts. In the third Die Hard (Crowd: 10/10 // Critic: 7.5/10), he teams up with Samuel L. Jackson to decipher the riddles of a terrorist madman (Jeremy Irons), and it’s a thrill ride. In The Whole Nine Yards (Crowd: 9/10 // Critic: 8/10), he’s hitman that screws up dentist Matthew Perry’s boring life in Canada, and—aside from one frustrating scene of let’s-objectify-women-style nudity—it’s hilarious.

10. This Is the End (2013)

On paper, this is not a movie for me. An irreverent stoner comedy about a bunch of bros partying it up before the end of the world? None of things are for Taylors. But with a little help of a TV edit to pare down the raunchy and crude bits, I laughed my way through and spent the next several days thinking through its exploration of what makes a good person. While little of the plot is accurate to Christian Gospel and theology, some of its big ideas are consistent enough with the themes of the book of Revelation I found myself thinking about it again in church this morning. (Would love to know if Seth Rogen ever expected that.) Plus, I love a good self-aware celebrity spoof—can’t tell you how many times I’ve just laughed remembering the line, “It’s me, Jonah Hill, from Moneyball”—and an homage to horror classics. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 7/10

July Critic Picks

1. Summer of Soul (…or, When the Television Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Even director Questlove didn’t know about the Harlem Cultural Festival, but now he’s compiled the footage so we can all enjoy one of the coolest music fest lineups ever, including The 5th Dimension, B.B. King, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, and Stevie Wonder, who made my friend’s baby dance more than once in the womb. See it on the big screen for top-notch audio. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 9/10

2. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

Robin Williams takes on the bureaucracy, disillusionment, and malaise of the Vietnam War with comedy. Williams was a one-of-a-kind talent, and here it’s on display at a level on par with Aladdin. Crowd: 8/10 // Critic: 9/10

3. Against the Rules Season 2 (2020-21)

Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball, adapted into a film starring Jonah Hill), is interested in how we talk about fairness. This season he looks at how coaches impact fairness in areas like college admissions, credit cards, and youth sports.

4. Bugsy Malone (1976)

A gangster musical starring only children? It’s a little like someone just picked ideas out of a hat, but somehow it works. You can hear why in the Bugsy Malone episode Kyla and I released this month on SO IT’S A SHOW?, plus how this weird artifact of a film connects with Gilmore Girls.

5. The Queen (2006)

Before The Crown, Peter Morgan wrote The Queen, focusing on Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) in the days following the death of Princess Diana. It’s a complex and compassionate drama, both for the Queen and for Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen, who has snuck up on me to become a favorite character actor). Maybe I’ve got a problem, but I’ll never tire of the analysis of this famous family. Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 9.5/10

6. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

This month at ZekeFilm, we took a closer look at Revisionist Westerns we’ve missed. I fell hard for Roy Bean, and I think you will, too, if for no other reason than you might like a story starring Jacqueline Bisset, Ava Gardner, John Huston, Paul Newman, and Anthony Perkins. Oh, and a bear! Crowd: 8.5/10 // Critic: 10/10

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7. New Trailer Round Up

Naked Singularity (Aug. 6) – John Boyega in a crime thriller!

Queenpins (Aug. 10) – A crime comedy about extreme coupon-ing!

Dune (Oct. 1) – I’ve been cooler on the anticipation for this film, but this new look has me cautiously intrigued thanks to the Bardem + Bautista + Brolin + Chalamet + Ferguson + Isaac + Momoa + Zendaya of it all.

The Last Duel (Oct. 15) – Affleck! Damon! Driver!

Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Nov. 11) - I’m not sure why we need this, but I’m down for the Paul Rudd + Finn Wolfhard combo

King Richard (Nov. 19) - Will Smith as Venus and Serena’s father!

Encanto (Nov. 24) – Disney and Lin-Manuel Miranda making more magic together!

House of Gucci (Nov. 24) - Gaga! Pacino! Driver!

Also in July…

Kyla and I took a look at the classic supernatural soap Dark Shadows and why Sookie might be obsessed with it on Gilmore Girls.

I revisited a so-bad-it’s-good masterpiece that’s a surrealist dream even Fellini couldn’t have cooked up. Yes, for ZekeFilm I wrote about the Vanilla Ice movie, Cool as Ice, which is now a part of my Blu-ray collection.

Photo credits: Against the Rules. All others IMDb.com.

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kingstylesdaily · 3 years

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'A Field Guide to Internet Boyfriends': Read the Harry Styles Excerpt

source: Billboard.com

#kingstylesdaily #Harry Styles #hs: news #hs: billboard #november 2020

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addictedtoeddie · 3 years

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The full Esquire Spain interview translated from Spanish:

Eddie Redmayne trial: guilty of being the most talented (and stylish) actor of his generation

The Oscar winner talks about what it means to premiere a film with Aaron Sorkin (The Chicago 7th Trial on Netflix) and filming the new part of the most famous saga of all time under the watchful eye of its author, J.K. Rowling.

By Alba Díaz (text) / JUANKR (photos and video) / Álvaro de Juan (styling) 10/23/2020

At the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge, stands alone and leaning on a piano Prometheus, a marble head made by Constantin Brâncusi, and the only piece of art that Eddie Redmayne (London, 1982) would save from possible massive destruction. He tells me about it as he leaves the filming set of the third installment of Fantastic Beasts in the early days of an autumn that, we suspect, we will never forget. It begins to get dark as the actor nods seriously: "I promise to do my best in this interview."

Eddie Redmayne made himself in the theater despite some voices warning him that he could not survive in it. "Many people were in charge to tell me that it would never work, that only extraordinary cases make it and that I would not be able to live from this professionally." Even his father came home one day with a list of statistics on unemployed young actors. Redmayne, who is extremely modest, polite and funny, adds: “But I enjoyed theater so much that I got to the point of thinking that if I could only do one play a year for the rest of my life… I would do it. And that would fill me completely.

Spoiler: since then until today he has participated in many more. He set his first foot in the industry when he debuted at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and won over critics and audiences. He then landed his first major role in My Week with Marilyn opposite Michelle Williams. And then came one of the roles of his life, the character he wanted to become an actor for, Marius. With him he sang, led a revolution and broke Cosette's heart in Les Miserables. “I found out about the Les Misérables auditions when I was shooting a movie in Illinois. Dressed like a cowboy. I picked up the iPhone and videotaped myself singing the Marius song. I always wanted to be him ”.

Now Redmayne is an Oscar winner - thanks to his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything - and the protagonist of one of the most important sagas in history, Fantastic Beasts. He plays the magizoologist Newt Scamander in it. When I ask him what it means to him to be the protagonist of a magical world that is so important to millions of people, Eddie sighs and takes a few seconds to answer. “I have always loved the Harry Potter universe. Some people like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars ... But, for me, the idea that there is a magical world that happens right in front of you, that happens without going any further on the streets of London, that. .. That exploded my imagination in another way.

During the quarantine, J. K. Rowling, who has been in charge of the script of the film, sparked a controversy through a series of tweets about transgender women. Redmayne assures that he does not agree with these statements but that it does not approve of the attacks of some people through social networks. The actor was one of the first to position himself against Rowling alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and other protagonists of her films. "Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are valid."

After having spent a while talking, Redmayne confesses to me that he has never been a big dreamer not to maintain certain aspirations that ended up disappointing him. So he has always kept a handful of dreams to himself. One of them was fulfilled just a few weeks ago with the premiere of The Trial of the Chicago 7, a film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin that can already be seen on Netflix and in some - few - cinemas. “I was on vacation with my wife in Morocco and the script arrived. I think I called my agent before I even read it and said yes, I would. She probably thought the obvious, that I'm stupid. After that, of course I read the script, which is about a specific moment in history that I knew very little about. I found it exciting and a very relevant drama in today's times. "

And it is that having a script by Aaron Sorkin in your hands is no small thing. Eddie Redmayne has been a fan of his work ever since he saw The West Wing of the White House. “His scripts have delicious language and dialogue. As an actor, it's fun to play characters that are much smarter than you are in real life. That virtuosity is hard to come by. I really hope that audiences enjoy this movie and feel that there is always hope. " He remembers that since he released The Theory of Everything he has recorded, to a large extent, English period dramas, “and although the new Aaron Sorkin is not strictly contemporary,” says Redmayne, “to be able to wear jeans and shirts and sweaters instead of so much tweed is great ”.

Besides acting, art was the only thing the actor was interested in, so he ended up studying Art History at Cambridge University. “My parents are quite traditional and when I told them I wanted to act they gave me free rein but on the condition that I study a career. And I'm very grateful for that because ... Look, beyond that, when I play a real character I usually go to the National Portrait Gallery in London quite often. There I lock myself up. Now, for Sorkin's film, I went through a lot of photographs and videotapes. Art helps me to be more creative, to get into paper ”. If he were not an actor, he would be, he says decidedly, a historian or perhaps a curator. "Although I think he would be a very bad art curator."

Against all logic, Eddie Redmayne is color blind. But there is a color that you can distinguish anywhere and on any surface: klein blue. He wrote his thesis on the French artist Yves Klein and the only shade of blue he used in his works. He wrote up to 30,000 words talking about that color with which he became obsessed. “It is surprising that a color can be so emotional. One can only hope to achieve that intensity in acting. "

Like his taste for art, which encompasses the refined and compact, Redmayne seems to be in the same balance when it comes to the roles he chooses. When I ask him what aspects a character he wants to play should have, he takes a few seconds again before answering: “I wish I had a more ingenious answer but I will tell you that I know when my belly hurts. It's that feeling that I trust. In my mind I transport him to imagine myself playing that character. When I read a script I have to really enjoy it. You never fully regret those instincts. It's like when you connect with something emotionally. "

So we come to the conclusion that all his characters have some traits in common. "You know what? I never look back, and this is something personal, but I do believe that there is a parallel between Marius in Les Misérables trying to be a revolutionary, someone who is quite prone to being distracted by love but at the same time is willing to die for his cause, and Tom Hayden from The Chicago Trial of the 7 who was a man who had integrity and was passionate and fought for the things he believed in. So I suppose there may also be similarities between a young Stephen Hawking and Newt Scamander. There are traits in common in all of them that I don't really know where they come from ”.

When we talk about the year we are living in, in which it is increasingly difficult to find hope, we both let out a nervous laugh. "There must be," Redmayne says. “There is something very nice that Tom Hayden, the character I play in Sorkin's film, said to his former wife, actress Jane Fonda, just the day before she passed away. He told her that watching people die for their beliefs changed his life forever. In that sense, I also think about what Kennedy Jr. wrote about how democracy is messy, tough and never easy ... As is believing in something to fight for. I look at history and how they were willing to live their lives with that integrity to change the world and I realize that somehow that spirit still remains with us. " We fell silent thinking about it. "There must be hope."

I tell him about my love for Nick Cave's blog, The Red Hand, and one of the posts that I have liked the most in recent weeks. In it, the singer affirms that his response to a crisis has always been to create, an impulse that has saved him many times. For Redmayne there are two activities that can silence noise: drawing and playing the piano. “When you play the piano your concentration is so consumed by trying to hit that note that you can't think of anything else. Similarly, when you draw something, the focus is between the paper and what you are trying to recreate ... There I try to calm my mind.

Before saying goodbye, I drop a question that I thought I knew the answer to, but failed. What work of art would you save from mass destruction? "How difficult! I could name my favorite artists but still couldn't choose a work. Only one piece? Let me think. I am very obsessed with Yves Klein, but I would stick with a work by Brancusi. There is a sculpture of him, a small head called Prometheus, in Cambridge's Kettle’s Yard, on a dark mahogany piano. The truth is that I find it very ... beautiful ”.

Before leaving, he confesses to me - with a childish and slow voice - that he would like to direct something one day. We said goodbye, saying that we will talk about his next project. Next, the first thing I do is open the Google search engine. "P-r-o-m-e-t-h-e-u-s". Although Eddie Redmayne has trouble distinguishing violet from blue, he doesn't have them when choosing a good piece. He's right, that work deserves to be saved.

* This article appears in the November 2020 issue of Esquire magazine

Source: esquire.com/es/actualidad/cine/a34434114/eddie-redmayne-juicio-7-chicago-netflix-entrevista/

#eddie redmayne #esquire2020 #esquirespain2020nov #esquire spain #chicago7promo #chicago7interview #interview2020 #photoshoot2020 #juankr #my translation

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eeveedel · 4 years

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Hi all, I haven’t recced some fics in awhile but...today is fic writers appreciation day! And there are so many fics that I love so very much and have brought so much happiness into my life.

And it just so happens I have a personal document where i’ve kept track of fics I’ve read for the past 3-4 years, categorized by tropes. So I thought it would be fun to rec you my all-time favorite fic from each of my personal categories! There are so many good fics so I hope you enjoy. And if you want a full fic rec list for any of these categories, please tell me!

And a big thank you again to all of the lovely authors out there, I hope you have a lovely day and now how valued your work is.

A/B/O

Sisterwives by jaerie

This was it, the moment Louis had been waiting for his entire life. Giddy excitement bubbled up as he held hands and stared up at his soon-to-be alpha and husband and grinned. The ceremony was small and simple, but Louis didn’t mind. Fresh flowers pinned into his hair and a brand new outfit was all he needed to feel special in front of their few witnesses. It was just some members of his family and a few of the church elders in attendance as was customary for any marriage beyond the first wife within the faith.

First wives were the ones to have elaborate weddings with the whole community involved. An alpha’s first wedding was a celebration of an their coming of age, his first steps into fulfilling God’s prophecy. There were many glories for an omega that came with being a first wife but also many responsibilities. Louis had never aspired to be a first wife or even a second. He wasn’t experienced enough to be the leader of an alpha’s many wives and children and he didn’t think he’d be up to the task.

Louis was just fine in the position he was stepping into as the seventh.

Or Louis thinks he's getting everything he's ever dreamed of. Harry helps him find what makes him truly happy.

Action/Adventure

The Dead of July by whimsicule

Harry is Captain America, and Louis’ been dead for 70 years.

Age Gap

White Pages, White Lace, Big Hands, Pretty Face by thechesirepussycat

“He touches his sides, his neck, his lips, all the places Harry has just been, all the places that still tingle from Harry’s touch. Such a strange feeling Louis has, so unreal and nerve-racking. He can’t begin to describe what Harry has done to him, what about Harry makes Louis want to call him… Daddy.“

Or, a gratuitous Sugar Daddy!Harry and Student!Louis AU.

Angst

Bot by tomlinsunshine (11k)

Zayn builds robots; Harry is a big fan of his latest model.

Break Up

got the sunshine on my shoulders by hattalove

five years ago, harry styles left his tiny home town to make it big as a recording artist. he didn't have much regard for what he left behind - a life, a family, and a husband, who woke up one morning to find him gone.

now, harry has everything he could possibly want: he's rich, famous, and adored by everyone he meets, including his boyfriend. but when said boyfriend proposes to him, he's forced to face the uncomfortable facts of his past - and louis, who's spent the last five years returning every set of divorce papers harry sent him.

(or, an au based on the movie sweet home alabama.)

Canon

nonstop earthquake dreams of you by lumineres

And there's heat behind it, blazing, plasmatic, like stars crashing together, like an explosion in space, like a supernova, like a black hole--everything else sucked out of existence. There's no bed and there's no pillow and they're not lying down, just floating somewhere, somehow, and there's no room and there's no X Factor house and there's no Niall snuffling or Liam's deep, even breathing and there's no wind or traffic outside and there's no hum of the heating unit and it's all just Louis. All encompassingly Louis.

or, harry falls hard and finds louis already at the bottom

Classics

Love Is A Rebellious Bird by 100percentsassy and gloria_andrews

AU in which the boys still make music. Louis is the concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, Harry is the New! and Exciting! interim conductor/ex-cello prodigy who "has made Mozart cool again" according to Esquire Magazine (Louis hates him immediately, which is definitely why he internet stalked him in his dark bedroom late at night that one time), and Niall is the best. Zayn and Liam are around too.

College/Uni

Could be Kissing My Fruit Punch Lips by thechesirepussycat

Harry happens upon a porn site that specializes in live videos and sort of falls in love with the cute boy he only knows as Kitty.

And then he gets the surprise of his life when he finds out Kitty attends his university...

Crime

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by haroldslouis

1997 AU where Harry is a bank robber and Louis falls in love with him

Dom/Sub

No Control Club series by SadaVeniren

Harry, a popular BDSM blogger, writes a negative review about Louis’ club. Louis wants to have a chance to make it up to him.

Dunkirk/Alex

Poison & Wine by tilthesundies

Alex comes home from the war to find a stranger living in his flat.

Dystopian/Apocalypse

things have gotten closer to the sun by starseas

when a solar flare is announced to end the world in twelve days, harry reunites with the people that he used to know better than the back of his own hand.

Enemies to Lovers

you flower, you feast by stylinsoncity

He's King of the Underworld, but don't assume Louis has it all. He could stand for some excitement in his monotonous, eternal life and maybe, even.....a soulmate.

(Despite not having a soul.)

And along came "Harry"

Established Relationship

I Only Ever Want You by itsmiz

Louis and Harry's relationship goes through a series of changes while Liam and Zayn discover new things about themselves, as well.

Or: Louis & Harry and Liam & Zayn begin to have sex in front of each other and a lot of kink-discovery results from that.

Fairy Tale

Red by frosteddream

Shockwaves were sent through the village after the McPherson family was savagely killed. There were people who feared the beast that did it, and then there was Louis, or, as most people liked to call him, Red. (Little Red Riding Hood AU.)

Fake Dating

And Then a Bit by infinitelymint

Harry and Louis fake a relationship for publicity. Eventually it becomes a lot less fake and a lot more real.

Famous (non-1D AU)

a million roses (bathed in rock n roll) by deLILah

au. harry sings in smoky dive bars; louis misses his flight home. they go to coney island in the morning.

(aka - harry is lana del rey, and louis makes him a star.)

Fashion

Just my style by thoughtsickles

Harry is sick, and the only thing that might help him is the pheromones from his mate--problem is, he hasn't got a mate.

Louis' just been disowned, and taking part in a medical study where he has to cuddle with some strange alpha seems to be his only option for earning a bit of cash.

The hippies and Omega Rights campaigners are busy changing the world--but all Harry wants is a chance to live.

Fluff

Dreaming of You by velvetoscar

The Begrudging Starbucks AU.

The world is winter and steamed milk and creamy espresso shots. The world is a never ending queue. The world is a Starbucks logo and a pink-cheeked smile from Niall and a bored scowl from Zayn and the world is Louis watching his best mate, Liam, fall in love with their newest customer, Harry. Who may or may not be in love with Louis. The world is cruel.

Frat

Soft Feet, Fast Hands, Can’t Lose by dolce_piccante

American Uni AU. Harry Styles is a frat boy football star from the wealthy Styles Family athletic dynasty. A celebrity among football fans, he knows how to play, he knows how to party, and he knows how to fuck (all of which is well known among his legion of admirers).

Louis Tomlinson is a student and an athlete, but his similarities to Harry end there. Intelligent, focused, independent, and completely uninterested in Harry’s charms, Louis is an anomaly in a world ruled by football.

A bet about the pair, who might be more similar than they originally thought, brings them together. Shakespeare, ballet, Disney, football, library chats, running, accidental spooning, Daredevil and Domino’s Pizza all blend into one big friendship Frappucino, but who will win in the end?

Friends to Lovers

OmegaVision by jaerie

Tomlin Networks Presents: OmegaVision starring Louis Tomlinson! The world's first 24/7 reality channel available in over 150 countries worldwide following the life of the first male omega born in over a century. Follow Louis through his daily routine, the ups and downs of growing up or just leave him on for comfort. There are many reasons to tune in but, no matter what yours may be, there's always a part of Louis that is just like you!

Or a Truman Show au that nobody asked for where Louis is Truman and Harry just wants to be his mate

Girl Direction

Never Enough by idekboo

Louis couldn't get enough of Harry and that gorgeous body of hers. She wasn't shy about letting her know.

High School

I found a love (darling just dive right in) by wonderlou

Louis, an omega with very little control. Harry, an alpha with a lot of emotion. Neither of them have any idea what do to with this little thing called love, but they'll be damned if they don't put up a good fight.

Historical

Coax the Cold by MediaWhore

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

Miscellaneous/Unique

the impossible now by stylinsoncity

A wish on Christmas Eve sends Louis to an alternate dimension where Harry is a member of One Direction.

Mpreg

The Things I’d Do to Wake Up Next to You by dirtymattress (36k)

Harry wakes up to a pregnant Louis Tomlinson and a wedding band on his finger.

Mythology

Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight by alivingfire

Louis is an angel who is just a little too bad to be good, Harry is a demon who is just a little too good to be bad, and they're both a little too in love to be impartial when angels and demons go to war.

PWP

mr. tomlinson by iwillpaintasongforlou

Louis is a billionaire CEO who makes grown men cry and rival companies crumble. He's also an omega. Harry is the quiet cupcake of a man he calls his alpha and the only one who gets to see Louis as anything less than fearsome.

Roommates

streetwise hercules by bottomlinsons

Uni AU, where Louis pretends to be Harry's boyfriend to scare away his one night stands.

Royalty

feel the chemicals burn in my bloodstream by togetherwecouldbealright

Harry is a journalist with a lot of secrets and Louis is the future king of the United Kingdom; they live together for 60 days.

Spies

never gonna dance again by togetherwecouldbealright

Louis is a spy and Harry is a dancer. The only real thing they know is each other.

Soulmates

Nameless Night by green_feelings

For their 18th birthday, every person receives a letter that reads a simple date. That is the date you'll meet your soulmate.

Harry and Louis have different beliefs, live in different worlds and have different dreams, hopes and fears. Yet, they're not so different from each other when it comes to love. When their paths cross, there is no doubt they belong together. Except for that one, essential difference: they didn't receive the same date.

Or, a fic about differences that make no difference at all: Harry and Louis are soulmates. In every way possible. Featuring Niall as a role model, and Liam and Zayn as a different kind of role models.

Summer Romance

Rivers til I Reach You by embodied

AU. Louis studies astronomy; Harry studies Louis. They spend their summers on the water and it shouldn't be complicated (spoiler: it is).

Supernatural

Howls Like a Beast (You Flower, You Feast) by indiaalaphawhiskey (16k)

France, 1754. Château de Versailles.

“You don’t love me,” Louis had said, utterly blasé as he callously fractured the heart of a Harry that was just barely eighteen.

“I do,” Harry had insisted pleadingly, green eyes already watering.

Louis had rolled his eyes, exasperated and flippant in the way only beautiful, young boys could be when faced with the affections of a baby prince. He had run his finger down Harry’s cheek then, had forced him to look into his eyes as he delivered the final blow.

“You’ll change your mind once you’ve seen more of the world,” Louis had teased, pressing a brutally delicate kiss onto Harry’s lovely, pure cheek. “Once you’ve been properly defiled.” He had whispered filthily, delighted by the gasp he heard, the frantic pink blush that had rested high on Harry’s cheeks, the power he had felt at knowing he could make the Crown Prince squirm.

#larry fic rec #larry fanfiction #larry fan fic #god tier fic recs

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apparitionism · 4 years

Text

Run

This is a pointless AU, a little idea from elsewhere that’s in the process of turning into a story-esque thing, not a comedy or a drama as such, just a “here’s another way two people might find their way to each other” tale. Also I’ve never deployed a Giselle character, really, and I figured I might as well try. She’s not a bad guy, mind you, nor even an obstacle; the only obstacles, at base, are misunderstandings and circumstances. Conventional ones. They might accurately be called clichéd. Anyway, this is some kind of starting line. Bang. (That’s meant to be a starter’s pistol, by the way; don’t be getting any ideas.)

Run

At four in the morning, Myka Bering sat three steps from the bottom of the dark staircase in her apartment’s foyer and pushed her feet into new running shoes. They looked like nothing special: a standard navy blue faux leather, with their manufacturer’s stylized “Z” logo embossed in silver on the sides. The pristine white of both the slim soles and the no-tie laces pleased her, despite the fact that their just-out-of-the-box luster would of course start graying at the first exposure to the city.

Myka stood up in the shoes and bounced on her toes, her ritual commencement of every day’s run.

The instant her heels left the ground, she understood just how difficult her life was about to become.

For this decidedly unspecial-seeming shoe—the Deceit—represented the latest attempt by the Zelus athletic corporation to gain an insurmountable advantage in the sport of running.

Myka’s job was to stop them.

At her desk at work later that morning, Myka revised, for accuracy, her overly dramatic thought of the morning: a small part of her job was to help stop them. Her actual job was to co-direct certification and compliance for Athletics Authority International, the globe-spanning organization that governed running, jumping, and throwing events. The organization regularly dealt with issues of equipment inappropriately boosting performance; thus Deceits, understood one way—nondramatically—were just the latest technological challenge to the idea of a level playing field.

But based on her morning’s run, Myka did not think Deceits could be understood nondramatically.

“Did you try the Deceits yet?” she asked Pete Lattimer, her co-directing partner. They had taken to joking that in their area, he was the “athletics”—an Olympic-team-alternate decathlete—while she was the “international,” for she’d got her job based largely on her wide-ranging language fluency. Myka suspected that today, athletics aside, his answer would be “no”; they’d received the shipment of test shoes only a few days ago, and Pete was focusing more on language than sports lately anyway, Duolingo-ing his heart out in Spanish so as to one day be able to impress Kelly Hernandez, head of Latin American outreach, such that she would first agree to go to lunch with him and then, swayed partially by his language skills but mostly by his charm, acknowledge that they were destined to spend their lives together. Myka wasn’t at all sure Kelly was going to persuaded by Pete’s bilingual (or “bilingual”) flirting... though he was also concentrating heavily on vocabulary related to sandwiches, so he’d probably end up with at least a food-related happy ending.

“Nah,” he said, confirming her prediction about the shoes. “I’m guessing you must’ve, though. They as crazy as those trials records make ’em seem?”

“Crazier,” Myka said. “To me. But I want to know how they really feel. To a real athlete.”

“Somebody needs a real athlete? I see why Lattimer’s not up to it,” remarked a tall woman as she approached Myka’s desk. Myka looked up and smiled.

“Same goes for you, Giselle,” Pete said, but with cheer. “How’s communications?”

“Turn those children over my knee if I could,” Giselle replied, equally cheerful. “That’s where you can help: how’s your javelin these days?”

“Why don’t you just run away? I thought you were supposed to be fast or something.”

Giselle Wade was fast—Myka knew it, and she knew Pete knew it too. Giselle was a legend in East Texas, where she had shattered high school track records, particularly at the longer distances. She’d done the same to NCAA times, placing some out of reach for what would probably be generations. U.S. bests had fallen to her too, though worlds had been elusive... but she had some impressive Olympic hardware all the same.

“Outran you,” Giselle said, which was true; her 1500-meter times were faster than Pete’s had ever been.

They would have gone on for a while before they wound down, but their jabs gave Myka the opening she needed. “Speaking of running,” she said to Giselle, “did you try the Deceits?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“And exactly what you think,” Giselle said. Before Myka could get her to clarify, she went on, “And this very morning I heard Zelus wants to push a version with spikes for sprinters.”

Myka objected, “But the thin soles!” Sole height was a major issue. The Deceit’s predecessor shoe, the Zelus Induct—which had also given runners a clear advantage—had been recognizable due to its oversized sole, packed with lightweight foam, that effectively lengthened a runner’s legs. The sole contained within the foam a carbon plate that acted as a spring, enabling a stride that used less leg energy and thus translated into distance runners having more kick over an entire race. AAI had rapidly banned that shoe, but the Deceit upped the ante because it somehow managed to do all the Induct’s dirty work, and apparently even more, in a standard-sized sole. Sprinters’ soles were basically flat, though, so how could the foam and plates fit? Not to mention: “Why would Zelus want to start a fight on another front?”

“Some other company rolls out skinny little cheat spikes first if Zelus doesn’t get on it? Old story about the toothpaste and the tube? You know.” Giselle shrugged. “All we can do is try to slow it down.”

“Ha!” Pete barked. “I see what you did there! Slow it down! Fast shoes!”

Giselle shook her head and murmured “that man” mostly to herself, but a little bit to Myka, who nodded in sympathy a commensurate little bit. Then Giselle said, “Thank sweet Jesus I don’t have to run in Deceits or against them. Glad I’m out of that part of it now.”

“I’m glad I was never in it,” Myka said.

“You know you got the discipline,” Giselle said. She’d told Myka this before.

It was a real compliment, but: “I don’t have the gift,” Myka responded, as she had in the past.

“Discipline counts. Makes up for a lot.”

“Those Deceits do too,” Myka said. “I barely even broke a sweat this morning.”

“That’s a shame.”

Myka offered a “huh?” expression, though she was pretty sure she knew what was coming.

“You, all hot and sweaty?” And Giselle sighed, a parody of infatuation. “Yes indeed...”

Myka rolled her eyes, and then they both laughed. It was a ritual: Giselle “flirted,” Myka “suffered,” they laughed.

Some months ago, not long after Giselle had been brought on board by AAI, she’d asked Myka out.

“I have a boyfriend,” Myka had said, because that was what she almost always said, as a learned reflex, in situations like that.

“Well,” Giselle said. “Look at me, getting the wrong impression. Sorry, Myka. Guess we’ll keep it professional.”

Giselle tended to put a drag on the last word of every sentence, a vocal habit that kept a listener hanging: would she say more? It might or might not have been intentional, but it was effective, particularly when combined with her linger of a Texas drawl. Thus her “professional” came out “pro... fess... io... nal.” Myka half-expected her to follow up with “or not.”

“Well,” Myka said back, when it became apparent that no more was in fact forthcoming, “not totally professional. We can still get coffee, right?” Because she did like Giselle.

Ah, there it was: Giselle gave her a still-flirty head toss and said, “Not to make the same mistake twice, but I did ‘get coffee’ with a lady one time and it turned into three days in Monaco. So we’ll see...”

Myka rolled her eyes, but then she laughed, and Giselle did too: the start of the ritual.

That should have been that.

But an international athletic governing body was apparently like every other semi-hermetically sealed social environment: a school, a team, a lab. Things got around. Mere hours after that conversation—which, granted, had taken place in the 40th-floor elevator lobby, the transit funnel for every employee of AAI, which occupied the entirety of that skyscraper level—Pete had marched back into their area from lunch and confronted Myka with, “I heard Giselle asked you out.”

Myka had tried not to respond, because really, what was there to say?

He went on, “And I heard you told her you have a boyfriend, which is what you said way back in history when I asked you out.”

“History? That was less than two years ago.”

“Anyway, I heard she believed you. Just like I did.”

“That was the idea. With her and with you.”

“I still don’t see why you didn’t just say ‘Pete, I don’t want to go out with you.’ It would’ve been fine.”

“I’d barely met you. I had no idea if you’d be a decent guy about it.”

“But I am a decent guy. About everything! So it would’ve been fine.”

“But I didn’t know you were a decent guy.” She had barely started at AAI; all she’d known about Pete Lattimer was that he’d been a decent decathlete. And that was no help at all, for every new coworker she met was a former Olympian or member of some national team or at least a famous ex-coach. It all made her feel as if she had no business working for the organization in the first place. They should have said that “athletic” was a requirement... each successive introduction seemed to drum with more force into her that a law degree and several languages were nothing against a sub-four mile.

Given that insecurity, she hadn’t needed any additional inputs or variables, so when Pete had said, “We should get dinner after work sometime,” she’d said what she almost always said, as a learned reflex, in situations like that. It had become a reflex because regardless of any other complicating circumstances—such as a new job where her body itself didn’t belong—it was easier. It was almost always easier than whatever might follow her saying anything else.

Pete said, “You didn’t know I was a decent guy, so you lied about having a boyfriend. And now you’ve lied about it again.”

She’d winced at the word “lied.” It was accurate, but she didn’t like it. Then you probably shouldn’t do it, her conscience told her. She told it to shut up. Then she told Pete, “I know that and you know that. Giselle doesn’t need to know that.”

“But you already like her better than you would’ve ever liked me.” At that, Myka started to protest, but he waved her off. “You know I mean because she’s a lady. Why didn’t you say you have a girlfriend?”

Speaking of what was easier: “boyfriend” was easier than “girlfriend.” It raised fewer questions, and it raised fewer... thoughts. And that was easier too.

It was supposed to raise fewer thoughts, anyway.

Fortunately, Pete hadn’t waited for an answer, or for Myka to start thinking any thoughts, instead moving on to what he clearly found most important: “And lady-wise, don’t you think she’s hot? I think she’s hot.”

Myka sighed. “Yes, I think she’s hot. In fact I know she’s hot. I have eyes.”

“So go out with her. She’s hot, you’re hot. Sizzle!”

“I just don’t want to.”

“Then why didn’t you go ahead and tell her that? Do you think she isn’t a decent guy?”

“Pretty sure she’s not a guy at all,” Myka had said, trying to joke him into just... stopping.

She didn’t want to get into the complicated conversation that would have ensued if she’d admitted to having genuinely, if fleetingly, regretted her reflex—because he certainly wasn’t wrong about Giselle being a woman, and he double-certainly wasn’t wrong about her looks. She was stunning; she’d had that wildly successful athletic career, then transitioned with seemingly no friction at all into modeling, at which she was even more wildly successful. Her legs were as long as the miles she used to run, and Myka was certainly, in that sense, human.

But Giselle had already developed a reputation at AAI, despite her brief tenure, for what could charitably be called a... short attention span. Maybe it was the inevitable result of her having been able to have just about anything—and anyone—she wanted, in not one but two elevated realms, or maybe it had always been Giselle’s personality as a romantic socializer, but while Myka had no trouble observing it from the outside, as a characteristic of her friend Giselle, she didn’t particularly want to be subjected to it. What if she slipped and overinvested? Exactly the kind of difficulty she didn’t need, regardless of any other complicating circumstances. Exactly the kind of difficulty she had never needed, and if she had slipped and fallen into it in the past? Well, that was the past, and she certainly didn’t need to revisit any part of that, much less repeat it.

These months later, however, some days Myka had a vague sense that a day should come when she should talk herself into telling Giselle she didn’t have a (nonexistent) boyfriend anymore. A day, that was to say, when she should ask for Giselle’s attention, if only for a short span. It seemed normal, human, to think that a short span of time, even if it led to a complicating slip and overinvestment, might—should?—be better than nothing, and so some days, Myka tried to want to talk herself into that.

But on different days, she’d think, definitively, I don’t want to. Because talking herself into it felt dishonest. Even if Giselle subscribed solely to Pete’s “she’s hot, you’re hot; sizzle” theory of the case, even if both of them might have enjoyed much of that short span of time: dishonest. Inauthentic. Deceitful.

“You’re not very good at having fun, are you?” Pete had asked her once, when she’d told him, in response to his sincere inquiry, that she had never actually dreamed of having Disneyland all to herself for a day. She’d agreed that no, she really wasn’t very good at having fun, and he’d said, “You need to get out more. Maybe not to Disney, but you need to get out more.”

You need to get out more. She’d laughed at him, because the most out she ever got, away from work, was for her 4am run. That, she could talk herself into without feeling dishonest at all. Far from it: she reveled in the discipline required for that strict self-persuasion every day, which was probably why she’d found that she could, ultimately, work well—reasonably well—with athletes. Athletics at its highest level was discipline, and Giselle and Pete and most of the others could see that Myka got that, even had that, as Giselle kept telling her.

But as Myka always told Giselle in return (not that Giselle needed telling), for real athletes, that discipline had to be kissed by the divine, and Myka had no access to such physical divinity. None at all. She was an exercise runner, lowest of the low in terms of athletic esteem. She knew because that was how the athletes said it, with a twist of pity: exercise runner. That was what she was, and she knew it.

Until she ran in the Deceits.

They were named, of course, for their unassuming look and for the illicit advantage they gave the world-class athletes. But for Myka-the-unesteemed, they were differently deceptive: they made her feel like A Runner. Giselle and her peers had been born with the kind of legs these shoes changed Myka’s into, springing from the ground with power, creating a feeling of “this is my body; this is what it can do, and if I push, still more,” and miraculously—deceptively—there was still more it could be pushed to do. Myka felt like her body before the Deceits had been Clark Kent, like it had been waiting for the chance to reveal that it wore the suit and had superpowers, like this had always been how she could run.

It wasn’t real. But it felt real.

So she understood why Deceits were breaking records—speed records now, but eventually, they would break sales records, too.

She also understood, very clearly, that they should be banned.

Even for exercise runners like her: deceiving oneself, Myka felt, was worse than deceiving others, regardless of whether they were fellow competitors or the outside world in general. Just as she didn’t want to talk herself into Giselle, she didn’t want to run every morning in those shoes. If she did, that self-deception would become a habit of mind, and Myka deep-knew that being clear-eyed about oneself was essential. A moral duty, her inner rector told her, and even though she would probably have been happier to not live her life quite that ramrod-straight (to, for example, be better at having fun), it had been her thought as she’d begun that first run in the Deceits. She’d kept on thinking it, throughout her entire route, as she devoured the miles with her newly athletic strides. Clear-eyed, mor-al, du-ty. Right-left, right-left, right-left.

Administratively, the world of athletics moved at a speed inverse to that of the track. The relatively “rapid” ban of the Deceit’s predecessor had taken six months to work out and implement, so it was no surprise that several weeks elapsed before AAI even scheduled negotiations with Zelus reps over the new shoes. They would be delicate, the negotiations, for Zelus money was essential to the sport. It was imperative not to make any penalties too prohibitive or too “insulting” to the company or its affiliates. Could already-ratified world records set in Deceits be voided? Would that lead to Zelus-sponsored athletes boycotting competitions? Could Deceits be banned? Would that be at all enforceable?

Myka knew that Dan Badger, the president and CEO of AAI, would be scrutinizing everything she and Pete and their team proposed. Newly appointed to show that AAI was turning a regulatory corner, he had made clear that his watchword was “integrity,” and that applied not only to the sport as a whole, but to every athlete who participated in it, every piece of equipment they touched, every employee under his purview, every official action they took. Unofficial actions, too: there was, as far as Myka could tell, no ethical give in Badger’s worldview. Where prior heads might have made a handshake deal of some sort with Zelus’s own CEO with regard to the Deceits—and Myka suspected something along those lines had occurred for the Inducts, most likely involving a wink-nod to the already-in-the-pipelines Deceits—Badger would have considered the mere suggestion of such a thing a personal affront.

“Why doesn’t Badge like you more?” Pete once asked Myka. “You’re exactly like him.” Myka wasn’t, in fact, exactly like him, for Badger was an athlete’s athlete, a hurdling champion from a decades-ago golden age of British track and field. That gilded aura was a carapace around him, deflecting whatever might have been directed his way from beings he considered lesser, including nonathletes like Myka. It wasn’t actively insulting or cruel, just... clear. The athletes called him “Badge,” among themselves and to his face, while Myka had the sense that if she uttered that collegial syllable, no one, and certainly not the man himself, would even perceive that any sound had escaped her lips.

Pete wasn’t entirely wrong, though; Myka had enough consonance with Badger that she couldn’t quite bring herself to resent him. His absolutely unimpeachable reputation was supplemented by the fact that he looked exactly as an athletic lion of his age and era should: face appropriately tanned for health and creased for character, hair silver and full, height calibrated as if to the millimeter to be imposing but not incongruous. He was the ideal figurehead for an organization that wanted to burnish its standing as a virtuous guardian of all that was competitively good in athletics.

In the end, Myka’s own inclinations aligned with her need to fulfill Badger’s expectations, yet neither she nor he could change the underlying economics of the sport. She might have been moved, under other circumstances, to restore her single-run-sullied Deceits to their silver Zelus box and push that box to the back of her closet, but instead she spent an inordinate amount of time looking at them. Was there any way at all to tell, just by looking, that they could do what they did?

Enforcement was a matter of measurement and testing, but these shoes were a drug for which no test existed. AAI had hired a group of materials engineers to take them apart, so Myka now knew how they did what they did: even newer foam, plus two carbon plates, set at angles to each other. They really might as well have been springs—invisible to the outside-shoe naked eye, but springs all the same.

AAI could nominally ban double-plate soles, but it couldn’t possibly dismantle every Zelus runner’s footwear at every event to ensure that the ban was being respected. Myka saw no way out other than to ban Zelus shoes across the board (for she’d been thinking, too, of what Giselle had said about spikes), but that brought her back to financial impossibility. And around she went again. And again. And again.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the rest of athletics administration proceeded without heed for Deceits, no matter how long Myka stared at them, no matter how many negotiating scenarios she tried, unfruitfully, to game out. Meets and championships and trials all continued, requiring level upon level of authorization and accompanying paperwork...

One morning, Myka was concentrating, squint-eyed, on a spreadsheet when she felt a tap on her shoulder. “Pete,” she began, still squinting at her screen, “I told you if I don’t approve the new certification tables for posting this morning—”

“I’m so sorry,” said an English-accented female voice, “but I’m not Pete. And I seem to be lost.”

Myka looked up. No, you’re not, was her first thought, which resolved into: You’re not Pete, and you’re not lost. You belong right here.

TBC

A few notes, just because:

I made up the governing body; it’s intended to be vaguely like the real organization World Athletics (formerly IAAF), which determines what’s allowable in track and field competition, but I’m not trying to replicate its structure at all. Further, the actual organization maintains that it doesn’t consult with shoe companies before making regulatory decisions... whether you believe that claim is of course entirely up to you.

Two passages from Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents are in some sense guiding my thinking here (because I’m like that). The first is this: “Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but these organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times.” He’s talking about cars and eyeglasses and such things, but obviously the idea is applicable to athletic tech. An idea from a little earlier in the book seems relevant as well: “What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon.” Right? We’ll see about that latter part though, Dr. Freud.

Finally, as that rude anon suggested some months ago, I’m obviously speaking to a community that’s mostly inactive now. But I’m a keeper of faith: one of the things I do best is wait. So one point of this story is that it exists. I’m waiting. C’mon and wait with me, if you like.

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Run #AU week

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mychemicalficrecs · 4 years

Note

Any longer fics to get us through the pandemic? Thanx! (No waycest please) :)

Hi Nonny!

We're living through difficult times right now and many of us could probably use a little comfort. I hope there are a few fics on this list that bring you some joy.And if you can, spread the love and leave comments and/or kudos on works you liked and brighten an author's day!

Be kind and stay safe

Longer Fics

L For Lucky (M for Mine) by orphan_account, Ray/Mikey, 42k, Explicit. “Yeah, look.” Mikey turns his head to peer at the crowd over his shoulder. “This is going to seem weird, but.” He stares behind him and seems, for a moment, at a loss for words. “Well, there’s no tasteful way to say it.” Mikey looks Ray in the eye and just shrugs. “This is a highly organized sexual gathering for very specifically kinky people.” Ray feels a bit of spittle lodge in his throat and tries his best not to sputter when he disagrees, “That’s actually a pretty tasteful description of an orgy.”

Paradox 'verse by stoplightglow, Frank/Gerard, 42k, Mature, Teen And Up Audiences. You know the saying. The best part about hitting rock bottom is that you get to meet a hot psychic.

Skin of the Canvas by sinsense, Frank/Gerard, 42k, Mature. The typical nude model is someone like Phil. Phil is forty-nine and paunchy. He's starting to go gray at his temples and in his pubic hair; he likes to pose on a stool, curving his back and curling his fingers together between his knees. Phil is secretly awesome -- he likes the Misfits and builds model trains -- but he's not what Gerard would call prime ogling material. Neither are any of the other models who have posed for the life modeling or anatomy classes Gerard has taken. This semester, Anna was kind of cute, but she whined about the conditions the entire time she was there. In his four years of art school, anyway, Gerard has never once dealt with being attracted to the model. But this guy is hot. --- Or: Gerard goes to art school. Frank is a nude model. Somehow their relationship gets off the ground, in spite of everything working against them.

Let The Darkness Lead You Home by rivers_bend, Frank/Gerard, 49k, Explicit. Vampires are in charge and most of the humans on earth are prey, so Frank Iero's parents have him train as a cyber tech to protect him. Leaving the family he's born into may have saved his life, but his parents never could have expected the lengths he'd go to in order to find a new family to call home.

Stunning Someone by morbid_beauty, Frank/Gerard, 82k, Explicit. Frankie, a tattoo artist living in Brooklyn, has basically everything ze wants...except, like, someone to cuddle with at night. As lame as that sounds. Gerard, an art student living in Manhattan, meets someone of questionable gender and starts a friendship with an unrequited crush. (Or: the one where Frankie is genderfluid, Gerard is kind of ignorant to much of the queer community, and sometimes you just fall for a stunning someone.)

Envision the Magic by innocent_wolves, Frank/Gerard, 69k, Teen And Up Audiences. Gerard is a talented magician, responsible for much of the success of the famous Envision Destiny cruise ship. He's also one of those people. You know, one of those people who just seem to take up all the space they come across with their arrogance and confidence. You wouldn't wanna touch their personality with a 10-foot pole, but still people admire them. That is beyond Frank. Working behind the cruise ship bars and seeing Gerard pretty much every day, he can't understand what's so great about him. Besides, everybody else doesn't have to deal with his snide remarks and rude comments. Because if there's one thing Gerard seems to love, it's the act of constantly pestering Frank.

Rentverse by gala_apples, Frank/Mikey, Ashlee/Patrick/Pete and more, 77k, Teen And Up Audiences, Explicit. It's Frank's senior year, and it seems like he's constantly having new experiences, at least half of which come as a complete surprise to him. He falls in love, comes out, and has sex, not necessarily in that order. /// It's Pete's senior year, and with every day comes a new mistake. But he can handle them, as long as his friends can.

(To Die Will Be) An Awfully Big Adventure by FayJay, Frank/Gerard, Lindsey/Gerard, 73k, Mature. Gerard has always vaguely liked the idea of being a vampire, in much the same way he's always vaguely liked the idea of time travel, or of being a pirate - but it's only when he wakes up dead that he realises that not all his fans (or friends) are actually human. This is rather a shock to the system, but Gerard does his best to deal with the fact that he's now an undead American, and he's lucky enough to get a little help from an unexpected corner. Just as he thinks he's starting to get the hang of being a vampire, however, everything suddenly goes to hell in a handbasket, and before he knows it there are angry vampires slayers chasing him around LA, and an urgent appointment with the Fairy Queen looming before him... A story about love, family, metamorphosis, art, trust and geekery.

Fit to be tied by maryangel, Frank/Gerard, 56k, Explicit. Frank is a bartender. Gerard is an alcoholic. They were clearly made for each other. Also, Frank is a werewolf.

Only Going One Way by ataratah, jjtaylor, Frank/Gerard, 73k, Mature. Crossover with due South. Constable Gerard Way of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Detective Frank Iero of the Chicago PD team up find Mikey Way in a city where bowling alley score cards hide secret codes, where the good guys are either lying or undercover (and sometimes lying about being undercover), and where criminal bakers make drug-laced frosting.

Time Travel 'verse by ladyfoxxx, Frank/Gerard, Ray/Mikey, 79k, Explicit, General Audiences. In which 2005!Frank and Fun Ghoul get it on. Then Frank accidentally winds up in 2019.

play and record, held down together by morphosyntactic, Mikey/Pete, 54k, Explicit. High school AU. Mikey Way likes keeping his head down and blending into the background at school. Then Frank signs the two of them up to do the school's weekly radio show, and keeping his head down gets more difficult, especially when he keeps running into senior soccer star Pete Wentz everywhere he goes.

Rock and Roll Never Looked so Beautiful by corruptedkid, Frank/Gerard, 58k, Explicit. Gerard Way is a rising solo artist, set to become the next big thing in the alternative scene. Frank Iero is a trashy punk with a reputation of his own as the frontman of Pencey Prep. When their paths cross, a love story is born, only to come crashing down when Gerard hits it big. As Gerard ascends to the A-list, Frank adjusts to life on his own. He almost manages it - until two years later, when fate puts him face to face with Gerard once more. Everything has changed, but the connection between them is still there. Their story has ended once before, but if they're lucky, they just might make a new one.

It's Hard to Say "I Do" When I Really, Really Do by wakingup, Mikey/Pete, 58k, Not Rated. Pete is trying to not fuck up this time. His friends don't have much faith in him, even though they love him. Mikeyway makes this easier and harder at the same time.

I never told you what I do for a living. by not0_fuckin_kay, Frank/Gerard, 60k+, PG-13 to NC-17. Frank Iero, male nurse at Pete Wentz's private hospital and possibly more to one new patient he can't keep his eyes off of. When a new pateint is brought in with amnesia, just days before Christmas, and with nothing but the clothes on his back and a strange drawing, it's left to Frank to find out who he is and what happened to him. When he does, it changes Frank's life forever, as he's thrust into love and health scares he never thought would complicate his life. This is the story of how he tries to make it through, juggling his job and his love-life and just trying to make things better. With Patrick the doctor, Bob the ward supervisor, Travis the unlikely therapist, and Mikey, the sometimes wannabe homicidal geek.

The Marching Band AU by frankiesin, Frank/Gerard, Mikey/Pete, Brendon/Dallon, 150k, all ratings. A bunch of gay teens are in a band and do dumb things while in high school. There will be a lot of pairings, each part can be read without reading the others, and the series is in chronological order.

Gerard Way's (Vampire) Detective Agency by jjtaylor, Pennyplainknits, Frank/Gerard, Mikey/Pete, Bob/Ray, Lindsey/Jamia, Spencer/Brendon, 164k, General Audiences to Mature. Pete, in Decaydance Mansion, with a yarrow stake. Frank and Gerard, in the greenhouse, with a plant of questionable origin. Bob, everywhere you look, with a gang of assassins for justice. Vampires, valets, pamphlets, haunted furniture, dub-thrall, disembodied voices, zombie couriers, and sinister rituals.

Nightswimming by waxjism, Mikey/Pete, Frank/Gerard, 163k, Not Rated. Summertime and the livin' is easy...

Unholyverse by Bexless, Frank/Gerard, Ray/Mikey, 187k, General Audiences, Mature, Explicit. Religion! Horror! Exorcisms! Piercings! And Gerard is a priest.

shut up and drive by Trojie, uglowian, Patrick/Mikey/Pete, 139k, Teen And Up Audiences. Pete Wentz is the grid girl, Andy Hurley loves him (not like that), and Jared Leto is the bad guy. A.K.A.: the bandom The Fast and the Furious AU that literally no one asked for.

#ray/mikey #rikey #frank/gerard #frerard #frank/mikey #mikey/pete #frikey #petekey #lindsey/gerard #bob/ray #lindsey/jamia #patrick/mikey/pete #fic rec list #longfic

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wesleyhill · 4 years

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Jesus Feeds Us

A homily on Matthew 14:13-21 preached at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Pittsburgh, on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost 2020

I would speak to you in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

In just a few moments, Aidan our priest is going to stand behind the altar there and pick up a piece of bread and a cup of wine. He will pray over them, asking the Holy Spirit to set them apart so that they might be for us the body and blood of Christ. And then those of us who are here will eat that gift of Christ’s body and drink his blood. And any of you who want to partake can receive them this week (just call or send us an email, and we’ll bring Communion to you in a safe, socially distant way).

What we are about to partake of goes by different names: Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Mass. The Second Vatican Council, in a wonderful phrase, said that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” Somehow, when we receive the Eucharist, we are returning to the nourishing heart of our faith. We are given divine grace in Holy Communion as we receive it with faith and gratitude.

I have been thinking a lot about Communion over these past few months of lockdown. I have been able to receive it, as you’ve seen here via the livestream, but I know many, many Christians, and even many of you, who have not. And they have longed for it, sometimes without really knowing why. In light of this extraordinary situation, starting this fall, I’m going to be offering to you some teaching videos on the cathedral Facebook page specifically on the Eucharist and why it remains so important, why it is indeed “the source and summit of the Christian life.”

But for now, this morning, I want to look at our Gospel reading through the lens of the Eucharist. The reason I want to do that is I think that’s what the Gospel is inviting us to do. Listen again to the climax of the story: “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” Does that choreography sound familiar? We’re about to watch Fr. Aidan take the bread and wine, look up to heaven, bless and break the bread and pour out the wine, and give them to me, the deacon, and I’ll carry them to those here present — and to any of you who request a visit. What Jesus is doing is, we might say, eucharistic. It’s not the Eucharist itself, but it should remind us of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist should remind us of the story. If we pay attention to what is happening in this story, we’ll better understand what is happening to and with us when we receive Holy Communion.

First of all, let me give you the simplest way I know to think about what the Eucharist is. This is what I tell my 3-year-old goddaughter: The Eucharist is Jesus feeding us. We come to him hungry, needy, broken, and sinful, and he feeds us. How?

One thing we should immediately think about is that Jesus feeds us in a surprising way. In the story, the disciples, of course, are the ones who make the rational plans. They come to Jesus with a proposal for how to take care of the restless crowds. They remind him of the desolate setting — there are no markets around, no houses whose doors you could knock on to ask for bread — and then say, “[S]end the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus, bizarrely, says, “They need not go away; you give something to eat.” This is our first clue that the meal the crowds are about to eat isn’t “business as usual.” There is something new, something strange, something from another realm or dimension, about to take place. That’s of course the way it always is with Jesus: he’s always surprising us, always bursting out of our limited categories of understanding, toppling tables, breaking the rules, taking people off-guard with his unprecedented authority and power. He is always, as we heard in our daily lectionary reading last week, “going ahead of us.” Here Jesus shows his glorious freedom to act otherwise than what we could ever imagine. He breaks out of the narrow boundaries of the disciples’ thinking and performs one of his famous “deeds of power,” bringing provision and nourishment in a way no ordinary human process ever could.

And that, friends, is how we ought to understand what is happening when we receive Holy Communion in humble trust and expectation. Jesus is feeding us in a way that is miraculous, arresting, unpredictable, surprising. We are not dealing here with simply a human occurrence, a religious or cultural ritual. We are being fed by the Lord himself. This is a supernatural meal, a visible sign of the workings of God’s effectual grace.

But not only does Jesus feeds us in a surprising, lordly way. He also feeds us freely. In the Gospel story, there is the notable absence of any exchange of money or goods. Jesus doesn’t offer to feed the crowds on the condition that they come up with payment. He doesn’t set any conditions at all. He simply gives the bread and fish away, with no ifs, ands, or buts.

It’s probably not an accident that the creators of our lectionary, our schedule of Scripture readings, appointed that wonderful passage from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah to be read alongside our Gospel story for today.

Thus says the Lord: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food…”

What the Old Testament prophet saw about the free gift of God’s favor is exactly what took place in the life and ministry of Jesus. Over and over again, Jesus called out to those who had no money, no social standing, no distinguishing virtues or character qualities, no moral uprightness, and he said to them, “Come, have bread and fish without money and without price. Come, receive my body and blood without cost and without payment.”

One of my favorite hymns is Hymn # 685, “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” In that hymn, you and I are invited to say to the Lord, “in my hand no price I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.” That’s about as succinct and memorable a summary of God’s good news as I can imagine, and we are about to show it with our bodies this morning as we open our hands to receive the gift of Christ’s body and blood. Our hands will be empty; we won’t be carrying a check book or a debit card to try to bargain for God’s grace. We will hold out our bare palms, and Christ will feed us freely.

Finally, we can see from our Gospel reading that Jesus not only feeds us surprisingly and freely; he also feeds us abundantly. Listen again to how the story concludes: “And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.” All ate, and not just nibbled: they were filled, satisfied, satiated. And, even so, there were leftovers, with as many baskets full at the end as there were tribes in Israel. Not only that, but the “all” who ate to their hearts’ content numbered over 5,000, perhaps even twice that number. This is a story of extravagance, of abundance. What Jesus gives is lavish, over the top, more than we could ever dream of asking for. He gives and gives and gives, without measure and without end, and there is always more.

Ultimately, what Jesus gives is… himself. Jesus gives us his very life, the love that he is, the abundance that is his person. That is what he was offering to those hungry crowds that day in Palestine, and that is what he offers to us in Holy Communion. Jesus feeds us… himself.

There is only one of Jesus’s miracles that is recorded in all four Gospels, and that is the miracle of his feeding the 5,000. We read St. Matthew’s version this morning, but if we had read the version in chapter 6 of the Fourth Gospel, we would find this point about Jesus feeding us with his own life to be unmistakable. Right after all the leftovers are collected and Jesus has gone on to another place, he says to the crowds, “[T]he bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” With the memory of the loaves and fishes still fresh in their minds, they say, “Sir, give us this bread always.” And that is the moment when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” And then, in language that is filled with eucharistic overtones, Jesus says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh…. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

Friends, Jesus feeds us surprisingly, freely, and abundantly — because what he feeds us with is his own life, his broken body and shed blood, so that his life might become our life; that by communing with him, we might be healed.

I remember talking with a wise older priest when I first became an Episcopalian. He asked me what drew me to our church. I fumbled around for an answer, trying to sound well-informed and engaged. But then I decided just to be honest: “I’m here mainly because of the Eucharist. I meet Jesus in Holy Communion.”

And the priest, his eyes misty, said, “He’s here, isn’t he? He’s really here.”

Amen.

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gravityfissure · 4 years

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[meta] What, if any, games, movies, books, tv shows, etc. have you drawn influence from for your character?

Okay so round 2, much in the same vein for Arthur there are... A lot. Possibly even more things that influence and inspire where Otto’s muse and views comes from. That said in writing this there are also a LOT of similarities between the characters I can pick out certain attributes and to be honest there’s a lot of crossover with the traits and characterisations highlighted.

Namely: playful and proactive, self-serving yet loyal to those that meet his criteria as to who is deserving of it. A grifter by nature that will approach almost any situation if he feels he’ll get something out of it while equally hoping that one day someone might actually bother to ask him (and maybe give him a true reason) to stay.

Dorian - Dragon Age: Inquisition

Uh, the heir of a famous magical dynasty? A flair of magical talent that made him the envy of his peers? Studied at one of the best colleges for the magical arts before being kicked out and privately tutored before eventually vanishing and being found by Magister Gereon Alexius who offered to take him as his apprentice eventually becoming a fully-ranked enchanter. A pariah for opposing every fault his homeland is renowned for?

It’s been years since I’ve played DA:I and Dorian always was one of my favourite characters but tbh I completely forgot his background and it’s only in revisiting it now I actually realise the similarities in the framework of their characters/development/story line. Not to mention the fact they both enjoy playful flirtation and witty banter and oppose the things they don’t fit into their view of the world. They will probably do the right thing, but that doesn’t mean they might not take their sweet ass time in actually getting into a situation.

Isabela - Dragon Age II and Inquisition

AND AGAIN. Isabela’s a great character - a pirate scourge of coastlines and nations around the world who values fun, freedom and getting ahead in life. They both value solving situations in clever and devious ways and getting ahead even if it means being somewhat selfish when they’re dealing with other people, example: Otto conning Deirdre out of $28k when she tried to cover for Regan or those plans he has to try and record a banshee scream? They’re both always down for trying to squeeze that little bit extra out of a person. If it one ups them in life and people are gullible enough to fall for it well... They really did it to themselves didn’t they?

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t depths to that hardened persona they both present. There are actual feelings and things hidden behind the wall and appearance they both present to the world. And underneath it all they’re both afraid of being left behind, but figure it’s best to push people away before they decide to leave of their own volition. At least that way they can say they have some control over the situation..

Sera - Dragon Age: Inquisition

Apparently this is a DA characters list but you know what sue me. x) So NEXT on the list is Sera, an elven archer who is incredibly impulsive and reactionary. She takes pure delight in humbling the established authority she views as arrogant and selfish. It’s less about what’s right in the grand scheme of things but more about what’s right in that very moment. She doesn’t believe in actions taken for a greater good, instead viewing it as just another excuse to hurt others undeserving of such treatment because it’s easier than making the truly hard choices in life.

Felix Dawkins - Orphan Black

Look Felix is one of the many fascinating characters on Orphan Black. Don’t get me wrong there are SO many and it’s a great show. But Felix is a character whose very existence proves that you can have a very effeminate, boisterous, loud, witty gay character and not have him be limited to the perpetuation of the sassy gay friend stereotype. Why? Because he has a whole complex personality beyond just that aspect of his life. He’s got to deal with real life issues on top of all the drama clone club brings into his life and he deals and he survives and he cOPES.

Not to mention he’s a positive representation of foster children being happy, positive representation of LGBTQ+ characters and gives positive representation of sex workers. Not to mention on top of all that representation you see how he’s smart as hell, the only person who knows Sarah well enough to keep her on track. The BEST uncle to Kira and one of the most supportive characters on the show.

Sarah - Orphan Black

Felix’s foster-sister, another character that shows the positive and complex dynamic that foster families tend to have while also demonstrating the fascinating found-family dynamic with clone club. Sarah’s interesting because she’s a natural chameleon, she’s street-smart and tough, a born outsider living on the fringes by her wits while in possession of a dark sense of humour that sees her by.

Sarah and Otto have a rather morally ambiguous compass, they’re both characters who swing between being very self-serving and selfish and acting for the greater good when they decide it’s needed. Not to mention the act as if they don’t care about other people’s issues (see clone club) when actually it transpires they both might just care a little more than they actually let on.

Garcia Flynn - Timeless

Unfortunately Garcia fits the my favourite character type: tall, dark, snarky, sassy antihero motivated fiercely by love and willing to do things of questionable morality against a greater evil, self-aware and doesn’t make excuses for his behaviour, but isn’t wringing his hands over it either. A character who so dearly loves the people in his life (see revenge for his wife and daughter) so much so he’s still fighting for them 5 years later just to be alive and not even to have anything to do with him again because he knows the things he’s done are enough the he could never go back to being that person for them. The man who loved his mum and went on a trip just to make her happy and save his brother. When he truly cares for someone he does EVERYTHING for them while somehow having none of the toxic jealous possessive business, despite his well-attested Garbage Drama in other departments, and just generally being a mature adult and an essentially good person who has gone down some really dark places and is finally rediscovering what he’s buried and lost. Look man, I’m a suuuuuuuuuuuuucker for found family, enemies to lovers, and villain becomes weird family member. And he covers all of those, so yes.

There’s a lot of that I’m planning and drawing on for Otto, this weird currently antagonistic little self-serving shit who is out for his own ends but maybe along the way finds some semblence of a conscious and maybe has a fair few moral dilemmas and self-questioning moments along the way? Who maybe finds friends (and even love?) Who has to deal with FEELINGS and things he’s repressed for years because of the things he’s done just to survive the life he fell into? Uh, yes give me give me give me.

Jesse Custer - Preacher

Okay, so this one’s kind of another given. Jesse’s another character I’m fascinated with because before Genesis’ arrival he was a down upon his luck preacher. A man who was trying so hard to fit into his dad’s ideal and not let the life he had before affect his day to day. Except it all goes to hell in a handbasket because of course it does.

Jesse essentially gains the ability to make anyone do anything he says. And that power? It’s addictive, and we see the struggle he goes through to learn how to control and manipulate it to his own end. To begin with he tries to right wrongs, to tell people to stop doing the bad things they’re doing in their lives and fix them so they’re better people but with each act that power and god-complex grows. It goes to his head until we meet the moronic messiah Humperdoo and Jesse eventually agrees to take his place. The messiah-complex and power corruption is complete, and the repercussions of his choices are devastating especially with how they impact Cassidy or Tulip and the repercussions in Angelville.

Much like Otto’s own magic, the more its used the more enticing it is to carry on using it for more and more things. At first it was small deeds, little acts of good until Otto in kind started to realise that good deeds weren’t enough to make a change. They weren’t enough for other people around him and with each act it grew and grew - and it continues to grow. The question is to what level? And if it ever got out of control, would he ever know how to stop it?

Crowley - Good Omens

An overall non-threatening demon, who tries to be “evil” in his own way to fit into the role his society (other demons) expect of him. Crowley wants to save the world (for his own reasons) and can be rather self-serving in certain moments. There’s plenty of times he tried to convince Aziraphale to run away with him and let everything else forgive the irony but for lack of a better term “go to hell” but he always comes around in the end (typically to a Queen track) to help when it really counts for something.

Not to mention his flare for the dramatic, very rarely thinking things through, with many of his own plans backfiring on him.

Sound familiar?

Wrench - Watch Dogs 2

Part-hacker and full-fledged anarchist who wears a freaky mask with LED displays capable of bizarre emoticons. He's vulgar, crude, entertaining and an absolute adrenaline junkie who lives on the edge. He's jokingly called the wrench because he's the wrench you throw into somebody's gears to grind them to a halt.

The final one on the list, because it’s a side I haven’t yet played into so much but I’m curious to given means and opportunity to. Otto does have some inclination towards an anarchistic nature, if a system doesn’t seem to work he isn’t afraid to speak out or more likely act out against it. Whether it’s in the greater good or not isn’t so much relevant rather that he would happily take a torch and burn something to the ground if it meant starting again with something new and better in its place. It’s definitely something I want to explore more down the line.

I also find it interesting the whole concept of “hiding behind a mask” which is something wrench quite literally does. Both have built personas to defend themselves from people breaking through and seeing that what actually exists on the other side is a rather shy and awkward person who tries to “act out” and be “dramatic” in an attempt to get attention from a world in which there’s so much noise how could anyone ever feel like their voice mattered let alone be heard unless they started shouting “HEY, LOOK AT ME” at the top of his lungs?

#Anonymous #answered #wickedsanon #meta #headcanon #// this GOT SO LONG

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ddaengyoonmin · 5 years

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Fate/Bangtan Prologue

Genre: DystopianFuture!au; Prison!au; historical and mythological characters; based on the Fate/ anime series. Fluff, Angst, Smut (it’s gonna be real smutty in some chapters 😳) Action and fighting will be a definite theme.

Pairing: poly!Ot7xreader -there will be some three(maybe even more)some smut in future chapters.

A/N: I really feel like I’m challenging myself with this series 🙃 I’m excited to write it though! I think I will be able to improve my writing skills and create something you guys will hopefully enjoy 😁 also! While there are going to be a lot of famous historical and mythological characters in this series, I am not sticking 100% to factual backstories from history or stories that they come from. So when that all comes in please don’t be in my asks saying “but that never happened to *insert famous figure*!!” It’s just going to be lightly based on them if that makes sense... 💜

Chapter One

Red Brick Prison, so named for the crimson bricks standing at least five stories high lining the perimeter of the city. Guards holding large guns paced the top of the wall day and night. There were sensors and alarms that would go off if any prisoner even set foot within 10 feet of the wall, there was no possible chance of escape. It was the largest men’s prison still standing in the what was once the continent of Asia, somewhere in the middle of South Korea most citizens had guessed, but the location was unknown to the public. Only those were employed by Red Brick and the highest level of officials of the government knew its location.

The idea of the prison was much different than former prisons before the world had fallen into ruin.

This prison was more a town than a prison. It was still monitored by guards and the prisoners were under some rules and regulations. They shared small houses with other prisoners and for the most part had created their own society. The guards did random checks and patrolled neighborhoods to make sure that things were running smoothly but besides that they were left to their own free will. It had started over 150 years ago as an experiment ‘Lets see what happens if we create a city of only criminals’ Some psychologist had helped fund and observe the whole thing. After many years of revising and tweaking the way it ran, it had become the new normal for prisons. Now there was only about 4 prisons left in the world, as there wasn’t quite much of humanity left itself. Red Brick was famous for holding the worst of the worst criminals. (And eventually, for one of the most entertaining televised battle royals the world had ever seen.)

If you commited a crime worthy of being sent there you’re chances of ever seeing the rest of the world again were slim to none.

The only exception being the odd occurrence that had mysteriously started happening around 100 years ago. Seven members of the prison woke up one morning to find a strange symbol was now tattooed to one of their hands. After a few days of wondering if they had one drink too many, (as alcohol and cigarettes were allowed in Red Brick, never any drugs though, despite many protests of the prisoners saying ‘what's the difference!’) the prisoners with the red marks found strange visitors had materialized in their homes. The strangers called themselves heroic spirits, and called the marked prisoners their masters.

Chaos ensued when these prisoners realized the grand power that these spirits contained, most looked human but their powers were anything but. Supernatural abilities that couldn’t be compared to anything that had ever been witnessed by humanity.

It became one of the bloodiest prison riots in history. The only thing that managed to stop them was that the warden himself had somehow received his own mark and had his own spirit materialize. It seemed to be an unfair balance of power in favor of the prisoners, 7 to 1, but the warden’s spirit was the most powerful of them all. Striking down the rest of the prisoner’s servants in one night.

After all of this strangeness they tried to go back to normal, only for it to happen again 8 years later, and again after another 8 years. The prisoners never won but they always tried to kill the warden and escape, many guards were killed in the crossfire. Realizing this would be a pattern the Warden -now growing old and ready to retire- decided he’d make a game of it and try and prevent the possibility that the prisoners would ever be successful in using these servants against the authority over them.

Seven prisoners were always chosen at random by a unknown force outside of anyone's power. So it was decided those seven would fight each other in a no rules fight to the death battle. They allowed the chosen masters to pick a team to assist them and their servant, anywhere from 4 to 10 players were allowed to be in a team. It helped with prison population control, and kept the prisoners focused on fighting each other rather than the guards and the warden. As an incentive as long as no guards were killed, the winning team was allowed to walk out the front gate free with all crimes erased from their record.

After many of these wars that had come to have the nickname the Escape War, one of the wardens had realized how much fun it was for him to sit back with his servant and observe the blood bath safe in his tower high up in the center of the town. He figured maybe others would love to observe from the comfort of their own homes, money signs flashing in his eyes he decided to bring in a camera crew and televise the event. It was more of a success than anyone had expected ‘The Escape War’ was a hit. Citizens would pay for a subscription for a season pass to observe the carnage and ferocity that ensued every eight years. Bets would get made on who would win and who would lose first.

Yoongi thought that was the sickest part of the whole thing. Not only were the chosen seven thrown into a deadly battle with no choice but to participate, but some sicko with bags of money was betting on who would die. What if one of the masters chosen wouldn’t have rebelled, what if they were fine with just living the most normal life they were capable of here in Red Brick.

He liked to think that's what he would’ve done if given a choice.

He groaned rolling over in his small prison issued twin bed rubbing at the red symbol that he had noticed on his hand just a few moments ago after waking up.

Why him...

#bts fanfic #bts fluff #bts x reader #bts smut #bts angst #bts x you #bts imagines #ot7 au #ot7 x reader #prison!au #distopian!au #jin x reader #yoongi x reader #namjoon x reader #hoseok x reader #jimin x reader #taehyung x reader #jungkook x reader #ot7 fanfic

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thewasp1995 · 4 years

Text

The Other World Part 2

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Part 2 of this short story epic that I’ve written. I must warn you it’s considerably longer than Part 1, but it had to be, given the subject matter. It also gets very heavy. I almost shed tears writing this multiple times. And I hope that passion is reflected in my work here today.

What else can I say except this is for you @hogwartsmysterystory. Consider this my thanks and appreciation to both you and Ethren.

If anyone needs a bit of back history for my MC please go here

Enjoy, guys!

Entering the classic wizard shop had been simple enough. Tom the barman was still there and the same tapping sequence still existed to actually get in. At least that hadn’t changed.

As it was with the previous two institutions he had visited, any damage caused by the war to Diagon Alley was already repaired and the streets were alive and full of busy shoppers, running children, and nervous parents once more. There were still a few wanted posters up, but David didn’t pay much attention to them, as they were only reward information for the capture of a few unseemly looking men and one haggard, scowling looking young witch.

His primary destination was Flourish and Blotts, a bookstore that had almost every kind of publication imaginable. Other than the Hogwarts Library itself, it contained one of the largest assortments of knowledge in all of England, including history. If there was a place he could find some answers in peace, it was there.

As he walked along the cobblestone streets, David gave more thought to his situation and tried to consider the facts of what he knew instead of going completely bonkers. He was clearly in the magical world of the UK. Hogwarts, the Ministry, and Diagon Alley existed, and the war had taken place much in the same fashion as he remembered. The time was a year into the future…except this wasn’t the future. If that were the case, why was Talbott alive, he reminded himself. Why were some of the names on the monument unfamiliar? Why was there no record of his existence in the halls of his own government? And what did this American with the last name ‘Whitecross’ have to do with this?

Surprisingly enough, the last question was the one David felt most intrigued by. He couldn’t explain why, but he was sure that whatever happened in this particular instance had a lot to do with the name he saw on the monument. The fact that Talbott wore a miniature American flag only added to his suspicions.

This is really fucked up. I still want to believe Talbott was pulling the other one, but there was no lie in his eyes. The bloke I knew…there’s no way he’d turn me away like that.

Walking into the pristine bookstore didn’t arouse the same sense of excitement and wonder he felt as a teenager when buying new schoolbooks or investigating the disappearance and motivation of his brother, but he appreciated the vast collection of books and editions all the same.

I wonder what Jacob would say if he could see me right now? Probably tease me relentless and give some cryptic advice on how to get out of it

Though he did miss the usual familiar, cheerful greeting from Madam Villanelle, who politely nodded in his direction and treated him as a brand-new customer, it only emboldened him more to find out why no one in this crazy world knew who he was. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for him to come up with a plan. One of the perks of being a pure blood, even from a minor family, was that it was much easier to trace your family lineage through the centuries than it was for half bloods or those who were muggle born. Thanks to Merula and her own resources, he had managed to trace his lineage all the way back to the time of William the Conqueror and the Norman French invasion. With any luck, he’d be able to find out the fate of his family and that of his mother, father, and brother as well.

David quickly found the book he was looking for, the one his wife bragged about all those years ago when they were children: Quibus Sunt Pura- A List of the Oldest Families of Great Britain by Linesrta Quint. Unlike the Sacred Twenty-Eight, who’s criteria was much stricter courtesy of the pure blood supremacist Cantankerous Nott, this book covered a much wider berth of material. The author in question also wrote the book as a purely academic, historical exercise not a means to propagate an exclusive group of people above all others. It revealed that many more wizards than just twenty eight specific families carried a great deal of history, including his.

Remembering almost fondly how Merula single handedly showed him more about his family history than he knew before, he reminded himself that finding his wife was a top priority as much as his own peace of mind. He needed to know where she was and if she existed as well. It was all information that could be gleaned by this one book.

Summoning water in his hip flask and taking a swig, he set to work in reading the introduction and scouring the index for the last name ‘Grant’. Strangely, however, he could not find it. It was usually right after the summaries of the ‘Gaunt’ and ‘Gamp’ families. But as he flipped back and forth, there was no mention of anyone of his last name having existed in magical England nor anywhere else for that matter.

Not a good sign.

Flipping about a dozen pages more, he came across the ‘MacMillan’ family expose and saw that his mother’s side of the family was intact, including all of his cousins. But there was no sign of Heather MacMillan having ever known or married John Grant.

David’s heart and pulse began to race. He thought back to what he and Merula discovered all those years ago: that his common ancestor Robert Graund had settled in England after the successful invasion of William the Conqueror, who unknowingly employed many Norman French wizards in his service, including Robert. Over time, the name became Anglicized to ‘Grant’ and each male whether by a pure, half blood, or muggle born woman also produced at least one magical son through the centuries. Certainly not as ‘pure’ as the bigots would have it, but then again that was the least of his worries.

Going back over to the front of the introduction, David finally found what he was looking for: the name Robert Graund. Apparently, alongside other pure blood families of French Norman descent: Malfoy, Lestrange, Rosier, etc. Robert had also taken part as it was before. But unlike before, there was also a miniature cross next to his name with a brief note that he had died during the famous Battle of Hastings, a decisive conflict that eventually led to William being crowned King of England.

David ran his hands through his hair once more and leaned back in his chair at the realization.

So that’s what happened. My first ancestor was struck down during that fateful battle. Therefore, no one in my family beyond him even exists. Including me.

But there were some parts he still didn’t understand, namely how he could go from existing one day to fast forwarding a year later where he didn’t at all? There was no logic in it. He knew the veil within the Department of Mysteries carried many secrets that even the Unspeakables didn’t fully understand. But did it transcend more than just life and death itself? What if perhaps the archway didn’t merely lead to a path beyond death, but other possibilities relating to time and space?

Peering around him, David took a deep breath and rationalized everything once more. Almost everything about this world was exactly the same as it was yesterday. Except today Talbott Winger was alive and there was no trace of him or anyone in his family having ever walked the earth.

“I must be insane,” he muttered to himself. “This whole place is insane.”

But the reality kept biting him until he could no longer deny it. Unless the world was playing an extremely sick joke, the only other possible explanation was that somehow, he had ended up in an alternate timeline or scenario where his very family had died almost a millennia before it could actually take root. Thereby the events he experienced at Hogwarts, as an Auror, a bounty hunter, and at the Battle of Hogwarts never took place. Which lead him back to two more avenues.

“Merula.”

Turning the pages to the ‘S’ section, it didn’t take long for him to find what was looking for: the Snyde Family crest and information. And it was just as accurate as he remembered. Merula’s own common ancestor was actually of Danish-Norse origin, a wizard Viking to be exact, who settled along the area of modern East Anglia only fifty years before William the Conqueror’s invasion. He traced his finger right down to the modern names, specifically her father, mother and aunt: Matthias, Lyra, and Lucretia respectively. Sure enough, Merula’s name and birthdate was there but that’s not all that was written. In tiny black letters below was the name ‘Alaire Whitecross b. 1997’.

David was absolutely convinced now that whoever this ‘Ethren Whitecross’ was, had to be related to Alaire in some way but the implication was becoming abundantly clear. If he, David Grant, had not existed in whatever realm this was, logic pointed to Merula being involved with another person. And in all likelihood this American was it.

There were several other factors to consider, however. If his hypothesis was correct, how had this person died? How had he gotten involved in the first place? And what was Merula’s role in all of this? And if Alaire was her son, where was he at the moment?

David quickly closed the book and stuck it back on the shelf. Even among the circumstances, he still loved Merula no matter which universe she was in. At the very least, he wanted to make sure he was safe, sound, and happy no matter if she was married or taken by someone else. It was too important.

Then, a sense of déjà vu hit him for more than the first time that day. His own Merula was effectively shanghaied into the ranks of the Death Eaters. Could the same have happened here too? Suddenly, his stomach again dropped multiple notches below his belt as he recalled the poster of the haggard witch he had passed by earlier.

“No..” he whispered in horror.

Rushing outside, not even bothering to say goodbye to Madam Villanelle, David ran about fifteen paces outside on the cobblestone street, narrowly avoiding two small children running in front of him before finally coming upon the wanted poster he sought.

What he saw nearly crushed him.

Wanted for crimes against the Ministry and Humanity:

Merula Snyde

Age 26

167 cm

Offense: Ex-Death Eater under You Know Who

Status: Missing/On the Run

Any information about her whereabouts should be sent to the Auror Office of the Ministry straight away, and any assistance will be rewarded with a sum of 1000 galleons

He didn’t want to believe it. No part of him wanted to believe this was the girl he had fallen for all those years ago. Technically speaking it wasn’t and the unkempt appearance only contributed to his feeble denial. Though far from being a girly, girl, Merula always kept herself moderately groomed to a certain degree. This person couldn’t have been further from that image: her porcelain skin and soft features were gaunt and much thinner, permanent bags seemed to be fixed underneath her eyes, the normally chin length bob a tangled mess of brown that went far past her shoulders.

But there was no mistaking that tuft of orange on top of that mop, nor the vivid violet eyes. He’d know them anywhere. It was her alright and no amount of disbelief could change that fact.

“Merula,” he whispered. “What happened to you?”

Resolve surged through the Auror once more as the search for information took on a whole new dimension. This wasn’t merely about himself anymore, no this was much bigger. He needed to find this version of Merula and talk to her. He was sure she could reveal the true story of what occurred in this world and why. She was the key to everything, including the American on the monument that was becoming increasingly relevant.

Snatching down the poster, David pocketed it and began heading east. If Merula was a wanted witch with a dark past, she was sure to be in hiding somewhere. And if that place was England, he knew the exact spot where dark and outcast magic folk loved to congregate.

It was time to leave the serenity of Diagon Alley for the dirt and grime of Knockturn Alley.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In all honesty, going to one of the foulest areas in the British wizarding world was far more of a hunch than anything else, but he did have his reasons.

The first was Merula’s own history with the place. In his own world, she had discussed in detail her encounters in Knockturn Alley and all the times she visited with her parents as well as unsupervised instances. The amount of run ins they experienced together while at Hogwarts only added to that notorious history.

Second was his own experience as an Auror. Make no mistake, if someone wanted any information or news about the underworld, this was the proper location to do so. The trick was getting people to talk. Some would loosen their lips for a few extra galleons, but the dark, blackened alley ways held their own code of honor, one that was extremely hostile to outsiders and law enforcement. A man in blue had to be very careful with how they approached things.

Unfortunately for David, time was not on his side and he desired answers. The sad fact of the matter was, there was a distinct possibility Merula may not have remained in England after the war. Anyone on the run from Aurors wasn’t likely to stick around for long. He remembered Kingsley falsifying all those reports about Sirius Black being on some tropical island and Fudge buying it hook, line, and sinker.

However, assuming this version of his wife was still kicking around somewhere, this was the best place to ascertain that information, if anyone had it. Pulling the black hood over his head, he tried to give himself the appearance of someone who was collecting a bounty not an Auror making rounds. It helped that he did not have the blue robes on, but even so, it paid to have eyes on the back of their head.

That brought back memories of Mad-Eye, another painful loss he wasn’t prepared to deal with at the moment. After all, he was the personal mentor of a certain pink haired witch that became one of his best friends…

“Watchoo lookin at?” growled a short, squat, white bearded patron with a fish eye.

Snapping out of his daydreaming, David responded quickly and decisively.

“Nothing,” he responded. “Not unless you’ve seen this woman. Then we have business to discuss.”

He held up the poster of Merula and the dwarf like man gave it a good glance over.

“Ain’t seen head or tail of ‘er. Personally, me thought the Ministry already rounded up the last o them Death Eaters.”

“Apparently not. If you do see her, let me know. I pay rather handsomely for information of this kind.”

That definitely intrigued the man.

“Ye got yerself a deal.”

As he shuffled along his way, David grabbed another random person, this time a hooded witch and showed her the picture.

“Have you seen this woman?”

The hood fell back to reveal the face of a rather grotesque looking banshee, who began to screech as though she were being tortured.

“AREEEEEEEECCHHHHHHH!”

“Bloody hell! SHUT UP!”

He shoved the banshee away in an effort to reduce the attention he had unwittingly drawn on himself. This wasn’t going well thus far. Even the most transient, unsavory looking characters didn’t appear interested or knowledgeable about his wife. The longer he stayed here, the more likely he was to become a target and the last thing he wanted was to get caught up in a scrum in this Godforsaken place.

You taught me well, Rakepick you miserable bitch. Thankfully, Kingsley and Mad-Eye taught me better.

He was just about to take his questioning to another part of Knockturn when he noticed a middle aged woman in a black cloak staring at him and the poster he was currently holding. It dawned on him that she recognized the picture but before he could say so much as a word, she dropped everything she was holding and sped off into the street.

“Hey! Come back!” he shouted, immediately taking off after her.

The crowd was thick and various people shouted at him for shoving them, but he didn’t care. Just as long as he was able to keep the woman in his sights, he’d catch up to her eventually. He was only about five steps behind her, when she suddenly ducked into a side street in an attempt to shake him loose.

“Trying to do this the hard way, eh?” he muttered to himself. “We’ll see about that.”

The woman thought she could lose him by utilizing the maze of narrow streets and alleys that Knockturn was well known for. Unfortunately for her, David knew just as well as any of the sleazeballs who sold black market poisons on the corner and prepared a plan to cut her off. Using his superior speed and agility, he booked right knowing that the woman was trying to reach a secret passageway that led onto Piccadilly St., where she would blend in more easily.

Muttering incantations, he pointed his wand at the sky and a puff of golden smoke filled the air.

“That oughta keep you here.”

Sure enough, his guess was right. He took a left and then another left peering around the corner where the woman was attempting to use the passageway but she was too late. She had nowhere to run and there was no way out.

“You don’t strike me as the completely unscrupulous type but it would be better if you simply gave up now,” he told her.

The woman’s response was to send a cutting hex his way, which he easily dodged.

“Or not. Either way, you’re not going anywhere.”

David the saw woman try to apparate, but it was to no avail.

“Yeah that’s not going to work,” he said in the casual tone of someone scrapping butter over a biscuit. “Temporary anti-apparation ward. Really comes in handy in these kinds of situations.”

Realizing now that she was completely trapped the woman raised her wand, her arm shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“Stay back,” she said in a thick cockney accent. “I’m warning you.”

A silent disarming spell was all it took to send her last line of defense spinning into the air, which David caught before grabbing the woman by the wrists and pinning her against the wall.

“I’m only going to say this once,” he growled, his voice full of steel, hazel blue eyes boring into the woman’s light green. “You tell me the information I need to know about this person, and I won’t have to break your wrists and arm today. Start talking.”

“I swear I don’t know anything,” the woman pleaded.

“That’s why you ran away once you saw the picture, right? Listen, I’ve had a very rough day and I’m on my last leg of patience with other people’s shit. So I’m only going to say this once more. What do you know about this woman?!”

David, sensing that she was no longer a threat to him, eased his grip slightly, allowing some of the iron in his eyes to subside. She wasn’t the type you had to scare to death in order for her to talk. Just enough to know that you mean business.

“I seen her bout few weeks back. She comes around every so often looking for supplies and other things like that. She gives me no grief, so I don’t tell no authorities.”

“And you know that she’s Merula Snyde?”

“Aye,” the woman nodded, still nervous at the much bigger man maintaining a firm hold on her. “She was one of them Death Eaters. One of the few to escape gettin thrown into a bloody cell in Azkaban. No one knows how she did it.”

That was code for: I don’t personally know but I’ve heard rumors. David knew all the tricks the backalley types liked to pull.

“Enlighten me.”

The woman lowered her voice to a quiet, hushed tone as though admitting it out loud could get her into trouble.

“They say the night she was captured, some Yank was watching over ‘er in a cell way up in a tower or some such. Then, when his back was turned, she slipped by ‘im and into the black of night. Been on the run ever since. No one’s been able to find ‘er or touch ‘er. Cept when she comes around buying food and what not.”

David tried to process this in his head. The American in question was supposedly dead, marked by a gravestone and subtlety confirmed by this world’s Talbott. But if an American had been watching her and she escaped, how then did this Ethren Whitecross die?

“She didn’t kill him?” he asked.

“Didn’t ‘ave a wand. Or so I heard. It’s all just gossip round this place.”

Gossip it may be, but it often held an element of truth to it. However, there was only one way to truly find out.

“Do you know where she is now? Any location she was last seen or frequents?”

“Last I knew, she was ‘iding out in a little hovel up in Liverpool. There’s a muggle pub up there called ‘Thomas Rigby’s’. Apparently, she’s pretty fond of the drink nowadays.”

That was all he needed to hear. Having no more use for the woman, he let go of her wrists and tossed her wand back toward her.

“Oi! Don’t I get a little something for my trouble? I have needs too ya know and make no mistake.”

“Not for chasing you down,” he called back over his shoulder. “Besides, what you need is a bloody bath.”

Ignoring her cursing and insults uttered to his back, David now walked with more of a purposeful stride than ever before. He was getting to the bottom of this, in fact he was so close he could taste it. The only premonition? Not liking what he found. In the center of his gut, he had a nasty feeling that this version of Merula did not share much in common with the one he left behind.

I just hope she didn’t join them because of….no, I’m not even going to go there

There was no time to waste. It was on to Liverpool.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

David didn’t try to waste time in finding other Merula’s residency. The city itself was far too large and industrious to pinpoint an exact location. But he did find Thomas Rigby’s rather easily. It was a cozy little pub- well lit, quaint, a standing and sitting barroom with numerous tables for patrons to sit, drink, chat, or mind their own business. If one was a witch or wizard seeking to blend in, there weren’t many spaces better to do so. There wasn’t a single patron in here looking for anything out of the ordinary. And why would they? It was a lazy, Sunday evening on a cloudy British day.

The twenty five year old knew that there was a chance of sitting here all night without so much of a trace of Merula. But he also acknowledged that very few other alternatives existed short of breaking into the Ministry and looking at her last known whereabouts and that was something he could not afford at the moment. He didn’t even know how was going to leave this crazy world much less solve the mystery of what happened. The universe seemed content to just take him along for the ride.

So in the meantime, he decided to take off his hood, sit back for a bit and sip on a few pints of Guinness while he waited.

When the waitress came over to give him his drink, he handed her two hundred pounds worth of notes and told her, “Just keep them coming until I say otherwise. You can keep the change.”

The blonde waitress, a woman who looked to be in her mid thirties, merely shrugged.

“Suit yourself.”

David began drinking and began lamenting that wizarding beer lagged far behind in its quality compared to that of muggles. It had been a damn good thing he learned how to use dollars, euros, and pounds during his time abroad. They were two among many things he had discovered.

In the old days, meaning the time before the war, David was at his most content sitting in a bar such as this one, drinking the night away with some friends. As he had many times that day, his mind wandered back to memories that were now too painful to consider anymore. It was tradition on every Friday he Tonks and Talbott would go to a London pub and see who could hold the most liquor. Strangely enough, Talbott was usually the one with the highest tolerance. Badeea didn’t drink, so their excursions were usually just the three of them. Sometimes, they’d get Penny, Tulip, Barnaby, Andre, Charlie, Bill, Ben, or even Merula to join in the festivities.

Those memories only served to bring back even older ones. Nights in Hogsmeade where he and the lads almost destroyed the Hogs Head Inn, Penny’s cocktails, the lampshade Tonks wore while dancing on top of a table, parties hosted by random popular kids in the Three Broomsticks, including one where Ismelda and Diego first got together.

Draining Guinness after Guinness, David couldn’t help but think back on those days and how fleeting they were. Almost the relic of another time, a universe that no longer existed, similar to his own predicament. They were rare moments where everything wasn’t so complicated…they were just teenagers being teenagers, growing up in the best way they knew how. No war, killing, mourning, or death. No one had to choose a side under the point of a wand.

But eventually, they all did. Things fell apart. Their island home and their entire world went to hell: Barnaby fled the country taking Ismelda with him in an to avoid the fate that would befall so many of their housemates. Diego too found England increasingly dangerous and went back to Spain. Rowan, always sensitive by nature, never forgave him for putting Merula before their own friendship and soon embarked on his own journey across the world and soon found a husband along the way (to no one’s surprise he had a bit of a resemblance to Bill). Charlie went off to Romania to tame dragons, Bill to Egypt to advance his curse breaking career. Chiara became a healer at St. Mungo’s, Penny a potions lecturer, Andre the starting Keeper for the Tornadoes, Tulip a freelance journalist for international publications….

With the exception of a few (Rowan being among those who stayed away), all had come back to fight in the end, which made Merula’s situation all the more painful. Her forced subservience to her parents, long after she had renounced them and their blood purist ways, was an act of cruelty that made David want to break the glass in his hand. Whatever her flaws and faults, joining the ranks of the Death Eaters was not truly his wife’s own choice, but an abusive sin enacted by Matthias and Lyra Snyde.

I hate them. I hate them both. I don’t even regret accidentally killing Matthias. He deserved far worse for what he did to her.

They were manipulative, sociopathic people. But even from a young age Merula was able to see through that.

The ringing of the bell signaled the arrival of new customers as the pub slowly started to fill up. There was no sign of her yet.

He continued his internal monologue. No, his wife was no more a Death Eater than he was. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever happened in the world he was in was much different than the outcome in his own. He was almost afraid to continue searching, but some other entity pushed him on, as though a cosmic force was actually trying to show him something.

He was already on his 5th Guinness when the door opened again. Just as he began to believe that the exercise was all for naught, there she was, standing in the doorway, completely cloaked but there was no mistaking those violet eyes nor the trodden black combat boots she still wore even into her twenties. And underneath the robes, she looked every bit as tired and worn down as the wanted poster.

By Merlin, is that really her? She looks as though she’s ten years older than she is

David supposed alcohol had a lot to do with that, after all the stuff was highly addictive. But there was more to it than that and it was plain enough on her face. There was a lot of turmoil hidden underneath the brown haired mess- anger, regret, denial, depression, and pain…so much pain.

“I’ll have my usual,” she said in a bored monotone, tossing out a couple of coins.

“Coming right up,” the barkeep announced.

He could have guessed what she ordered: a vodka tonic with a lime to top it off. Her favorite. Though there was no doubt this Merula had no idea who the heck he was, it also stood to reason she was just as clever as his own version. She would know if a wizard was either observing or following her. So he kept his head down and bid his time, resisting the temptation to look in her direction.

A couple of hours passed and the Slytherin kept downing more and more vodka tonics. By this time, David had ceased drinking, the mind needed to be clear for what came next and it would not be easy. But if she was intoxicated enough, he just might be able to get her to talk long enough before she inevitably tried to hex or kick him. Either way, he tried not to focus on the awful appearance and keep himself focused on the ‘why’ and not the ‘what.’ It did no good to do the latter.

Finally, at the stroke of ten, Merula paid for her last drink, hopped off the stool and made her way outside. David, having paid in advance, stood up, and also opened the door to the warm pre-summer air. He pulled his cloak over his head and faked as if he were going left but secretly veered right, careful to mask his presence with a concealing spell. The onset of darkness also assisted in avoiding being seen.

“Come on, just a little more,” he muttered to himself.

When Merula was about fifty yards away from Thomas Rigby’s and headed towards the River Mersey, either to hang on the railing, puke, or a combination thereof, it was time to make his move

With a small *pop he apparated from the corner of the street and almost directly behind her. Immediately, he was met with a wand to the face.

“I suggest you back off right now, wanker,” she spat viciously, though her words were slightly slurred. “Not unless you want to lose a nose and your cock in the same night.”

“You know it’s really quite impressive how many of those things you downed in a couple hours,” he responded dryly. But that had been the wrong thing to say as she sent a curse of unknown origin his way.

Yeah, that’s her alright. Probably thinks I’m trying to get in her pants.

“Do you think just anyone can sneak up on me?” she snarled. “Do you know who I am?”

“Believe me, I’m very familiar with ‘The Greatest Witch at Hogwarts.’”

There was a minor look of surprise on her face indicating that was a term she had not used in quite some time. Nevertheless, she remained hostile.

“I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you,” she said wand remaining directly pointed at his chest. “So whoever you are, mind your own business and hit the road.”

David internally struggled with the situation. On the one hand, Merula was still his wife, no matter which universe he found himself in….no, that was wrong. Scanning this woman up and down she bore almost no resemblance to the woman he’d left behind, either in appearance or temperament. She was an ex-Death Eater on the run and also a drunk. This was not someone to be saved or redeemed.

This is about closure. Something is going on here that’s bigger than yourself.

As much as it pained him, he could not give the impression he was a pushover or else she’d walk right over him.

Suddenly, quicker than Merula could anticipate, he disarmed her physically and grabbed her left arm.

“Hey! Let go!”

True to his prediction, she gave him a mighty kick in the leg with her combat boot but he stood firm, rolling back her sleeve to reveal the ugly, faded remains of the Dark Mark. The skull and snake were still there, but with Voldemort’s death it was already becoming gnarled and reduced, and soon it would be nothing more than a permanent scar- a black stain on all those who wore it.

“So it’s true,” he whispered harshly, pushing her away. “You did join them.”

Merula didn’t try to escape. She didn’t have her wand for one thing but the look on her face was nothing short of grim.

“A real genius you turned out to be. Didn’t you read the wanted poster before deciding to collect this bounty?”

“I don’t give a damn about the wretched bounty,” he replied, hurt creeping into his tone. “What I want to know is why.”

She held her grim, harsh gaze, unwilling to say more. But David hadn’t come this far to be denied now. If this was some lesson being brought upon him by the universe by Merlin he was going to learn everything.

“Please…” he said, his voice dry and cracked from all of the beer. “Please tell me that joining the Death Eaters was not something you did voluntarily. If you were forced, it’s not the same thing but I need to know that you did not do this by your own actions.”

It was yet another in a long line of cosmic twists and also another painful reminder of just how different this woman was from his own Merula. She didn’t need to say anything, her silence said it all.

“Why?” he repeated painfully.

“Because I couldn’t disobey my parents!” came the ragged shout. “Because people don’t change! It was war and I had to choose a side…”

“…and ended up choosing the side you despised since you were a little girl. You said so yourself, that mark was something you feared.”

“They manipulated me! I-I….DON’T YOU GET IT?!” she screamed in rabid fury. “I said the same thing to him all those years ago! There is no such thing as happy endings!”

It was all the confirmation he needed to know that this woman, whoever she was, couldn’t be further from the Merula Snyde he had come to love and lay his life for. The person standing before him sounded no different than the version he’d known in third or fourth year: petulant, narcissistic, angry, and blaming everyone for her problems except herself.

“You still had a choice,” he responded firmly, willing himself not to quiver as he spoke. “No one forced you to join Voldemort. And look what it got you.”

“What’s it to you, whoever you are?” Merula snapped, leaning against the railing as though unable to properly stand upright. “You sound just like him. Preaching about morality and choice as though any of us have it.”

They were coming to the crux of the issue now.

“Whitecross,” he said and there was immediate recognition of that name upon its proclamation. “What was your relationship with him? Where is your son?”

“So, you know about that too,” she huffed. “Are you some two bit author looking to make a buck on our life story?”

“Look, it doesn’t matter who I am,” David responded in frustration, knowing that there was no point in telling her the truth. “I just need to know what happened to Ethren Whitecross. Humor me and I’ll leave you alone.”

This seemed to do the trick as other Merula sighed and stood up a little straighter.

“We were….an item so to speak. Hogwarts sweethearts, dating pals, whatever you want to call it. He loved me.”

“But you chose opposite sides,” David confirmed. “He must have been an Auror or with the Order.”

“The latter of the two. He was always a magnet for adventure, especially during the curse breaking years. Then again what else do you expect from a Gryffindor?”

Though this universe had been the opposite of his in so many ways, David was starting to see some parallels as well. A Gryffindor boy falls in love with a Slytherin girl, dating while at Hogwarts, going on curse breaking adventures…it was all quite similar. And yet, so vastly different. The dynamic of their relationship had not played out as it did in his own world.

“How did he die?” David continued. “I was told he was guarding you in one of the Hogwarts towers when he turned a blind eye and allowed you to escape. But the memorial says he was killed on that night.”

“That wasn’t him.”

He raised an eyebrow, features turning into a confused frown.

“He’s the only Whitecross listed on that memorial. So either you’re lying or-”

“It was his brother guarding me you prat!” she cut across him. “Jaxson Whitecross. He wasn’t the only American there that night. He was the one who let me go.”

“Jaxson,” David breathed out. It was a name remarkably similar to Jacob, his own brother. “So if he was the one who let you go, what happened to Ethren?”

There was no mistaking it this time, tears were forming in the defeated violet eyes. A look of hatred formed on her sullen, hollow features but it was not a hate directed at him. No this hatred was internal.

“He was killed….protecting me.”

For the second time in as many days, David felt his body go numb. He knew that the person he sought was already deceased, but hearing how he was taken from this world made it that much more…potent.

“Protecting you?”

“Yes,” she answered, salty discharge streaming down her cheeks, managing to tell the story through emotional breaths. “I-I had killed two Death Eaters that were trying to do him in. But then reinforcements from the Order arrived including a herd of centaurs. One of them saw me and shot an arrow directly at my heart….h-he took it instead.”

And so the answer had been revealed at last. This was the connection that the universe had been trying to show him all along. The man who loved Merula Snyde in this world, died doing so without hesitation for a person that did not deserve it.

Sacrifice. The ultimate sacrifice.

“And your son,” he managed to choke out. “What of your son?”

“He lives with his uncle in America…I’m sor….I couldn’t take care of him. Not after everything that happened. I’m not a mother. I’m not anything except a lush anymore.”

It was the closest thing to an apology David heard thus far and he suspected that was as close it was going to get. At long last he finally understood. Stories had more than one way of playing themselves out. A choice made by one was not a choice made by someone else. This was the legacy of the world he currently stood in laid bare: Merula had refused to better herself and as a result the story of Ethren Whitecross ended in tragedy, not redemption.

How then, would his own conclude?

Looking down at the crying woman in front of him, a mixture of pity and supreme sadness weighed in his heart. He wanted to say that he was sorry and to help in any way he could. But this was a person beyond any sort of help he could give. And if he and Ethren had truly been similar, nothing he said would change that.

“Take this,” he said, tossing back her wand. “Though I doubt you’ll need it much. If my hunch is correct, no one will be able to harm you until the day you pass from this world.”

He began to turn to leave but before doing so, there was one more thing he needed to know.

“Merula,” he spoke softly. “Where is he buried?”

“O-on the shores of Lake Michigan in the United States. There’s a large house by the shore overlooking a grassy hill. He…he’s there.”

Then that’s where I’ll go

“Take care of yourself,” he said to other Merula, though in his heart he knew she wouldn’t. Whatever her future held, it didn’t involve proper self-care. It was out of his hands now.

Even now, I understand…that could have just as easily been me lying in a grave. He gave his life for her even when she was beyond all hope…he still loved her just as I would have.

He walked off from the docks and apparated away. There was one thing left to do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Somewhere on the shore of Lake Michigan an unknown man arrived at a beautiful, melancholic scene.

David had never been to this part of the United States, his interactions being limited strictly on the east coast in cities like New York, Boston, Washington, and what not. But he resolved to visit again someday to the Midwest, because what he saw was truly mesmerizing. True to Merula’s word, there was indeed a large mansion overlooking a green hill which contained nothing save for a white marble headstone. Beyond the shore, were the waters of Lake Michigan in all its spring time splendor. In the distance, tall oaks and pines mixed together creating a deciduous-boreal forest, the scent of which could be inhaled even from the edge of the water. The oaks were at last in full bloom, creating a vivid green that contrasted wonderfully with the afternoon sun and the dark, turquoise sky. The air was clean…so clean. He truly envied anyone who grew up in an environment like this. America was always a much sunnier place than England, both figuratively and literally.

But that was not the purpose of this visit. David couldn’t explain but he sensed his time in this world was coming to an end.

Which brought him to this final task.

It hadn’t been hard to sense the magic surrounding this place and after probing with his wand, David detected only a minor muggle repelling charm by the gravesite, which thankfully wasn’t rigged with a caterwauling charm or any other such alarm. After temporary disabling it, David walked the length of the hill before arriving at the foot of the headstone. He silently read the writing of the deceased for the second time that day.

Ethren Whitecross

1973-1998

A proud American

A wonderful son & brother

You will be missed

“The father that never was,” David breathed out.

He took one more glance back at the mansion, ensuring no one noticed his presence. To ensure absolute privacy, he tapped his head with the disillusionment charm, rendering him completely invisible. After one more look towards the beautiful forest beyond, he began to speak.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” he finally uttered, struggling to hold back the lump in his throat. “I don’t know what to say really. This whole thing is bloody crazy. You never knew me, and I only just learned about you. We’re literally from different worlds. And not just because I’m from across the pond,” he added with a choked chuckle.

“But at the same time, I feel a connection to you. I can’t explain it, but after the events of today and all the shit that’s happened, part of me feels like I’ve known you almost my entire life. And…I couldn’t leave without honoring you.”

He knelt down, taking another deep breath.

“Thank you. Thank you for the kindness and consideration you gave my wife. I know she’s not my wife but she’s still Merula and my love for her transcends worlds. No matter how difficult she was or how lost she became, you never stopped loving her. Even when she found herself in the dark pit of the Death Eaters, you never gave up. I only wish she had done the same for you before it was too late.

“Thank you, for making me realize…just how lucky I am. Before I arrived here, I genuinely thought there was nothing left to live for. But I was wrong, I have everything to live for. My wife is alive, so are scores of others. We have the opportunity to build a better world than the one before and we will. Through it all, I’m still here and so is Merula. That’s more than enough.

“Lastly, thank you for your sacrifice…the ultimate sacrifice. You gave your life so others could live, and the evil of Voldemort permanently ended. You did so out of love, and because of that your Merula will carry that protection for the rest of her life. People owe you so much more than just a memorial and a gravestone.”

Taking out of his locket, the one that contained the picture of his beloved wife, he clutched it tightly as he uttered his last sentence.

“I promise you for as long as I draw breath, your story will not be forgotten. I swear it on your grave, Ethren Whitecross.”

He reached out and touched the white marble and that’s when he felt it. The same overpowering, white hot sensation that threatened to rip him apart molecule by molecule and every action and thought seemed to run for an eternity. By the time he thought his mind would be lost to the pure chaos, darkness took him once more and there was nothing.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A thunderous force pushed David so hard, he fell straight back onto a hard stone floor with an incredible thud.

“AGH!”

Ignoring the pain he felt in his back and shoulder, he slowly lifted himself off the ground and tried to make some sense of his surroundings.

“Grant?” a voice called out. This one, however, was not mysterious or a whisper.

“Hello?” he called out.

The figure of Williamson made its presence known as he stepped into the lighted part of the room.

“Blimey, Grant what are you doing in here? This area’s off limits, you know that.”

Dusting off his robes and pocketing his wand, David saw that he was still clutching the photo of Merula that he had taken out only seconds earlier at the gravesite. But if he was back in the room of death that could only mean…

I’m back. Son of a bitch, I don’t know how but I’m back in my own world. And not a second from where I left it.

“Uh, Grant? David? Can you hear me? What’s gotten into you?”

Shaking his head, he pulled his focus back to the matter at hand, trying to give off the impression that nothing was out of the ordinary…which was a shame because he had never been very good at lying.

“Oi, yeah. Sorry, Williamson. I zoned out for a second.”

The smaller, dirty blonde Auror eyed him carefully.

“Just what exactly were you doing down here anyway?”

“Nothing,” David murmured. “Just…needed some time to think. I’ll be on my way.”

But Williamson held up a hand to stop him.

“Breaking into a highly restricted area of the Ministry aside, that’s actually not the reason I came to see you.”

That gave him pause, as he stuck the picture back into his jeans pocket.

“What do you mean?”

“I come bearing news. The Minister has decided to release your wife, Merula Alice Snyde, effective immediately with no charges being brought to bear as of now. She’s free to go pending further evidence.”

David could hardly believe his ears nor dare to feed the excitement of his heart.

“She is?” he asked lamely.

“Yes. We’ve received new intelligence in the last hour or so, one that just came to my attention. It confirms directly that your wife was under the control of the Imperius Curse and that her actions were indeed not her own.”

As overjoyed as he was, David didn’t quite understand how this was possible. One moment Merula was looking at a life sentence in Azkaban and now she was free?

“How? I mean…how-”

“Two people, including one who was very high in You Know Who’s inner circle, have agreed to give testimony against any and all of his captured servants. One confirmed that Miss Snyde was indeed being controlled by Death Eaters Matthias and Lyra Snyde and is prepared to confirm that in court to the Wizengamot.”

“And just who is this informant?”

“That is confi-”

“Out with it, Williamson, who am I going to tell?”

With a sigh, his colleague relented.

“Lucius Malfoy. And his wife, Narcissa.”

Yup that confirms it

Williamson gave an irritated look and gestured towards the door.

“Look you’re really not supposed to be in here and I imagine you’ll want to see your wife now. She’s waiting for you in the lobby. Shall we?”

He didn’t have to be told twice. Jumping down from the giant rock that supported the veil, he followed Williamson out of the door and back towards the Atrium.

“By the way, I do hope that you didn’t touch that thing in there.”

David gave a cheeky grin and response.

“Perish the thought Williamson, old boy,” he in a fake posh tone.

Yes, teasing him would never get old.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It didn’t take long for David and Merula to reunite. The moment the spotted one another they ran into each other’s arms and embraced, hugging so tightly that neither one was prepared to let go.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered in her ear, tears running down his cheeks once more. “I’m so sorry.”

“What are you sorry about you prat?” Merula responded, wiping away tears of her own. “You saved me from being a slave. From my parents.”

“No, you saved yourself,” he affirmed to her, his forehead pressed against hers. “You made the choice. The right one.”

He kissed her, long and passionately, one that she returned.

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “We’re all okay. We’re going to get through this.”

“Yes, we will.”

An awkward clearing of the through interrupted their tender moment and David realized Williamson was still there.

“Very sorry to cut in, but there is one other thing I needed to inform you of,” he stated.

“It can’t wait until after post-prison sex with my wife?”

Merula kicked him in the shins, which caused him to wince and hop on one foot.

“Just joking, dear.”

“I shan’t keep you,” Williamson said, completely unperturbed. “I only wanted to confirm your appointment with Minister Shacklebolt regarding your reinstatement to the Auror Office. He seeks to discuss the matter with you personally this Wednesday at ten o’clock. It seems he desires your return.”

Relief awashed the twenty-five-year-old as he looked towards the heavens.

Yes, everything was going to be alright.

“Tell him I’ll be there on the dot.”

“Wonderful, I shall inform him of your decision,” he turned to go but not before adding the smallest of smiles. “Congratulations to you both.”

“Many thanks, Williamson.”

With the last of the formalities concluded, he and Merula were set to exit.

“Shall we go home?” she asked him.

“Wherever the hell that is. I pretty much abandoned my London pad two years ago. I do hope no one’s trashed it.”

“We’ll figure it out,” she reassured him. “We always do. Now let’s get out of here. I never was a fan of the Ministry.”

“Wait.”

He stopped her. Before they did anything else, David had to get a good look at her…just to be sure. What he saw, warmed his heart. Yes, she was still covered in cuts and bruises from the battle, and dark circles permeated underneath her violet eyes. But instead of alcoholic self-loathing he saw they still radiated life. Her hair was still the cute little bob he adored as opposed to a tangled heap. Her posture gave no indication of defeat. She was not the broken Merula Snyde daughter of Death Eaters who gave up on herself, but a woman who had passed through multiple trials and won them all.

It’s still her, he thought joyfully. This is still the woman I fell in love with and will continue to love for all time.

“Uh, David?”

“Yes?”

“I appreciate that you want to bask in all of my beauty, but the staring is kinda off putting. Can I at least shower beforehand?”

David smiled.

“Of course. It’s just…I love you is all. And I’m the luckiest man in the world to have the ‘Greatest Witch at Hogwarts’ by my side.”

Merula laughed and interlocked her chipped, black polished fingers with his.

“Wow, it’s a been a long time since either one of us used that title.”

“I don’t see you complaining.”

Merula leaned in, a soft, but eager look on her beautiful features.

“I’m not,” and she gave him a gentle kiss. “I love you too.”

Together they began to walk towards the exit of the Atrium but not before Merula had one last question.

“Dave…you mentioned something earlier about me making the right choice. What did you mean by that? There was a funny look on your face when you said it.”

Clever as ever, she is

“It’s a bit hard to explain,” he said rubbing the back of his head as they approached the exit.

“Did something happen to you in the short time I was in a Ministry cell?” she joked to him.

The image of a marble white headstone appeared once more in his mind, the shores of Lake Michigan calming his heart as he squeezed Merula’s hand a little tighter.

“It’s a long story. A story that will never be forgotten.”

The End

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