#and. there’s a point where they’re still growing into what they become before everything breaks. and they still trust each other. and for

[desperate-gay]

Pls pls write for ali

Victory

Ali Krieger x fem!reader

The game is intense. Both teams have been playing hard, leading it to be 0-0 after the full ninety minutes, causing it to head into overtime. It’s 105 minutes in and Gotham has taken control of the ball. Kristie passes it downfield and it continues to move forward as Portland’s defenders scramble to guard the ball, but because they’re a little behind, it leaves a space allowing Katie to shoot the ball and hit the back of the bet.

The whole stadium goes wild, including you standing up with Sloane on your hip, cheering with the crowd. She looks around cluelessly with noise-canceling headphones, making her look even more adorable than usual. Kyle alongside you has Ocean in his arms while pumping his fist up and down at the new lead.

Only 14 minutes later, they are advancing to the finals. Ali looks up into the stands with a bright smile, seeing her family witness her journey through her career, but she is quickly pulled aside by her teammates who continue to chant they’re not finished yet.

After a few more minutes, you and Kyle make your way onto the turf with the kids to meet up with the captain. Kelley, Kristie, and Lynn all talk with her but once she sees you approaching, she excuses herself and jogs over.

“Mama won.” Sloane slurs with a cute little grin.

“Yes, she did!” You exclaim as you continue to bounce the little girl on your hip, something she has always enjoyed for whatever reason.

Ali laughs and takes Ocean out of Kyle’s arms without her smile breaking once. “I’m so happy you’re all here. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“We’d do anything for you, sis. Right, Y/n/n?” He wraps his arm around Ali’s shoulder before nudging you to answer. You divert your attention back to the girl and notice she’s already staring back at you.

“Of course. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

You all stand around and talk for a bit with a few of her teammates. The Portland breeze picks up, making it feel much chillier than it actually is. You’re only covered by a thin zip-up, not thinking the temperature would drop mid-game and freeze you half to death. Your shivering is noticed by Ali, so she shrugs off her coat and rests it on your shoulders before taking Sloane from your hands into her other arm.

“Ali, you’ll be cold now. I’ll be fine-“

“You’re clearly cold and you need to warm up. I’m hot anyways.” She shrugs you off and talks to both of the kids in her arms. You’re lucky that the bitter weather makes your cheeks rosy or she definitely would’ve noticed the deep blush rushing to your cheeks at the gesture.

You have been friends with Ali since forever. Your feelings for her have grown stronger and stronger as time moved on to the point where you’re now sure you’re in love with her. The only problem is that she split from Ashlyn months ago and you were her shoulder to cry on through her heartbreak. To you, it’s still too soon to even think about making a move, especially when she has more important things to think about like her retirement and her kids.

Sloane and Ocean have become important to you as well, treating them as one of your own. The little girl is a goofball and the little boy is a bit of a stinker at times, but nothing makes you love them any less. Ali sees the way you interact with them which makes her melt to the floor, knowing that you’re perfect in any way.

Long before the divorce, she knew it was over with Ashlyn for a while. They both argued constantly and Ali didn’t want the kids to grow up in a toxic environment. When Ashlyn cheated, she weirdly felt relieved. Maybe it was because it made her feel less guilty for growing feelings for you. Her best friend.

When the split happened, she ran to you. Even if she knew it was going to happen, it was still devastating. No matter what caused the divorce, she’ll still always care for her ex-wife, and knowing everything is changing with her career, love, and family, it breaks her. You’re there for it all. Her ups and downs, highs and lows. You assure her she’s stuck with you forever.

So here you are now, in Portland watching the captain survive and advance to the finals. Kyle drove you and the kids since Ali had to arrive a little earlier to get ready, but she insists her brother heads back to his hotel and she’ll take everyone back with her.

“Let me go wash off and gather my things then I’ll meet you here. Are you okay with watching them for a couple of minutes?” The taller girl asks, gesturing to the two toddlers in your arms.

You wave her off the best you can with her busied hand and say, “I’m sure I can handle these angels. Now hurry! I want to get back to the hotel.”

“Jeez, I thought I was bossy.” She snarks, walking away but not before the tip of your foot meets with her behind. “Ow! Meany.” You stick your tongue out on her which she returns, causing the kids in your arms to giggle at their Mama’s banter.

Kelley walks out with Kristie and sees the two giggling toddlers. Rushing over to you, she drops her bag, holds out her hands with a grabby gesture, and takes Ocean from your left arm. Kristie quickly follows and pulls Sloane into hers, allowing her arms to relax from the removed weight.

“I’ve missed you two.” Kelley coos at the boy while sticking her finger out for him to wrap his tiny hands around.

“I want one.” The blonde next to you frowns. “Can I keep her?”

“Mmm, I don’t think Kriegs would be happy with me if I sell her children-“

Your statement is cut off by the locker room door opening, revealing the said girl with dampened hair and a bag swung over her shoulders. “I leave you for a few minutes and you’re already auctioning off my babies?”

“Am not! Kristie is thinking about stealing Sloane!” You defend yourself while pointing to the girl.

“Hey!”

Ali chuckles and wraps her arm around your waist, pulling you into her chest. You don’t know if she realizes what she’s doing, but you’re far from complaining about the closeness. You both watch as your guys' two friends continue to mess with the children before you see them yawn.

“Alright, time to go. Gotta put these two to sleep.”

Kristie frowns but reluctantly hands Sloane over to you anyway. You smile sympathetically and pat her back with your free hand.

“I’m going to call Sam and ask for one now. I’ll see you two later.” The girl hops off on her phone, most likely already face-timing her Australian fiancé.

Kelley also bids her goodbyes, parting ways from the four of you, letting you all finally walk out to the car. You both buckle them in before you settle into the passenger seat and Ali in the driver.

The car ride remains silent besides the quiet hum of the radio in the background. You keep your gaze out the window, watching the unfamiliar buildings pass and the stars in the sky. The two toddlers in the back both fall asleep due to it being past their bedtime and the eventful day they had.

As you pull into the hotel parking lot, you unbuckle your seatbelt and turn around to look at the peaceful two.

“They’re so precious.” You mumble in awe to which Ali hums in agreement, also looking with you.

You both grab their sleeping forms and head into the hotel room. You’ve been staying with Kyle at his, but since she insisted on driving you back, you follow her into her room, thinking she might want to hang out for a bit. When in the room, you both first change the kids' clothes and place them into their little cribs for the night.

Ali sighs and thumps onto the bed in the middle of the room with her hands covering her face. Her shirt rides up due to her arms lifting, exposing her muscular stomach. You sit at the edge of the mattress and admire the beauty in front of you. A clearing of a throat breaks your stare and turns your attention to the brunette who is now sat up staring at you with a ghost of a smirk.

Heat once again radiates onto your face, embarrassing you further proving you just got caught. The best moves and the sheets shuffle from her moving to sit next to you. She nudges her shoulder with hers as she continues to look at your side profile.

Breaking the silence she says, “I’m happy you came with us to Portland. It means a lot to me; you being here through everything.”

“Like I said, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

You look up back at her and your stomach twists at the sight of her gaze remaining on you. With both of your heads turned, your nose is almost hitting against hers. For a second, you swear you saw her eyes flick down to your lips, but maybe your eyes are deceiving you, feeding into your delusional mind that thinks she may feel the same.

Surprisingly, your mind wasn’t faking you out. Her hand reaches out and rests on your cheek, the soft pad of her thumb stroking your skin gently. She slowly leans in closer when she sees you look at her lips, taking it as a sign you’re not going to find her disgusting.

“Is this okay?” The brunette asks as her lips hover over yours. You nod instantly, not trusting your voice at the moment.

That’s when it finally happens. Her lips slot into yours like a missing piece to a puzzle you worked ages on. The kiss is firm, not too soft to make you think she’s unsure, but not too rough to make you think there’s no meaning behind it. As it continues, her other hand moves down and strokes your thigh which makes you crumble even more into the kiss while your hands rest lightly on her chest.

It lasts until you two need air, pulling away you rest your forehead against hers, giggling lightly in delight.

“What are you giggling about?” She smiles at the sweet sound.

“I just can’t believe this is happening. I’m really happy is all.”

Your right-hand slides itself to the back of her neck and rubs up and down, soothing the tense muscles. She sighs in relief from the feeling and pulls away slightly to be able to look at you. If she was a cartoon, hearts would appear in her eyes from seeing you smile softly at her and your doe eyes roaming her face.

Not being able to control herself, she pulls you in again and places multiple pecks on your lips, causing you to giggle at the outburst and try to lightly shove her off. She finally stops when she hears a quiet whine from the crib which makes the both of you pause and see if you woke one of the toddlers up. Lucky for you, they must have fallen back asleep as quickly as they woke up.

Ali moves to lie down on the mattress before opening her arms wide, signaling for you to lay down with her. You slot yourself comfortably into her embrace and cuddle into her chest. She presses one final peck to your head before whispering, “You are the one for me.”

You tap her waist 3 times, telling her you feel the same, something you've both done ever since you started hanging out. Both exhausted from the thrilling day, it doesn’t take long for slumber to take over your bodies, making you miss the quiet buzz from your phone.

brother kriegs<3

im hoping you finally made the move since youre not here. cant wait for you to be my sister-in-law. i have been dreaming of this day since you admitted your feelings xx

#ali krieger x reader #ali krieger #woso x reader #woso imagine #woso fic #woso #kelley o'hara #kristie mewis #gotham fc #nwsl #uswnt #lgbtq

[andvys]

We'll burn the sky | part eight

Warnings: angst, mentions of suicide, mentions of cheating, allusions to smut

Pairings: Rockstar!Eddie Munson x Rockstar!fem!reader | Eddie Munson x Chrissy Cunningham | Steve Harrington x fem!reader

Summary: Eddie confronts you about your night with Steve. You have your first interview and your final show before your break in Hawkins.

Word count: 7.6k

Series masterlist

-

The frown on Eddie’s face seems constant as he listens to Steve talk about his amazing night with you. 

He can’t even be mad at him, Steve knows nothing about the things that happened between you and Eddie but it still makes him angry; the way you so easily moved on from him and let someone else touch you the way he touched you– actually, you let Steve do more than just touch you. 

You and Eddie never had sex. 

He wanted to wait, he wanted to break up with her first. 

“Eddie,” Steve nudges his shoulder, “do you think I could take her out on dates when she comes to Hawkins?” he asks, staring at his friend, not noticing the anger and the jealousy in his eyes. 

Eddie doesn’t even look at his face, he doesn’t look into his eyes the way he always does when they talk, he stares at Steve’s neck with a sour expression on his face, you gave him hickeys, your lips touched his neck, your lips touched his lips, your hands touched his body, you let him touch you, you moaned his name. 

“Dude, what’s up with you?” 

Steve slaps Eddie’s shoulder as if to shake him awake. 

Eddie blinks, furrowing his brows as he finally looks into his friend’s eyes, “huh?” 

Chuckling, Steve shakes his head, “are you okay?” 

‘No, you fucked the girl that I love.’ Eddie thinks to himself. 

“Yeah, just tired,” he mumbles, “got another show tonight and some kind of interview.” 

Steve raises his eyebrows in surprise, “an interview? Are you nervous?” 

Eddie shrugs as he reaches for his cigarettes, taking one out from the pack before he puts it back inside, “not really,” he mumbles with the cigarette between his lips now, “I don’t think they’re gonna focus much on me or the guys. They’re not gonna go easy on her though,” he says after lighting up his cigarette. 

He is concerned about you. He knows how rude the press can be.

“She’s tough, got a mouth on her too,” Steve chuckles, “she’ll be fine.” 

“I hope so.” 

Steve scratches the back of his neck and clears his throat, he looks down at the snowy ground, “can I ask you something?” 

Eddie clenches his jaw already, knowing that it’ll be something about you. 

“Sure.” 

“Are you and Chrissy still a thing?” 

Oh. 

Eddie swallows harshly, he inhales and breathes out the smoke into the sky before he turns back to Steve. 

“Why are you asking?” 

Steve avoids his eyes, feeling nervous and uncomfortable all of the sudden and it only causes the frown on Eddie’s face to grow bigger. Just by Steve’s weird behavior he can tell that something happened. 

Steve tears his gaze away from the snow, instead finding interest in the people that walk past them on the sidewalk. 

“Steve,” Eddie mumbles, “why are you asking?” 

“I just– me and Robin went to a party last week and she was there,” he explains as his guilty eyes finally look into his. 

“And?” Eddie asks, tilting his head a little. He doesn’t know why he is even asking him this, he can already tell where this is going. 

Chrissy has either been seen with Jason or some other asshole. 

“Robin was with Vickie and uh, I was getting a drink, she followed me, we were just talking about you know, stuff,” Steve chuckles nervously, “she was talking about work, I was talking about a date I went on–”

“Steve,” Eddie says sternly, “come to the point.” 

He sighs, “okay,” he mumbles under his breath, “she kissed me.” 

The betrayal in Eddie’s eyes is there but there’s no surprise, no pain, no heartbreak, no shock– just betrayal and disappointment. He can’t feel hurt anymore, not after everything she did to him. He was used to it. Somehow, he has become numb to the pain, even when he used to love her. 

You just left the hotel and were about to walk around the corner when you heard Steve’s words. Halting in your tracks, your eyes widen in shock.

“But I didn’t kiss her back, I pushed her away, she tried again and she wanted more than that but I pushed her away, I swear Eddie–”

“It’s okay, Steve.” 

“N-No, it’s not, Eddie. I’m so sorry,” you hear Steve say. 

“It’s not your fault, you know it’s not the first time,” Eddie says without a single emotion in his voice. 

“Yeah, it isn’t. I-I saw her, Eddie, with Jason.” 

“Okay.” 

You furrow your brows at his words. Okay? How is that okay? How can he be so calm, so unbothered? 

“Okay?” Steve scoffs, “that’s not okay, Eddie! She keeps doing it– dude, you were a wreck, you were heartbroken when she cheated on you back then and now you act like it’s okay?” 

He suffered before, she put him through this kind of pain before, that’s why he is so unfazed. He is numb. He is numb to all this pain and all these feelings. Is that why it was so easy for him to do all of this?

“You should leave her.”

“I will,” Eddie says loudly, “I’ve wanted to do that for a while now, I-I don’t know what the fuck I was waiting for.” 

You can hear Steve’s sigh, “I get it. I felt the same after Nancy cheated on me with Jonathan,” he snorts, “I was willing to look past it and beg her to stay with me but looking back on it, I’m glad I never begged, would’ve just made a fool out of myself. And, being alone isn’t that bad, man. At least you won’t get cheated on.” 

Eddie laughs a little, you know that he is shaking his head at Steve’s words right now. 

You also shake your head, staring at the ground in confusion. What’s wrong with the women in their life’s? Despite what Eddie did, you still think that he is the sweetest person you have met, he is perfect in your eyes, that’s why it hurts so much to look at him and remember what he was hiding and doing all these months. 

“Yeah uh, I’m going to talk to her when we’re back home.” 

“Who are we spying on?”

You almost yell in surprise when you hear Gareth’s whisper, startled, you turn around and stare at him with wide eyes, “dude!” you say in a hushed whisper as you hit his shoulder, he stumbles back a little. 

“You should’ve seen your face!” he laughs. 

“Shut up!” you frown, rolling your eyes.

He is still laughing, like it’s the funniest thing ever. 

“Are you drunk or something?” you mumble, furrowing your brows. 

“No,” he snorts as he finally stops laughing and straightens up, “you just get that funny look on your face whenever something startles you.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s like you’re about to start screaming like the girls in the horror movies.” 

“That’s not true!” 

“Yes it is, y/n.” 

You roll your eyes at the grin on his face, “whatever.” 

Jeff comes out next, he’s wearing a thick hoodie with your band logo on it, a big leather jacket over it, he is carrying a red paper cup in his hands. 

“Hey you,” he smiles, “I know you missed breakfast and I know you need your coffee so, so…” he trails off, holding it out for you. 

Your eyes soften. You take the warm cup, giving him a small smile, “that’s nice of you, thank you, Jeff.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

“Did you put something in there?” Gareth asks Jeff with a smirk on his face. 

Jeff glares at him, “I’m not you, asshole.” 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t take a coffee from you, man,” you mumble, “I know you’d put salt or pepper in it.” 

“That’s uh not correct,” he says, holding one finger up, “I would add salt and pepper in.” 

You snort, “you’re a menace.” 

“Hey.” 

Your head snaps in his reaction, your eyes meet with his. Not settling on Steve, just yet. 

Eddie’s eyes leave your face, settling on your neck instead, he eyes the marks that Steve left on you. Anger flashes in his eyes and he frowns. 

Is he hurt or is he just angry that another man touched you, since he already claimed you?  

You hold the warm cup tighter in your hand, pressing it against your chest. 

Pain flashes in his eyes when they meet yours again, big brown eyes filled with sadness.

Damn you and your stupid puppy eyes, Eddie Munson. 

Steve looks between you and Eddie, curiosity lingering in his eyes. 

“Did you have a sleepover with Eddie?” Gareth jokes, looking at the guy he used to dislike once. 

“Uh… no,” he chuckles, nervously. 

“Oh,” Gareth mumbles, “where did you–” he stops when Jeff nudges his shoulder. He glances at Eddie, who still stares at you like you just broke his heart. Then his eyes fall to your neck, noticing the very visible marks that he hasn’t seen before, his eyes widen, even more so when he looks at a very flustered Steve. Oh god. 

Jeff clears his throat, looking away awkwardly. 

“Damn, Steve. You just can’t keep it in your pants, huh?” Gareth mumbles. 

Steve blushes, laughing nervously. 

Jeff can’t even stop the laugh that escapes from his lips, “says you?” he snorts. 

“What do you mean?” 

Jeff turns to Steve, “Gareth is fucking every groupie that he can find.” 

“What?” Steve gasps, “Gareth, you?” 

Neither, you or Eddie pay attention to them or their conversation, instead you keep looking at each other until he finally makes a move and pulls you away. Without asking you first, he grabs your hand and leads you away from the others. 

His hand feels warm, despite being out in the cold for so long. You fight the urge to intertwine your fingers with his. 

He stops next to a phone booth and turns towards you, still keeping your hand in his. 

You stare at him in confusion, not moving your hand away just yet. 

Eddie has dark circles under his eyes, his curls look messy, he looks tired. 

“What?” you mumble, not knowing what else to say. 

“What?” he mimics, irritating you, “did you have fun?” 

Rolling your eyes, you rip your hand out of his, “yes, actually. Steve is amazing.” 

Jealousy flashes in his eyes, he clenches his jaw. The images that pop up in his mind just make him feel even worse. 

“Was it so easy for you to move on from me?” he asks, with no anger behind his words, just pain and sadness. 

You don’t look into his eyes now, you can’t. 

Steve is amazing and you have only done what you did because you felt safe and comfortable with him and because you wanted to feel something other than this. Steve is funny and kind and sweet and you don’t regret what you did but you do feel guilty. 

You aren’t Eddie’s, you never were and yet you feel like you have betrayed him and it makes you feel sick. 

“Don’t ask me this question, you are the one with a partner, not me,” you finally say, “I don’t owe you anything, Eddie. I can do whatever I want with whoever I want.” 

“You once told me that I’m the only one that you want,” Eddie says. 

Scoffing, you look back into his eyes, “yeah, I did. I did want you,” you nod, “but that was before I knew about your girl.” 

He mumbles your name, eyes showing nothing but guilt. He tries to reach for your hand again but you pull away, shaking your head at him. 

“How would you feel if you were in my place?” you ask, “how would you feel, if you found out that I had a partner all this time, while we were doing this,” you ask, gesturing to the two of you. 

“I would give you a chance to explain yourself,” he mumbles. 

You scowl and roll your eyes, “would you now?” 

“Yes,” he exclaims, taking a step forward, he looks like he is fighting back the tears, “yes, I would because you mean everything to me, I could never do what you did, I could never move on to someone else, kiss them and sleep with them as though nothing fucking happened–” 

“You are such a hypocrite!” you whisper yell, trying to keep the attention away from the two of you on this busy street, “you fucked her after being with me and then you claimed that you wanted to leave her, that you wanted to break up with her for months now!” 

He scrunches up his face, brows knit together as he shakes his head, “I didn’t fuck her…. Christ.” 

Right. 

“Mhmm,” you roll your eyes, looking at anything but his eyes. 

“It’s the truth, y/n,” he mumbles, “I didn’t have sex with her, I didn’t even kiss her. I haven’t touched her like that since I left Hawkins.” 

“God,” you sigh, “stop fucking lying to me already. You said nothing when I confronted you about it two nights ago, I asked you why you kissed her and why you slept with her, when you wanted to leave her so bad and you said nothing, you just stood there and stared at me like I was a fool.” 

He sighs, running his hand through his hair, “I didn’t sleep with her and I didn’t kiss her, I’m not lying about that.” 

“Then why didn’t you say anything when I asked you about it?” 

“I-I just, I don’t do well with confrontations,” he mumbles as he looks down at his hands, nervously playing with the rings on his fingers, the way he always does. 

“Eddie, you literally fought a guy and argued with him for fifteen minutes straight after he tried to grab my ass and you’re trying to tell me that you don’t do well with confrontations, come on, man…” 

“It’s different with you, okay?” he huffs, raising his head to look at you, he finds you staring at him with nothing but confusion in your eyes, your lip jutted, brows furrowed. Why do you have to be so cute? 

“How?” 

“You intimidate me,” he confesses. 

You draw back in surprise, lips parting, “w-what?” 

“You intimidate me,” he repeats, chuckling to himself, “not in a bad way, it’s just. I’m worried about saying the wrong things around you, I’m worried about scaring you away. You’re amazing and even though we made it here together. It feels like, I get to watch you become a star, a fucking rockstar and I’m just some lucky dude that gets to play guitar and come along on this adventure but the moment it’s over, I’m going back to Hawkins to live the shit life I never wanted but you? You will keep doing this and you will forget about me and you know what? That’s what scares me the most. As much as I wanted this life, I want you more and the thought of losing you or you forgetting about me, breaks my fucking heart, y/n.” 

He quickly wipes his tears away and looks down. 

Tears well up in your eyes and your chest warms at his words, yet at the same time they hurt. The thought of living a life without him hurts you just as much as it hurts him to think of one without you in it. 

“And the thought of you moving on so easily hurts too,” he mumbles, “but you’re right, you don’t owe me anything, you can do whatever you want. I just thought that we had something special.” 

“How can you say that?” you ask, voice almost cracking. 

“Say what?” 

“That we had something special, you lied to me the whole time, you have someone waiting for you at home, you cheated on her with me, you knew that you would hurt me. This isn’t special, this is fucked up and disgusting, Eddie.” 

His shoulders slump and his face falls, “sweetheart,” he whispers. 

You shake your head, “no, you can’t say all these things to me.” 

He takes another step towards you, you don’t move away and you don’t flinch either, not even when he cups your cheeks, tilting your head up to make you look at him. 

You close your eyes, “don’t do this to me again, Eddie,” you whisper. 

A sigh falls from your lips when you feel his touch on your skin. Your heart begins to flutter the way it always does whenever he touches you, “you’re gonna hurt me, you’re gonna do the same thing to me that you do to her and I can’t do this, Eddie. I feel too deeply for you, I wouldn’t survive this so please, just let me go, don’t do this to me.” 

He shakes his head, stepping even closer to you, not caring if anyone sees you two like this. 

“I would never do this to you, sweetheart,” he whispers.

“But you did it to her and I think that you must have loved her a lot if you stayed with after what she did and yet you still did this, you can’t tell me that this– that you, would be any different with me.” 

Eddie didn’t stay because he loved her so much, he stayed because he was afraid. Afraid of being alone. She made him believe that no one else would want him. 

“You and I are different,” he whispers, squeezing your cheeks a little, he looks at you with pleading eyes, “we are different.”  

“That’s what you thought about her too, didn’t you?” 

Tears fill your eyes, you’re so sick of it already. Of these tears, of this pain, of all of this. 

His silence gives you the answer that you needed. You nod and close your eyes as you step away from him. 

“We have to go,” you mumble, “the stupid interview..” 

Eddie blinks his tears away, nodding at your words. He watches you, already waiting for you to leave him standing here by himself again but instead you look up at him with your soft and pretty eyes, a frown on your lips and sadness clouding your features. 

“To answer your question, I did not move on from you, I don’t think I ever will and you know what the worst part about it is? I don’t want to, I don’t want to move on from you, I just want this pain to stop but I know it won’t, no matter what I do,” you whisper the last part and take another step back, catching a tear before it can slip down your cheek. You turn away and walk back to the other before he can even say anything. 

You hate how easy it is for you to be so vulnerable around him, you hate that you can’t lie to him about your feelings, you hate that you can’t just push him away from you. 

How will you ever shake him off of you? 

“Hey,” Steve’s gentle voice pulls you out of your thoughts. 

“Hey,” you smile, still blinking as the tears still threaten to spill. You look up at him, finding the soft look on his face contorting into a concerned one. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, laying a palm on your shoulder. 

“Nothing, j-just got something in my eye,” you lie. 

Steve frowns at your words, clearly not believing you, he looks over your shoulder to see Eddie still standing by the phone booth. He can see the sad look on his face, even from afar. 

He looks back down at you and then back at him, raising his brows as his brain slowly starts connecting the dots. 

“Oh,” he whispers in realization. 

Suddenly, he feels like a fool. 

He didn’t notice this before. He noticed the glares that Eddie gave him when he flirted with you, the frowns that took over his face whenever he touched you, the little scoffs that left his lips whenever you flirted back. 

Steve was just too excited to be with you to notice the so very obvious jealousy and anger in Eddie.

Eddie likes you and you like him. 

Steve stares at his friend as he walks back towards the hotel, the look of heartbreak in his eyes is so hard to miss.

No, Eddie doesn’t just like you. There is so much more than that. 

He looks back down at you, “you know what, you gotta tell me everything when you come to Hawkins.” 

-

The interview started off well. Though you were nervous about the amount of journalists in the room, all eager to find out more about you. 

You sat in the middle, with Eddie and Jeff on either side of you. Gareth and Jeff sat at both ends at the long table. 

The smell of coffee lingered in the room, oddly enough it was calming your nerves. 

The questions were tame, at first. 

They asked about your backgrounds, how the band came together, what or who got you into music, they asked about the process of songwriting and of recording. It was going well until now, the questions were starting to get personal and the more they asked, the worse you felt. 

“Are you single, Eddie?”

You want to roll your eyes at the question. What does his relationship status have anything to do with the band or music? 

“Yes, I am.” 

You have to restrain yourself not to turn to him and gasp. So he just continues to lie? 

“And what about you, y/n? Are you single?” 

“Very much so, yes.” 

“You and Eddie seem pretty close,” another woman says, “you look very comfortable with each other.” 

“It would be weird if we weren’t comfortable with each other, we’re together day and night,” Eddie says, not realizing what he actually said. 

“You’re together at night?” one asks. 

Eddie, you dumbass. 

“Yes,” you speak into the mic before Eddie can make this any worse, “because we’re on the same tour bus, obviously. There’s not much privacy.” 

“Y/n, what is it like for you to be the only woman in the band?” 

“It’s fun actually, they’ve become my family.” 

“Speaking of family, how does it feel to follow your father’s footsteps?” 

And that is where it all went downhill. One mention of your father and they all jumped right at you, throwing one question after the other. You were able to mask your discomfort with snarky replies and a stoic expression on your face but Eddie could sense your anxiety. He could see your leg bouncing beneath the table cloth, he could see you blinking more rapidly, you were angry, you were hurt and upset.

He took your hand in his and began to rub circles into your soft skin, it seemed to calm you down but he could only do so much. 

‘Is this life as overwhelming for you as it was for your dad?’

‘No, I love living this life.’

‘A source told us that you have been doing drugs before shows, is that true?’ 

‘No.’

‘How does it feel to live the life your dad once lived?’

‘Feels like I’m doing it for him.’

‘Have you had any relationships with your band mates?’ 

‘Is it true that you and Eddie had been caught hooking up in a bathroom at a nightclub in Pittsburgh?’ 

‘What do you say to these pictures?’ 

‘Did your dad commit suicide on Christmas eve?’

Rob cut the interview after that question, not even giving you the chance to answer the question. To say that you’re shocked is an understatement. You felt tense and you felt frozen in place and yet, you kept a straight expression on your face and let go of Eddie’s hand before leaving the room. Rushing through the hallways and storming out of the hotel before making your way towards the tour bus. 

Your chest feels heavy, you feel sick, you feel angry, you feel too much.

The moment you are back on the tour bus, you let out an angry sigh. You knew this would happen, you knew they would do this, you knew they would ask them all the meaningless and simple questions while you would get this. 

They just had to bring him up. 

They had to bring up his death. 

Rob speaks your name, approaching you slowly.

“How did they know?” you ask, angrily. 

“They don’t know,” he sighs, “people were talking about it before, in the magazines, it was a rumor–”

You laugh, raising your hands towards your head, “expect it’s not a rumor, Rob. He did fucking kill himself.” 

Rob turns around to make sure that no one followed him on the bus. 

“Y/n,” he steps towards you, watching with worried eyes as you begin to pace back and forth, “don’t let this get to you, these assholes out there always throw disrespectful questions around, especially at women, they wanna get a rise out of you but you did well, you handled it well.” 

“Well, I’m not handling it well right now,” you scoff.

He places his hands on your shoulders, “you gotta calm down, kid. I know this is hard but just try to calm down, yeah? You got a show tonight, don’t let them ruin this for you.” 

Closing your eyes, you nod at his words. 

He is right. 

You take a deep breath. 

“I think the christmas break will be good for you,” he says, patting your shoulder. 

You want to scoff and roll your eyes but instead you open your eyes and force a smile on your face, “you think?” 

Rob smiles at you, nodding. 

“Yeah, it’s been some stressful months. Songwriting and recording takes up a lot of energy but the tours are harder. Takes a toll on your body, it’s time for a break, gotta take care of yourself, eat some good food and just watch some christmas movies.” 

You chuckle, your features soften. 

“That’s what you will do?” 

His eyes flash with amusement, “of course.” 

“Then that’s what I will do too.” 

-

Though the conversation with Rob calmed your nerves a little, you still feel on edge and the other’s notice it as you all get ready for the show. 

Eddie can see the anger in your eyes. It’s only been there ever since the journalists have mentioned your dad and it makes him suspicious of the question they have asked you. 

He wants to approach you, take your hand in his and tell you that everything will be okay. He is scared to make things worse though so he stays back and watches you instead. 

You lean against the wall, you move your hair back and adjust your earpiece. Your lips match the colors of your nails tonight, blood red. You’re wearing a black cropped top with what seems to be a new leather vest, a pair of tight pants showing off your curves nicely and as you turn your back to him to reach for your red microphone, he can’t help but curse under his breath, your ass just looks perfect in those jeans. 

“Fucking christ,” he mumbles, having to adjust his pants the longer he stares at you. 

Suddenly the images of you with Steve appear in his mind, the thought of him touching your bare skin, kissing you in places that only he should be allowed to kiss you, his hands on your perfect ass– fuck you, Steve. 

Gareth comes up next to him, blabbering about some girls he saw before entering the venue but Eddie doesn’t listen to him, he is too busy staring at you, eyes almost bulging out of his skull when you bend over to tie the loose laces on your boots. 

His dick twitches in his pants. God, he knows you kind of hate him right now but he wants nothing more than to bend you over a table and rip those tights jeans off so he can fuck you senseless and remind that you are his, that you belong with him. 

You move back up and when you look over your shoulder and your eyes lock and he can’t help but wonder ‘are you doing this on purpose?’ You pretend to be innocent though, turning away from him and reaching for the drink you’ve grabbed for yourself earlier. 

Ever since you have found out about Chrissy, Eddie finds it hard to read you– it’s easy to read your emotions when you’re being vulnerable with him but it’s hard to read you when you do these things. 

Are you teasing him? 

Are you playing with him? 

Are you distracting yourself from today’s events by doing this? 

Or are you just reminding him of what he can no longer have? 

He can see the fire in your eyes when you’re performing, the anger and the raw emotions in your voice. Your engagement with the people in the front row makes the crowd go wild. 

Your touches with Eddie are different than usual, you step closer to him, letting him use your mic to sing, he looks into your eyes, a smile tugging at his lips as the audience screams for you. 

You step back again as the song stops playing ,before the band begins to play another song, you raise your hand and put a finger up and in front of your lips. They guys give you a questioning look but still do as they're told, Gareth puts his drumsticks down and tilts his head at you. 

Eddie furrows his brows, lips parting as he stares at you. 

You turn back to the crowd, greeting them for a second time tonight. 

“Eddie,” you speak into the mic, causing the people to scream once again, you chuckle as you look at them, “he is amazing, isn’t he?”  

Eddie’s eyes twinkle with happiness and gratitude when they cheer for him again. They love him. All these people are here for the band and him– Eddie who grew up with a father that didn’t love him. Eddie who was pushed around in school. Eddie who was considered a lowlife and a freak. Eddie who had been told that he is nothing. Eddie who had been told that no one could ever love him. 

All these people love him.

You love him and even though you claim that it has no meaning to you anymore, it still means something to him. 

“He is not just the best guitarist in the whole word, Eddie is also a pretty fucking good singer!” 

Eddie raises his brows, staring at you nervously. 

“Why don’t we switch places for this song, Eddie? Sing your heart out, see what it feels like to sing this song, what it’s like to be in my place.” 

Eddie blinks, drowning out all the cheers of approval. You wrote this song together, it’s the last one on the album, the one you have worked on the longest. The one about heartbreak and betrayal. 

He forces a smirk on his face, “you sure you can handle her?” he speaks into the mic as he holds up his sweetheart. 

“You know I can,” you smirk, tilting your head. 

“Yeah,” he rasps into the mic as he eyes you up and down. 

No one is blind to it, you always flirt on stage and your fans love it. 

“Alright,” Eddie says, “you guys are lucky tonight, you’ll be the first crowd to watch my favorite girl play with my sweetheart,” he chuckles, slinging the guitar strap over his head, he holds it out for you. 

His favorite girl. 

You ignore the fluttering of your heart when he calls you that. 

You grin, taking his guitar as you hold out your microphone to him.

You sling the strap over your shoulder, winking at Eddie as you switch places with him. You use your thumb and your forefinger to grip the neck. The crowd immediately cheers after you strum the guitar, you can’t help but giggle at their excitement. 

“I love you, y/n!” 

Eddie chuckles. 

He watches you with a smile on his face, staring at your twinkling eyes, the happiness, the one that has become temporary, the one he only ever sees on stage now. 

He appreciates the sight in front of him. The way you look with his guitar. You are perfect in every way. 

You turn towards him, using his microphone, “let’s do this, guys.” 

He nods, flashing you a small smile as he holds the mic tighter in his hand. His fingertips hurt from playing all night and now he is watching you with awe in his eyes. Despite not playing as much as he does, you’re good, just as good as he is, Eddie thinks. 

He can’t keep his eyes off of you, not even when he sings and is supposed to engage with the crowd– with his fans. He can only look at you. 

And you feel just the same, your eyes are glued to him as you play and sing the lines that are supposed to be his. Your eye contact is intense as always– perhaps even more intense than usual. 

Your heart longs for him, your soul pulls you into his, you want him and you need him but you can not have him and yet, when the song is over and you stop playing, you still let him in, you still let him pull you into his arms. 

Just like always, there is only you and him when you look into each other’s eyes. 

Eddie’s eyes show nothing but love. He leans down and cups your cheeks, he kisses your forehead softly, letting his lips linger for a moment before he pulls back.

You place your hand on his, wrapping your fingers around his wrist as you look up into his eyes. 

Why does he have to make things so hard for you? 

-

December 16th, 1988

So, it’s been a while since anyone wrote something in here but, we’re back in Hawkins, home sweet home, or whatever. I missed this shithole, can’t believe it. -Gareth.

Hawkins.

The town you have dreaded so much ever since finding out the whole truth. Now you’re here and you feel uncomfortable. 

While the others went to visit their families, you will spend your time here at the town’s motel, which is very different from the luxurious hotel’s you have gotten used to but your room is a small and cozy one, it’s on the second story and it’s close to Forest Hill Park, Eddie’s trailer is only a ten minute walk away from motel 6. 

It’s a Friday afternoon and all you have done since your arrival was taking a long and hot shower and laying on the king sized bed while the tv plays in the background. You play with the rings on your finger and stare at the ceiling. 

You wonder what Eddie is doing. 

Is he spending time with his uncle? 

Is he taking a nap?

Is he laying in bed by himself? 

Is he with her? 

You haven’t been away from him since you’ve left for tour. You were together all the time, it’s weird to be here all by yourself now. 

You could see Steve. 

Sitting up on the bed, you stare at your suitcase for a moment before you decide to get ready. You still didn’t get the thick coat that Eddie had suggested you should get and you already know that you will hate yourself for it later. It’s even colder than in the city. 

You put some makeup on and do your hair before picking out the warmest clothes that you’ve got. Your oversized leather jacket definitely won’t do much to protect you from the cold but at least you’ve bought a scarf and a hat before leaving Indianapolis. 

You pick out your shoes when you hear a knock on the door. You furrow your brows, walking towards the window, you peek out, Eddie. 

Sighing, you step back from the window to open the door. 

“You miss me already?” you ask with a bored expression on your face. 

“Always,” he says. 

Rolling your eyes at his words, you open the door further, letting him in. 

“What do you want?” you ask, only now noticing the two coffees in his hands. 

“I don’t like that you’re here by yourself.” 

Oh. 

His nose is a little red from the cold, fitting the red scarf around his neck– you don’t have to ask to know that his uncle forced him to wear that scarf. He looks cute. 

“Why?” you ask, glancing at the coffee that he is offering you

“Here,” he whispers, offering you the coffee. 

“Thanks,” you mumble as you wrap your hand around the warm cup, “it’s not dangerous here, is it?” you chuckle.

He shrugs, brown eyes flickering down to your leather jacket and the scarf. 

“Not really but there’s this weird guy.” 

Raising your brows and tilting your head in question, “oh?”

“Yeah, he actually lives right around the corner,” he says, pointing his thumb to the entrance. 

“Oh, you’re talking about yourself?” you snort, eyes flashing with amusement. 

Eddie rolls his eyes, scoffing at your words, “you’re so funny.” 

“Right?” you smirk. 

Placing the cup on the desk, you bent down and reach for your boots. Feeling his eyes on you, you glance up at him as you put them on. 

“So, what’s this guy’s name?” 

“Huh?” 

“The weird guy, what’s his name?” 

“Oh,” Eddie mumbles, eyes moving to your ass, again. 

“Henry, dude is kinda sketchy, he has that psychotic look in his eyes. I sold weed to him before and he started talking about the end of the world, seemed a little too into it.” 

“Wow,” you mutter under your breath. 

“Hey, where are you going?” Eddie finally asks.

You shrug as you reach for the coffee again, “thought I’d take a walk.” 

“Can I come with you?”

“Why?” 

He walks towards you, ringed fingers wrapped around his cup, his soft eyes meet yours, “cause I wanna spend time with you, I can show you around.” 

You wanted space, you wanted him to stay away from you, you wanted him to leave you alone but he just won’t do it, he keeps showing up, he keeps clinging to you. 

“Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?” 

He sighs, nodding. 

If anyone else told him that, he would leave and never show up again. Eddie never truly felt wanted or loved, not until you. You never pitied him, you never faked anything with him, you never lied to him– not even when he hurt you. You could have lied about your feelings, you could have told him that you hate him but you never did. 

You might have told him that you never want to see him again but he knows that you truly never meant it. 

And despite the tension between you, despite the things you tell him, you still want him around. 

“I hate being away from you,” he whispers. 

You narrow your eyes, sighing in annoyance. 

“Shouldn’t you be spending time with your girlfriend?” 

“I don’t want to.” 

“I hope you know that, that kinda makes you sound like a dick,” you scoff. 

“I know,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “she isn’t here anyway, she’s gone for the weekend.” 

Of course. 

You can’t even stop the laugh from escaping, you shake your head, “right, so I’m the placeholder again, okay,” you scoff, turning away from him, you walk towards the door. 

Eddie curses under his breath, how does he keep messing it up?

“No, sweetheart, that’s not– I didn’t want to spend time with her, I wanted to talk to her.” 

You grab the keys and leave the room, waiting for him to come outside too, you look away with a clenched jaw. 

“I really don’t care, Eddie. I don’t give a shit about what you wanted to do with her.” 

He follows you, looking frantic as he stares down at you. You shut the door and lock it, stuffing the keys into your pocket before walking off. 

“Please, y/n.” 

“Please what, Eddie?” you scoff, “just leave me alone, that’s all I was asking of you.” 

“You are so confusing!” he suddenly says, almost yelling. 

Surprised by his words, you halt in your tracks and turn back around. Your wide eyed gaze meets his and you can’t help but gasp. 

“I’m confusing?”

He nods as he continues to walk towards you, “yes, actually. You are the most confusing woman I’ve ever met in my life.” 

“What the fuck? Why?” 

“Because you act all fucking cute with me on stage and then you do this,” he exclaims, “you tell me you love me and then you go and fuck my friend, you keep telling me to stay away from you but then you almost kiss me at the show, you hold a whole speech about me and then go back to ignoring me, you keep acting normal with me and yet at the same time you look at me like you want me gone! I know I fucked up, okay? I know what I did was wrong but you made me feel like I was wanted for once in my fucking life, I felt like someone actually wants me and loves me for who I am, so I’m sorry for wanting to be around you, I’m sorry for wanting you so bad.” I’m sorry for being so in love with you. 

For the first time, you see the vulnerability in his eyes that he was hiding from the world. The part of him that’s broken is finally coming to the surface after years of pushing it away. His bottom lip quivers a little, his dark eyes filled with hurt. 

You feel guilty, you feel sad, you feel insecure. 

You want to hug him but at the same time you want to turn heel and run. 

“Do you actually want to be around me or do you want to be around me because I make you feel good?” you ask, “do you want me so bad because you know that I love you and that I would never hurt you like she did?” 

“What?” 

Now it’s your bottom lip that is quivering, now it’s your eyes that are filled with hurt. 

“Because that’s what it sounds like to me, Eddie,” you shrug, “you feel safe with me because you know how much you mean to me, because you know that I still want you even after you lied to me all this time but I would never stand a chance if she made you feel the way I make you feel, right?” 

He shakes his head, staring at you with raised brows. 

“You want to settle for me because I can give her things that she couldn’t give you.” 

“No,” he whispers in shock, “what makes you think that?” 

You shrug, not wanting to talk about this any longer, you turn away and begin to walk away from him again. 

You hear him sighing, calling out to you.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Eddie.” 

“But–”

“No,” you mumble, “I wanna go on a walk now.” 

“Can I come with you?” 

“Didn’t I tell you to leave me alone?” 

“I just, please.. I wanna be with you.” 

You look at him in annoyance, his stupid puppy eyes make it hard for you to say no to him. 

“I’m gonna spend time with you tomorrow, remember?” 

You promised Eddie that you would get breakfast with him and his uncle. Wayne wants to meet you and even though you don’t want to be around Eddie, you couldn’t say no to that offer, just like you can’t say no to him now. 

“Yeah but… still.” 

“You wanna go on a walk with me?” 

He nods. 

“Okay, then take me to family video, that’s where Steve works, right?” 

His face falls, frowning at your words, he turns away to roll his eyes. 

“Seriously?” he mumbles. 

“Yeah.” 

“Fine.” 

-

“You are so full of shit.” 

“You don’t believe me?” 

Robin laughs, “nope.” 

Steve rolls his eyes, “why not?” 

She continues to stack the vhs tapes on the shelf, looking back at her best friend, “because, I don’t think that you’re her type.” 

“Dude,” he exclaims, “can’t you see this?” he points to the hickeys on his neck. 

“Yeah,” she scoffs, “some chick gave you those.” 

“Not some chick, y/n, gave me those.” 

“Keep dreaming, dingus.” 

Steve just started his shift and rushed into the store with the most excited look on his face that Robin had ever seen, his cheeks were flushed red and his eyes shone with happiness. 

She hasn’t seen him like that since… Okay, maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he got lucky and did get to be with you.

“You’ll see.” 

“See what?” 

Steve smirks at her, crossing his arms over his chest after putting on his vest, “she is in Hawkins now.” 

Robin drops the tapes and rises to her feet, eyes widening, “what?” 

He nods, “she’s in Hawkins, she’s staying here and guess who’s gonna hang out with her?” he asks, smirk growing bigger as she walks towards him, “me.” 

“Holy shit,” she mumbles.

Just as she stops in front of the counter and looks at the smug look on his face, the bell above the door rings, he looks over her shoulder, eyes flashing with excitement. 

Robin’s brows draw together, following his gaze, she turns around, eyes widening even further when she catches sight of you. Her lips part before they set in a smirk, “holy shit.” 

With Eddie right behind you, you walk inside, an excited smile resting on your lips, while the look on Eddie’s face is nothing but one of annoyance. 

“Hi Steve.” 

-

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[angelsworks]

Little Witch The last kingdom x reader

Chapter 5

Next chapter -> H E R E

Series Masterlist -> Here

Type: Series

Summary: Your journey leads you to a town, where you plan to meet Astrid.

Warnings: 18 +, mature themes, abuse, injury, underwear shopping.

Sun breaks across the previously grey sky. It gives some indication to what time it is. You’ve been travelling since the morning. According to Finan it should only be half a days ride to the next town. You would estimate that the group had been travelling for two hours already.

For two hours you’d been in front of Uhtred. Pinned to the front of the saddle due to his size. Caged in by his thick thighs and strong forearms. It would almost be enjoyable if your back would cease its torment.

During your time spent with Steffen he had tried everything to make you break. His ideas weren’t often repeated. Giving you a glimpse into how sick and twisted he could really be. On one of your last days with him, he’d taken a whip to your back. Creating lacerations both long and deep all over.

Even now you were sure they were still open. You had no time from then till now to treat your wounds. Despite Uhtred being your master, you weren’t completely comfortable with him. Not comfortable enough to tell him about said injuries. It was hard to picture Uhtred being a healer of any kind. His talents lay elsewhere.

As far as country roads go, you are convinced this is the most boring. The trees all look the same, the grass is green, the road is a worn yellow colour. Every clop of the horses kicks up dust and continues to fill the air with sound of their hooves. It’s become background noise at this point. You wonder if silence would be better in some cases.

Your eyes glance to beyond the trees that line the sides of the road. Seeing more green grass, ferns bushes and finally flowers.

You see a bunch of pink and white tulips. Growing in a dominantly brown area. They stand out and attract your attention immediately. You know white tulips are Astrids favourite. Pink tulips being your own. The colour is one of your favourites. Reminding you of the sky before night, turning various shades of pink. It takes you back to your family’s farm.

Although the thoughts fill you with sorrow, a strange part of you wants the flowers. A reminder maybe? Of a happier time. Or maybe just because they are beautiful.

You look beside you, seeing all riders preoccupied with thinking. Even Uhtred, as you turn to look behind you, is busy with his own thoughts. Eyes glossy and attention elsewhere.

You decide that now is the time. You put your hands under Uhtred’s arms, holding loosely to the reins. With a tug up his hands have come off, giving you change to move your legs. You swing your right leg over the saddle and slide off the horse. Without stopping you dart into the woods, hearing Uhtred dismount behind you.

Your heart pounds as your feet beat against the floor. Dodging trees in your path as you make your way through the woods. Finally you see your tulips and drop to the floor. You’ve picked three pink and four white by the time Uhtred puts his arms around you. Putting you over his shoulder in one swing.

You grip tightly on to your flowers as he carries you back to his horse.

“You are quite the runner little witch.” He acknowledged, while you stay silent. Happy to have your flowers.

When you reach his horse you can see the rest of the group on guard. Expecting some threat to jump from behind Uhtred.

Instead of saying anything he turns around. Showing you over his shoulder, flowers in hand.

“Flowers?” Finan asks incredulous, “All that for flowers?”

You nod, “They’re pink.”

Your response elicits a huff from the Irishman. It brings a small smile to Uhtred’s lips. Though he hides it from you.

You feel Uhtred’s arms tighter around you this time. Making sure you won’t get the slip on him again. Silence falls over the group once more.

Aftwr a few more hours the town starts to appear. First you see more frequent houses, some farmers of both crops and animals. Then you see small groups of buildings, small villages. Then finally the town. It had a wooden fence surrounding it. Guard manning the gate and walking the fence in rotations.

Uhtred and his group pass without problem. The Lord being well enough known in this town that they show him respect. He’s welcomed in and told where to find lodging.

Uhtred halts his horse near a stable. The stable hand coming out to greet him quickly. The men remove their bags of valuables and hand the horses over to the boy.

You see Uhtred take rope out of his bag, holding out a hand expectantly. You’ve seen this in your vision, so you’ve got some idea to wear it’s going.

He ties the rope around your wrist, acting as a sort of bracelet. Then wraps it around a few times before tying the rope around his own wrist. The short length of rope means you can’t get far away without him knowing.

“I won’t have you running away now Witch.” Uhtred tells you. The last word attracts the attention of the stablehand. The boy looking around curiously at you. Quickly turning when he sees Finan and Sihtric’s glare towards him.

Uhtred leads you around the town beside him. The five of you trek through alleyways and streets alike. Passing many people as you go. None wearing the dark blue cloak you are hoping for.

Uhtred stops you when the group reaches a market square.

He turns to Finan, “I have business with the witch. I’ll meet you at the ale house soon.”

Finan is more than happy to oblige. Leading the way for Osferth and Sihtric.

With tulips still in hand you walk beside Uhtred through the streets. You notice how they seem to have gotten busier. More carriages, more carts, more people. At some point Uhtred had reached down for your hand. Finding it easier to manoeuvre the two of you around. The feeling makes you smile.

You pass through a maze of Stalls. Each covered in a different banner. They sell all sorts of trinkets on the table. From gold and silver to seeds and bread. You see all kinds of gemstone captured in metal on tables filled with jewellery.

You’re lead through the maze. The man attached to you seems to have an exact location in mind. He’s found that location when he stops in front of a stall that’s more hidden to the crowds. A woman stands at the front of the stall, looking over a variety of fabric samples.

“Elenor, it is good to see you.” He greets the woman. She looks at the two of you. A new spark lighting in her eyes. Her face has aged, her hair beginning to grey. But her smile could belong to a young woman. It lights her face and the world around her.

“Uhtred!” She cried, moving around the table to hug him.

“My lord, I did not expect to see you again.” She admits.

He pats her gently on the shoulder. Moving back to reveal you to her.

“I came in needs of your skills.” He tells her. While motioning to you.

She looks you over with appraising eyes. Looking over your rubber ‘shoes’ and black ‘dress’. Her face turns sour as she looks at your tattered clothes.

“My, my,” she repeats again. “Uhtred, you think too highly of my skills.”

He laughs, “Nonsense lady. You are the best seamstress in England. You could surely do something.”

She turns again. This time looking over your body, not your clothes.

Without your knowledge she is estimating your sizes. Mentally working out measurements for dresses and cloaks and shoes and robes.

“I will try Uhtred. What do you need?” She asks. Moving back to her table to look at the various fabrics she has.

You watch with surprised wonder as Uhtred’s words flow into an order. He points to fabrics and names a gown he wants made from that. You hear him mention a cloak and shoes and finally nightwear. A part that makes you blush, as he points to the more lacy of the fabrics for those choices. You had no idea Uhtred was so knowledgeable in womens clothes. You would tease him if you didn’t feel so grateful for it.

“Hmm, a large order like this will surely cost Uhtred.” She mutters, looking over her ribbons and fabrics.

“It will be no issue. Here,” he pulls money out of a coin bag attached to his belt. “Take this as a part of what is to come.”

She smiles, retreating to her tent. The large black tent is set up behind her stall. Blending into the background. As the flap opens you see a whole work room of dresses and gowns galore. The sight makes your eyes widen.

A tug on your wrist has you moving back through the market maze. Back to the square where you started. You take a new path to the Alehouse. The roads less crowded on this part of town.

“Thank you Uhtred.” You tell him, trying to meet his gaze.

“I can’t have my witch looking like a beggar.” He brushed you off. Trying to dirty the kind gesture.

You see through his act and can’t help but feel a little happier. The tulips in your hands are still surprisingly intact. It reminds you that you need to be looking for Astrid.

Among the carts of traders you see her. Her cloak is down and her hair is flowing around her. While she stands out from the crowd, the market is much too busy to keep an eye on her.

The constant pull from Uhtred makes it no easier to see her. Even with your frantically moving head, moving from side to side. When you leave that particular street you realise it’s hopeless. Not while you’re attached to Uhtred.

So you sigh and decide to wait for another opportunity.

The air inside the alehouse is hot from the crowd inside. The walls trap in the shouts and laughs and belches. The sounds bouncing of the stone walls.

Uhtred leads you to a table in the corner. Sihtric and Osferth are already sat. You see Finan at the bar, seeming to be flirting with the barmaid from the way he leans against the bar and speaks in low tones.

“Sit witch.” Uhtred commands when he sees you stood there staring.

When your sat he pulls at the rope on his wrist. Loosening it in his end, then uniting the knot around yours. It brings small relief to have your wrist unbound. You place your bunch of flowers on the oak table. Taking a moment to rub your now free wrist.

When Finan returns he looks very proud of himself. He carries two metal tankards, you assume for himself and Uhtred. Sihtric and Osferth already nursing their own.

The group talks amongst themselves. Talking of plans for when they reach Coccham. Some plans of new buildings for town, or their next adventure. You tune most of it out. Still trying to find an opportunity to go and search for Astrid.

When they men have moved on to their second tankards and are well on their way to getting drunk, you decide to make your move.

“I need to piss.” You say, hard in your resolve and leave little room for embarrassment or a smile. You hope the crude nature of your request makes them believe your lie.

It brings a choke from Osferth and a laugh from Finan.

“You will piss later.” Uhtred tells you. Brushing you off.

You frown. You need him to let you leave, now.

“Either I leave and find somewhere to go,” You pause. Making sure he sees the seriousness in your eyes. “Or I piss here.”

Finan stops his laughter with his hand as he watches Uhtred for a reaction.

His brows furrow, feeling as though you hide something more.

“Fine, you can have your piss. If you go anywhere else other than to piss, I’ll tie you to my bed post for the night.” Your eyes widen at his hushed words.

Trying to give little away as you nod. No matter where you end up tonight, you need to see Astrid. So you grab your flowers then stand and leave. making your way to the main town square again.

When you leave the men pull their heads closer, ready to question Uhtred. It’s clear from taking the flowers, you lie about where you plan to go.

“I think she plans to leave Uhtred.” Sihtric suggests. Keeping his voice low as he leans in towards the Lord. He knows his friend plans to keep you in their company. For obvious reasons he sees that you have the potential to be useful.

Uhtred nods, “That’s why I plan for you to follow her.”

Sihtric huffs, shaking his head. The last thing he wants to do is follow you anywhere.

“A monk would be spotted too easily from the crowd,” Uhtred tries to reason. “And Finan has no knowledge on being quiet.”

The comment causes the Irishman to jab him playfully. Sihtric relents, finishing his tankard in a few swallows and following you out the door.

He follows you as you wander down the street of the alehouse. Missing plenty of communal latrines on your way. Clearly you are not going to piss like you say. The sight makes his eyes narrow, feeling more suspicious of you.

He watches as you reach the town square. Looking around almost desperately, pink and white tulips in hand. You stop looking and almost run down towards an alleyway.

He follows at a distance. Positioning himself at the mouth of the alley so he can both see and hear what you do and say. But stays close enough to the marchants that he doesn’t look like he’s spying on you.

You almost tackle Astrid as you embrace her. Your eyes start to leak when you realise you can hold her again. From your time at the covenant, she had become a sort of second mother to you.

She wraps her strong arms around you. The action making you feel young again. Before things took such a turn.

“Hello (Y/N).” It’s the first time in a long time someone has used your name. Not witch, not lady, not anything other than your name. It fills your body with warmth.

“Oh Astrid, so much has happened. There’s so much to tell you and little time.” You practically sob. Burying your head into her leather chest plate.

Under her dark blue cloak she’s adorned in armour. The sight not unusual for the Dane. She often wore clothes similar to those seen on the battle field. You felt the hilt of her sword against your hip.

“I know little star,” you earned the name from all your stargazing. “The Elders have seen your struggle. They know of your parents death, of your killing of Steffens men, they know of Steffen. Child I am sorry for the pain he has coursed. But I have come to give you a message from the Elders.”

“They have told me of what they see. They say you travel now with your true master, Uhtred of Bebbaburgh. Is this true?”

You nod pulling away from the woman. Holding your flowers tightly in your fist.

“I am glad you have found protection. The Elders tell me to warn you of Steffen. He continues to hunt for you. He plans to take you to his bed and break your bond to Uhtred.”

You think you should be unable to feel shock at this point. You knew that was his plan for you. You just don’t expect him to still be hunting.

“They want you to know about your bond to a master, specifically Uhtred,” she paused looking around. “They have seen a future union between the two of you. One of marriage.”

You face heats and you feel dizzy. Between you and Uhtred? The man that practically hates you? He is your master and nothing more.

“If a seer and their master bind,” she raises an eyebrow so you can see the meaning behind her words. “Their bond cannot be broken. He will stay your master even if Steffen tries to break your bond. You will stay forever attached to Uhtred.”

It’s hard to process the new information. You would do anything to make sure you don’t lose your bond to Uhtred. But sex?

You’d never done anything with anyone before. You’d never had the chance. But now you find out that having sex with anyone but Uhtred will break the bond between you two. Leaving you masterless. Your sight would be uncontrolled. Who knows where it might lead you.

How would Uhtred feel about this. He seems to care very little about learning anything about you. He calls you witch, not your name. Yet he still keeps you with him.

“I also come bringing gifts. This dagger is for you. It’s small and light and easy to conceal. You can do so in this leg scabbard.” She pulls the dagger from her bag, handing it to you.

She also pulls out a pot of what looks like a herby paste. “This is for your wounds. You must apply it once daily for the next few week. Or else they will become yellow and poisoned . May Steffen rot in Niflheim the puny bastard.”

Her insult makes you laugh, as pitiful as it is. You dry your tears, handing her your flowers.

“Thank you little star. You are too kind. I must leave now. The seers have sent me elsewhere.” She tells you. Putting the flowers in a pocket of her bag.

“When will I see you again?” You ask, voice weak, afraid of her answer.

She wipes your face, “Do not cry baby seer, fate will have us meet soon. I am certain.” She hugs you a final times before leaving the alley.

When she is out of sight you steady yourself against the wall. Then begin to sob, loudly. You slide down the wall, collapsing to your knees. You wish for the life of your mother, your father, to return to you. You wish Steffen would leave you gone. You wish your new Master and his friends cared for you more. All while feeling the horrid cuts along your back against the cold stone wall.

You take many deep breaths to calm yourself. Feeling the tears drain out of you, along with the last of your energy. You wish to be in bed, sleeping. Back on your families farm. You wish for your only worries to return to feeding the horses and collecting the harvest.

But that was not the case. Now you needed to get up and deal with your situation. It would not be solved sitting on the floor of a dirty alley.

So you get up, brush your tatty dress off, and begin your walk back to the Tavern.

#angelsworks post #uhtred the last kingdom #osferth the last kingdom #the last kingdom osferth #the last kingdom x reader #sihtric the last kingdom #the last kingdom #the last kingdom series #finan the last kingdom #dark

[kuiperblog]

What makes movie action “good?”

There’s a John Wick movie in theaters. There seems to be pretty uniform agreement that John Wick movies have great action, and simultaneously, there seems to be a lot of general “Marvel fatigue,” some of which is specifically about the MCU, but also some of which is about “action blockbusters” that seem to put a lot of focus on action and spectacle that a lot of people seem to be growing increasingly disenchanted with. (See, for example:  Tomorrow War (2021) starring Chris Pratt, Extraction (2020) starring Chris Hemsworth, and to round out the Chris roster we also have Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) with Chris Pine.)

Most of the discussion tends to focus on effects, and how making everything in a computer feels soulless while practical effects like the ones in John Wick and Everything Everywhere All At Once are superior, and there’s a certain degree to which blockbuster CG does look worse due to everything being computer generated. But I think a much bigger and more deep-seated problem is that blockbuster action is poorly structured.

There are a lot of great practical scenes in John Wick with choreography that is great not just in execution, but in concept: if you recreated them with computer animation, or hand-drawn animation, many of them would be just as fun. You could look at a storyboard with a director’s poorly-drawn pencil sketches and you’d still be able to follow the logic and understand what the scene’s impact is supposed to be. You can tell this, because people can describe these scenes, and regularly do exactly that, because they’re memorable. It’s what the legend of John Wick is all about. (And it’s not just the “top 10 most creative John Wick kills” listicles that remind us of that fact.)

The thing is, John Wick doesn’t rely on the unique outlandish props for memorable kills. Most of John Wick’s kills boil down to “point gun, pull trigger.” And yet despite that most of his kills are with bullets, so many of them feel unique. Each scene feels like it has a tempo to it, a sense of flow, a chain of cause and effect. “That guy is hiding behind a pillar, but his toe is sticking out. So I’ll shoot him in the toe, causing him to bend over in pain, exposing the rest of his body so I can shoot center of mass.” There’s always the moment when John Wick runs empty and has to reload before delivering the killshot.

There’s a storytelling principle that’s often applied to plot structure. This was famously described by Trey Parker to a bunch of NYU students on MTVU's "Stand In." Trey Parker describes the writers room as containing a massive white board, split into 3 acts, where they write down ideas scenes and rearrange them. Each scene has to be entertaining by itself, but they also need to be connected by a coherent narrative through-line.

"You don't want just one scene where, 'well, what was the point of that?' Take the beats of your outline, and if the words 'and then' belong between those beats, you've got something pretty boring. What should happen between every beat that you've written down is either the word 'therefore,' or 'but.'”

A happens, therefore B happens. Or, B doesn't happen, but C happens, therefore D happens. Repeat.  You can use this to structure the plot for a 25-minute TV episode, or a 120-minute movie, or a 2-minute action scene. Follow it, beat by beat, and see if one leads to the next:

One of the evil henchmen comes swinging at our hero with a wooden chair raised over his head, but the hero dodges and the wooden chair smashes against the floor, shattering. Therefore, the ground is now covered with the broken remains of a wooden chair, so the mook picks up one of the long pieces of wood that served as a chair leg and begins swinging at the hero again. But the hero successfully dodges and the wooden club breaks and splinters in a way that causes it to become, therefore the mook starts trying to use the splintered end to stab the hero...

I’m not saying this is an amazing action scene, but it’s a competent one: each beat flows into the next. The chair becomes a chair leg, then the chair leg becomes a shiv. Each time the henchman comes rushing at the hero, he’s doing it with a different weapon. The scene has a logic to it: if you rearranged the shots, the scene wouldn’t make sense. You can’t start with a splintered piece of wood and then end on an intact chair.

So many mediocre action movies fail to deliver it. The bad guy punches the hero. And then he punches the hero again. And then he tries to kick the hero. And then he punches in a different, cooler way. There’s no real sense in which each beat is a consequence of what followed it: if you cut the scene up and rearranged the shots, a lot of people might not even notice. (And in fact that sort of thing happens all the time in the editing bay.)

Tony Zhou self-deprecatingly describes this problem when critiquing one of his own videos, saying “This is a list you could put in any order. That’s why it’s so boring.”

For examples of action cinema where every beat feels like a consequence of what preceded it, watch any classic Jackie Chan movie (the ones that came out of Hong Kong, not Hollywood). Tony Zhou describes it like this:

“So how does Jackie create action that is also funny? First off, he gives himself a disadvantage. No matter what film, Jackie always starts beneath his opponents. He has no shoes. He’s handcuffed. He has a bomb in his mouth.“

“From this point, he has to fight his way back to the top. Each action creates a logical reaction. And by following the logic, we get a joke.” (Jackie is facing an assailant with a gun; Jackie has a gun, but it’s empty. Therefore, Jackie fakes surrender, handing his empty gun to the assailant. Therefore, the assailant is now holding an unloaded gun in his left hand. The assailant now thinks he has control of the situation, but reaching for the unloaded gun distracted him the fact that Jackie was entering a fighting stance and getting ready to kick: therefore, when Jackie kicks, he succeeds in knocking the loaded gun out of the assailant’s right hand. Therefore, the assailant tries to fire at Jackie using the gun in his left hand -- which is empty, and he realizes it in a moment of surprise which Jackie seizes on by punching the assailant in the face.)

This is the joy of watching Jackie Chan films: much like the example of a chair (which morphs into a chair leg, which morphs into a shiv), a prop in a Jackie Chan movie is rarely just one thing. A ladder isn’t just a ladder; it’s a prop. And it’s several different kinds of props. Fighting with a ladder like this:

...is subtly different than fighting with a ladder after this happens: 

And if you flip it over a guy’s head, it suddenly becomes a cage: 

...trapping a guy just long enough for him to look at you in surprise right before your fist intersects with his face.

It’s great for action comedy, but it’s also great for straight action: sometimes, the “punchline” is someone getting defeated in a surprising way. John Wick is one of the few big franchises of recent years to reliably do this sort of thing well.

Often, John Wick accomplishes this by being clever.  But I think a big part of it comes down to the fact that John Wick is just mortal enough for the number of bad guy’s he’s facing to matter. Each scene needs a sense of “progress,” where the stakes are constantly changing, and sometimes the change in stakes is as simple as, “There are five bad guys, oh no!” Bang bang, pivot, bang bang. “Okay, now there are only three bad guys.” (It’s harder to do this when you’ve been injected with super soldier serum and wear a suit made of high-tech blast resistant stretch fabric: Captain America subduing five bad guys doesn’t feel meaningfully different from him subduing three bad guys, even if the way he punches them is really cool.)

Stakes matter! If threat level scales linearly with the number of bad guys on screen, then each scene will have a natural eb and flow to it as bad guys get gradually picked off (or as more of them stream into the room, or pick themselves up off the floor and reach for the gun they just dropped).

One of the MCU scenes that actually did this better than most is the famous Captain America elevator scene: first, Crossbones and two guys get onto the elevator with cap. A bit surprising. Why is that guy resting his hand on his hip so close to his gun? Several floors later, the elevator opens, and four more guys get on. They’re wearing suits, like you’d expect from people who just showed up for a day at the office. This is headquarters, there’s nothing to be worried about. So why is that guy sweating? Then, the  door opens again, and three more guys get on -- and these guys are wearing tac gear. But hey, it’s Jack -- I know Jack, he was in the first ensemble movie, he can’t be one of the bad guys...so why is he standing directly between me and the door?

It’s a great example of slowly amping up the tension by gradually adjusting the threat level up. The scene even amps up the tension by having the magnetic handcuff, which leaves Cap in various stages of incapacitation throughout the fight. And he has to fight his way up from the bottom. But we very quickly go from this iconic shot:

...then after literally three seconds of Cap delivering a rapid series of strikes to incapacitate most of the mooks, he’s back to fighting two or three of them at a time.

Despite there being ten bad guys in the elevator, it’s kind of hard to get a clear fix on how many of them attacking Cap at any given moment, all of the others existing in various states of injury and recovery after they get the wind knocked out of them. In fact, the only shot that allows us to get a full body count is after the fight is over:

But it’s still a fun scene, one of my favorites, succeeding at being fun and memorable.

The bigger issue is the need to be “epic”: threat level can’t scale linearly with the number of bad guys on screen when you want a scene where there are literally hundreds of enemies to fight off.

There’s a certain point at which the marginal effect of another bad guy on screen is effectively zero. Obviously, this is the case when you have hundreds or dozens of enemies on screen, but there’s a real sense in which “group of seven bad guys” doesn’t feel different from “group of six bad guys.” Our brains just categorize both as “a pretty big cluster.” Research tends to come to slightly different results on this, but it seems like humans count “one, two, three, four, many.” Once you have five bad guys on screen, adding a sixth bad guy doesn’t do anything to change the stakes.  (That’s the problem with having a hero who’s so strong that you need to throw 10 bad guys at him to pose any threat.)

If you cap the total number of on-screen bad guys at five, then each enemy the hero defeats meaningfully changes the stakes, and John Wick does this a lot. In many cases, the flow just comes from watching the number of bad guys on screen decrease linearly as the hero picks them off, one by one. It gives the scene a natural scenes of progress, and it can sometimes be played for comedy, like Neal Stephenson does in Snow Crash in a scene described by a sniper’s dialog:

"It's, like, one of them drug dealer boats," Vic says, looking through his magic sight.  "Five guys on it.  Headed our way."  He fires another round.  "Correction.  Four guys on it."  Boom.  "Correction, they're not headed our way anymore."  Boom.  A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away.  "Correction.  No boat."

That’s a (very short) scene with flow. You can’t rearrange the beats; every beat leads to the next. Follow the logic, and arrive at the punchline.

#writing #john wick #movies #snow crash #neal stephenson

[fallingforel]

Hi!! I was wondering if you could do numbers 5, 23, 62, 63, and 69 from your prompt list with like the reader being part of one direction and Harry dating her, and she falls for brad from the vamps. Like could it be angst between Harry and the reader where they’re together but then he cheats on her with someone (idk any celebrity or something like he dated Taylor at one point I think) and she goes to Brad and they’re friends but he’s been in love with her since forever and he comforts her and they get together. Also just make Harry completely regret everything if you can (I live for the cheating with no second chance trope, it’s amazing ❤️) thank you so much!! Have a great day!

A/N hi my lovely here it is for you, hope you enjoy and I hope you like it. dont forget those that want to request one the prompt list is here

1,548 words

PROMPTS 5, 23, 62, 63 AND 69: "you made your choice" "they didn't deserve you" "you think that this is easy for me" "I hate seeing you like this" "I don't like you...I love you"

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It was a well known fact that I was the 6th member and only girl in one direction, I was also dating harry from my band, on the outside things looked squeaky clean and it looked like we had a perfect relationship but we didn't we fought all the time, Harry was always jealous because I was best mates with Brad from the vamps, Brad and I have been lifelong friends as we both resided from the same part of Birmingham and we also went to school together. It wasn't my fault that I've always gotten along better with boys than I have with girls they were just easier to talk to and the fact that they weren't snakes behind my back.

So you could imagine Harry's reaction when I told him brad was coming tonight, even if he tried to hide it in the best way possible. I still noticed. It was hard not to, however we hadn't had a fight in three weeks and I wasn't about to start one now, I had just finally hoped that we were in an all right place.

"Brads coming tonight. He's in town got a show tomorrow, thought he'd pop by then celebrate with us as the end of this leg is today, was thinking we could go to his show tomorrow"

"mmh, yeah, be nice I 'spose"

"Yeah it would, come on we've got to get ready, we've got a show to perform"

⋆｡°✩

And the show went spectacularly well, I was at my happiest when I was on the stage with my band, with my fans screaming my name it was the most supportive feeling in the world, and I loved every second of it.

Now we were back in our dressing rooms ready to go out, It wasn't often we went out while on tour we'd only ever do it for special things like birthdays, end of legs or if someone new joined our team halfway through. Tonight though, we were celebrating the end of the leg of the tour we were currently on, zayn left a couple of months ago. And with Harry and I on rocky ground we all secretly knew that the band was coming to an end, we were all scared to admit it though, too afraid to say it out loud because then it would all become real.

I'm broken out of my thoughts by a knock on the door, which makes me wipe away the tears I didn't even realise were there, before I'm saying "COME IN" and I'm met with Harry peeping round the door

"Hey, hey. why are you crying my love? What's the matter?" "The bands breaking up isn't it?" "no? what makes you think that sweetheart?" "I mean, with Zayn leaving, you and I on rocky terms, we're all not the same people we were 5 years ago Harry, the bands dynamic doesn't fit anymore"

"Yes okay, zayn may have left, You and I may be on bad terms some of the time and yes maybe we have all changed, but nobody stays the same, it's pretty hard to do that darling, otherwise you wouldn't grow up. The dynamic still works all the same though. So for now, dry your tears, get a fit dress on and lets take our minds off this band breaking up nonsense"

And I do as he tells me joining them shortly in the addison lee taking us into the main part of london, so we could go to a night club. I was sat inbetween Harry and Brad and could feel the tension rising, more so from Harry than brad, Harry was being weirdly possesive with me and it didnt feel in a good way, like it usually does.

Soon arriving at the nightclub we all head inside and Louis takes Harry to the bar to get some drinks for all of us, even he could sense the tension meaning it was bad.

⋆｡°✩

"you did great tonight, y/n/n. Smashed it, if only you could've heard the chanting for your name. It was unreal honestly." Brad says from beside me perking me out of my daydream of nothing in particular.

"awwh, Braddy. You're sweet you" I say placing a kiss on his cheek as a thank you. I've always called Brad, braddy ever since we were in nappies because I was never able to pronounce my L's I soon learned, the name stuck around though.

⋆｡°✩

Having not seen Harry since he went to the bar, and hasn't come back since, It's been well over half an hour now, so I was getting pretty worried. So I decided to ask around if anybody has seen him.

"LOU! You haven't seen Harry have you? Haven't seen him since we got here." "No I haven't. Last I saw him was at the bar, said he was going back to you, that was about fifteen minutes ago" "thanks lou."

⋆｡°✩

10 minutes later Niall comes up to me interuptting the conversation I was having with Brad I had given up trying to find him he clearly didn't want to be found, "I heard you were looking for Harry, I found him, but you're not going to like it" "what Niall, where is he" "mens bathroom, that way" he says turning to point me in the direction of where the mens bathroom is.

Walking into the mens bathroom, I found a sight I didn't want to see, Harry going down on a girl, the girl that wasn't me. "OH WOW!" I shout earning both his and the girls attention. "y/n/n, baby-" "don't you baby me Harry, it is so clear what you think about me." "who the fuck are you?" the girl quips back at me. "his girlfriend honey, actually no his ex-girlfriend. Keep him he's yours he was a slag anyway" "oh thats rich coming from you y/n, I saw you getting close with Brad, a little kiss on the cheek" "we've always been that way and you fucking know it" "oh but it's so easy for you breaking up with me though isn't it, now you can run away with the btec version of me cause it's clear you have a type don't you" "YOU THINK THAT THIS IS EASY FOR ME? YOU THINK THAT I WANT TO BREAK UP WITH YOU? WELL I DON'T HARRY OKAY?, BUT ITS CLEAR WHAT YOU'VE CHOSEN, goodbye Harry, I'll see you soon for the american leg." is the last thing I say before I walk out of the men's bathroom and back to where Brad was sat.

"Y/n? are you okay?" is all he says before I break down crying and he wraps an arm around me. And an executive decision is made between the two of us that he's going to take me back to his for the night.

⋆｡°✩

In the taxi on the way back, I'm still crying and he still has an arm around me. "

what even happened? why are you crying?"

"Harry cheated on me" is all I can muster out before I'm a blubbering mess again

"I hate seeing you like this Y/n all I know right now is that he didn't deserve you, he never has but I've always been supportive of your relationship always been the shoulder to cry on because I'm your best friend and always will be here, and you know that"

And soon enough I'm on Brads sofa, with Brad laying down giving me a hug.

"you want to say something dont you?" I speak up breaking the silence between me and him. "yeah I do, and I don't care if it's the incorrect time, or what but I have to say it now, otherwise I never will, I dont like you y/n I love you, and I have for the longest time, and if you need time to heal I'm okay with that I can wait a little while longer for you darling" he says shocking me to my core, I will admit I always loved Brad, and I don't think I ever stopped not liking him I just think Harry was a distraction while I was away from him.

"oh brad, I love you too" Is the last thing I say before I'm pulled into a kiss from him and we make our way upstairs to his bed where we both reside for the night wrapped up in eachother and if we were to get stuck into each other as well, then that's nobody's business but our own

⋆｡°✩

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

we're both awoken to a pounding on Brads door, so we both rush down and he answers it, revealing a disheveled Harry who looks like he hadn't slept. He tries to enter but brad pushes him back with the door "she doesn't want to speak to you Harry, You really fucked it this time" "please just hear me out y/n. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to cheat, I love you so so so so much"

"You made your choice Harry, please just go. I don't want you here, just please leave, be better on yourself" which I was met back with silence and then the turn of footsteps up brads gravel drive was all that could be heard.

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end.

#harry styles x y/n #harry styles fic #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader #harry styles #harry styles angst #one direction #louis tomlinson #niall horan #brad simpson #bradley simpson #brad simpson x reader #the vamps #brad simpson imagine #brad simpson x y/n

[musings-on-aching-flowers]

Sumeru: a first impression, and my honest opinion

Growing up, I’ve always struggled to find representation. 

I’m a second-generation Indian diaspora, born to Australian parents, raised on Western media and Bollywood. I am dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed - the kind of Indian you don’t see in North Indian media, because fair is the beauty standard. I didn’t really have anything else to turn to, though, and I grew up despising how dark I was, to the point where I avoided the sun in the summertime in attempt to preserve my marginally fairer winter complexion. 

For a long time also, to many of my peers growing up, I was the first impression they had of Indians, and I felt in this way, everything I did had to be perfect. Even still, I feel like anything representing India as a country and culture must be perfect, because, intentionally or not, whatever image of a place someone is first exposed to, that becomes the impression people have of the country and people as a whole, and it’s immensely difficult to change that. 

So representation ultimately terrifies me. So much Western media has gotten it wrong. We were always painted as the caricature nerd-type character in Western media - I love Phineas and Ferb but look at Baljeet, or Raj from Big Bang Theory. And that was if Indians were lucky enough to be included: more often they were not, which, as a kid, is hard - you can’t really see yourself reflected in many characters on screen - someone who shares the same traits as you. 

Now, what relevance does this have to Genshin Impact? A lot, actually.

You see, Sumeru is an interesting case. I recognise the exploration music as Indian - strains of the Sitar and flute, melodies and scales characteristic of Indian music that I grew up listening to, singing and playing. Don’t get me wrong, Indian music is not a monolith by any means, there’s huge variety wherever you turn, but I recognise it. The combat music, too. Honestly, whenever they break out the Sitar it’s heartwrenchingly familiar to me. 

I also recognise the region names. They’re Sanskriti, like Gandharva Ville, Chinvat Ravine, Gandha Hill. The chapter title for this part of the Archon Quest is ‘Pages of Purana’. Even the names of the various jades you use to level up characters are derived from Sanskrit - but this is also due to Sanskriti words spanning the Dharmic religions i.e. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and so on. Personally, I am Hindu, so of course Buddhist stuff is immediately recognisable and familiar to me as well, considering that Buddhism originated as an offshoot of Hinduism, and also began in India before it was spread down the Silk Road to take root in East Asia. 

The problem is, I don’t recognise the names. I don’t recognise the clothes. I don’t recognise the skin colour of the NPC character models. 

Now, you could make the argument that India is a very large place, and the names are very diverse. And they are, to an extent. But I know my culture, I know the kinds of names we have. I don’t recognise it. These names and clothing and whatever else are more Middle-Eastern. And therein lies the problem. To lump together various different regions and cultures and treat it as a monolith, isn’t that in itself breaking from the established tradition? Why couldn’t Sumeru have been dedicated to one region, whether that be India or the Middle East?  

And before anyone decries me for being overly sensitive or unfair, I will ask this. Why is it that Inazuma, Liyue and Mondstadt get utmost respect in the handling of their respective regions and cultures? Each region is based on one country - that in itself is immediately recognisable. The names of the characters are appropriate and, again, immediately recognisable. And don’t come at me with nonsense like arguing Enkanomiya isn’t based on anywhere, that’s wilfully obtuse and you know it.

Another thing - the complexions characteristic of both the Middle East and India are dark. Dark, as in the last shades on the cosmetic line dark, as in hair almost-black dark, as in pupils only discernable in the sunlight dark. I want to see that reflected in the kinds of characters that populate Sumeru. The little girl in me that applied ‘Fair and Lovely’ masks in the hopes that she would become fairer is hurting for that kind of representation. I want to see people that look like me populate a region with music and names familiar to me. That, to me, would be the most healing of all.

Genshin Impact is enormous. It is probably the biggest game today. This kind of representation is going to have an enormous impact on how people perceive India and Indian culture, along with Middle Eastern culture, whether they may realise it or not. I desperately want my experience of Sumeru to be positive, but I am absolutely terrified of what I might find. I have been hurt by poor representation enough times before. I'm terrified of playing and being proven right again, and that saddens me, because I love this game.

Ultimately, what I want is for people to see India and Indian culture in its full beauty, and appreciate it the way I appreciate it.  If you have time now, why not go watch a Bharatanatyam dancer or Sitar player perform, or visit a nearby temple or mosque and pay your respects, or participate in your local Diwali festival, since it’s coming up soon? After all, Indian culture isn’t just butter chicken, naan and stolen diamonds housed in the British Museum. 

That was my first impression of Sumeru, as an Indian. I hope I’m proven wrong. 

#genshin impact #sumeru #al haitham #India #representation matters #representation #media representation #brown skin #My experiences as Indian diaspora who struggled with double identity for a very very long time #I truly cannot stress to you how much representation matters #A lot of my self-esteem issues when I was young would have been resolved if I had had the kind of representation #that characters like Kate and Edwina Sharma in Bridgerton provide #(not that I would be watching that at a young age but you get the idea) #I just hope that I'm proven wrong and they get it more right #but I'm not holding out much hope #I guess we'll see #3.0 update #genshin sumeru #tighnari #genshin #inazuma #liyue #mondstadt #kusanali

[lesbianballofgender]

Okay but in all seriousness the writing of season two is perfect to portray exactly who Ed and Stede are and who they’ve always been. If David Jenkins had said “fuck it” and given them a happy ending right away it would’ve been magic, but so false. Stede and Ed aren’t perfect like that so a perfect and easy ending isn’t correct for them.

They’re going through another break up over the pettiest of shit (I mean a fish for fuck sake) but that’s exactly what Stede and Ed would do. Because we all know it’s not actually about a fish. As Ed was running away he said ‘fishermen and pirates are nothing alike’ which just surfaces a whole bunch of new things they need to talk through. Because in that scenario Stede is the pirate and Ed is the fisherman, a complete 180 to season one’s dilema where Ed’s the pirate and Stede an Aristocrat. Stede knows it’s not the real reason he’s leaving because he even yells ‘it’s not about that’ to which Ed yells back ‘it’s everything about that! It’s everything about fishing!’ yet there’s no reason it would be. Ed is making up an excuse because he’s afraid. He kept repeating how he wanted to take things slow yet (like he mentions) everything has been doing the exact opposite. They had sex but I don’t just mean that. Stede also was very close to confessing his love for him, which to Edward I’m sure would be a huge deal as no one has probably ever loved him truly and purely before in that way. And I’m not being funny but especially a man. Ed killed his own Father and as far as we know the only person to have loved him (besides like ig Izzy) is his Mother. So it may be difficult for him to accept love especially from another man because he never received it growing up. The entire episode ‘man on fire’ also highlights exactly how truly whim-prone Ed and especially Stede are. It doesn’t take much for Stede to get swept away by praises from his fans, enough so he even gets his ear pierced. And Ed deciding to become a fisherman from catching one fish is really… the best example.

Even in ‘Calypso’s birthday’ when Ned calls Stede Ed’s ‘pet’ it brings about these doubts Stede could have about Ed’s true feelings for him that, paired with ‘Man on fire’, is fucking incredible. Because right after Stede has been told that his boyfriend only likes him because ‘of his bumbling amateur status’ he changes completely, kills two men (Ned and the man on fire), has gay sex for the first time, gets his ear pierced and a bunch of people start to get tattoos of him on their bodies. These doubts need resolving though but instead of talking it out, of course his initial response is to bottle it/have sex… though it isn’t like he was given much of a chance to bring it up to talk about it because Ed ran away (a response that is so fucking accurate to both of them as characters).

I’d just like to point out that I love the detail of Stede always preaching for everybody to ‘talk it through as a crew’ yet I swear he has never practised what he preaches. This man running away back to Mary instead of talking his feeling out but telling the crew to share their thoughts is one of the most realistic thing about his character.

No one can say this show has bad writing. The inevitable conflict was hinted at so many times throughout the season. Ed and Stede could’ve never stayed happy as soon as they met up in ‘Fun and games’ because Stede still hadn’t met his goal of being a known pirate (his whole goal from season one) plus he literally ran away from having a normal life so of course he wasn’t going to give up the seas quite yet while Ed has been so clearly saying he’s done with pirating for a long time. The entire persona of ‘Jeff’ is the only evidence we need. He wants a normal life, not as Blackbeard but as ‘Edward Teach born on a beach’ or as ‘Jeff’ - the innkeeper or accountant. It’s impossible not to pick up on this. Even the line ‘you wear fine things well’ is just this idea incarnate. They both say it to each other on severed occasions, it being a complement showing their adoration for one another. When Ed tells Stede those words it’s a comedic moment because he’s relaying Stede’s words, it’s sweet because they kiss and it’s such an obvious thing to say because Stede is (as he put it in ‘a gentleman pirate’) landed gentry so of course it suits him. Yet when Ed’s being told he looks good in nice things it’s the best thing someone has ever told him, because Stede looks past him being a pirate and a murderer and says “hey, that suits you”. No one has ever seen him as someone worth anything more so he feels seen more then he ever has before. That one line is so powerful and that’s probably why it’s repeated in season 2; because it feels like proof they will end up back together again.

They don’t understand their own feelings half the time, they’re whim-prone and they’re very good at running away, however they see one another for who they are and so far have always found their way back to each other.

#ofmd #ofmd season 2 #our flag means death #pirates #lgbtq #i love this show #I love these stupid gay pirates #gay #thought dump #stede bonnet #edward teach #ed x stede #ofmd spoiler #stede fucking bonnet #man on fire #David Jenkins

[presidenthades]

I am doing very minor revisions of Daemon’s Handbook (mostly formatting and continuity errors), and I wanted to do some behind-the-scenes commentary before too much time passes and I forget my original thoughts. Here’s Chapter 2!

(Note that these commentaries aren’t canon to the verse until/unless the author writes them into the series. I might change my mind on a few points later, but these are the thoughts I had while writing.)

Those gold dancing slippers with pink roses and sunbursts? Aegon 100% bought those for Jace (in Sunfyre’s colors of course), and that’s why she freaks out about them in Chapter 3.

Helaena has FRIENDS in this verse! Because she gets to grow up with three kinswoman close in age to her! Yay! I imagine her spending a lot of time with Jace, Luce, and Joff while they’re all living at the Red Keep.

That black and green three-pointed star is supposed to be some kind of reference to the three main couples of this series. Please don’t ask for details because I don’t have any 🙈

Rhaena and Baela’s crushes on Helaena and Jace, respectively, have begun sprouting in this chapter. They are very embarrassed by their dad acting like a weirdo in front of their crushes.

Daemon has a mental diatribe about Aegon’s dissolute ways, but in actuality Daemon would probably enjoy hanging out with someone who can keep up with him in Flea Bottom. Alas.

Neither book nor show canon says anything about Aegon or Aemond squiring, but I think healthy young princes would be expected to squire, like Daeron. I’m thinking Aegon strongly disliked the idea of having to squire (which involves a lot of acts of service) so maybe he a) threw a fit or b) used some weaponized incompetence until people gave up. 😆 But show!Aemond would like the idea of becoming a chivalrous knight, and Criston seems like a good option to squire for, considering Criston’s proximity to Alicent.

In this verse, Rhaenyra chooses to move her family to Dragonstone for different reasons than canon (where she felt pushed out by the Hightowers). Here, she’s mostly concerned about Jace and Aegon. I’ll delve into more detailed commentary later for Chapter 6, but basically, the kids have hit puberty and Jace and Aegon have already been caught sneaking around to kiss and hold hands. You can’t really keep them apart if they’re living in the same castle, so Rhaenyra’s solution is to relocate her daughters. Rhaenyra still plans to commute to court as needed (like in Chapter 4), but it’s not the most politically expedient move even if she’s decided it’s best for personal reasons.

We get our first glimpse of what the Jace/Aegon relationship is like. Jace spends a good amount of time trying to make Aegon act nicer (especially toward Aemond; no Pink Dread in this verse). She tends to use the carrot instead of the stick, which is Aegon’s preferred learning method, so Jace is more successful than Alicent who does it the other way.

Daemon doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see with his own eyes so he’s not superstitious, BUT Joff makes him question a lot of things. 😆 He figures out real fast that regardless of whether she’s actually witchy, it’s best to stay on her good side. (Otto also knows something is up with that girl lol)

I’m definitely exploring Joff’s dynamic with Laenor in a future installment in this verse. For now, let’s just say it was complicated. As precocious as Joff is, she’s only 6 and she doesn’t actually know everything.

“Window closes, heart opens, door opens, heart closes.” Helaena’s prophecy is about Aemond’s eye and the Luce/Aemond relationship, though I originally planned for it to play out differently (more to come in Chapter 4 commentary). As the fic currently stands, the prophecy breaks down like this: window closes = Aemond loses his eye. Heart opens = Luce opening up to Aemond again. Door opens = the rookery door when Daemon messes with the letters. Heart closes = Luce and Aemond’s three year estrangement.

#my writing #hotd #house of the dragon #meta #hotd fanfic #house of the dragon fanfic #daemon’s handbook

[cosmica-galaxy]

FSR Headcanons with Audi and Tricky

--

AUDITOR

--

+ The auditor is easily fascinated with the large foreign being from "the outside realms" of Nevada. The chances of a creature actually breaching into Nevada is so slim, it's practically non-existent. So to have such an opportunity to study a being from the outer realms is a privilege in itself.

+ The first contact goes well and the Auditor finds himself growing more and more curious as the studies of the being start to come through. Revealing their complex inner mechanisms and their general make-up to be similar to his own master in a way, just much more streamlined and organic.

+ Since the being isn't hostile, his agents and numerous units can work around the being effectively and study it without risk of losing all of his crew. Color him surprised when the being even COOPERATES and tolerates scientists and agents crawling all over them.

+ When the testing begins, his interest only deepens. With granted permission from FSR, they decided to test out their weapons on the being. The shocking results revealed that not even BULLETS or MISSILES can damage it. They simply bounce off and FSR gives the assaulter nothing more than an annoyed look. Sharp weapons were even ineffective, since FSR was covered in thick armor. The only weapons that they discovered that can hurt FSR, using small reasonable doses, were more along the lines of Nexus Core weapons. Dissonance and lasers have a much stronger effect and FSR was recorded even wincing when the small dosage was used.

+ Field testing came later on once FSR was actually moved to a more appropriate holding cell. The Auditor took in everything he could, almost as if he was eager to obtain such forbidden knowledge about those that dwelled on the outside. The field tests were even much more intriguing than simple studies. FSR enthralled him with their ability to pick up massive vehicles, an active demonstration of their arm cannon (That morphed in from their own digits!), and the ability to fly at speeds over 200 MPH.

+ The Auditor was EASILY convinced that FSR would serve his purpose greatly, possibly becoming the most strongest unit in his army if they joined, but he can see the hesitance of the being. They're nervous...or just simply unconvinced. He NEEDS them to join his side and he'll do anything he can to make sure that recruitment is the definite result.

--

TRICKY

--

+ Tricky is a maniac and the moment he finds a larger, possibly stronger enemy, roaming the desert all by themselves, he pounces on them. Much to his surprise, and both parties frustration, his attacks simply can't break through the armor that covers the body of his enemy. Even prodding the cracks in the chassis didn't pop any of them off!

+ FSR is easily annoyed by Tricky's antics and swats him off repeatedly. But Tricky always bounces back and tries again and again. To the point where the larger being hovers in the air to get away from his attempts at attacking them. Of course, Tricky screams out "NO FAIR" when this happens.

+ It's almost hilarious at what transpires after that. Tricky's enemy will ALWAYS be Hank Wimbleton, but this tall foreign creature is just so intriguing to the clown zed that once it begins to head off somewhere else, Tricky finds himself compelled to follow it. It has no set destination, that becomes apparent, but Tricky is never too far behind when it decides to settle down for a rest. Pouncing on FSR and merely irritating them for hours on end as they try to get some sleep.

+ Tricky also comes to notice how FSR is annoyed by other factions. Be it the AAHW, Nexus Core, Fanatics, Zeds, and whatever else happens to be crawling around in Nevada. Still, it confuses Tricky to no end at why they just simply won't kill whatever is annoying them. Even him! They never choose violence and just simply stare at the aggressor in annoyance before pushing them away or knocking them over. Yet none of their enemies come to harm.

+ Tricky quickly finds out that FSR is practically nomadic and travels by air most of the time. He's even lost them a couple of times, but he will eventually find them again if he looks hard enough. Soon enough, the creature pretty much tolerates his antics and bothersome presence enough that they won't just fly away whenever he irritates them enough. They just simply lay there while he chews on their armor or breaks his stop sign against their hull. All while they stare at him in indifference.

+ What really confused Tricky, was the day when he finally caught up to them after another long pursuit, and they gave him a series of gentle pats instead of brushing him off like usual. It stunned Tricky into a frozen state. Then from that moment forward, Tricky found himself following them around and even clinging onto them when they began to move from one place to another. They even seem to grow fond of his presence as well. Taking him with them across Nevada without a care.

#TUMBLR LET ME ANSWER MY ASKS GOD DAMN #anonymous #anon asks #madcom x reader #human!reader x madcom #madcom tag #y/n x madness combat #madness combat x reader #futuristic soldier reader #FSR!Reader x Madcom #FSR!Reader #hax speaks #Haxorus Imp #cosmica galaxy #My writing

[boots-with-the-fur-club]

Inverted Confrontation chapter 5!

April stares in shock at the girl who looks so similar that she could be her twin.

“Woah! Is that me!?”

“Yeah, I’m-….Agent 64…?” Other April trails off, staring at Mayhem.

“So cool! You’ve got a secret agent name!?”

“No, he’s….” Tears prick at her eyes but they quickly glance away.

“Never mind. We’ll talk after I get these guys out of this dimension!” She continues, pointing at the villains.

“Give up now, Apricot. You know we can still wipe you all out.” Champion smirks.

“Quit calling me that! You’re wrong this time. We’ve got you outnumbered!” She insists.

“Oh yeah? For how long?”

Her eyes widen.

“Watch out!”

Dr. Rude puts his hands together and they start to glow orange. One hand pulls from the other, producing a chain. It lengthens as he pulls more until he tosses it with great strength and speed.

The group tries to disperse to avoid it but it almost seems alive, going right after them all.

April hits the chain with her bat, but it wraps around and tugs. She digs her heels into the ground to avoid it getting pulled away. Orange starts creeping up the green.

“Let go!” Other April warns.

April begrudgingly does as asked and the chain retracts, bringing the bat to Dr. Rude. It slowly changes fully from green to orange.

“He’s going to do that to all of us if we don’t do something!”

Leo frees Draxum.

“Barry, if you don’t want to die, you’re going to have to help us out here!”

“I could handle them just fine if they didn’t surprise me!” He insists.

“Dr. Rude, it’s time to get Hyde his assistant.” Champion whispers.

Dr. Rude nods in response and falls back into a portal that is clawed open behind him.

Everyone panics about where he’ll show up.

Leo moves closer to Mikey, knowing remembering what the villains had talked about before with Hyde getting his lab assistant.

Another portal opens up which Leo readies his weapon towards. The sound of a third one opening makes him realize too late that it was a diversion.

He turns his head behind him, eyes widening as a chain reaches for Mikey. He can barely scream out a late warning.

Then, the chain suddenly gets grabbed by a vine and Dr. Rude is pulled through, up towards the air.

“Stay away from my son!” Draxum shout.

Mikey’s eyes sparkle at hearing the word son.

Dr. Rude’s eyes fill with hatred.

“Hyde, Red, let’s end this already.” Champion growls.

He opens a lot more portals all around. The exit portals open up on the other side, too many to keep track of. All the villains go through, popping out from random ones.

They all begin to fight. The portals make everything much more chaotic and difficult. The villains use them to pop in and out while everyone else gets pushed or falls into them and land awkwardly out of them.

It gets incredibly tense with the villains not throwing their punches in the slightest. Every single close contact with Dr. Rude is a narrow miss of brainwashing. The original turtles are getting tired while the villains don’t seem to even break a sweat.

Except for Champion who seems to actually be sweating.

Hyde continually spares glances his way that had concern in them.

It starts to become obvious that something is wrong with him.

Donnie glances around at the portals and sees that they’re becoming unstable.

“He’s getting strained!”

Champion grits his teeth, trying not to react outwardly too much.

Raph immediately starts going after him to further weaken his concentration on the portals.

Red attempts to stop this but is himself stopped by Draxum and April.

“You need to just give up! You’re going to get hurt!” Raph hits his mystic fist at Champion.

He isn’t able to recover from it as well as before, stumbling slightly.

“I know exactly what I need to do! I know what my brothers need! And they need him dead!”

“Is that really what they need if they get hurt doing it!?”

Champion looks at his brothers in panic. Dr. Rude’s arms were growing shaky, the mystic orange light in them getting dim as he fights against Donnie and other April.

Hyde was getting overwhelmed by Leo and Mikey breaking every projected weapon of his they could get their hands on.

Champion is so distracted by all of this that he doesn’t dodge a hit that Raph expects him to, leading it to be a much harder one than he’s intended.

The portals all stop at once as he weakly tries to stay standing.

“Leo!” Raph shouts the wrong name out of panicked concern and rushes to catch him before he falls over.

Champion heavily resists falling over or passing out at first, but ultimately ends up in his arms, completely limp.

Dr. Rude’s arms fully stop glowing at seeing his brother go down. He practically screeches in anger before attacking Donnie and other April more brutally. This seemed to be the last of his energy though, because eventually he’s shaking all over in an attempt to keep going.

Donnie picks him up with his robotic arms, he still struggles heavily right up to the moment he just physically can’t anymore. He goes as limp as Champion.

Hyde and Red become incredibly distraught. They both try to get to their brothers but are stopped at every turn.

“Let me through!”

“Not happening you Frankenstein wannabe, you can see your brothers once we’re sure you’re not going to kill anybody!” Leo comes at Hyde again.

Red starts tearing through vines and attempts to barrel through April. He’s taken off guard by Mayhem jumping at and clawing his face.

“Get a portal home open, he’s not lookin good!” Raph shouts.

“On it! You got this Mikey?”

“You know it!”

Leo quickly makes his way to Raph, Donnie, and other April to open up the portal.

Once Red and Hyde notice, something changes with them immediately.

Hyde gets rid of all of his current tech to replace them with robotic enhancements on his arms. They come in the form of extremely sharp blades on either side. His eyes glow completely purple, leaving no room for any semblance of his personality as he slices at Mikey.

Red shares the glowing eyes, his red. He takes Mayhem off his face and flings him at April instead. She’s quick to react and catch him but the force sends her skidding back a bit. Red summons a large copy of himself that slams Draxum and his vines into the concrete.

The sheepman barely avoids anything getting broken thanks to said vines, but Red’s clone relentlessly keeps hitting him.

“We have a situation!!” April screams.

“What’s happening!?” Donnie looks at other April.

“I’ve never seen them do this before! I have no idea!” She responds.

“They’ve gone into a war protocol!” Draxum yells with strain.

“Explain already!” April insists.

“I may or may not have implemented something that would have them react to the strategist and infiltration specialist being taken out! It’s the last line of defense! There’s almost nothing that will stop them!”

“You what!?” The turtles shout.

“We’re talking about that later! What’s the not totally nothing thing then!?”

The door to the roof slams open as Splinter charges forward.

“April! I’m here!”

Hyde and Red turn their attention to him, the color overtaking their eyes fading.

“I-Is that him?” Hyde’s weapons vanish once again.

His body is clearly exhausted, just like what had happened with Champion and Dr. Rude. Despite that he still cautiously approaches Splinter.

“Dad! Be careful!” Leo warns.

Hyde tries to move forward, but drops to his knees. He shakes and tears up, hands on the ground.

“It’s not fair….it’s not fair! Why do they get to have a dad? Why do they get to have two!? What did we do wrong…?”

Splinter frowns and gets close to him despite the previous warning, moving his chin up so he can wipe his tears.

“It’s time to rest.”

Hyde’s body gives out, face planting into Splinter’s shoulder.

Red, who watched the whole thing go down, pushes through his own exhaustion to pull him away from Splinter.

Everyone tries to stop him but he keeps pushing through to collect all his brothers. He sits down on the ground, cradling them protectively before he too passes out.

Raph feels pangs of sympathy in his chest. He’d be doing the same exact thing in this situation. He’d also feel an incredible amount of guilt.

“Can someone explain what’s going on here!?” Splinter looks around at them all.

“It might take a while, let’s do it at home.” Leo suggests.

Everyone agrees since most of them are tired from the fighting. They use the portal he opened before and get the entire gang of villains through it as well. With some help from Donnie, Draxum is able to make some mystic canceling bindings to put around the villains. They’re kept in a room nearby so an eye can be kept on them as the turtles and other April explain what’s going on.

“A world where I wasn’t able to save you….” Splinter frowns deeply.

“You did save us pops, you just….couldn’t save yourself too.” Raph sighs.

“And because of that they took over all of New York!? And I’m leadin the resistance!?” April looks at her other self.

“It’s not all of New York, but yeah, most of it. I’m actually a co-leader. Sunita and Casey help out a lot.”

“Who’s Casey?”

“You don’t know Casey here!? Come on! Intense girl with crazy combat skills? Likes hockey? Shaved head?”

“FOOT RECRUIT!?” Everyone shouts.

“I guess she used to be, do y’all just call her that? You never learned her name?”

“We’re sworn enemies!” April replies.

“And here I thought this world was way better. I couldn’t imagine not being friends with Casey….”

“What about that whole Agent 46 thing?”

Other April sighs heavily.

“We were partners. He was part of the yokai trying to help against the turtles. He worked for their council.”

“Mayhem!? You’re a secret agent!? I’ve been giving you baths!”

Mayhem glances the other way.

April glares at him before coming to a realization.

“Were? Was? Past tense….?”

Other April leans her arms on the kitchen counter, head down slightly as she tears up.

“He’s….gone. They brought down a building on us. H-He was so hurt, but he still got us out. It was just too much and he….” She sniffles and covers her eyes.

There’s a sad silence in the room. Nobody knows exactly what to say to her. Most of them couldn’t imagine not having Mayhem around anymore. They also couldn’t imagine wanting to hurt him.

Mayhem jumps out of April’s arms and onto the counter, rubbing against other April.

She slowly moves her hands away and and pulls him close.

“I miss you so much….I’m sorry….”

April puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. Knowing me, since you kinda are, you did whatever you could to avoid it. Sometimes….things happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. It sucks, but you can’t hold onto that guilt. It’ll eat you alive just for something that wasn’t even your fault.”

Other April takes a breath and smiles softly.

“Giving myself a pep talk, never thought it would be literal.”

They both chuckle.

“Okay, now that that’s taken care of, you need to tell us what you did!” Leo shouts, pointing at Draxum.

“I created you for war, you’re already aware of this.”

“We weren’t aware that we had a kill switch.” Donnie crosses his arms.

“Fine. You were each created with a role in mind. Obviously I never got to fortify here it myself, but they’re there anyways. The blue one is the-“

“Glorious face man?” Leo flips his mask tails like they’re hair.

“-distraction. Red eared sliders, your species, slide off things in nature to escape predators. They sense vibrations, are good climbers, and the bright colors I encoded could keep the enemy’s eyes away from the others.”

Leo’s face drops.

“Then Mikey’s natural speed, strength, small stature, and overall adorableness make him the perfect infiltrator. He and the distraction would then make sense as a natural pairing.”

They two of them look at each other in concern.

“As for the purple and red one, their roles are pretty clear. The tech and data specialist who’s best with defense tactics with machinery to match. The tank and muscle of the group who takes the damage that the others can’t and acts most often as offense.”

Donnie huffs and looks away while Raph seems shocked.

“The so called kill switch would in most cases be when the red one is the last left alive. A final resort to take out the enemy when everyone else has failed.”

“My….savage Raph freak out moments when I’m all alone….it’s because of you?”

“Technically it’s in all of you, like what we saw when half their team was gone. You’re all capable of it, you just more so than the rest.”

Mikey rushes over to Raph and hugs him tightly. Raph hugs him back just as tightly, his eyes looking like a kicked puppy’s.

Everyone else glares at Draxum.

Leo crosses his arms angrily.

“I am so regretting not letting them drop you off a roof.”

Shoutout to @daboyau! The headcanons and ideas about the roles of the turtles as well as the theory about savage Raph came from them! They have great fics which you should check out!!

#inverted confrontation #2018 tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rottmnt fanfiction #rise fanfiction #tmnt 2018 #fanfiction #rise leo #rottmnt michelangelo #rise angst #rottmnt angst #villain raph #villain raph au #rise villain au #villain leo au #rottmnt villain leo #villain donnie #villain donnie au #villain mikey

[rubeau-art]

Some Notes on Jax and Atlas - Their relationship, how they feel about each other, and how their connection works (plus any other noise that jumped into my head as I was working on this)

- After footage of Jax using his new abilities leaked into the news and he became public knowledge, Jax adopted the title ‘Atlas Soldier’ that was used in the news as a sort of alter-ego he could slip into to protect himself.

- Unknown to him, the alterations made to his brain by the Midra Machine made it so this choice of slipping into the ‘Atlas’ alter-ego, caused new neural pathways to form, allowing this splinter personality to start manifesting.

- As it becomes easier and easier for Jax to slip into this fabricated persona, he begins to experience bouts of dissociation, where he’s aware he’s doing things, but the memory of those things is thick and fuzzy.

- These episodes later turn into full blown blackouts where he has no memory at all of events, and is pretty freaked out by this.

- Atlas himself begins as a sort of slightly self aware fight or flight response (normally set to fight). Because he’s a splinter formed around Jax’s attempts to protect himself, that becomes the core of what Atlas is. He is protective. He protects Jax.

- Atlas is not evil. He is flawed. He is made of many of Jax’s repressed emotions, has that same short temper and all he really knows at this point is violence because 90% of his manifestations happen when Jax is getting overwhelmed mid-fight.

- As Atlas becomes more self aware, he begins to realise that if people knew he existed, then Jax would be in danger. This adds more tension to Atlas’ desperate need to be seen and understood. While he harbours some resentment towards Jax for being able to exist as himself, he is still loyal and protective of him.

- Atlas is at first only able to take over when Jax is at his breaking point. Stepping in to take action that Jax doesn’t think himself capable of.

- Later he can do it almost at will, finding a gap he can slip into (often when Jax is tired/distracted).

- In Act III, Jax and Atlas have suffered from the machine’s effects for too long and it’s made them both aggressive and unstable. The two of them blur and flip between each other on a dime, wired into permanent fight or flight.

- It’s at this point in Act III that they lash out and end up hurting Monroe. When they realise what they’ve done, a split second later, they flee the base in a blind panic and go into hiding before being located and taken into custody by Loomis. (Act III is a really rough time)

- Since the very first splinter started to develop, Atlas has manifested in Jax’s dreams and nightmares. Often appearing as either some untouchable distant hero Jax could never live up to, or some sort of unstoppable monster.

- They have confrontations and conversations within the dreams, and as they start to understand each other more and even out the playing field, their dream encounters become more of a way for Atlas to keep Jax updated, Jax to keep Atlas company, and the two of them to grow together and accept each other.

- Their relationship has been rough for a long time. Between Jax’s fear and Atlas’ resentment, they strain against each other constantly. But by the end of things they’re honestly glad the other is there. It makes dealing with everything they’re going through a bit easier as they understand it in a way no one else ever could.

- They are two sides of the same coin.

- Ceres is the first person to knowingly have a conversation with Atlas. He’s shocked to be treated like he’s his own person, and her acceptance of him and what he is does a lot to chill him out and settle his relationship with Jax. (She doesn't love Atlas the way she loves Jax, and he knows this. It hurts him, but her acceptance of him means everything to him)

- In other settings, Jax and Atlas are often depicted as twin brothers. At each other’s throats, but protective, loving and loyal.

Overall they're a mess, but between the ups and downs, things are getting better.

—-

From a design standpoint:

Jax and Atlas are nearly impossible to distinguish from each other usually in the book. Atlas stands a little straighter, and doesn't bother doing his hair, but that's it.

In art though, I like to be able to show which is which by fiddling with the eye colour and how the hair is

They’ve come a long way and changed a bit since their first iterations for sure, but this is the most accurate info I can give at the moment. Hope it makes sense.

#Atlas Rising #Jaxom Hanway #Atlas #Atlas Soldier #Long post #I cannot stop thinking about these boys #Sad boys who need each other

[snarky-art]

if you don’t mind explaining, what are each of the specialists’ relationships with their formerly assigned winx members?

Sure!

Biggest changes out of the way first:

Musa and Riven aren’t together. They start dating near the end of s1 and then break up around 3/4 of the way into s2, basically before the big final battles are launched in Shadow Haunt. They start off a somewhat awkward friendship in s3, and after everything is done at the end of SotLK, they’re pretty solid friends.

Aisha and Nabu aren’t together ever, but fear not they’re besties.

Sky and Bloom start dating near the end of s1 and have a kind of flirtationship during s1, although Bloom takes longer to warm up to him that Sky does to her. They date through s2 and s3 and SotLK, and they’re just as messy as they are in canon. S4, it’s getting to be too much though for Bloom, especially with dealing with balancing Domino and Earth life and getting accustomed to royal life bs and learning an entire culture and history. Bloom’s still very real inferiority issues and messy relationship with her parents are present too because they have to learn who they are as individuals while also trying to overcompensate with each other, Bloom because she’s not Daphne and her parents because they want her to feel she really is their daughter and they love her even though they weren’t there for her whole life and they’re literally strangers to each other with only a blood familial tie and giant legacy holding them together, but this results in putting a shit ton of Domino Court shit on her (gotta make sure she’s included and knows they see her as their daughter and rightful heir despite everything that happened before) and it’s too much too much too much. S4 in my thing is partially Bloom running the fuck away from her responsibilities in the magical world, Domino specifically. She goes “oh I gotta go to Alfea to talk about stuff bye. Oh look, a big thing on Earth what a happy coincidence ok bye for who knows how long I gotta go-“ Her relationships are kinda strained in general in s4 since she isn’t great at handling pressure still, and Sky and her are still having the same issues of not communicating well about stuff and Bloom can’t even articulate everything rn and doesn’t know where to start and now she has to worry about potential queen regency stuff and stretching herself not only between Earth and Domino, but Eraklyon too? No, she can’t do this. She’s tired. She breaks up with him before the big final battle shenanigans and she does it super suddenly and loudly and then dips as per usual and Sky is like. “Wtf? Yo what the actual-“ They talk about it eventually near the end of s4 and Sky is rightfully miffed at how this has been handled and how Bloom is still. Running. Away. He hasn’t been the best to her he admits that but she’s also still doing the same things when backed into a corner. And that’s,, kinda the whole point. They’ve grown the most outside of each other, and then when with each other, are perpetuating the same things that are causing issues. Sky goes we could really work on it this time. Bloom says no, I’m too tired, and for once with Bloom looking at hindsight instead of thinking moment to moment for her basic non magical life stuff, she goes if we weren’t growing and trying to be better for each other the way we should’ve for 3 years, what makes this time different? And that’s that. They don’t really talk much for the first half of s5 but they still have to work together, and it’s Weird, but it eventually gets better. Bloom is trying to get better about not running, and she did enjoy Sky, just not as a partner by the end of it all, and Sky still thinks he and Bloom had some good times together and that she’s fun, so maybe they can try getting to know each other again? As friends this time. And they have a decent start to a proper friendship by the beginning of s6, ending s5 as close acquaintances. They don’t become besties or anything, but they’re close friends and they know they can count on each other.

Flora and Helia is the same as canon. They get together by the end of s2 and are adorable.

Tecna and Timmy get together in s2 and are also adorable.

Brandon and Stella get together in s1 and are the flirty fun sassy couple that everyone knows and loves.

#winx club #winx #asks #ask #winx club rewrite #winx club redo #winx club remake #snarky winx

[silvantransthranduiltrash]

Finwe, Ingwe, Olwe, and Elwe (The -We’s) are all emotionally stunted and have untreated PTSD.

Seriously though, most of their subjects don’t realize it because they were born in valinor/the girdle, while the -we’s were born before the valar discovered the elves.

Let me tell you what indicates that the -we’s are emotionally stunted.

In the girdle/valinor, the elves were safe for the first time in existence. And this safety allowed them to focus on fostering positive and emotionally healthy relationships with one another because they no longer needed to fear death around every corner. For once, whole families could grow together with no chance of a member being killed due to the darkness. The elves even had time to foster skills and explore at their leisure, instead of being solely focused on “survive, survive, survive”.

All in all, this means that those who were born/grew up in valinor/the girdle were the first elves with the chance to grow up emotionally healthy, with proper communication and relationship skills. Because they actually have the time and energy needed to learn these skills.

The -we’s (finwe, ingwe, olwe, and elwe) however, were born and grew up during a time where they were in constant survive mode, fight or flight. Their priority was living to see another day, and they likely were surrounded by constant death/disappearances of their family members/people they cared about. AND while the elves may have spawned in cuvinan fully grown, they still have absolutely no life experience then, nor did they magically know how society and their fellow elves worked.

They essentially had the cognative function of an adult, yet were as dumb as babies, because they didn’t just immediatly know everything. They had to figure everything out. Like cave men, kinda. So yeah, these first elves are absolutely useless when it comes to being emotionally healthy and well developed. It wasn’t until they were safe (in the girdle/valinor) that they really started to develop society as a whole, with kings and queens and governments, etc. Before that, they had a loose-ish leadership going on. Heck, the -we’s only really became the leader bc they were the first to follow the valar.

Now, you’re probably wondering “well what about the other elves that went on the great journey? Are they emotionally stunted to?” Probably to some extent, but the -we’s are by far the worst. And the reason is because they are the kings (I guess Miriel probably also falls in this category).

No one’s going to go up to the leader of a nation and say “hey, you need therapy”. That and the pressure of being perfect leaders means that they never got the chance to really become emotionally healthy and be able to form healthy relationships with their family, because they couldn’t admit that they weren’t perfectly mentally healthy in the first place.

Now, why is it important that finwe, ingwe, olwe, and elwe are emotionally stunted? What affect does it have on the story/silmarillion? Well-

*points at Miriel breaking down and fading*

*points at finwe’s crap handling of his family*

*points at elwe’s crap handling of his family/people* *in all honesty, his refusal to make peace with the noldor might be a result of his pre-valar’s arrival all-or-nothing survival drive* (don’t get me wrong, I still think he was dumb for some acts, but somethings I understand)

*idk a lot about olwe or ingwe, but olwe’s fear of returning to the pre-great journey days would explain his refusal to allow feanor the boats*

So I guess what I’m saying is that finwe, ingwe, olwe, and elwe (and Miriel) are emotionally stunted and have untreated ptsd from the days before the valar arrived, and no one’s forcing them to go to therapy bc 1. They’re kings and 2. Most elves (especially those born in valinor/the girdle) probably don’t even realize they have it, and it resulted in a lot of problems.

Side note: this either means that the silvans/avari/cirdan’s people are either the most emotionally healthy as a whole OR the most emotionally stunted. For the sake of my feral silvan au, I’m going with stunted, yet acutely aware of other elves’ emotional needs.

#silmarillion #lord of the rings #lotr #feanor #sons of feanor #finwe #lotr elves #ingwe #olwe #elwe singollo #elu thingol #miriel #ya’ll get them some therapy stat #Ngl I’m really fascinated at how those first days after the elves awoke impacted their way of life #also I don’t hc that the -we’s were some of the wakers #and rather we’re born after #I definatly think the -we’s + Miriel had ptsd #but couldn’t get the help they needed #(yes I do think Indis was born in valinor so she’s not included in this line up) #finwe’s family: falling apart #finwe: help how do I emote? #the silmarillion: how family drama changes the world #the silmarillion: how one guy’s untreated trauma caused everyone problems #well multiple elfves’ untreated truama #poor feanor #both his parents refused to go to therapy and it fucked him up #and he in turn also didn’t go to therapy

[davyjoneslockr]

IDK IF ITS TOO LATE FOR THE CHARACTER ASK GAME buuut trish if ur still doing it!

(For this ask game)

First impression: I guess I didn’t really think much about her at first? I loved her intro and her almost breaking Narancia’s wrist + dunking on Fugo for no discernible reason was so awesome of her. But she unfortunately kinda took a back seat for the beginning parts of Vento Aureo, and I just found myself wishing there was more of her, and that she was granted more agency by the narrative.

Impression now: LOVE HER SO MUCH. After like the halfway point of VA she very quickly became a highlight of the part for me. The way she doesn’t hesitate to question what’s happening around her, chooses to become an active player instead of letting her (very justified) fear consume her, and when she not only gets a stand, but one that presents her softness as a strength and demonstrates the incredible resolve she has? So so good. I also really really love her in the Purple Haze Feedback bonus chapter, where she meets Bucciarati’s mom and ponders whether he was a good person after all, and I think she was a great perspective to frame the Giorno vs Mista fight in the flashback. I only wish she had more time in the spotlight, and that she had a more active role in the final fight (which. Sorta ties in to other criticisms I have of the part as a whole).

Favorite moment: Obvious answer, but the Notorious BIG fight. Like I said before, I think Spice Girl is a perfect stand for her, and I like that she’s sentient, which allows her to basically interact with her own conscience while she’s suddenly thrust into a life-or-death situation only she can handle. And we finally have a fight where it’s not Giorno stepping in to save everyone – because without Trish, Giorno would’ve been out of commission for good. I also just found the way she struggles, has to think on her toes, and ultimately perseveres very refreshing and human in a way that reminds me of what I loved about Jonathan in Phantom Blood. And her “arrivederci” at the end is so awesome I clap and cheer every time I see it. Again it makes me wish we had more Trish-centric arcs, because Notorious BIG was so so good and she was what made it such a highlight for me.

Idea for a story: Post-canon Trish aughhh I love you. Whether it’s immediately after Vento Aureo where Giorno isolates her from her only living friends, and she has to navigate life on her own after her world was shattered over the course of a week, or years down the road where (I think) she eventually reunites with them, has to confront Fugo now that’s he’s back, interacts with Sheila E. (so much tragic toxic foil relationship potential), and balances her stardom with her ties to the criminal underworld. I need to write more about her there’s so much to talk about with her.

Unpopular opinion: As much as I love AUs where she joins Passione in some capacity, I don’t think that would be a good or satisfying ending for her. I think she retains those relationships eventually, and she definitely wont ever be able to live a “normal” life after everything she witnessed, but the fact that she ultimately leaves Passione and does something else with her life is good, actually. It builds on her contrasts with Narancia (where he didn’t take the chance to lead a better life, and she did), and, frankly, I don’t think she deserves to have to do horrible things and fight to survive for the rest of her life.

Favorite relationship: Her and Narancia!! The parallels between them are so awesome, and I like how Narancia projects onto her at first, but eventually gets to actually know her as a person – and while they’re different in many ways, they’re still similar, and Trish grows to trust him, too (love that one of the first things she does after the body swap is to run to “Narancia” for comfort). And her friendship with Mista by the end is so fun and silly too, and quickly turns tragic with the PHF bonus chapter stuff. Let them go to the mall together please I’m begging no more horrors </3

Favorite headcanon: When she’s older and far into her music career, rumors start spreading around that she’s involved with the mafia. They’re generally treated with the same level of seriousness as the “Paul McCartney/Avril Lavigne died and was replaced with a lookalike” conspiracies. Eventually, she puts out a rock opera concept album based on a “fictional mafia story,” with a couple strangely-dressed musicians nobody can place a name to – a guitarist and a pianist – joining her usual lineup. Everyone praises her for being a meme savvy queen.

#jjba #trish una

[heliads]

everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Five: A Treacherous Road to Safety

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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The ground is shaking, and it takes Connor far longer than it should to realize that he isn’t going to die. He’s jumpier than he was a few days ago, already, and he can only assume it will get worse as time goes on. Connor will shed whatever innocence he had left before his parents signed him up to die a thousand painful ways all at once, and he will become a twitchy skeleton, the nervous bones of what was once lively flesh and blood.

The source of the disturbance isn’t the disaster he’d envisioned. A loud rumbling had split the air, and Connor had flinched like he’d been slapped, picturing the land beneath him crumbling to dust, or the ship cracking at the seams. Instead, they’d started to move, and Connor realized belatedly that they were only just now taking off. It’s okay. They’re starting on their journey, the destination unknown but at last somewhere they can be safe.

He glances down at Risa, who’s somehow still asleep by his side. Growing up in a State Home, she must be used to sleeping through all sorts of sound and commotion. He envies her for it now. What a blessing it must be, to close your eyes and let the world slip away. Every time Connor so much as thinks about taking a break, his brain goes into high alert and refuses to let him rest. After so many close calls, he’s certain that one more will ruin them both, and Connor cannot have that after how far they’ve come.

Still, Risa seems to think it’s okay to rest, so maybe he can too. Not enough to sleep, just enough to take the edge off his already frazzled nerves. Connor does his best to relax along with her, let his breathing ease in unison with hers. They’ll do everything together until they get wherever Sonia wanted them to go, and even past that too, no doubt about that. They’ll survive together, run from the Juveys together, and yes, even breathe together in the underbelly of a massive shipping cruiser, curled away like rats in a cellar. Well, Connor’s already a pest in the eyes of the Collective. He might as well sink his jaws into the brightest parts of life around him while he’s at it.

So he sits perfectly still, careful not to so much as topple a stack of tools lest they somehow be heard over the distant clanging of the superspeed engine and the roaring of the ship around him, and he waits for their destiny to ship them off to somewhere farther beyond the stars. There are no windows in this glorified storage closet, so Connor can’t see where they’re going nor how far they’ve already come. 

He swears he should be able to feel it in his bones when he officially crosses the boundary dividing the OH-10 star system from empty, nameless connective space, but instead they just keep going, paying no mind to the total terror that is leaving one’s home for the first time. The next time Connor looks up at the sun, it won’t be his. There might even be more than one. The stars will no longer be the ones that shone down on him, not in the same order, not the same way. Connor is away without leave in every sense of the word. Homeless, groundsless, purposeless. All he has is the infinity of stars somewhere around him.

Risa wakes at some point; Connor has no way of telling when. She comes to gradually, wrinkling first her brow and then her fingers, moving the digits together in her lap. Risa straightens up from where she’d started to slouch against Connor’s shoulder, both of them pointedly not bringing up the fact that her face had been so close to his, and to cover up for the mistake she asks, voice still groggy, ��How long was I out?”

“No idea,” Connor answers truthfully. There’s no way of sensing anything here. Hours could have passed or mere minutes. They just keep going.

She frowns. “Still too long, though.”

Connor lifts a shoulder. “What else would we do?” He’s careful to keep his voice quiet, just in case.

Risa follows suit, her eyes flicking around the empty space before she continues in a whisper. “Do you really think there will be someone waiting for us?”

“Other than Juvey-cops, you mean?” Connor asks, then sighs. “Who knows? I’d like to think so. Sonia seemed like she had her stuff together. If she wanted to turn us in, she would have let Lev do it while we were at the boundary checkpoint. Would’ve been much more efficient for both of them.”

He’s unable to hide a slight snarl in his voice when he mentions Lev. Sure, he’d kind of kidnapped the kid, but he’d only stolen him from an early death. It’s not like his family was taking him on a fun vacation or something, unless you count the wild sendoff to a surgeon’s knife as an exciting thrill ride. Lev should be grateful for his second chance at life; Connor had to fight for his, and he gave it to Lev free of charge, yet the little bugbait ran off and sold him out, too. 

Next to him, Risa arches a brow, evidently able to tell where his mind is headed. “Still mad at our favorite runaway tithe?”

“How could I not be?” Connor protests. “He stabbed us in the back.”

“After we kidnapped him,” Risa muses, and at Connor’s wordless but energetic protests she rolls her eyes and admits, “Yeah, I’m mad too, obviously, but you’ve got to think about it from his end. He’s probably been trained to accept this all his life. Just when he’s about to fulfill his divine destiny or whatever, we swoop in on a stolen cruiser and don’t even give him a chance to say his goodbyes. He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”

This saps some of Connor’s anger from him. At least when he ran away, it had been on his own terms. He’d decided what night to leave, and he’d treated his parents accordingly. He might not have been stupid enough to say goodbye outright, but he could still let that shape what conversations he had with them. Lev may have been ready to die, but he might not have been ready to let go quite yet.

“D’you think he’s already in a harvest colony somewhere?” Connor asks after a pause. “Last time I saw him, he was raring to go under the knife, but I can’t help but wonder…”

He lets his voice trail off, not sure what he’s wondering at all anymore. It’s easier not to ask questions about what happens to fiery tithes after they sentence themselves to death. Same way no one at home will ever talk about him again unless they physically have to. Thinking about someone who has seen you before, someone who remembers your name and spoke to you, having those same eyes and vocal chords ripped away on a remote lunar outpost is too disturbing to consider.

Risa gets what he’s trying to say, though. “If he changed his mind or something? If he did, Sonia could have found him. Maybe we’ll see him wherever we’re going.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, not entirely convinced, “Maybe we will.”

He’s not entirely sure that he believes it, but it’s a better thought than most, so Connor lets himself accept it for now. The two of them drift into a silence that’s slightly more paranoid than companionable, letting the roaring of the ship around them do the talking for them.

Some time later, the ship touches down. His hands are clenched into fists the entire time, terrified of a bad landing doing them in. However, they’re still alive when the dust clears, so Connor counts that as a win. After so long stuck inside the noisy, clanging behemoth, it’s strange to carefully climb out of it in complete silence. The absence of sound makes him uneasy, and causes him to be extra aware of the quiet shuffle of their footsteps as they head away from the shipping hauler.

Once they’re a safe distance away, Connor gestures for Risa to follow him into a darker, quieter hallway. “What do we do now?” He asks.

Risa shrugs. “Try to find that man Sonia told us about, I guess. What did she say his name was? Cleaver?”

Connor can’t help a wry smile. “That totally sounds like the kind of guy I want to see right now.”

Risa nods solemnly. “All the most trustworthy people go by Cleaver, I’m sure. Any idea of how we’ll find him?”

Connor shakes his head. “No clue. Do you think we should have stayed on the ship? Maybe he was supposed to come to us first.”

Risa tosses a nervous glance over her shoulder towards the ship, which is now swarmed with workers anxious to unpack the cargo. “If we stayed, we would have gotten caught. I think our best bet is to lay low and see if we see anyone else hanging around.”

It’s not like they have any other options, so Connor nods his agreement and they do their best to blend into the shadows of the corridor. The area is busy with disembarking passengers and ground control all bustling around. A few times, they have to duck into a closet to avoid overeager sec-officers patrolling the area, but everyone stays moving long enough for them to come back out soon enough.

The flow of workers starts to slow, but no one’s found them yet. Connor can’t be sure if that’s a good thing or not. Even if Cleaver doesn’t show, they’re still out of OH-10. It’ll be tricky to make their way out of here and find a regular source of food and shelter without a single grounds license between them, but they’d surely figure something out.

He’s about to suggest to Risa that they start to make their way out of the spaceport when she gently nudges him with her elbow, her eyes on something behind him. “This guy’s been staring at us for a while.”

Connor casually fakes a cough, using the motion of twisting and covering his mouth to glance behind him. Sure enough, there’s some guy in dark clothes loitering down the hall. A datapad is open in front of him, but the guy’s not doing much more than that to keep up the pretense of work. Instead, he’s eyeing Connor and Risa with an expression almost akin to hunger.

“Let’s get moving,” Connor suggests.

“What if it’s our guy?” Risa asks.

Connor gives her a sarcastic look. “Do you really want to go up to that guy and ask if he’s looking for two groundsless who look like us?”

Risa winces. “Good point.”

They turn and head down the corridor. The guy watches them go, and starts to follow a few paces behind them. Connor starts to pick up his pace, but the man just speeds up accordingly. They take a few random lefts and rights to shake their stalker only to find themselves at a dead end. Connor meets Risa’s wide eyes, and slowly turns back around to face the man who’s been following them. He shifts forward a little to step in front of Risa, but the guy doesn’t strike. Not yet.

Instead, he glances one last time at the open datapad before eyeing Connor. “You two are Sonia’s latest kids?”

Connor swallows hard. “How about you tell me who you are first?”

The guy stares at him as if Connor has just asked the most useless question in the world, then sighs. “I’m Cleaver. Sonia sent me, obviously.”

“It’s not obvious,” Risa remarks from behind Connor’s left elbow, “You’re a stranger. We have no idea of knowing who you are at all.”

Cleaver shrugs one muscular shoulder. “Can’t argue with that. Now come on, we need to get moving before someone else notices you. The two of you stand out like a sore thumb.”

Connor and Risa frown at each other. Connor had thought they’d done a pretty good job of hiding, but apparently not. Cleaver gives them one more look of vague disgust before turning and walking back down the corridor with long, purposeful strides. He’s moving fast enough to make it clear that he doesn’t want to talk to either of them, but Connor has more questions and he’ll be damned if they don’t get answered. 

Hurrying to catch up, Connor presses on as they round a corner and head down a long hallway lined with doors to other sectors of the spaceport. “Is that how you knew it was us? We were too obvious?”

Cleaver grunts in reply. It takes Connor intentionally matching his strides for half the length of the hallway before the man finally caves and answers him. “That was hard to ignore. Other stuff too, though.”

Paranoid, Connor glances back behind them, but anyone passing through is too intent on their own destination to pay much attention to the three of them. “What else?”

A snide side glance from Cleaver; Connor returns his stare as intensely as he can while still speed walking down the hall at a breakneck pace. They make a few quick turns and Connor is forced to break his gaze so he doesn’t head directly into a wall. 

When he looks back, Cleaver is facing ahead again, but this time he condescends to explain himself. “You two did look mighty suspicious, but I was helped by this.”

Cleaver tilts his datapad so Connor can see the image on the holoscreen. Immediately, he tenses up. Emblazoned in big, bold letters beneath a picture of him are the words WANTED: CONNOR LASSITER, ESCAPED GROUNDSLESS. TREAT WITH CAUTION. There’s another image right below it, a photo of Risa with a similar caption. 

Connor wants to throw up. “When were these released?”

“About twenty-four standard hours ago,” is Cleaver’s guttural reply. 

Connor blows out a low breath. So his parents had noticed his absence about the next morning, which makes sense, and the state home would have seen that Risa was gone when they checked the kids in the shuttle. 

She’s told him by now of her escape attempt, and he’s got to admire her guts for pulling a stunt like that. Sneaking off the shuttle that was supposed to take her to a harvest colony after everyone on board nearly all died from the meteor shower? Crazy stuff. Connor’s down with crazy, though, so long as it keeps both of them alive. They’re a package deal by now. Can’t split them up, no one without the other. Like the twin braces of Connor’s ribs inside his chest, that’s them; no breaking them up until the end. Till death do us part.

Connor shoves his hands into his pockets to stop them from shaking. “So that’s how you knew it was us? You searched up our wanted posters?”

Cleaver blows out a breath, and Connor swears he almost looks impressed. “Not for you, actually. I’d already heard of you even before Sonia said she’d managed to send you on my way.”

Connor frowns. “How’d you manage that? Do you monitor every AWOL out of Sonia’s star system?”

Cleaver guides them down a narrow hall out of the main thoroughfare. It seems as if they’re headed towards a smaller hangar bay, probably where Cleaver keeps his ship. It would explain why Cleaver feels confident enough to stop lowering his voice when he tells Connor, “I didn’t have to look you up. The two of you are already famous.”

Risa has joined them by now; Cleaver’s relentless pace slowed when they left the central sector of the spaceport. She eyes the man cautiously. “What do you mean, we’re famous?”

Cleaver opens his mouth to answer, but another, younger, brasher voice beats him to it. “He means that you two made quite a name for yourselves when you shot a Juvey-cop and stole his ship.” 

Connor looks past Cleaver to see a tall, muscular boy looming out of the darkness of the poorly lit corridor. His grin is sharp, and his teeth flash like fangs when he says, “Or, just Connor, I should say. He’s the one who did it.”

Cleaver huffs out a frustrated breath. “Roland, I told you to stay on the ship.”

The boy– Roland– doesn’t seem to care what Cleaver thinks he should or shouldn’t do. “I got bored. No one’s here, anyway. If they did, I’d shut ‘em up, no worries.”

Ah, Connor thinks. So he’s setting himself up as a threat. Classic move. Whenever new kids impede on your territory, you’ve got to decide whether they’ll be friends or foes. How lucky that Roland has already made that decision for him. Now he knows for certain that the only ones he can trust are Risa and maybe Cleaver. Roland will ‘shut him up’ just like anyone else to cross his path.

Connor’s met boys like Roland before, enough of them to already have a plan of how to handle him. Step one is not to give up or show a sign of hesitation. Step two is to get into a fight, but judging by Roland’s cocky stature and impressive physique, that might not be one he’d win.

Step one’s good for now, though. Connor squares his shoulders and looks Roland dead in the eyes. “I’m glad you’ve heard of me. It’s always nice to meet a fan.”

Roland scoffs. “Don’t take it personally. The story’s better than the real deal anyway. They failed to mention that you’d be this short face to face.”

Connor rolls his eyes, making Roland flash him another saber-toothed grin. Clearly eager to get back to his ship, Cleaver urges them both onwards. Roland stalks back into the dim lighting, giving Connor a good look as what he had thought was just a shadow on the boy’s right arm manifests itself as a tattoo of a shark. Suns, everything about this guy just gets better and better.

Roland leads the way back to Cleaver’s ship with obvious familiarity, making Connor wonder how long he’s been stuck here, waiting to move on. Cleaver checks for unwanted guests around his ship, and unlocks it once he’s sure the coast is clear. This starship is more haphazard even than the Juvey-cop’s shuttle; it looks completely patched together and it’s even missing an entry ramp, so they have to awkwardly climb up into the thing. 

Roland acts the proper gentleman by offering Risa his hand so she has an easier time getting up, but judging by the way he doesn’t let go of her immediately afterwards, he’s not just doing it out of the pure kindness of his heart. Connor approaches the ship next, leading Roland to sneer in his face that he won’t be helping him up. Connor says something snappy and stupid in return, then climbs up, Roland right after him. Cleaver goes last, and walls them up inside after checking around one last time.

After that, they’re all left standing uncomfortably in the belly of the ship. Cleaver claps his hands together suddenly, making Connor and Risa jump. “Alright, then,” he says, “We’ll take off tonight, and probably make it over bright and early next morning. Give me a few hours to get everything in order and we can leave this junkyard behind.”

Roland’s face twists. “We’re not waiting for anyone else? I’ve been here for a fuckin’ week and the second these two show up, we drop everything and go?”

Cleaver, to his credit, doesn’t bat an eye at Roland’s protests. “As you so helpfully pointed out earlier, Connor and Risa are far more recognizable than you are. I can’t take the risk of someone stumbling across the ship and finding the Akron AWOL.”

Connor has no idea what that nickname means, but he can only assume it refers to him. Roland looks like he wants to argue, but Connor interjects so Cleaver can head to the cockpit and get travel preparations started. “It’s the fame, Roland. You have to understand. It’s exhausting having this sort of legacy, but–”

Roland cuts him off with a sound bordering on a snarl. “Watch it, starspawn. I don’t take kindly to upstarts running their mouths. That’s not how it goes around here.”

Connor wants to argue with this, but Risa lays a hand on his shoulder and says, “I think we’d all like to minimize fights, if possible.” 

Roland folds his arms across his chest, daring Connor to contradict this. Risa looks at Connor accusingly, and– sunfire– they are on the same side, so he’s not going to undermine her by starting something, even if he really, really wants to. “I agree,” he says simply, and walks past Roland to the dingy common area in the center of the ship. There are maybe four chairs, one of them broken, but it’s good enough for now.

Risa follows him. “Excellent temper control,” she says, one eyebrow quirked up.

Connor sighs. “Don’t you start, too.”

“I’m not,” she replies, hands raised in mock surrender. “I just want you to remember that Roland is not the biggest of our worries right now.”

Connor looks past her to where Roland still lingers near the starship’s entrance. They’re far enough away that Roland can’t hear them, but the older boy still glances towards Connor as if he can sense the topic of conversation. Roland grins predatorily, and Connor’s eyes are again dragged towards the shark tattoo on his right arm. 

Getting tattoos is rebellious, especially in the age of distribution. Either you’re confident enough that you won’t get distributed that you don’t mind damaging the goods, i.e. your own skin, or you know for a fact that you will be so you want to make sure that whoever gets your bits and pieces will be unable to ignore the source. No matter where they go, they’ll see your ink and they’ll be reminded of what they did to you. It’s like taking a stand, you refuse to protect your body such that someone else could use it. The way Roland acts, though, makes Connor think that it’s not just a promise that he’ll destroy himself, but anyone around him as well. He would drag them all down with him if he got the chance.

“No,” Connor muses, “but he’s certainly not something to forget about.”

They end up sitting around for what must be a couple of standard hours before Cleaver remembers that he was supposed to be leaving and they finally take off. In that time, Connor sits down for a while, stands up, sits again, walks around the ship a few times, peers at the cockpit instrument panel before Cleaver chases him out, and pokes around in a few crates. Risa stares at the wall. Roland stands with his hands on his hips, looking out the window as if daring anyone to come near. Every now and then, he cracks his knuckles menacingly, but only when he’s certain that Connor is nearby.

At last, when Cleaver comes out of the cockpit and announces that they’re on the move, Connor thinks they’ll finally have something to do. Maybe he can ask him for some flying lessons, or better yet, learn something about their mysterious destination.

Cleaver immediately shuts down the flying tutorial idea, not that Connor was really expecting that to go anywhere, but he is a little more forthcoming about where they’re headed. Apparently, one of the Collective’s higher-level officers recently developed a conscience and couldn’t live with his guilt about all of the kids getting distributed. He borrowed a massive cruiser and has been using it to house any groundsless he or his associates come across.

It sounds like a fairytale to Connor. Can’t be real. Of course there’s just, like, a massive star cruiser full of Unwinds orbiting some moon somewhere, because that’s the most realistic option here. When Connor looks at Cleaver to wait for him to start laughing at how gullible they are, though, the release never comes. Cleaver stays cold and stalwart, and at last Connor realizes that stars above, it’s real. It’s real, and they’re going directly to it.

Connor leans back on his heels, shaking his head slowly. “That’s crazy.”

“It is,” Cleaver says impassively, “And crazier still is how protective we have to be. No one can know about it. No one can leave unless they turn eighteen. It’s our best kept secret. That’s why you three are going to be traveling a little less comfortably than you’d like.”

Connor freezes. Even Roland looks uneasy. “What does that mean?” Risa asks slowly.

Cleaver meets all of their eyes in turn. “We can’t afford for any of you to get picked up on scanners while we travel between star systems, nor are any of you allowed to see where we’re going. This ship was jerry-rigged as an illegal transport vessel a long time ago. There are storage compartments in the walls that don’t let scanner beams through. You’ll be hiding in those until we dock.”

Connor stares at the walls around them. They don’t seem all that thick, even by junker starship standards. There must be hardly any space for them at all. 

“It won’t be pleasant,” Cleaver says in agreement with Connor’s unspoken thoughts, “But I think you’ll find distribution far less appetizing. Unless you’d like me to let you off at the nearest harvest colony, of course. That would save us time and trouble.”

It’s an unnecessary threat, but it gets the point across. Cleaver walks over to the wall and begins to methodically unlock and pull away sections of the metal surface. Sure enough, he reveals storage compartments curving down the hall. They’re extremely shallow and not too tall, either. It’ll be like a coffin in there. In escaping death, Connor has seemingly sentenced himself to an early grave.

Cleaver extends a hand towards the hollows. “Well, take your pick. Time’s a wastin’.”

They all stand there for a moment, unable to move, and then Roland goes first, making an exaggerated show of scoffing like he couldn’t care less about how he makes the trip. Connor sees his eyes just before Cleaver closes the wall back over him, though. He knows Roland is just as terrified as they all are.

Two empty areas await, looming like eye sockets in the smooth metal wall. Risa climbs into one cavity, but when Connor moves to get into the next one over, she reaches out and grabs his hand. He looks over at her, and sees Roland’s horror reflected in her gaze. Which is worse, to have even less space than before or to go through this trial alone?

He climbs in after her. There’s just enough room for them to stand side by side, backs pressed up against the metal wall. Cleaver looms up before them, silhouetted by the light of the corridor outside. Strangely, Connor feels as if he’s on the other side of an airlock, about to be shut out into space, and then the metal casing slams down and they’re locked inside.

Immediately, Connor feels as if he cannot breathe. He’s never counted himself as claustrophobic before, but he’s never been locked inside a narrow storage compartment before, either. The darkness is overwhelming; Connor swears it presses against his skin like water. He thinks he might drown in it, and takes deep breaths to compensate. He never gets enough air, though. His lungs are never full.

He tries again, gasping for more, but it’s not enough. The blackness around him seems to get closer, and Connor is a few seconds from fully freaking out until he feels a tapping on his right arm. It comes again, a moment later– tap tap, two motions against his forearm. It’s Risa, reminding him that he’s not alone in this endless darkness. She’s here with him. They’re going to be alright, because they have each other, that’s all they’ve ever had, and if they managed to survive everything else, surely they can live through this, too.

Connor feels his heart rate start to slow down. He reaches his right hand to tap twice against her left arm, returning the message. A couple of minutes later, when Connor can feel her starting to shuffle around too much, she taps twice, and he does the same, like a prolonged heartbeat stretching between the both of them. Eventually, they both calm down enough that the beats have more and more time between repetitions, and then they stop entirely.

Connor focuses on his breathing, on not thinking about anything. He closes his eyes, even though it doesn’t entirely matter, just because having his eyes open to the stuffy blackness makes him feel even more uncomfortable than before. His knees start to cramp, but he can’t straighten them, so he just tries to think about something, anything else. 

He moves the fingers of his left hand one by one. He curls his toes inside his shoes. He listens to the soft rise and fall of Risa’s breathing somewhere to his right. Connor leans a little closer to her, just to be sure that she’s still there and hasn’t somehow been ripped apart from him. He’d never known unless she shouted; it’s too dark in here, and his eyes refuse to adjust. He would have no idea at all that she was gone if he ever let go, and so he won’t.

There’s a scratching sound on the metal somewhere above and to the side. Connor wonders if it’s Roland, trying to carve his way through the barriers of his storage compartment into theirs. He shivers, and Risa, evidently having heard the same thing, presses closer to him. The sound carries on for some time before falling off in disappointment. They won’t be reached by anyone, shark or boy or Juvey-cop. Nothing can touch them.

Neither of them pull away, though, and Connor doesn’t want to. He’s only aware of one sensation anymore, and that is the crescents of his skin pressed against her. They are here in this unmarked grave, somewhere in the vast expanses of space, and when they come out of this, they will be safe. They will be whole. Someone out there is looking for them, waiting for them to arrive, and then none of this will ever happen again.

And if they die here, let the worlds find their brittle bones together, hand in hand, spine against spine. Let them never be separated again, even in death. When their blood congeals, when their muscles atrophy, let all that dust of what was once flesh and bone intermix until no one can tell the difference between the two. Let Connor and Risa, Risa and Connor, never, ever end.

Connor learns to sense the passage of time by the alternating rumbles of the starship’s engines. Twice, Connor thinks Cleaver docks the ship, and twice he gets his hopes up only for the ship to start up again without ever letting them go. Cleaver had passed out food and drink rations before forcing them into the storage compartments along the walls, so he’s not immediately hungry or thirsty, but he has no idea how long they can keep this up. When he starts thinking too much about it, he taps his right hand twice, and waits until Risa taps twice back. Only then can he force himself to relax and move on to other, braver topics.

He compels his mind to stay busy. Mentally, Connor runs through every flight tip he’s ever heard. He thinks through the routes he would walk or bike to school, how he’d return from his destination. He used to sneak over to his friend’s houses all the time, and in his mind Connor imagines that he’s back there again, hopping fences or running low down the road so cars couldn’t spot him. He goes to his friends’ houses and he completes the trip back, but he always stops his mental picture just before he turns down his driveway. Home is not a place Connor can return to, even in the illusion of his own head.

More, a desperate need for more; Connor thinks of homework assignments he procrastinated, TV shows he’d binged. Every girl he’d ever met. Every boy he’d ever fought. There was this one field trip when he was a kid where everyone in his class got to go to a science museum across town; they’d shown up in one big, writhing mass and immediately been shepherded from exhibit to exhibit by exasperated teachers. He had been small then, barely able to tie his shoes, and when they passed dioramas of monstrous animals with huge jaws, Connor had hidden his face in his hands. One had been a tiger shark.

There’s a clamor outside the metal wall of their storage compartment. Lost in memories, Connor thinks it’s his dad working on the junker of a car they’d found abandoned on the side of the road one day. The engine had needed some work, it hardly even ran on substellar batteries, let alone a normal fuel like power cells. 

Still, they’d worked on that thing day and night. He can still remember his dad looking at him proudly the first time they took it on a trip across the neighborhood; Connor can’t imagine why his dad would let him die when he was so happy that day, they both were, but maybe he just hadn’t done a good enough job on it, maybe that was why his dad had been okay letting him go.

The clanging persists. Connor opens his mouth to tell his dad to stop it, he’ll be out in a minute, but then the door of the storage compartment rips open, letting in blinding waves of light, and Connor remembers. He remembers where he is– not at home, not heading out to the garage, but on a run down starship somewhere in the vast expanse of the galaxy.

Cleaver is peering down at him. “You two haven’t died in there yet, have you?”

“No, unfortunately,” Connor grumbles out through chapped lips and a dry tongue.

Cleaver grunts in sympathy. “You look it, though.” 

He helps both of them out, then hands them each a water ration. Roland is already idling somewhere in the back, and although his back is tall and straight, he’s got this look in his eyes that even the best of his bravado can’t hide. None of them will forget what it took to get here. In a way, Connor thinks that was done on purpose. You can’t run a secret safe haven if the kids inside believe they can just leave without a care. This sort of terrible journey teaches them the price of their safety.

Cleaver nods, as if sensing that Connor finally gets it. “Well, you survived,” he says matter-of-factly. “Welcome to the Graveyard.”

unwind tag list: @schroedingers-kater, @locke-writes, @sirofreak

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#unwind #unwind imagines #unwind oneshot #unwind series #unwind fanfic #conrisa #conrisa imagines #conrisa oneshot #conrisa series #conrisa fanfic #unwind dystology #unwind dystology imagines #unwind dystology oneshot #unwind dystology series #unwind dystology fanfic #connor lassiter #connor lassiter imagines #connor lassiter oneshot #connor lassiter series #risa ward #risa ward imagines #risa ward oneshot #risa ward series #space au #connor lassiter x risa ward

[lovecolibri]

I find it really interesting and off-putting, the way some in the 911 fandom act like if you’re not liking the current season you’re just stupid. You just don’t Get It. You just don’t understand and you have a short attention span. Okay. Like it’s a bad thing to expect a piece of entertainment media to… entertain us? Like I hate to break it to them, but this isn’t exactly a world-changing piece of narrative fiction, it’s a commercial product designed to make money and once it becomes unprofitable it will end. The writers/producers have one job and that’s to keep the audience they have as they’re unlikely to bring in much new after six years. They are manifestly not doing a great job of that right now, as evidenced by the growing discontent in the audience and the declining ratings. Obviously not everything needs to be fanservice, but it’s also a lot like they’re taking for granted that they’ll *have* the time to tell these precious long-form storylines. You can’t take the audience for granted, and you cannot expect every actor to stick around forever. The plot has to move, it can’t just hang out in a holding pattern until the last handful of episodes in the season. And I just think the way some refuse to see this and act like we’re the crazy ones for seeing the problem… is mostly rooted in denial. They don’t want to be wrong, and they don’t want to have wasted their time getting emotionally invested. It’s also a simple fact that the number of shows that ended well are greatly outnumbered by the number of shows that ended badly, so it’s reasonable to start preparing ourselves. Ships or no ships, this many annoyed people didn’t just come out of nowhere and we’re not out of line for saying “hey this isn’t the show I used to love anymore, it’s changed and not for the better.” Not everything needs to be fanservice, but you do ultimately need to serve your fans or they won’t stay fans.

Absolutely, Nonnie, well said! I'm not going to hate on people wanting to be positive, I get that! I'm still enjoying aspects of the show and some of the moments we're getting and I find the investment in the show still worth it (for now).

But you touched on something that I think is important. "Like it’s a bad thing to expect a piece of entertainment media to… entertain us?" This right here is where myself and a lot of fans, and honestly a lot of the general audience is struggling. The emergencies aren't just...not as good as they used to be, they also aren't tying into the storylines like they used to. Like I said in this post, emergencies were often used to trigger a heart-to-heart talk between other characters so we the audience know what is going on in their heads, and it made the audience feel like there was a purpose to those scenes besides just filling up time in the episode because they helped move the plot forward! Now, since they aren't using a brief emergency scene to wow the viewer PLUS trigger a scene that pushes a character arc forward, they don't have any deep character driven moments to...drive the plot forward. So how do you fill up that time gap? Longer set up, longer emergencies has so far been the answer BUT because they aren't really driving the story forward they just feel too long and pointless, and the little bits of plot feel like they're just in a holding pattern and dragging out forever, or not getting the time to SHOW us on screen what is going on or what the characters are feeling. Because they're not talking to each other! Like you said "The plot has to move, it can’t just hang out in a holding pattern until the last handful of episodes in the season."

I also think it's important to point out that this is NOT just a fandom or just a "Buddie" fandom issue, it's across the board coming from fans, people who don't ship Buddie, and casual viewers alike! Even the lady I share an office with who is a casual viewer and thinks Eddie and Carla should get together, came out and said (before I said anything about what I thought of 6x09) that the episode was so boring and felt more like a silly Halloween episode instead of a good Christmas episode, and why didn’t they resolve anything like the thumb or the who the car belonged to, and why hasn’t Wendall come up before, and why is this sperm donor thing still happening. She said it was the worst episode she’s seen and it was boring and not at all like the show used to be, and she can't even remember character names half the time. But she's been watching every week since the show started and it's now been regulated to "watch the next day or sometime during the week" because it's not holding her attention anymore. The show has CLEARLY changed how it's doing things and it's NOT been for the better. It doesn't make you stupid to point it out, especially when so many people are saying the same things, PLUS the dwindling number of viewers (yes, demo matters more but going from 1.6 in key demo to .6 and dropping millions of viewers) is LOUD, especially for a show airing against sitcoms not even other procedurals.

Do I think the show can recover? Yeah, I do! Plenty of shows have a bad season or even two. I'm not sure this show can afford 3. And it's extra frustrating because this isn't a new show trying to find it's feet, and it isn't a show that's been on for 18 years and has one original character left who is unrecognizable and they're doing wild things for shock value. This is a show in it's PRIME. A show that was unlike a lot of other shows because it was rooted in HOPE, and in found family supporting each other, and characters leaning on their support system, and things working out well! This show provided something the world really needed at the time. Seeing the show's collapse away from that good, tight, deep but still lighthearted and hopeful at the core type of storytelling is crushing. Being able to so easily pinpoint where the issue is coming from (if you have a showrunner who admits to consistently struggling with basic pacing and plotting out stories, you will have a subpar plot and consequently subpar season) is at least helpful in knowing what kind of noise might make TPTB pay attention, but honestly if they haven't done anything before now, I doubt they will. (Unless they decide to pull the Buddie plug to get ratings back up meaning Tim comes back to get credit for that event.) You're right, you can't take the audience for granted and right now, 911 has been squeaking by with the good will it earned in previous seasons, but if the comments surrounding 6a are anything to go by, that good will has dried up. Tying up a fan and GA favorite character (Buck) into SEVERAL failed plotlines (tay kay/BT was unpopular, L was so hated they had to cut her out of almost all the promo ad severely cut her scenes for the rest of the season and so far she hasn't come back, and people are already sick of the sperm donor plot), while continuing to isolate him in those plotlines with side characters and away from the group (not just Buddie, but Buck/Maddie and ESPECIALLY Buck/Bobby which is a big fan favorite dynamic as well), and not even giving the audience familiar dynamics and interactions, or any depth of storytelling to hold on to, has further burned through the viewers good will.

"You do ultimately need to serve your fans or they won’t stay fans." Couldn't have said it better myself.

#my sweet nonnie friends #911 #911 spoilers #it's clear that for kr it isn't about the fans or the stories it's about her getting to be in charge and call the shots #and get a leg up so she has something to put on her resume for later #this isn't about treating the show/character/storylines or the audience with respect and love #and it fucking SHOWS