#at least lloyd brought extra drinks

[the-ninja-legacy-whip]

Jesse in 🔥

🔥 OC in what they’d wear on a very hot day

Jesse: ...Why'd you pick the hottest day of the year for a RUN?!

Nya: Hey, I could've picked the coldest day of the year instead! The heat builds character >:3

Lloyd, entirely unbothered: *sluuuuuurp*

#at least lloyd brought extra drinks #ninjago #ninjago fanart #ninjago ocs #oc: jesse marvell #nya smith #lloyd garmadon #legacyverse #art tag #art of mine #works of mine #ask games #these requests have made me dig up doodles i forgot existed lmao

[residentdormouse]

Yammering Out “Y” Words

Yeah, yikes. As yelling turns to yawning, I must yield this battle to you @mrsmungus; my mind only yearns for yesterday’s dreams. For younger years where being yanked from a slumber wouldn’t be as yucky. As it is, best I have to offer is the image of yeti’s doing yoga in the yard to maintain their youth.

…aka I am so tired and there is not enough coffee…

My Words: Yell, Yawn, Yard, Yank, Youth

Your words: Since this is going to be a scattered hit or miss, with a majority of miss - find five sections with a ‘Z’ anywhere in it. Bonus Points for a word starting with 'Z'.

As Always - Open Tag, even though this really is coming to the end now… What are we going to do with the time. I feel like pooh trying to brainstorm a new challenge.

(There were a surprising amount of spoilers with these words. Or maybe I’m using spoiler too liberally. I’m not sure. I’ve tried my best.)

Yell:

Another wave rolled over her, and she dropped to the floor, involuntarily yelling out in pain. While she had done well at hiding it so far, at putting up a strong front, this shock radiated out from her and she couldn’t hold back the cries of pain any longer. The added verbal release made her unable to hear that Lloyd had dropped to the ground along with her. It wasn’t until the pain fully receded the she noticed him laying there curled in on himself on the floor is, eyes closed and face twisted in a look of torment.

It took her a second to fully register what she saw, but as soon as it did, she quickly made her way over. "Hey, Lloyd... Hey…" she shook his shoulder and he jolted up into a sitting position, immediately scurrying back against the wall.

"What the FUCK did you just do to me?!" He placed a hand to his temple; energy of a wounded and cornered animal exuded off of him in waves.

Yawn:

(Hey, another two-fer!)

The next morning came faster than either of them had wanted. Both her and Glen were slow to make their way over to Stu and Fran’s. While he said he appreciated the nod to his youth, Glen made the determination that the all night, late night drinking needed to be curbed, at least for a short while; they would both be essentially useless otherwise. Last night had certainly taken its toll on him, and she honestly wasn’t faring any better. Thankfully, the previous occupants of their home had the ibuprofen stocked up.

She let out a yawn as Stu greeted them. "Good mornin', you two! Beautiful start to the day, isn’t it?" His extra chipper greeting was solely to antagonize and that fact was not missed.

Walking right past with a smile and a middle finger, Hayden didn't give him much mind. "Uh-huh, yeah, love you too, Redman." Glen just shrugged, following behind her.

Yard:

(cheating a bit.... Yard shows up, but it's endgame of Spiral - please accept backyard as a substitute. It can be just a plain old yard for our purposes. 😂)

As they passed through the door, Hayden instantly felt the relief of their arrival come back. The journey was over. They had made it. And she was accepted.

Introductions were already underway on her arrival, but she picked up quickly. Ray Brentner was sitting at the table, observing silently, while Tom Cullen was playing with Kojak on the floor. The latter pair brought a huge smile to her face, and plunking down on the carpet, she joined in.

“So I’m not the only sucker for his belly rub whines. He's good at that.”

“My Laws, yes! This is the first dog that's come here. M-O-O-N that spells first. Is he yours?”

"Glen found him. Only dog we saw on the trip as well."

"Well, I'm mighty glad you all made it."

Equally glad they had made it, Hayden continued to pet the pup until everybody moved through the kitchen to the (back)yard for dinner.

Yank:

(Four instances of this and all of them spoiler-rific. I guess this may be the least of the bunch? From where you’re at, I’m assuming teal book has already been mentioned enough to know it has importance.)

Hayden yanked out the teal book from the bookshelf, and watched the wooden pieces of shelf that connected it splinter away. She knew the deafening static now surrounded her, but for the first time, the underwater feeling was to her benefit. Now that the screeching static was simply a muffled noise in the background, she only had to fight against her fading energy.

She tried to hop down from the chair, but it turned into falling. With a hard crash to the floor, she let out a pained cry. Her shoulder cried out at her, and it took all of her willpower to push herself up from her position. Once she brought herself back up to standing, she looked back at the red spot on the hardwood, smeared across the floor where her back had hit. Time constraints were baring down on her.

Shaking, she moved back to the bookshelf and put all her weight on the side panel, beginning to push.

Youth:

There was something special about watching karma happen in real time, and Max could barely contain her laughter as high-on-his-horse James stumbled and crashed face first into the dirt.

“Don't worry, Graceful, you get used to it."

"Right."

By the time her hand extended towards him, he was already up on one knee. A moment passed, before he grudgingly accepted the help. Clearly, he was not somebody who liked to rely on others. She understood the logic. For the bulk of her youth, she was the same way. Headstrong and independent, and you best not get in her way. A woman of her own making.

Until she wasn’t.

#yup...yuck #didnt realize y would be this hard... #mouse's tag games & reblogs #riding the train to alliteration station

[ninjaslegos]

Hi! When you have the time, could you please do a story where the reader is Cole's younger sister and Kai's girlfriend, but she dies taking a knife for her brother. I really love your writing, and I've had this idea in my head for a while, but I'm certain you can write it better than what I have planned. Thank you so much! :)

Aww, that's so sweet of you! I'll try my best! 🥺 my poor ninja....I’ll work on this when I am extra angsty so it’ll hit harder. ALSO I set this before season 5 so like....if you want a part two with Reader being a ghost... 👀 I can get you some.

She/her reader!

Three Broken Hearts

Where everyone was supposed to come out of this fight alive, so why didn’t you?

You were Cole’s baby sister. He taught you everything you knew. Your mom got sick after having you, but he didn’t blame you at all for her death. Instead, he spent his time looking after you since his father barely paid attention to you. He swore to be the best older brother that anyone’s ever seen. He took you with him when he was sent to Marty Oppenheimer’s School for Gifted Youth, and you were the reason he got kicked out. It turns out he wasn’t allowed to sneak you in with him. Not that he cared, he hated the place anyway.

Instead, the two of you went travelling. You would camp out together, living off the land best two teens could. Well, a teen and a tween. You were three and a half years younger than him. So when you eventually got sick, naturally, he began to panic. As he went mountain climbing one day, an old man sat atop it and offered him a place to stay. He declined at first, knowing not to trust strangers, but he realized if he didn’t take the help, you would just get worse. So he went back to your temporary cave home to carry you and your belongings to the monastery.

He learned the man’s name was Wu, and he wanted Cole to train to become a ninja. He was a little bit interested, and settled down in the monastery nicely, while Wu helped you out with your strange illness. It turned out you had a parasite from eating bad meat, and Wu flushed it out using heat. He kept your body close to fire, and gave you hot tea to drink. You got better within a few weeks, and soon you were back to your usual self.

Life was peaceful here, even though he had to learn to share the space with Wu and one, two, wait, now three other ninja and someone else’s sister. At least you and Nya got along, but Cole had his eyes on Kai, who suspiciously hung around you a lot. He was a hothead who acted and spoke before he thought, and easily got himself into trouble, while you were a sweetheart who was soft spoken and always tried to be kind to everyone. Surely, Kai was undeserving of you.

Speaking of your kindness, you started to spend a lot of time with Zane, who was dubbed ‘the weird one’ by the others. Soon, the two of you were friends, so Cole was devastated when the monastery burned down. He searched among the ashes, and became livid when he couldn’t find your body anywhere. He snapped, yelling at everyone, crying for his baby sister, and threatening Zane. He nearly got kicked off the team. Instead of feeling hurt by what Cole said, Zane was quick to point out that his dragon was missing, and Cole felt a glimmer of hope.

He didn’t see you again for two weeks when Ed and Edna showed up to meet Jay. They explained that they ‘brought the cutest girl’ with them, and Cole cried at the sight of you getting out of their car. He never wanted to lose you again. As time went on, you ended up befriending young Lloyd, and when he was revealed to be the Green Ninja, Wu suggested the two of you could start training together.

Dressed in pale yellow, you became the Dandelion ninja. You named it yourself. Jay called you the piss ninja, but Cole shut that one down real quick. You soon learned of your light powers, and quickly put them to use. You could create shields, platforms, and weapons out of your element, and Cole couldn't be prouder of you.

At one point, you and Kai started to date. He didn't know when this happened, but it had to have been during the time when he and Jay were arguing over Nya, as that was when he was too distracted to notice it. This didn't blow over well with him, but instead of arguing with you, he had a 'light talk' with Kai and watched the two of you from a distance. Sure, you were 17 by now, and Kai just turned 19, but he didn't like it.

As the months passed, though, he came to accept it. Especially since you needed both guys' support when your best friend died fighting The Overlord. Everyone blamed themselves for Zane's death, even you. It tore the team apart, no matter how much you and Lloyd tried to keep them all together. First Jay left, hating Cole and you for some reason, which only served to piss him off even more. Sure, you and Jay weren't exactly friends, but he didn't have to be a jerk to you about something Cole did. Nya left shortly after, taking Kai with her. Kai wanted to take you with him, but Cole refused to let you leave with such a quitter.

Unfortunately, Cole left in the end as well, meaning all that was left of Wu's students were you and Lloyd. You sobbed when he did, reminding him that he promised not to leave you again, but he insisted he couldn't stay here like this. He lost not only Zane, but his friends and team. There wasn't anything left for him here, and he tried to convince you to leave with him, but you wouldn't budge. Well, neither would he; he could play stubborn, too.

It wasn't until Lloyd warned everyone that you went missing, that everyone got together again at Chen's Noodle House. Even Jay. They agreed to start being a team of ninja again to get you back, until they were distracted by a fight, leading them to an alley where they found out Zane was alive as well.

"Zane was her best friend, she must've heard about this and tried to look for him on her own..." Lloyd sadly concluded.

"Well, we have no choice. That's my sister, and my teammate. Whether you guys are coming with me or not, I'm looking for them." Cole frowned.

Kai stepped forward, "I'm coming with you."

"Me too." Lloyd nodded.

They all looked expectantly at Jay, who chuckled nervously. "(Y/N) does deserve an apology from me..." He sheepishly admits. "And I miss seeing Zane around."

So it was a deal. Along with Garmadon, the five of them board the ferry to Chen's Island, where they anxiously wait for their arrival. The aura is still tense and awkward, as they haven't seen each other in a few months, but Cole knows that when they find you and Zane again, everything will be back to normal. Honestly, he missed being a ninja with you.

As the terrifying days pass slowly, the ninja try to not only find the two of you, but also find a way off this island afterwards. It's not until Cole gives himself up in a fight against Jay that he finds you, and Zane, huddled up in a dungeon cell together. "Cole," you snap at him in a whispered tone, "what are you doing here?"

"Participating in Chen's tournament to get you and Zane out of here?" He asks in an amused tone.

"I can tell; dude, your powers are gone." You sigh, "I'm lucky, Chen doesn't know about my powers, so I'm waiting for the perfect time to escape with Zane and the other prisoners."

"How is...how is he doing?" Cole asks sadly, and you frown.

"He's alive, but he's not Zane right now. He doesn't remember much, and he's having horrible nightmares." He's not chained to the wall right now, so his head is in your lap as you play with his hair in an attempt to soothe him. "Poor guy, Pixal is next door trying to help, but she's been scrapped. She begged me not to tell Zane, as she doesn't want to dishearten him. I'm scared, I wish there was more I could do."

"You're doing the best you can." Cole reaches over and puts his hand on your shoulder. "You came all this way to save your friend, and even though you can't rescue him right now, you're still helping him with his sleep and keeping him company. Mom would be proud of you."

You weakly smile at him. "I wish she was here now, she'd know what to do."

"You know what to do, too." He assures you, and you nod. "I believe in you; we can make it out of this together, just hang in there."

Chen has deemed you too weak to work, so Cole makes his plans in the warehouse, then comes to you and relays what's happening to fill you in.

It takes a few days, and soon Jay, Kai, and Lloyd are captured, but it happens to be on the day you are planning to escape. With energetic yelling and loud drilling, you quite literally crash Chen's party. Kai reunites with you and kisses you hard. Cole doesn't quite like it, but you haven't seen each other in a long time, and Kai made it quite obvious that he missed you a lot.

The fighting is chaotic, and Cole loses you in the crowd a couple times. Suddenly, there is a scream. Your scream. Panicked, he rushes towards the sound as the fighting comes to an astonished stop. Eyes wide with awe, he watches as you unlock your True Potential. You had it coming for a while now, and he was glad he was there to see it happen. Your eyes were a shining pale yellow color, and beautiful, glowing wings protruded from your back, as you held Chen's staff in your hands, away from Kai. Why did he want it so bad?

It didn't matter anyway, as you spoke, "I am (Y/N) the master of light, and as such, all lights cast shadows. As the true guardian of balance, I must make sure that no one person holds all power." It was like there were multiple of you speaking at once, but as soon as you broke the staff, you collapsed as your glow faded away. Luckily Kai caught you before you hit the ground, and Cole made his way over to check up on you.

"Why wasn't I told of this?!" Clouse demanded from some of his nearby warriors, but they just shrugged and shook their heads. No one knew you had this power until now, except for the elemental masters.

"Retreat!" Chen shrieked, and everyone ran off.

A few worried masters gathered around to ask if you were alright, and Zane got close and put his hand on your head to soothe you, like you did to him in the dungeon. When your eyes snapped open, and you gasped and sat up, people began to cheer and pat you on the back, congratulating you for helping them win.

Everything was okay, until Shade looked around. "Where's Skylor?" Then it became quiet.

A few people looked around, as a few others scoffed about how they didn't need her, but you stood up for her. "She could've chosen to stay with her father, and help him and his followers become Anacondrai, but she decided that our collective friendship with her was worth more than her relationship with her father, and she threw that away for us!" Cole admired your kindness and bravery. You didn't mind standing up for her at all. "I didn't know her long, but I know that anyone who chooses to help others deserves the same. I'm looking for her, and if no one wants to come with me, then I'll go by myself."

Kai stepped up first, "then let's make this fast. The sooner we find her, the sooner we can end this against Chen. We know he won't stop trying to get his spell to work, so we don't really have a choice."

"I'm going, too." Cole nods. "I've left you behind too many times already. Besides, someone needs to keep you safe."

Zane, Lloyd, Jay, and soon everyone else is rallied behind you, and you split up into groups of three to find Skylor. The search isn't going so well, and people are starting to lose hope, but you stay persistent. It's not until Neuro receives a message that everyone becomes interested again, and he relays what Skylor told him. Chen was going to use her power instead, as she has absorbed everyone else's power and could complete the spell on her own.

You needed to be fast. Racing off with the other ninja, you track her down and try to rescue her from her father. Zane crashes and gets lost at one point, but he insists that no one stop for him. You promise to come looking for him afterwards and continue on.

You come across an abandoned city, and agree to split up into twos to keep going. Kai with Lloyd, Nya with Jay, and you with your brother to make the search easier.

It turns out you and Cole are the ones to find her, and try to get her to safety. It's harder than you realize when several of Chen's warriors show up to try and prevent it from happening. Too focused on what's happening on the ground, up in the sky, a net is fired at you and you are all captured.

In a strange crystal cave, Cole asks what's going on, as you are all separated from each other, and Chen is trying to get Skylor to touch you and copy your powers as well, even though they weren't part of the spell. However, you kept a shield around you, so you couldn't be touched, and you were just left in the net instead.

The transformation was hard to watch. Chen got what he wanted. He was now an unstoppable Anacondrai, and was going to take over Ninjago with his new army.

When you, Skylor, and Cole were rescued and regrouped with the others, everyone seemed to have lost hope. Everyone except you. You were like literal light sometimes, which was what they needed right now.

"We may have lost the battle, but we have not lost the war!" You declared. "Maybe they've become Anacondrai, and have impenetrable skin, but I have impenetrable shields. If it comes down to it...I will sacrifice myself to keep them locked away so they will never have to hurt anyone."

Cole's protest was instant. "No, you can't do that to yourself! You're not even an adult, (Y/N), please, we need you here with us, I need you, as my baby sister," he grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you a bit. "I won't let you do this!"

Kai agrees. "Cole's right. I need you, too, and you can't waste away your entire life just sitting there and guarding Chen's army forever. There has to be another way to defeat an Anacondrai."

"It's not like we can get off this island anyway. Ninjago's all the way out there and none of us are going to be able to cross the ocean, much less get there before he conquers it all." Griffin sighs sadly.

"I mean, I have a dragon, but none of you do, so it will have to be me and...(Y/N), since she's the only one with a plan to stop them..." Lloyd trails off, not liking this idea of self sacrifice either.

Zane steps forward, "that is not entirely true." He shows off his new ability, and summons a dragon of ice in front of him.

"Woah, how are you doing that?!" Jay asks, and Zane starts explaining to the group that he was able to unlock his dragon by facing his fears.

Cole thought about his biggest fear. Snakes? Death? No, it had to be something deeper than that. As he saw Kai kiss your cheek before making his dragon, Cole realized what it was. It was losing you. You were basically all that was left of his family, as neither of you talked to your father much anymore, and you reminded him so much of his mother. If you died, he didn't know what he would do. Nothing would be the same.

He breathed in deeply, letting go of his fear. You would be fine, he told himself, you had him to protect you, you had Kai and Zane, your boyfriend and best friend, and you had the rest of the team on your side. Besides, your power was literally making shields. Or at least that's what you used it for most. He had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all...

"No fair! You always get things before me!" He can hear your childish pouting behind him, and he laughs.

"You're the baby of the family, you'll always get it last." He teases. You still can't manage to make your dragon, so he offers you a ride on his. On the outside, anyone would perceive your inability to summon your dragon as inexperience, but Cole knew you better than that. You were too scared of your fear to overcome it, but what were you scared of? Staying behind and leaving everyone to defend Ninjago against the Anacondrai? He'd be scared of that, too. It's a big burden to carry.

When Skylor and Garmadon realized their bodies were slowly fading back to normal from their Anacondrai ones, everyone became hopeful again. It was brief, though, as they knew their next steps were to prevent the spell from becoming permanent, then stopping Chen for real. Once again, the group split up; the masters protecting various spots in Ninjago while the ninja team go after Pythor to see if he would know how to defeat fake Anacondrai, seeing as he was the real deal.

He explained to the ninja that there wasn't a way to defeat an Anacondrai, as like you said, there truly were no weaknesses. Cole wanted to sob; he wasn't ready for you to sacrifice yourself like this. There had to be something they could do, and luckily Zane and Garmadon were here, as they figured out Pythor made the spell permanent.

"So? I can just make a shield around him and they can't touch him. That's much easier to handle than the previous plan!" You grinned, but Pythor didn't like that idea at all.

"What?!" He shrieked, "you're just going to lock me up in a smaller prison? How fair is that?! They're the enemy, not me!"

So he escaped. It was an honest mistake, as Pythor was still as slippery as he ever was, but you felt down. Now it was Cole's turn to cheer you up again, as he reminded you it wasn't your fault, and that there was still time to figure something else out.

Wu congratulates you for discovering your True Potential, then assigns you your task of protecting Ninjago City. You were to create and sustain a huge dome over the entirety of the city, as it was one of the biggest ones out there, and was definitely a target. Cole and the others were sent out to track down and eliminate trucks that Chen sent out, but he didn't like that idea.

"Sensei, I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but this plan is awful. For one, I want to be by my sister, because this might be the last time I see her, and two, don't you think she's a little too young and inexperienced to suddenly create a large dome over the city? Sure she unlocked her True Potential, but just barely." He frowned.

"Wow, Cole," you smirked, "you don't think I'm tough enough? You're my brother, the strongest person in the world, and you don't think I can handle making a shield for a couple hours?"

He sighs and hugs you. "Of course I do, it's just...you're doing more than I could ever ask of you, and on top of that, if we don't win this, it means you could be separated from me, and from Kai, too."

"Yeah!" Said hothead adds as he approaches you, "you're my girlfriend, I don't want you to strain yourself." He kisses your cheek. "But you're strong, and I believe in you, and I love you."

"Aw," you hug him and give him a quick kiss, and Cole grimaces inwardly. He hates it when you're lovey-dovey in front of him. Something about you being his sister while Kai's his teammate...and you're both teammates as well... "I love you too, Kai." You then hug both boys tightly. "I'll be okay, you guys just get out there and fight hard!" They hug you back, then you all let go as they turn to leave. "When this is over, we can relax together again as ninja, and I can bake us all a nice cake."

"You mean me a nice cake." Cole teases, before he leaves and you go on your separate missions.

He's quick to locate the truck he was assigned to, and catches up to it within minutes. Once he gets close enough, Skylor calls in, telling everyone they were just a distraction, just as Cole crashes the truck. His fears are coming true, and he finds he can't make his dragon stay with him, or even summon it. It only served to make things worse as he realized he now had no way to get back to you.

Fortunately, he wasn't alone in his thoughts, as Neuro communicated with him, telling him to regroup to figure out another plan, but Cole was starting to lose hope as he headed for the Samurai X cave. Even worse, you were nowhere to be found. "Where's my sister?!" Cole demanded an answer from Wu, who shook his head sadly.

"I tried to stop her, but she fled to the villages to try and stop Chen's army on her own." He shakes his head. "I'm sorry Cole."

"What do you mean, you 'tried to stop her'?" Kai asked, "you're her Sensei, just order her to stay behind and fight with us instead of alone!" He snaps. He pushes past everyone to try and find you. "I'm going to get her."

"Kai, stop!" Wu thunks his staff against the ground. "It would be foolish of you to leave alone. She told me she would be at the Corridor of Elders if she couldn't hold them off, so that is where we shall go. It is the only place they can pass through now to get to Ninjago City, and if we don't stop them there, then all will be lost."

Kai and Cole exchanged glances, and silently agreed to wait. When they finally reached the Corridor of Elders, they were excited to see you again, waving your arms at them as you ran towards them.

Everyone cheered at the sight of you, except for Neuro. His eyes widened as he started shaking his head, "she's not happy to see us, she's in distress, and is trying to warn us of something."

Then they heard you. "They're here, They're here!" Your voice was hoarse from screaming so loud, but they could still understand what you were saying. "They're coming!"

You had taken out most of the vehicles, but the warriors were still left undamaged, so you had to flee. By the time you reached the ninja, you let yourself fall into Kai's arms as you caught your breath. You had been running as fast as their vehicles, which was hard on you. Cuts and scrapes covered your arms and legs, and your ninja gi was becoming tattered, yet you kept fighting.

"You should rest," Cole advised as Kai assisted you up to The Bounty, "you deserve it, we can handle it from here." You nodded to each other, before you disappeared on the deck. Kai dropped down next to him later, and everyone readied themselves for a fierce battle.

A couple minutes into it, Cole saw you on the battlefield again, wielding two shields as you use them to defend yourself, and the sharp edges become weapons. "What are you doing here? I told you to rest!"

"Yeah, well, if it weren't for me, you would've been stabbed back there!" You retorted, not looking up.

"What? How, when?"

"Yeesh, Cole, you're welcome?" You snort, pushing one warrior onto his back with a mighty heave before blocking a shot from another Anacondrai.

"Okay, fine, thank you." He dodges and hits one behind you, "well now we're one for one."

"Thank you." You giggle, then sigh, "I'm going to see if Zane or Kai need help, see you later."

And just like that, you were lost in the crowd. Everyone was getting worn out, but Cole had to keep fighting, for you. Because if he didn't, you would be stuck doing guard duty for life. That's all he needed to keep going. Sure, a portal opened over his head, but he couldn't focus on that right now. At least, not until the Anacondrai warriors started to float up towards it, carried away by strange snake spirits.

Did they...did they just win? Against another invincible army? I mean the stone army was invincible, but manageable. He listened to the cheers of the other masters and determined it must've been so. He celebrated as well, until he realized something. "(Y/N), where's my baby sister, (Y/N), where are you?!" He shouted out into the crowd, as they parted for him.

"Cole?" You sounded weak, as you coughed from behind him. "I'm tired..."

He was almost too scared to turn around, and once he did, he wished he didn't. Maybe he could've pretended you were just sick, or worn out from battling so hard. "(Y/N)!!" He screamed, running forward to catch you as you fell to your knees. Blood dribbled from your lips, and stained his clothes as you coughed it up over his back while he held you against him. In your back was a knife, but he knew better than to remove it. "Fuck - hey, hey, open your eyes," he lightly smacks your cheek as he holds your head in his palms. "Stay awake for me, please?"

You just chuckled lightly, as you tried to tell him how it happened. "I told - I told you I had your back."

Kai hovered over his shoulder, also wanting to hold you, but not wanting to take you away from Cole, so he just held one of your hands tightly in his. "Squeeze my hand, as hard as you can. I promise it won't hurt." You keep coughing as the blood from your heart seeps into your lungs, and fills them with fluid. Kai shakes his head at Cole, telling him how faint you were becoming.

"Cole, I miss mommy. I miss her." You gasped for breath as you choked. Zane came over to assist you medically, and Kai still didn't let go of your hand.

"Suck it up, you can miss mom another time." He insisted. Cole couldn't tell if he should be mad at you for letting go so easily, when you had so much left for you to do here, but at the same time, he knew deep down somewhere that it wasn't something that could be fixed.

The knife was removed, and Kai took his top off as he pressed the cloth to the wound as Zane instructed. "Keep coughing, (Y/N), maybe we can get the blood out." Kai whimpered, kissing your hand. Nya was off dialing for an ambulance, but it wasn't enough for Cole.

"Shit -" he turned to the others, "well do something, don't just stand there!" He snapped. "Be useful and fucking help me!" He was screaming at them, as he tried to fight back his sobs. He probably looked pathetic, blubbering over your dying body instead of trying to provide you comfort, but he so desperately wanted to believe you were going to be okay, that he denied himself allowance of grief. "It's okay, (Y/N), I can save you. I love you, I love you, stay with me."

You weren't responding, as your body shut down. Shit, did you even hear him? He couldn't see through the tears, no matter how many times he wiped them away. Zane had to pull you out of Cole's grasp so he could properly lay you down, and perform CPR. He lost it at the sound of your ribs cracking and breaking under the weight, and he shrieked.

"Stop it, stop it!" He pushed Zane hard, "you're making it worse, stop hurting her!"

"Dude, you stop!" Kai snapped back at him, "Zane and I have both been trying our hardest to save her, while you're just barking orders at everyone like a chicken with it's head cut off!"

He was right, but Cole couldn't face the truth just yet. He sniffled as he tried to justify his actions. He looked around at everyone, and couldn't take their stares. he just leaned down and buried his face into your stomach, trying to hold you best he could. Blood was everywhere, but he didn't care. Zane didn't care about Cole's feelings, and worked around him as he continued CPR. Kai tried to help by doing mouth to mouth, but coughed after inhaling some of your blood with an 'ew'.

Zane announced the news with a defeated tone. "I'm sorry, Cole, but there is no pulse. She's gone."

He felt dead, like something inside him snapped, or broke. The world felt too small, and his head started to spin while his heart started to burn. "Wh...what?" His voice was shaky, as he went pale immediately. "No...no, no, no..." Everything came crashing down as he started to openly sob for you. "(Y/N)!!" He wailed as he picked you off the ground and cradled you in his arms. You had the messiest death he'd ever seen, and he was too damn stupid to try to comfort you when you needed him the absolute most. "Come on, come on," he shook you lightly, as your head fell limply against his chest. This had to be a bad dream, or the worst prank ever. "Wake up, I need you, I need you." He sniffled next to your ear, "please stay with me."

His body felt numb, felt cold, felt dark and dead. "Tell mom I love her..." Without you to light it up, the world felt darker than he remembered. His greatest fear came true, and he would never be able to summon his dragon again.

#damn this is... #I cried while making this I feel so bad #damn this took a while BUT it was worth it I'm proud of it DESPITE that it made me cry #ninjago #ninjago cole #ninjago kai #kai x reader #cole and reader #blood #injury #gore #angst #death #swearing #trauma #oneshot

[the-l-spacer]

(Ch 1) (Ch 2)

Summary: Lloyd wakes up one morning to discover that, on a whim, the Metaverse had decided to release him and Raven from the Lovers archetype they had been locked in for as long as either could remember.

In the process, however, reality became… just a little screwed up.

Now, Raven is gone, and in his place is David Adams. David Adams, who had never left Ashland, working middle-management at Justacorp. David Adams, who had never heard the anvils, never jumped off Warner's Peak.

But Lloyd remembers everything, and he makes it his personal quest to win back the love of his life.

...No matter how many 'strictly professional' coffee dates it took.

I started a (hopefully) multi-chapter, Raven-kind-of-has-amnesia fic! Title and everything's still very much a work in progress, and this chapter is more an introduction than anything, but I hope y’all enjoy reading anyways!!

- 

The last thing Raven says to Lloyd before he (quite literally) vanishes the next morning is a semi-conscious, “Good night, my love,” mumbled into the latter’s chest as they both fall asleep.

Not that he knows of his boyfriend’s disappearance just yet, of course. For now, Lloyd Allen is asleep. Well, half-asleep, roused from a dream he can no longer remember by a rather odd sensation in his chest, a sensation that he promptly attempts to shake off, willing himself to sink back into slumber. 

He succeeds with the former, though the Metaverse always finds other ways to keep him from the latter.

This time, it’s the mid-morning sun that does it, filtering in through a gap in the bedroom’s curtains, casting a single, warm beam of light across the bed. When the light reaches his face, Lloyd shuts his eyes tighter, burrowing deep under the covers.

“Mmmmfgh,” he groans. “Ravey, draw the curtains.”

When he doesn’t feel the responding shift in the mattress, nor hear the sounds of curtains being pulled, shielding his precious eyes against the sun, his half-conscious mind is consumed by halfhearted annoyance. He really didn’t know what else he expected, considering Raven was always the heavier sleeper.

Eyes still closed, he stretches out his arm, meaning to rouse his (presumably) unconscious partner. Instead of feeling Raven’s telltale warmth, however, his hand connects with nothing but an empty expanse of bed.

Fully awake now (and against his will, too), Lloyd sits up and stretches, preparing to give Raven — probably up and outside without having the decency to give his boyfriend his precious five minutes extra sleep — a good telling-to. He swings his legs to the edge of the bed, and at long last, gets up with a final, drawn-out groan.

He first realises that something is decidedly off when that strange feeling in his chest returns full-force as he’s brushing his teeth.

“This again?” He aims the question, garbled through foam, at his sleepy-eyed self in the mirror.

Spit, rinse, close the faucet, done.

He regards his reflection once again. “No response, hmm?”

More silence.

“Well, I’ll just have to work this out for myself. No thanks to you, and no thanks to Ravey, apparently. I have no idea how he’s up before I am.”

He goes through a mental list of everything that could have possibly gone wrong. Heart attack? No, there would be other accompanying signs. Some other heart condition? Impossible, at least not if the folks who built his body on the Singularity had anything to say about it.

Anxiety? It is a possibility, but what does he have to be anxious about? Compared to where he was a scant year ago, his current position of ‘Carnival Co-Runner, Trainer of One Not-So-New-Now Post-Human, and not to forget, Possessor of an Actual Living, Breathing, Positively Spry Human Body’ is downright enviable.

Perhaps it’s simply dehydration, he decides. He and Ravey did have quite a bit to drink the night before, nothing a quick trip to their small, cosy kitchen couldn’t solve. Plus, he hasn’t quite ruled out the anxiety option. Maybe, in the haze of alcohol and festivities (yesterday being their time-is-fluid-th pre-anniversary, and all), his boyfriend had talked about pulling yet another zero-gravity, hair-whitening stunt. He swears to question him once he finds him, probably in the kitchen nursing his morning hangover over a cup of strong coffee.

But when he doesn’t. When all telltale signs of life in the kitchen — the smell of cooking, of roasting coffee beans, of a chair askew or messy countertops — are simply nonexistent, that’s when Lloyd knows that something is very, very wrong.

Because the kitchen isn’t just empty, it’s as if no one but him had occupied it ever since its construction. There is one, lone kitchen chair tucked neatly at the table, a single mug, one set of silverware, and when Lloyd dashes back to the bathroom to confirm that he isn’t just hallucinating, one toothbrush, his own.

It isn’t just these rooms either. The living room coffee table, which Lloyd is certain would be filled with bottles and wine glasses in the wake of the previous night, is completely empty, and gone from various surfaces are the framed photos of him and Ravey at the carnival, at the Second Playhouse’s opening night. Even their wardrobe isn’t spared, devoid of the violent splash of purple brought by his other half’s various coats, vests, dresses, shirts and heels.

The sensation of wrongness doubles in intensity, made worse by the rapid thump-thump-thumping of his heart. Lloyd’s shaking knees give way, depositing him onto Raven’s side of the bed, cold and bare.

It is then he finally realises exactly what he’s feeling. The sensation is his heart is emptiness, something alien to him ever since he had gotten his body back and returned home to nothing but light and love (and a near-death experience, though that was an accident and hardly counted), even the memory of his hilariously disastrous homecoming sending another icy knife through his chest.

Raven is gone. With it, a piece of himself has been ripped away, and all Lloyd feels is empty.

- 

The rest of his morning is spent in a daze, running around the carnival, asking every worker, Floozy, honorary Floozy and Hell Hag he passes if they had seen his boyfriend. 

“Nope, sorry Lloyd.”

“Haven’t seen him. Isn’t he usually with you?”

“Sorry sugar, No sign of Raven Baby ‘round here just yet.”

A flurry of activity — people setting up booths, clearing the last of the previous day’s detritus, cranking the ferris wheel in preparation for the guests who would arrive from wherever the Carnival decides to park itself for the day — swirls around him, but Lloyd registers none of it. He runs and searches every corner of the place, until his hunt takes him to the last stop, Han Mi’s trailer.

Han hears the feeble knock on her door, and decides not to say anything when she opens it to a panting, wild-eyed Lloyd, who promptly proceeds to wobble past her, collapsing onto her couch, head in his hands.

“Okay, so you didn’t remember to take your shoes off before coming in, I assume you’ve got bad news.”

Through the gap in his fingers, Lloyd mutters a soft, “Shit. Sorry, Han,” before kicking his shoes off and toward the half-open door. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Han sighs, and slides a chair over, taking a seat opposite the man. Not beside. They aren’t quite there yet. 

A brief moment of silence passes, before Lloyd speaks up. “This is probably an exercise in futility, but. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Raven around this morning, have you?”

Letting out a sympathetic whistle, Han says, “No dice, sorry. I woke up, like, fifteen minutes ago, and I think I’d know if Raven was in my trailer. He isn’t with you or the Floozies?”

Lloyd deflates, letting his head fall backward to rest against the wall behind him. Addressing the ceiling, he says, “He very much isn’t. I checked everywhere, and this was my last stop.”

“Maybe he’s running a quick errand in another narrative,” Han offers.

“No. It’s not just that Raven’s gone from the carnival, he’s.” Lloyd scrubs a hand across his eyes, and rests his gaze on her. “He’s vanished completely. All his clothes, his personal items, his photos. It’s like he had never even existed.”

“Wait. What?” Han Mi’s eyes go wide. “Does everyone else know about this?”

“They only know that I can’t find him. You’re the first person I’ve told about… the rest. And there’s more.”

“Wait. Before you tell me, have you eaten yet? Drank anything? You look like a wreck… no offence.”

“None taken, and no, I haven’t. There hasn’t been time to, with,” Lloyd vaguely gestures, “everything that’s been happening.”

“Well, if he’s really up and disappeared, a little time taken to catch your breath couldn’t hurt, could it?” Sure, she was still mad at the shit Lloyd pulled as the writer for the Cabaret, but she didn’t hate him. And she knew painfully what it was like to lose someone she loved.

Lloyd begins to protest, but Han silences him with a glare. She’s persuasive like that.

“Are we doing carrot cake?” He manages feebly.

Han nods. “We’re doing carrot cake.”

#shaperaverse #new albion #Paul shapera #im working on the next chapter aaaaaaa #writings

[justtoarguewithyou]

9/28: New Beginnings

day 10 of @swottypotter comfort minifest. something completely different from me. i’ve had so much fun. thank you, @swottypotter!!!

Sirius stood outside Remus’ house with a boombox, playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

The first few times he’d played the song, he’d held the boombox over his head, like Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything.” He and Remus had been to see that in the theatre three times that spring. Remus loved romantic comedies. Sirius loved Remus.

Sirius had put the boom box down, and sat on his longboard in the drive way instead, yelling at Remus to come out.

“Come on, Remus,” Sirius yelled. “I’ll stay here all night.”

Hope twitched open the living room curtains, and gave Sirius a small wave. Sirius was drinking from the bottle of water he’d brought in his backpack. He was trying to follow the shade as it shifted along the driveway. He’d been out there for 45 minutes. The song was starting for the 9th time.

Hope, who had started singing along under her breath, turned to her son. “Remus, I really think he would stay all night. I don’t see why your father and I should have to suffer through all that noise.”

She covered her burgeoning smile with her hand, and did her best to not sway along to the music. She loved Sirius, and all his grand gestures. It reminded her of her husband, Lyall, when they were young. And she loved her son. But she also knew her son could hold a grudge like no one else. She wasn’t proud that he had inherited that from her.

Remus stomped over to the couch and sat down with a huff.

“Remus!” Sirius yelled. “I gave you my heart! Please don’t give me a pen!”

Sirius had used his brother’s tape recorder held up to his own stereo to dub the song onto an old cassette single. With just this song on both sides, and no need to rewind, he could keep this up all night. Or at least, as long as his batteries lasted. He’d put in new ones, and packed extra, just in case. He also brought the power cord. Sirius had never been a Boy Scout. But he did believe in being prepared.

Lyall came to the window as the song ended. He gave Sirius a big wave. Sirius waved back.

“Hi, Lyall!” Sirius yelled, and then flipped the cassette over. He shrugged apologetically.

Lyall turned to Remus and said, “Tell me, son, what exactly did he do?”

Remus looked away from his parents and mumbled.

“Louder, dear,” his mother said.

“He came up behind me while I was working and grabbed me. I didn’t see him come in, and I wasn’t expecting it, so I screamed like a little girl in front of everyone. All the customers, and my boss,” Remus emphasized.

Remus was working at the mall that summer to help save up for his college expenses. Sirius’s Uncle Alphard was helping him pay for college, so Sirius was unemployed. He often loitered around the mall food court, waiting for Remus to take his breaks. He always had an Orange Julius ready for Remus’s lunch breaks.

“Did he apologize?” Hope asked, biting her lips together after asking the question, to keep from smiling. She knew she wouldn’t improve Remus’ mood by appearing amused.

Sirius answered as though he could hear her.

“I said I was sorry. Come on, Remus. It’s so hot out here…” Sirius lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat off forehead. Hope sighed. She remembered when Lyall had abs…

“It was undignified!” Remus pouted on the sofa, his arms crossed.

Lyall rolled his eyes, and went to the kitchen to pour Sirius a glass of cold lemonade. He walked it outside.

“I think you’re breaking him down,” Lyall said, and sat down on the driveway.

“Remus!” Lyall yelled. “Come on out!”

Sirius gave Lyall a high five, and the two of them laughed. Sirius gulped his lemonade, and put the empty glass down in the grass. Lyall usually took Sirius’s side, as he knew his son could be very stubborn. Lyall remembered what it was like to be on the receiving end of Hope’s stubbornness. He swayed along with the chorus.

“You’re both off to college soon,” Lyall said, pulling himself out of the song.

“Yeah. I’m really looking forward to it,” Sirius said.

Sirius had been accepted to the California Institute of the Arts to study animation. His uncle had also put him in touch with some friends at Pixar, a relatively new company that was getting into computer animation. Sirius was excited about the possibilities.

“It won’t be easy, being so far apart,” Lyall said, with a sneaking suspicion his son was upset about more than the incident at the mall. Remus was planning to study math at UC Berkeley.

“No,” Sirius said. “But, I know I want to be with Remus. And we can write, and I’ve already bought us some long-distance calling cards so we can call each other, and we can see each other on weekends and breaks. Alphard said he’d help me buy a car.”

“I’m just not sure a long-distance relationship…” Lyall began.

“Mr. Lupin,” Sirius said solemnly, holding his hand out to stop Lyall’s train of thought. “I love your son. I know your son. I know he’s in there pouting because I embarrassed him today. I know I’ll probably be in your driveway for another couple of hours unless Mrs. Lupin can talk him into forgiving me sooner.”

Lyall groaned. The concrete was very hard. But he had chosen to cross the battle lines.

“But,” Sirius continued, “there’s nowhere I’d rather be. I know you think we’re 18, and we’re idiots, and that I sound like a moron for saying Remus is my destiny. But he is. I know he is.”

Sirius shrugged his shoulders and smiled at Lyall. What else could he say?

Lyall sighed, thinking Sirius sounded very young. And he looked very young, Lyall thought, as Sirius sat there in his neon green board shorts, and old white tank top. Sirius had let his hair grow long, and Lyall thought he looked like a surfer more than ever.

Maybe when Remus has gone, and he and Hope had time for themselves again, he’d take up surfing, Lyall thought. He’d had abs once. He wondered how long it would take him to get them back. He was still a relatively young man. Not even 40! He’d just turned 37.

Even though he’d never let on, Lyall Lupin was a firm believer in young love. He and Hope had married shortly after high school graduation, even with the threat of the Draft looming over him, and had Remus 9 months after that. They were still so happy together. He loved his wife, he loved his son. He loved this doofus, sitting beside him in “the light, the heat.”

Inside, Hope sat on the much softer couch with her son.

“Is this just about what happened at work?” she asked knowingly, pushing her son’s hair out of his eyes.

“No,” Remus said, curling into her lap.

“What is it, then, baby?” she asked her only baby. Maybe she and Lyall would have another. She was only 36. It had been so hard when they were young, working in a canning factory. Then, she’d had Remus, and had stayed at home with him. They’d never had that much money. Lyall joined the Navy, and they ended up in California. But she loved her husband, and her son. She was excited about his going to college—the first of their family to go.

“What if we go away to college, and Sirius decides he wants to break up?” Remus asked. Hope sighed. “What if we grow apart? What if he meets some devastatingly handsome surfer person, or some artistic soul and decides that they have more in common, and he doesn’t want a nerd like me who loves poetry and math?”

“Well, my dear, my crystal ball is in the shop. But I can tell you that Sirius must love you an awful lot if he’s been sitting outside in the heat for this long.”

“I’m scared, mom.”

“I know, dear,” she rubbed his shoulder. “I can’t tell you what the future holds, but I can tell you not to be stubborn and make yourself miserable for no reason. Believe me, baby. It doesn’t make your life any easy to hurt before there’s any reason to.”

She smiled at her kiddo. Her smart, stubborn, grudge-holding kiddo.

“Ugh, I love you so much. Just like me. Go on. Take pity on Sirius and your father. Let’s go get a burrito down the street. I’m not cooking tonight. And then we can go to the beach for a while. Okay?”

“All right,” Remus sighed, and his mother squeezed him tight.

“It won’t be easy, but you’ll be ok. Look me and dad. We’ve lived through so much. College will be a piece of cake.”

Remus smiled, and got up smoothed his shorts, and wiped his eyes.

Remus opened the screen door, and looked sheepishly at Sirius, who jumped up the second Remus opened the door.

“Hi,” Sirius said, turning off the boom box, and tucking his hair behind his ears.

“Hi.” Remus said.

“Thank goodness,” Lyall said, pushing himself up, and smiling at his wife. He picked up the glass, and put it inside the door. Hope came out with her purse, and their beach bag packed with towels, and a blanket, and sun screen. She jingled the car keys at Lyall, handed him the keys.

Lyall smiled at her, and kissed her cheek. “Stubborn, just like his mother,” he whispered in her ear.

They got into the station wagon, and rolled down the windows, and waited.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said, reaching out to hold Remus’s hand. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just knew you were about to get off work, and I was excited to see you.”

“I’m sorry, too. I’m just…”

“Hungry,” Lyall said from the driver’s seat. “Come on boys. Talk on the way.”

Sirius kissed Remus’s cheek, and Remus smiled at him.

They went to dinner, and laughed, and Hope and Lyall told stories about their being young and in love. Sirius smiled at Remus with all of his easy confidence, and Remus knew that he was a lot like his mom: patient and loving and strong.

“If you guys can make it through deployments, I think Remus and I can make it through a few semesters apart,” Sirius said, holding Remus’s hand under the table.

Lyall grinned at them. Dorks, the both of them.

They went to the beach after, and while the boys swam, Lyall pressed play on Sirius’s boom box, and the song started somewhere in the middle.

Lyall sang into Hope’s ear, and she giggled, as he grabbed her behind.

“In your eyes, the light, the heat, I am complete,” Lyall sang.

#10daysofhealing #wolfstarcomfortminifest #day 10: new beginnings #justtoarguewithyou

[see]

Zane can still be saved.

This is a follow up post to this one right here, which lays out the problem that I’m trying to solve in this post. Read that first. While the original post goes over both Lloyd and Zane, I’ll only be talking about Zane here. Lloyd will have to wait for another day, as he will require a different solution, one that I don’t really know right now.

Before we get into this, I’m going to address points two and three in my previous post so I can just get it out of the way. Zane not being included in jokes within the team is entirely laziness on the writer’s part and requires no hurdles to be jumped through for Zane’s character. The best way I can explain this is by basically saying that the writers are opting to take the easier possible route when writing dialogue, when a bit more consideration would go a long way when it comes to Zane’s place in the group. While Zane is different to write, he’s not necessarily hard to work into banter. Lloyd, once again, is a bit of a different story.

As hammy as this is on a post about this specific character, I see Zane’s character as a large block of ice. Perfectly cut, with perfect sharp sides and angles, but to be crafted into, say, an ice sculpture, he has to be whittled down a bit. To summarize the point I’m going to (attempt) to make here, Zane has to be pushed down before he can move forward.

We’ve all heard of paragons, characters who always embody goodness and purity and are, typically, the best at their craft? I’d definitely jump to saying Zane is a paragon, or at least is more of one than the rest of the main cast (excluding maybe Lloyd). Zane has an intrinsic problem with his character, and that problem is that he’s too perfect. This may seem dramatic, but try to think of a flaw of Zane’s. The two biggest ones I came across (and their subsequent “debunking”) were 1) his tendency to glitch as a Nindroid (which is a mark of what he is not of his specific character, and is like saying ‘needing to eat and drink’ is a flaw of any passerby human) and 2) his way of speech and misunderstanding of common trends, etc. I shouldn’t have to explain that this is nowhere near being a character flaw and isn’t a bad thing, it’s just who he is. I’m just talking about it to get it out of the way, even if it were a flaw, it’s nothing compared to Kai’s rampant jealousy or Jay’s compulsion to lying. This, in turn, makes him a harder character to write, and on top of that, his lack of flaws probably makes him a less palatable character to write as well. So, what’s the fix?

Zane has to crack before he can be brought back in with the group. He has to have a flaw, or at the very least, a failure under his belt. There are a few ways I’ve come up with fixing this, each is just a stripped down version of the former. I’m going to start with the absolute best and work down.

1) Exposure of a Positive Trait

This one, at it’s very core, is taking a trait that Zane already has and turning it around on him. Every character has a trait, conventionally good or bad, that can be used as a double edged sword. For an example I’m going to use Zane’s propensity for self sacrifice (this being said, there could be many other Zane traits that could be used here). This particular trait made him a hero and got him a statue after season three, when he killed himself to take down the Overlord. Seeing this flipped around would be interesting, maybe it’s a situation where he’d be better off alive, or him trying to sacrifice himself gets the gang in more trouble. Whatever happens, it flips something that was once used to save people into a negative thing. At the same time, this is still working with a trait he already has, unlike solutions down the line.

2) Creating New Flaws

And by “solutions down the line”, I mean the one right here. This one’s pretty cut and dry so I’m not going to go into it too much, but I will talk about the time Ninjago did this before, which was in season five with Kai. To add extra drama to the season and to introduce a flaw for Kai to overcome, a fear of water was written in (Kai had already proven not to be scared of water on several earlier occasions, the most notable being in season two when he tried to swim from the Dark Island to Ninjago. Whatever.) This was done sloppily and was never mentioned again afterwards (to my knowledge), so while this is a slightly scummy but all around good intentioned move in most other shows, I wouldn’t trust the Ninjago writers to do good by it. 

3) Give Zane a Failure

While not as long lasting as a full on flaw, a failure, however small, can open the door for more pushes down and maybe flaws. To be clear though, this is a failure that is fully his fault, not something that he can feel guilty for. A failure can start to make the character feel more human, and it might push the writers to write more scenes with him as he navigates guilt or pain as a result of said failure.

4) Give Zane a Failure (that isn’t fully his fault)

This is the absolute most bare bones easy way to get Zane on the right path, because it’s already halfway written for them. The whole Ice Emperor situation, while barely his fault, still had him at the helm, and Zane isn’t the type of person to just move on and absolve himself of any participation. Write him dealing with repercussions, and write him dealing with guilt! This is literally so easy I shouldn’t even have to say anymore, and I’m not going to. 

I don’t really have a well thought out conclusion to this. I’d like to think it’s because this isn’t the end, there’s still a lot to look at with Zane and there’s still a lot of tweaking to be done. Maybe in the future I’ll make a part three (or a part four if I do Lloyd’s stuff) where I talk about where to go from here, but honestly, I’m not holding out too much hope for Zane. While I do love him as a character, I also see him getting shafted more and more often by the new Ninjago writers, and I highly doubt they’ll take any steps forward pushing Zane in the right direction. I can only hope. These are my thoughts, feel free to tell me what you think :) As always, thanks for reading.

#long post #/ #ninjago #zane #zane julien

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Rose the Hat

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Stephen King really seems to have some sort of vendetta against kids, huh? It seems like some of his most vicious and terrifying creations exist solely to abuse, consume, and eviscerate kids, and almost all of those creatures have serious pedophilia undertones to them. Obviously the most well-known example would be Pennywise, and for good reason; a killer shapeshifting alien clown demon that devours kids and lives in the sewer is going to stick in the mind, in no small part thanks to being brought to life onscreen by talented men like Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgard. But there is another child predator straight from the pages of King’s work who made her mark on cinema: Rose the Hat.

Rose is a sort of psychic vampire, who consumes the shine from children to preserve her immortality alongside a gang of fellow monsters known as the True Knot. Think Dracula, Pennywise, and Elizabeth Bathory all rolled into one. And if that isn’t a terrifying combo, I’m not sure what is.

Motivation/Goals: Rose’s goal is simple: consume the shine from innocent kids, when their power is strongest and the taste is far better. Unfortunately for the kids, eating the shine out of them is horrendously unpleasant and fatal. And unfortunately for one of our protagonists, the young Abra, she is one of the most powerful children Rose has ever seen. After becoming aware of her existence, Rose sends the True Knot after her and pursues her herself to an absurd degree, even after hitting numerous setbacks, from her hand being mutilated to her followers being massacred. Part of this seems to be the implication that those with the shine are rarer nowadays and they desperately need to eat something like this to stabilize themselves, but at some point it does seem like Rose is going out of her way for the thrill of the hunt, though it is also evident she wants revenge for the death of her followers, because there is every indication her affection for them is genuine.

Performance: I’m really happen I got to see the 2010s Mission Impossible films before I saw this, because it gave me a deep adoration for Rebecca Ferguson. She is an excellent actor, and she manages to give Rose a sort of sub-Pennywise sort of creepiness. She definitely has a child predator vibe to her, especially as seen in the opening when she tricks a little girl to her death; seing a female character written as a child predator is not quite as common as the alternative, so it’s interesting to see it. But that being said, she’s honestly the opposite of Pennywise in a lot of ways – where Pennywise is ugly she is beautiful, where Pennywise is uncanny and creepy she is sweet and inviting, where Pennywise’s affection is faked Rose genuinely seems affable at first. It definitely helps set her apart and make her a great, unique villain in her own right. Plus, gotta love that dapper hat she rocks for most of the film.

Final Fate: Rose shows that she has no idea what she’s actually dealing with as she follows Dan and Abra into the Overlook. Now, the Overlook has been established so far in the film and The Shining as a horrendously evil place, with Doctor Sleep in particular noting how the hotel hungers for the shine as much as Rose does. Now, Rose not only has the shine in her, but has also inhaled the stored-up steam from previous victims before entering in an attempt to give herself the upper hand. Can you guess what happens when Danny finally decides to unleash the imprisoned ghosts of the hotel?

Her death is actually a beautiful little bit of karma. After centuries of picking on defenseless children, Rose is made as helpless as a child at the hands of the ghosts of the Overlook. For bonus karma, the way her death is presented is very similar to how her and the True Knot devoured a terrified little boy earlier in the film. She dies screaming and in agony, a truly fitting death for a monster such as her.

Best Scene: I mentioned briefly in the Psycho Analysis for Jack Torrance that there is a scene near the end where she reenacts the scene where Jack menacingly walks up the stairs towards his wife. This here is probably my favorite scene of hers, as it leads into the disturbing sexual assault-esque attack she unleashes on Dan before he reveals that he has her right where he wants her and unleashes the imprisoned ghosts of the Overlook. It’s a great finale for a villain like her, and Ferguson really does a good job at coming off as menacing as Jack Nicholson in her own way.

Best Quote: Rose has a very simple and sweet quote that I think sums up just what’s so great about her: “Well, hi there.”

It’s not flashy, super impressive, or the most memorable line of all time. It is, however, very affable, friendly, and delivered in an inviting tone of voice all the time, masking her true personality under a persona that has led countless children to a grisly end. Yeah, she’s a Stephen King villain alright.  

Final Thoughts & Score: Rose is one hell of a villain for sure. A lot of it comes down to Rebecca Ferguson’s stunning performance, which really helps you endear yourself to Rose; she just exudes a natural charm and charisma throughout the film, really selling you to the idea that Rose is a charming, cunning individual who could convince someone to her cause. You wouldn’t think someone like Snakebite Andi, whose entire deal is acting as a honey trap to punish pedophiles, would then join up with a child murdering psychopath, but Rose is just that outwardly charming that yeah, you know what? I fully buy that this kid fell for it.

Of course, even with all that said, I think Rose only ends up as a 9/10. This is mainly because she really Isn’t a household name or a true icon among Stephen King villains like, say, Pennywise, Annie Wilkes, or Jack Torrance. She’s so close, and maybe her score will change if she ever becomes a well-known icon like those others, which I think could happen considering how good the film was. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

And aside from that, the fact remains Rose is ultimately not the ultimate, final evil of the film that must be confronted. In fact, she pales in comparison to the true villain, a villain whose presence is felt throughout the movie and is alluded to many, many times before it finally appears. I am of course referring to…

Psycho Analysis: The Overlook Hotel

Yes, I am doing a Psycho Analysis on a building.

The Overlook is not a typical villain, of course. It’s not something that can truly be dissected in the same way as other villains, because there is not one single performance here – rather, there are multiple performances here that are all apart of the nefarious machinations of the hotel. But all of them work together to prey on the weak and frightened, and help build up the Overlook as a terrifying force the likes of which cinema rarely sees in more obvious villains, let alone evil, sentient buildings.

Motivation/Goals: Despite the numerous ghosts all doing different things and despite all the supernatural goings-on, the hotel has one very clear goal, even in the much vaguer Kubrick film: the Overlook wants to drive people to madness and take their power for its own. This is explicitly spelled out in Doctor Sleep, where it is made clear that the hotel was preying on Jack’s weakness as well as on Danny himself, wanting to consume him as much as Rose does. To this end, the ghosts all play a part in pushing people over the edge.

Final Fate: Danny decides to finally allow the fate of the book version of the hotel to catch up to it, and cranks up the boiler and burns the hotel down, opting to stay in and sacrifice himself to ensure he doesn’t become overtaken by the hotel again and allow its evil to spread out into the world.

Best Scene: It’s really weird to think of the hotel having a “Scene,” but if we’re referring to the ghosts… The Shining features the iconic scene of the creepy twins in the hallway as well as the lady in Room 237, both scenes that have stamped themselves into the cultural consciousness.

Doctor Sleep has one that may actually be even better, though; in a scene reminiscent of a scene in the first film, Danny sits at the bar and is offered a drink by the bartender. However, here the bartender has taken on the form (or perhaps even is the spirit of) his father, Jack Torrance. This scene really cements Danny’s character arc and shows that, for all of his flaws, he was still able to overcome his addiction and prove once and for all he is a better man than his father.

Oh, and if you just want something big and fanservicey, every ghost appears all at once to kill Rose. It’s pretty awesome, if I’m being honest.

Best Quote: There are a lot of ghosts in the film, and a lot of them have interesting things to say, but only one quote has wormed its way into the cultural consciousness to any great degree, and that’s the twin’s invite to Danny: “Hello, Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever... and ever... and ever.”

Final Thoughts & Score: The Overlook is one of the most famous locations in cinema, and as a villain – no, as a force of malevolence – it is utterly perfect. Of course, things are kept rather vague and mysterious in The Shining to fit with the oppressive, terrifying tone, but even then there are so many little touches such as the bizarre, shifting, and even nonsensical architecture (there are rooms there that could not reasonably exist at all) that add to the unnerving atmosphere that when the sequel outright states plainly that yes, the hotel is a malevolent entity with a will of its own, it’s not even the least bit surprising.

The ghosts go the extra mile to making the hotel feel as evil as it is. The woman in 237, Lloyd, the twins… all of them add their own creepy flair to the proceedings. What’s even better is that even in Doctor Sleep it is never entirely clear if the hotel is just empowering the evil spirits or if it is outright creating them based off of the horrendous tragedies that occur there. It’s also interesting how it only ever seems to target people when there’s only a few there, functioning as normal hotel when it’s fully operational. The thing is almost an SCP, with the mysterious and sinister ways that it operates.

Obviously, there’s no way I could give this place anything less than full marks. 10/10 is the easy score for a villainous building the likes of which cinema has never really been able to top. Can you name a single evil building as memorable as this one? I suppose there’s the titular building from Monster House, but as good as that film as, can you say with a straight face that that house comes close to the sheer unchecked malevolence exuded by the Overlook? Rose really didn’t comprehend at all that this hotel is not something to be trifled with.

#Psycho Analysis #The Shining #Doctor Sleep #Rose the Hat #Rebecca Ferguson #The Overlook Hotel #Stephen King

[lilibug--xx]

Awkward Encounters

Chapter 2/3  

Here is the archive link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12245094/chapters/27881679

—————-

Jughead seemed to float around the mall after leaving Victoria’s Secret. Thoughts of his date on his mind making him step light, even in his black combat boots. He stopped to sit on a bench outside the game store, where he picked up his promised offering from Veronica. He looked over at the food court briefly before deciding he could wait until his date to eat again.

Where should he take her? What kind of food did she like? What should he drive – his motorcycle or should he ask to borrow Archie’s truck? Should he go home and change clothes? Should he get her flowers? Maybe he should call Veronica and ask- ugh forget that idea Jughead. Should he clean the apartment? - what did she mean by dessert exactly? The low tone in which she had spoken combined with her eyes growing dark he couldn’t help the tingle that started to burn up his spine. Tie him up and eat him – she could do whatever she wanted.

His thoughts were so consuming he didn’t even realize he had driven home. Jughead was standing in front of the apartment he shared with Archie with his key in the lock. Okay then. Might as well take a shower.

After getting squeaky clean and washing his hair he ran a towel through it, leaving his beanie off to let it dry. He pulled on a pair of dark blue jeans sans rips and a black belt. Deciding on a dark grey button up, he left the top bottom undone and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, loosely tucking it into his jeans. He lay back on his bed, gazing up at the ceiling. He still had a couple hours before he had to pick Betty up.

He pulled out his phone and set an alarm before closing his eyes and locking his arms behind his head. He didn’t usually nap, but he felt this swell of feelings he couldn’t identify – anxiety Jughead, you know thee well, and just felt like trying to clear his mind for a bit. He didn’t actually sleep that many hours regularly, as he had a touch of insomnia that more often than not required pills in order to get at least six hours. But he finally managed to doze off for a little bit while imagining Betty’s hand raking through his hair. Jughead was always one of those people that secretly loved to have his hair played with – it made him calm and sleepy.

He didn’t dream but rather heard a soothing voice that seemed to lift that clawing pressure on his shoulders. It sounded vaguely like his mother’s voice, but he wasn’t even sure of the sound of it after 8 years without hearing it.

Next thing he knew he was waking up to the alarm. He turned it off and stretched his arms above his head in a yawn before slinking back into the bathroom. Jughead always had some sort of under eye-bag situation going on, but he didn’t look too bad today. He ran a comb through his hair and brushed his teeth. Sticking the beanie back on his head was a force of habit, his hair was an intimate thing for him so he generally kept it covered up. The fact that he only had one hat that he’s been wearing for literally years was another story.

He looked in his closet at his selection of jackets: dark denim with sherpa lining, light denim with sherpa lining, black denim, a red velvet blazer Veronica had given him that he’s never worn, and a red flannel jacket with sherpa lining. His wardrobe was really varied. He looked over to his desk, eyeing the chair with his black leather Serpent jacket resting on the back of the chair there. Old faithful it was.

Grabbing his extra motorcycle helmet from the floor, Jughead looked around for a moment before deciding to throw on his black and white stripped suspenders, doing them up properly instead of hanging off his hips like normal. Despite the fact that he was against the societal idea of hipsters it just so happened that their fashion sense aligned.  

Jacket on, boots laced, cash in wallet. He was ready to roll. Arriving late was usually his forte, but he didn’t want to make a bad impression on a first date. So he had time to park his motorcycle, secure the helmets, stick his beanie back on and walk inside the mall. Making his way past the food court, the air teasing his stomach with the smells of greasy pizza, warm pretzel dough, and spicy Chinese food.

Betty was waiting for him right in front of the store. She had a dark grey cardigan (that oddly matched his shirt) on over top of the outfit he had seen her in earlier. One button was pressed closed at the column of her throat, right where he wanted to kiss and lick the skin of her neck – to feel her pulse under his tongue and – alright getting carried away there.

He looked her up in down in an obvious way while he grinned. She rolled her eyes before thrusting her hand out to him. “Betty Cooper, nice to meet you,” she said giving him a formal introduction after their informal meeting earlier.

He took her offered hand, bending slightly at the waist and brought it up to his lips as he pressed a soft kiss to her knuckles. “Jughead Jones. May I just say you are a vision among us mere mortals, ” he couldn’t help the angel reference.

Her cheeks flushed and he took pleasure in getting that reaction from her. “What a gentleman, thank you,” Betty pulled her hand back and looped it around his elbow, tucking herself into his side as they began walking the way Jughead had come from. “But I’m no angel.” She teased, mouth curling in a small smirk as she turned her head back to watch their path. Well, that was an interesting development. His interest in her was only growing with each passing moment.

“So, I’m assuming that you’re the motorcycle type,” She started again, glancing up to him. He realized then how small she was against his frame – that she’d probably have to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him.

“You’d be correct in that assumption,” Nodding his head toward her as they weaved through the other mall goers. “Do you like motorcycles?” She must not dislike them if she agreed to go out with him, that assumption on the tip of her tongue.  

“I do! I’m also kind of an old car buff, I blame my dad for that. I used to help him fix up old cars that he was restoring for customers.”

“That’s hot.”

She swatted his chest with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around his arm. “Jughead!” that prompted him to look down at her, watching her eyes roll back into her head at him. The hand on his chest lingered for another moment before disappearing.

“You’re telling me that I can’t find a girl who knows her way around a car attractive? Why are we going out then?”

“It’s just embarrassing when people make a big deal out of it. I know I look like some bubblegum princess, but I’m not.” Betty didn’t sound offended, just tired. Like she had those thoughts running through her head a lot.

“Princess? Nah, you’re a Queen.” He couldn’t help it. They walked through the automatic doors, her grip on his arm tightening in an affectionate  squeeze as they walked outside.

“You’re sweet,” she said accepting the spare helmet he pulled off the back of the bike as they approached.

Throwing a leg over the bike he settled down, scooting up as far as he could so Betty would have enough room on back. “Like bubblegum?” he questioned, pulling his beanie off quickly and plunking his own helmet on his head. He shoved his hat in his jacket pocket. He didn’t miss the way her eyes had darted to his hair.

Her hands fiddled with the strap under her chin, answering as she sat down behind him tucking her legs up underneath his, bracketing his hips and sliding her warm hands around his waist. “Right now? Like black licorice. Ask me again at the end of the night and I might have a different answer.”

Spicy but sweet? Medicinal and bitter? Did she love it or hate it? Black licorice was hard to describe – which he supposed was adequate for now since she only had a vague impression of him and most of it of visual.

“I look forward to seeing if your opinion changes,” he tossed over his shoulder as she tucked her head down against his shoulder. Revving his bike up, Jughead grinned at the thrum under his hands, the sound booming in his ears. Betty’s arms cinched tighter around him, her chest pressed fully against his back.

He hadn’t really thought about where he wanted to take her before getting on the bike. But he knew exactly where to go once he started driving.

There was this place downtown he wanted to take her to where the streets were lined with old brick buildings, most of them were local stores - McAllen’s Apothecary, Lloyd’s Sweet Shop, BBB music, and many more. He stopped the bike in front of a small store called Mom’s Kitchen. It was a store that sold a variety of items including kitchen gadgets and vintage décor as well as  homemade pasta sauce, jams, pickles, dried noodles, and various other food stuffs. Basically Jughead’s favorite store. The symbolism of him enjoying places with ‘Mom’ and ‘Pop’ in the titles weren’t lost on him – they felt like home.

They untangled themselves from each other, Jughead securing the helmets to the bike. Beanie back on his head, he put a hand on Betty’s lower back pressing her forward gently. They started to bypass the store and head down the alley right beside it.

Her eyebrows rose but she didn’t stop walking. “You’re not trying to murder me are you?”

“In broad daylight? I’m not an idiot, Betty.” He winked at her.

They came around the back of the building and around a wooden privacy fence to a patio area. It was full of wooden tables with chairs, fairy lights hanging from the awning overhead, potted roses, and mason jar candles on tables. There were a couple of people already seated, some with drinks and some looking over menus. The back of Mom’s Kitchen was a restaurant and Jughead always preferred this outside space whenever it was still fairly warm out.

“Jughead, this is amazing.”

Betty was still looking around as he guided her to a table after making eye contact with an older gentlemen that worked there. “Yeah, it is.” He pulled her chair out for her at a small table in the corner between the fence and the building. He moved her to sit with her back to the wall so she could see the rest of the area before sitting across from her. He took off his jacket, slinging it around the back of his chair before sitting down.

“Oh, how very Leonardo DiCaprio of you Jughead.” She said appraising his whole outfit now that she could see the suspenders. He pulled his right elbow back over the arm of the chair, leaning back comfortably and throwing his head back as quoted from the movie she was thinking of back to her “Never let go,” he said with a smirk, left hand reaching up and brushing his nose out toward her before dropping it back to the table.

The older gentleman Jughead had made eye contact with came over with a flourish, brandishing two menus from his apron and giving Jughead a good squeeze on the shoulder.

“Mr. Jones! It'sa so good to see you again, has been a little while, no? I was worried. I'ma glad to see you with such a fine lady this evening!” the salt and pepper haired man gave a big grin to Betty. “I’ll grab some water for you twos,” his Italian accent made Betty giggle as he walked off.

“He’s certainly loud, isn’t he?” Betty opened up her menu to look over the options. Jughead didn’t make any moves to open his, just looked after the man as he disappeared inside the building.

“You definitely know when Giorgio is in the room,” he shrugged, a fond smile on his lips.

“So what’s good to eat here?” The blonde questioned, her fingers trailing over the menu as her eyes followed. The names of rich Italian dishes littered the pages, and Jughead knew them all without opening the menu.

“Betty, everything on the menu is good. Believe me when I say I’ve tried every dish here.”

“Wow, you must really like this place then, huh?” she tilted her head, looking across the table at him. The flame from the mason jar candle flickered, casting a glow across her features that made him take a slow breath. “Yeah, I really do. But like Giorgio said, I haven’t been here in a little while.”

Before she could say anything else, Giorgio had come back with two glasses of ice water and a basket of bread. “Ready to order?” he glanced between Jughead and Betty, arms crossed behind his back.

Jughead looked to his date, her eyes darting down to the menu frantically.

“What’s the chef’s special tonight?” Jughead asked, bringing Betty’s eyes back up.  

“Tonight is braised beef, roma tomatoes, mushrooms and tortellini in a red whine sauce,”

Betty pressed her lips together making a little ‘hmm’ before speaking, “That sounds really good actually, I think I’ll have that!”

Jughead nodded at Giorgio and he collected their menus happily. “Double the usual order then, excellent!” he floated away, back inside the building.

“Usual order? Do you bring all your dates here Jughead?” she was teasing him, left elbow coming up to rest on the table, her chin resting on her palm as she leaned forward.

He shook his head a little, fingers flexing as his fingers rapped against the table. “Actually no, I don’t.” He often came here by himself to be honest, he just really liked the food and the atmosphere. “I bring my little sister here a lot,” which he did do as well.  

“How old is she?” Betty genuinely seemed curious, and it made Jughead hesitate. He didn’t really like talking about his family because it was such a sore spot for him. “Jellybean is 14 and already cooler than me,” rolling his eyes he thought of his raven haired sister.

“Jellybean and Jughead huh?”

“Nicknames. The real thing is much worse, I promise,” he offered her a wink, taking a sip of his ice water and pulling an ice cube into his mouth to crunch on. Thankfully Betty didn’t press him further on his family, but instead offered up something of herself. “I’m the younger sister in my family. I’ve got an older sister, Polly… and an older brother, Chic.” Her hands were suddenly fiddling with the bread and his eyes didn’t miss the slight shake of them before she started tearing it into pieces.

He simply nodded his head to her, letting that go. Obviously they each had some baggage that was maybe a little too heavy to explore on the first date.

“How about we play 20 questions?” Jughead offered, grabbing a piece of the bread she was playing with to throw into his mouth. They had really good sourdough here.

“Ok, me first.” She tilted her head again, leaning back into her chair and looking at him with an intense gaze.

“Are you in college?” he bristled slightly, it was a valid question but she could have maybe said it differently or maybe started with something else. He supposed she just wanted to make sure he wasn’t in a ‘gang’ full time. The jacket did give some questionable vibes.

“Yes, I’m in NYU’s English and Creative Writing track, you?” he tipped his head back at her, playing with a piece of bread.

“I’m actually doing Mechanical Engineering, at NYU as well.” Well, guess she liked fixing things more than she had let on earlier. He was impressed to say the least.

“That’s petty fucking cool. How old are you exactly?”

“I’m 19. I actually graduated high school a year early, so I should be the same year as you.” she admitted shyly, like she was trying not to boast.

“You’re only a year younger than me? You must have been pretty dedicated to your studies,” he thought on his own grades in high school – average, he was just trying to go along without being noticed and that had worked splendidly.

Betty seemed to think his words over before hardening her gaze. “Well, I was very dedicated. But it wasn’t about learning – it was about getting away from my parents.”  

“Why did you want to leave so badly?” he himself had reservations about leaving his sister alone with his father to attend college.

“My parents are crazy, trust me. One day I might get into it more. The short story is that they are very controlling, strict, and wanted things for me that I didn’t want for myself.” Jughead had noticed that she had clenched the hand that wasn’t propping her chin up very tightly into a fist, her knuckles turning white with the pressure. He brought his hands out and captured her fist in his palm, cradling it and bringing her attention to what was happening. Her eyes widened, immediately unclenching her fingers, splaying her palm flat between his bigger hands.

“What’s your favorite color?” Jughead asked a lighter question, not wanting to dwell on some thing that was bothering her. She smiled at him, her eyes twinkling with affection. “It’s actually pink, but like cotton candy pink.” He wasn’t surprised, but it suited her personality.

“Well, for your information – mine isn’t black.” She feigned a look a surprise, raising an eyebrow at him. His hands had started to play with the skin on the back of her hand, his thumb running a slow circle. “It’s green, like the color of your eyes.” He said looking up from their hands and into her eyes.

He wasn’t kidding. He hadn’t really considered having a favorite color prior to meeting Betty, because how could you just like a single color enough to deem it the best when there was such a multitude to the color spectrum? But looking into her eyes he could see the appeal. If everything had turned to shades of black and white he would miss the color of her eyes the most.

She was blushing, ducking her head into her shoulder. “Jug…” his heart skipped when she used the nickname his friends called him. He squeezed her hand, her head popping back up.

She decided on the next question, her lower lip between her teeth as she chewed on it. “Favorite movie? Mine is Pretty in Pink.”

“It’s very hard for me to pick a singular movie to name as my favorite Betty. I’m kind of a cineophile. But I’m particularly fond of The Princess Bride.”

She let out a laugh and he thought for a second that she was going to make fun of him, his stomach clenching uncomfortably. He tried to pull his hands away, only getting one back as she held steadfast to the palm trapped under hers. She had stopped laughing and was shaking her head. “I was only thinking how funny it was that our favorite movies were way before our time. Like we were born a little late,”

Jughead let out a ‘hmm’ as his stomach relaxed, free hand drumming the table. “So you like the 80’s?”

“You should see my room Jughead, I think that would answer your question well enough.” His eyes darkened at her words. Of course he would like to see her room, her bed, underneath her clothes..

Giorgio chose that moment to set down their dinner plates in front of him, their hands springing apart at his arrival.

Betty let out a soft “oh” as she took in the plate of food. It was one of the reasons Jughead loved to eat here, the portions were huge.

“How are we supposed to eat all of this?” she asked, eyes filled with mirth as she watched Jughead eagerly begin to dig in to his dish. She unfolded her napkin and carefully stirred the noodles, vegetables, and meat around in the sauce.

“I’m a growing boy Betts, I need to eat.” A version of her name slipped out, much like her calling him ‘Jug’ earlier and it seemed to have the same effect on her. She gave a little chuckle, lips smiling around the fork she had brought up to take a bite.

“Oh my god, Jug!” she let out a low moan, her shoulders slumping in her seat as she seemed to relax completely in the chair. He snickered at her, he told her the food was good. “I think this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” she said scooping up another bite. He murmured his agreement around his fork, not wanting to talk with his mouth full.

The rest of dinner passed smoothly as they continued to ask each other questions while eating their meals. To his surprise Betty was able to eat most oh her dish and then she let him finish it off.

“Now, I was promised dessert.” Betty said after wiping her mouth with her napkin – her lips had stayed that same cherry red color all through eating and drinking. He blinked and brought himself up to her eyes which were twinkling. The sun had dropped low in the sky at this point, the fairy lights and the table candles providing enough low light to be considered intimate.

“There’s this amazing pecan blondie with maple cream glaze and ice-“ she shot her hand out to grab his wrist from across the table, her nails pressing into his skin lightly, the muscle in his thigh giving off a twitch. “You had me at pecan blondie.” She licked her lips, pulling her hand away. “Let’s share?” she offered and Jughead couldn’t help but nod.

Giorgio had taken their empty plates away, returning with glasses of milk for each of them and a sizzling plate with a large chunk of pecan blondie, 2 scoops of vanilla ice-cream piled on top and 2 spoons. He let Betty pick up the cup of maple glaze and watched as she poured the entire thing over the dessert before swiping her finger into the empty cup to get the last remnants. Finger popping into her mouth, he followed the movement with his eyes. “Shit, Jughead that’s amazing.”

Her voice was really making his muscles ache with tension, his palms sweaty, his body heated. He grabbed a spoon and shoved a bite of the ice-cream in his mouth in an effort to cool himself. “Yeah, I know. I told you,” he shrugged a shoulder, gaining composure as he took another bit of the dessert. They traded taking spoonfuls, crashing their spoons into each other and fighting over the last bite. Betty finally got her way and accepted the last bite off of Jughead’s spoon as she leant across the table, her lips closing around the spoon in his hand. Her eyes were locked onto his the entire time and he felt his lips part, his breath seeming to halt until she leant back in her seat and sighed happily.

The next few minutes passed by in a bit of a blur, he paid the bill and they munched on some chocolate mints while he took her through the restaurant and back up front to the store to look around. They ended up back out by his bike when a breeze caught them and Betty shivered. Jughead immediately brought the jacket he had slung over his arm across her shoulders. It was large on her, swallowing her small frame but damn did she look good in his leather. Her arms snaked through the sleeves and her pink painted nails peeked out from the edges of the sleeves as she hugged it around herself.

“Let’s get you home,” he said softly, taking the helmet she wore and bucking it under her chin after he swept her hair over her shoulders.

She murmured her address to him, climbing onto the bike behind him and pressing herself to his back like earlier, her thighs tucked up right behind his. The warmth of her body plus the fire that was raging inside of him was enough to keep him warm on the ride to her apartment.

They walked into her building about 15 minutes later, a large brownstone building with multiple apartments. They climbed 2 flights of stairs, him following her until she stopped at what he presumed was her door. Betty pulled his leather jacket off and handed if back to him. Jughead pulled it on his own shoulders while she murmured how good of a time she had with him tonight. They shared cell phone numbers, the evening winding down as the silence got more awkward. He was absolutely planning on texting her, probably even right when he got home. He hoped she felt the same things he was, but she seemed quiet since he had put his jacket around her earlier.

Her hands were searching the little purse that hung at her hip for her keys. Suddenly she stopped and looked up at him with wide eyes. He was about to ask what was wrong but before he could her arms were suddenly around his neck and her lips were pressed to his. He responded eagerly, eyes sliding shut as he slanted his mouth against hers more firmly. He gripped her hips, pulling her body close to his as he backed her into the door of her apartment.

Betty’s hand were gripping his neck, dipping down under the collar of his jacket, nails scratching against the material of his shirt. Moving his lips against hers he nipped at her bottom one, taking it between his teeth and sucking on it. Her lips parted as her head fell back against the door. Jughead swooped in, running his tongue along her swollen bottom lip before diving inside her mouth. His body turned hot, like someone had started a fire in the pit of his stomach. He pressed his hips harder into the small blonde, her back arching up as he did.

Her fingers were leaving tiny electric shocks as the pads of her fingers pressed down against the skin of his neck, her hands gliding around to the front of his chest.  Their tongues tangled together in a heated clash. He could taste the maple and chocolate on her breath, feel her chest against his,  heaving as they both began to struggle for air. She tore her mouth away from his, panting and tilted her head to the side as he descended down her jaw papering kisses until he got to her throat.

He pulled a hand from where he was keeping her hips pinned between his and the door and undid the single button of her cardigan at the base of her throat. He then swept her hair away from the side of her neck, his hand staying there on the back of her head, tangling in the blonde waves. He kissed the hollow of her throat before moving up and to the side, grazing over her pulse which was thrumming against his lips. His own heart pounding just as fast. She gave a breathy sigh, her hands now clutching the front of his shirt.

Jughead licked a stripe of skin from her neck up to her ear before nibbling gently on her earlobe. “Juggie..” He felt her thighs clench together between his legs. He groaned at that, loving the way his name sounded rolling off her tongue, his stomach clenching in desire.

Betty’s hands came up to his cheeks, taking hold of his face and pulling him from her neck. She leaned in kissing him softly this time, catching his own lip between her teeth and giving him the same treatment she had received. He tightened his hold on her hip, the hand in her hair drifting down to snake around her small waist and pull her impossibly closer. She pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth before leaning further up to his ear.

Her voice was haunting as she spoke, breath tickling his ear and sending a delightful tingle down his spine.

“Would you like to come inside?”

#bughead #bughead fanfiction #bughead fandom #riverdale fanfiction #riverdale fandom #betty x jughead #jughead jones #jughead x betty #bughead fic #fanfiction #a03 fic #ao3fic #betty cooper #riverdale

[fortunesrevolver]

Commission: Hot & Cold (Or Maybe Hot!)

Series: Tales of Symphonia Request: Lloyd and Sheena as baristas. Kratos as the boss man. Shenanigans commence.  For: @lloyd-irving This one was a lot of fun to write. =w= I haven’t played Symphonia in a long time, so I was a little paranoid I’d get everyone wrong, but my beta assures me I did well. It was really fun writing Kratos again, but I was surprised to see how nice it was to write Lloyd and Sheena too. A nice throwback to the game that brought me into the Tales fandom.

Thank you very much for the commission, and I hope you enjoy it!

There were many things Lloyd had discovered in life that he liked, and one of them was coffee. It was one of the main reasons he’d leapt at the chance to work at his father’s coffee shop. While he still had the sneaking suspicion part of the reason he’d been offered the position was to keep him out of trouble after the totally-not-his-fault incident involving a children’s chemistry set and his uncle’s not-so-long-now hair, there was coffee. Free coffee. And free coffee was an incredible motivator.

However, as incredible as the motivation of free coffee -- and often times leftover baked goods and sandwiches -- was, sometimes he came just for the clientele. Especially one of the rare and brave few who was willing to talk back to Sheena when she started using what Zelos affectionately called her ‘pre-banshee screech.’

“Look, sir...” Lloyd leaned against the counter and took a sip of his drink, raising an eyebrow as he watched Sheena balance her weight on her palms to go nose-to-nose with a middle-aged businessman. “We don’t have pumpkin spice loaf cake. We’ve got bread and muffins and enough drinks to clog your arteries. So if that’s not what you want, then you’re gonna have to go somewhere else.”

The man, with the bushiest mustache Lloyd had ever seen, didn’t seem to find Sheena’s tone intimidating by any means -- one of the few he’d ever seen. Somehow he’d managed to look haughtier than before as he tapped the counter impatiently and scoffed. “Well then, sweetheart, I suggest you get in back and make some.”

“Uh-oh.” Frowning, Lloyd set his drink aside stood up. Sheena’s eyebrow was beginning to twitch, and that was always the first sign that someone was about to go through a window if they weren’t separated soon. As funny as the thought might be, trying to explain to management why the window was broken (again) would be hard. “Uh, Sheena…”

“Listen here, buddy…”

“Is there a problem, sir?” A hush fell over the coffee shop as a third voice joined the conversation and Lloyd watched as his boss approached the counter, arms crossed and mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the store manager,” Kratos replied, his tone flat and even, an eyebrow raising in a silent gesture for the man to challenge him again. “If there’s a problem here--”

Silence settled over the small group for a second time as the businessman looked Kratos up and down, the irritated red of his face slowly melting away into a panicked pale. “No. No, I… suppose there isn’t. I’ll just have a coffee. Sweetened.”

“Fine. $2.15, and I’m sure Ms. Fujibayashi would be happy to bring that to you once it’s finished.”

The man didn’t linger at the counter any longer than he had to after he paid and quickly scurried away to a table. Once he was sitting down, Kratos made easy work of filling a medium sized cup and offered it to Sheena with a neutral expression. “Salt and sugar have very unfortunate similarities at first glance.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess s--oh.”

“Hmph.”

“...damn, dad.” Lloyd muttered, only to get a soft tap to his forehead and a disapproving stare.

“Language, Lloyden.”

“Aw, come on, don’t--”

“I’ll be in the back if you require my help again.”

As silently as he’d come, Kratos vanished into the back once more. Almost immediately, Sheena dove toward the salt-shaker sitting on the counter at the same time Lloyd grabbed the sugar.

“Sheena!”

“Lloyden.”

“Not you too…” He grimaced and made an attempt to grab the salt. “Come on, we can’t just--”

“Boss’ blessing.” Sheena grinned and danced out of Lloyd’s grasp, giving the salt several hard shakes. “Whoops. Too late.”

“Sheena!” Lloyd gasped, stumbling to the edge of the counter to watch as Sheena approached the formally displeased man with the utmost glee. It would be a lie to say he didn’t want to laugh, but he also didn’t want to get yelled at. Still, they did have a pretty good shield if he tried. Kratos was a force to be reckoned with and as much as Lloyd might have enjoyed pushing his father’s buttons, he knew when to back off. Truly, his father could be terrifying.

“--ahem. Is there anyone at the register?”

“Oh, crap!” Forcing his gaze away from the spectacle about to unfold, Lloyd flew back to the register with a practiced grin. “Welcome to Hot & Cold -- Or Maybe Hot! What can I get for you--oh! Hey, uncle.”

“Lloyd.” Across the counter, Yuan regarded Lloyd with a small frown, his eyebrows -- one still unfortunately thinner than the other -- drawn together and jerked his head behind him. “She looks happy. What happened?”

“Uh, well…” Lloyd’s grin turned sheepish as he rubbed the back of his neck. “He was a total ass and Sheena was angry, but then dad--”

The rest of Lloyd’s explanation was cut off as the businessman retched, spitting his coffee across the table as he coughed several times, much to Sheena’s poorly veiled delight.

“I’m so sorry, sir! Was it too hot?” She grinned, and Lloyd was vaguely reminded of a tiger he’d seen in his old picture books. Maybe Zelos really was onto something about Sheena.

“T-this is--” The man stopped, his gaze darting nervously toward the back before he began to shake his head rapidly. “Yes--just a tad warm. I’ll… go and fetch myself some creamer then. Excuse me.”

“Oh my god…” Lloyd murmured, ducking behind the counter as he tried to conceal his own laughter, the task only growing harder as Sheena all but sprinted to the back and her guffaw could be heard even through the closed door.

“...I see Kratos got involved in another customer incident,” Yuan sighed. “What was it this time? Too many beans? Not enough beans?”

“S-salt,” Lloyd choked out, dragging his weight up to fumble clumsily with the register. “That guy’s face…”

“Of course it was. I daresay he has enough of it to season the sea.” Yuan snorted and motioned with his hand. “Green tea, same as always.”

“Green tea!” Lloyd chirped back, “Uh, large, two bags, three sugars and, uh…”

“Venti,” Yuan corrected, “I’d expect you would have learned these by now.”

“H-hey, I knew that. I just… I just forgot.”

“Hm… Between you and your father, I sometimes wonder how this place hasn’t had more accidents.”

“Hey…!”

“A pastry.”

“...huh?”

“Three sugars and one of your chocolate pastries. My usual order.”

“Oh, right. Okay, that’ll be--” Lloyd stopped, the proper amount already being held out to him with a sigh. “...it’ll be right out?”

A nod was his only response, and he immediately set back to work as Sheena finally reemerged from the back, wiping her eyes.

“Feeling better?” Lloyd asked as he began to pour hot water into his newest order.

“Oh, much, that was--” Sheena nodded, glancing at the door as the bell rang out again. Her expression faltered and a scowl took place of her once amused grin. “...and there goes the mood.”

“Sheena! Hello there, my beauty. I’ve been thinking about you a latte.”

“Ugh, don’t even start…”

“Aw come on, now. I know you turn me down a lot, I’m just asking for an extra shot today.”

Shuffling over to where Yuan was waiting, Lloyd grabbed a sharpie and scribbled out ‘sry about ur hair, uncl’ on the cup and slid it over with a pastry. His attention fluttered over to the register, where Sheena was flexing her fingers in warning as a mass of red hair Lloyd could only assume was Zelos backed away.

“Hey now, babe, don’t be mad. Can’t you feel what’s brewing between us?”

“If you don’t knock it off with the lines--”

“...charming as always,” Yuan muttered, taking an immediate sip from his hot tea without so much as a flinch. “You’ve learned to stay away from them, I see.”

“The last time I tried to save Zelos, I woke up in the back and dad was having an episode,” Lloyd shuddered. He really didn’t need to repeat that incident. It had been a disaster in at least seven ways. Maybe even twelve.

“...I won’t ask.” Lloyd smiled, lop-sided and grateful, it was probably better that he didn’t. Kratos has only just crushed his habit of fluttering near Lloyd whenever he was on shift with Sheena. It had been an accident, after all. “Good luck, then. It seems like you will need it.”

A cup of coffee obscured his vision before Lloyd could respond and he jumped, turning to meet the eyes of a very irritated Sheena. Her eyebrow was twitching dangerously as she gave the cup a small shake and thrust it into Lloyd’s hands. “Finish his drink before I pour it on his stupid face.”

Lloyd gulped, taking the cup as quickly as he dared to look over the order label. Coffee; extra sugar x3, and creamer for… “Nononever-at-stoptrying-dot-jerk?”

Sheena growled and Lloyd took a step back. The door rang again and he was all too happy for an excuse to dart away. At least dealing with Zelos didn’t usually risk life or limb. Usually.

“You know…” Lloyd began as he finally approached the table and offered Zelos his coffee. “If you keep up those weird names, one day she’s really going to throw you through a window.”

“Bud!” Zelos grinned, waving his hand in an exaggerated hello. “You wouldn’t let her do that to me, would you? We’re best buds! You don’t want to see me in pain.”

“No,” Lloyd admitted, “but I don’t want to be hurt either. I kinda think she’d throw me too if I tried to stop her.”

“...hot,” Zelos hummed, nodding. “Gotta love a hunnie that strong.”

“Uh,” Lloyd shrugged, “I mean, I can turn up the AC. The dial isn’t that hard to turn.”

Zelos choked, staring at Lloyd as if he couldn’t decide if he was purposefully being oblivious or truly missed what he’d meant. “...that’s okay,” Zelos pouted. “One of these days I’m gonna have to drag you out on a proper babe hunt. Then we can--”

“LLOYD!” They both jump as Sheena calls across the cafe and waves him over. “We need more Pum-Spice from the back. Mind helping me out?”

“Looks like we got caught,” Zelos sighed and waved Lloyd off. “Hurry up, before she goes full banshee.”

“...you know, sometimes I think you do it on purpose,” Lloyd shook his head and jogged into the back. Inventory was a mess after a late and overstocked shipment. Finding what he wanted could take a while. “Pumpkin… pumpkin… uhhh...”

“...Lloyd.”

Lloyd jumped, knocking a box down that fell neatly at his feet. “Dad! You scared me!”

“Lloyd.” Kratos repeated, an empty cup clasped in one of his hands. “Would you care to explain this to me?”

“Uh, it’s a cup?” Lloyd asked, slow and careful. It was, indeed, a cup. Maybe Kratos wanted more coffee?

“Very astute,” Kratos replied, holding it out. “This was just returned to me by a customer.”

Lloyd blinked and took the cup. “Uh, do they want a refill?”

“No.”

“Bad coffee?”

“No, Lloyd.”

“Err… salt?”

“...no.”

“So….” Lloyd shrugged, turning it over in his hands. “What’s the probl…”

Written on the side of the cup in his own messy script: Lord of the Tight Pants.

“Um…”

Kratos frowned, the look on his face the one Lloyd always knew was a sign of trouble. “Would you care to explain?”

Lloyd hesitated. There was really only one right answer when his father looked like this and a ‘girly guy with tight pants came in and ordered a fruity drink’ didn’t really seem to be the right answer. But it was the only one he had… and thus the answer he gave.

“Lloyd.” Kratos sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “As much as I want to encourage your… creative spirit, if you could avoid insulting customers, especially important ones, on their beverages, I would greatly appreciate it.”

“Seriously?” Lloyd could only stare. The man had come in early that morning with an attitude that was both horrifying and entirely too friendly all at once. His clothes had been tighter than Professor Sage’s classroom rules and blindingly bright in their sheer… whiteness. He’d looked like something that had walked right out of the sixties. Or maybe it was the seventies. History wasn’t Lloyd’s strong point, but the man had looked ridiculous. “But he was…”

“My boss.” Kratos explained evenly, eyes narrowed. “I may be the store manager, but I still have someone I answer to.”

Was that why he’d asked so many weird questions? Or why he’d interrogated Sheena? Oh man, he hadn’t even answered them truthfully. He’d sort of been a troll. And maybe made a small amount of an ass of himself. Crap. “Disco Fever is your boss?”

Kratos’ mouth twitched, a clear sign he was trying not to show laughter, and Lloyd felt himself relax. Good. He hadn’t ruined everything ever. “...yes,” he nodded, “and I would appreciate it if you were to write his proper name down on the cup. No matter how… true those nicknames may be.”

Lloyd flinched, his smile apologetic as he nodded. “Uh, sorry… about that.”

“Write whatever you please on the cups of your friends. But for strangers… behave.”

“...right.”

“Now,” Kratos bent down, scooping up Lloyd’s fallen box to place it in his hands. “The lunch rush is about to start.”

A yelp, followed by a small crash sounded from the front. “Whoa, whoa! Babe!”

“I’ll take care of the back,” he sighed, pushing Lloyd forward. “Just… please make sure they do not break anything important.”

“Calm down! I just asked for a little extra sugar--”

“I’ll show you sugar, pervert…!”

#Commission Fics #Tales of Symphonia #coffeeshop au #Fun with baristas #lloyd-irving #Nao writes stuff

[spinning-ninjas]

Cafe AU Things Part 1

Zane feels somewhat bad whenever Lloyd comes into the cafe. Because Lloyd overpays by a RIDICULOUS amount, and insists Zane keeps the change. Lloyd does it because he has more than enough money and, well, it's good stuff that Zane sells. Jay actually comes in at the same time every day. Zane pre-makes Jay's regular order every day, that way Jay can run in, throw down his money (which always happens to be exact change), and run back out with a "thank you, bye!". It's a silent agreement the two have. Kai experiments the most with what he orders at the cafe. He's ordered every single item on the menu as t least once, including any number of combinations of creamers and sugars and blackness of coffee. Kai and Zane actually exchange cooking tips to one another, which helps the two improve themselves as workers in the food department. On one of the days Zane has off of work, Zane actually went to one of Cole's hiking tours. He brought him a drink, and Cole made sure to give an extra good tour that day as a replacement for money. Nya has tried convincing Zane for a while to study at her dojo by telling him stories of people improving and doing incredible things. "This kid broke through X amount of blocks today!" Zane politely turns her offers down each time.

#ninjago #ninjago Zane #ninjago Lloyd #ninjago Cole #Ninjago Jay #Ninjago Kai #Ninjago Nya #Sharp as ice yet elegant as snow (Zane) #Ninjago Cafe AU

[pornosophical]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by theory, well-fed complacent leather-coated, dragging themselves through the Caucasian campuses at dawn looking for an angry signifier.   The voices dissolved into the warm pre-dawn darkness as I watched vomit drip between the ferns and fallen leaves. Muttering consolations, my friend held my elbow. Only moments before we had been making impassioned if sloshy love in my single bed, while my 21st birthday party raged outside. Now I was hurling what seemed like a infinite fount of bile into the bushes behind my little room.   As my friend led me to bed, I thought: You really are 21 now. You got horribly drunk, dragged a guy to bed, and then got sick. Just like a made-for-TV movie. These thoughts were accompanied by an odd, abstracted rapture I have come to take for granted. For want of a better term, I'll call it the rapture of irony.   Halfway to my bed, I must have laughed out loud, because my friend asked, "What are you thinking about?"   "The narrative," was all I could manage. I wanted him to know that even in this humiliated, impaired state, I was fully cognizant of the mind boggling paradox of the situation. I may have been a walking cliché but at least I was self-conscious.

Carol Lloyd, I Was Michel Foucault’s Love Slave

As I drifted off into a tangle of dehydrated nightmares, I comforted myself with the thought that Theory had suffused my life so thoroughly that I couldn't get laid, get drunk and get sick without paying homage to Roland Barthes' notion of the "artifice of realism" or Baudrillard's "simulacra." Though now I live a practical life, with more actions and fewer theories, I still struggle with the convoluted mind-set of my higher education. Even after years of trying to acclimate myself to a more concrete world, this odd theology lives in me so much so that it is only recently that I have recognized it for what it is: a religious doctrine.

I am a child of Theory. I avoided this truth because I didn't want to confront the deep, strange river of pretentiousness that courses in my veins. But lately I've begun to think my predicament is less reflective of a private eccentricity than of a weird historical moment. The moment when the most arcane, elitist mental gymnastics Theory in all its hybrid forms was reborn as sexy, politically radical action. The moment when well-meaning liberal intellectuals who a decade before had dedicated themselves to activism, volunteerism and building social programs turned inward, tending to their private experiential gardens with obsessive diligence. Theory offered intellectuals the same escape from the public world that self-help and therapy offered the masses. But unlike self-help and therapy, which never claimed to be anything but psycho-spiritual Darwinism, Theory draped itself in revolutionary verbiage and pretended to be a political movement. For those of us who got liberal educations in the wake of this shift, being radical meant little more than voting when it was convenient, reading the newspaper and thinking about doing charity work. The only thing that separated us from the ignorant masses was our intellectual opinions, which we shrouded in baroque revolutionary rhetoric. The "tyranny of grammar," the "subversion of sexual mores in extinct Native American tribes," and the "colonialism of the novel" these were our mantles of honor.   Though I always believed that my upbringing was free of ideological trappings, I now see that the seed was planted long before I reached college. My eldest brother was a political activist in his teens, but with the onslaught of the '80s he threw away his ideals and pursued the good life: drinking from the corporate tit as an organizational consultant. After two years in Africa as Peace Corps volunteers, my parents shed their activist habits, moving to a resort town with the intention of getting rich building houses for retired millionaires. Aside from the little holes punched in their secret ballots and token checks made out to various nonprofit organizations, politically my family acted no differently than our blue-blood, conservative neighbors. They pursued the free market with a vengeance, bought as many nice things as possible and hobnobbed at the tennis club. But they still talked like the lefties they once had been. And how they talked.   At dinner we served up steaming topical cauldrons of death, child rearing, art and gender, then skewered them whole. We asked unanswerable questions and then imperiously proceeded to invent the answers. We had no interest in facts. Facts were just things you made up to win arguments. Once I brought home a boyfriend whose old-fashioned education and conservative family had taught him none of the liberal preference for ideas over facts. When the dinner conversation turned toward his hobby of California history and he began to speak in facts, my family paused to stare at him like he was sporting antennae. My mother hemmed; my father hawed; my brothers began to babble invented statistics. Through my family I learned to love ideas "for their own sake," which made me a kind of idiot savant (with emphasis on the idiot) and a prime victim for the God of Theory.   In 1978 my high school history teacher, a Harvard-educated, Jewish-turned-Catholic New Yorker, promised to give "extra credit" to anyone who read and did a book report on Paul de Man's "Blindness and Insight." (Though later exposed as a Nazi sympathizer, at that moment de Man still carried the mantle of "subversive" in the hippest sense.) Dutifully, I read every page understanding it the way a little boy understands the gurgles of his toad. I had no idea what it meant but the densely knotted language of ideas made my head implode and my body sing. For the rest of my high school years I would only have to read a paragraph or two of deconstruction's steamy prose to have a literary orgasm.   In his recent disavowal of literary criticism in Lingua Franca, Frank Lentricchia confesses that his "silent encounters with literature are ravishingly pleasurable, like erotic transport." My experiences with Theory were equally exalted delivering me into a paroxysm of overdetermined signs. In the blurry vertigo of those pages so full of incomprehensible printed matter I felt myself in the presence of a God: the God of complex questions, the God of language's mysteries, the God of meaning severed from the painful and demanding particularity of experience. In abstractions, I found absolution from a world in which I was utterly unprepared for any real responsibility or sacrifice. By surrendering myself to Theory, "reality" became a blank screen upon which I projected my political fantasies. My feelings of responsibility to a world that I had once recognized as both unjust and astoundingly concrete, slowly and painlessly seeped out of me until all that remained was the "consciousness" of the "complexity" of any "serious issue." I didn't need to fix anything, utterance was all, and all I needed were the words long and tentacled enough to entrap meaning for a slippery, textual moment.   Like any religion, Theory provided perks to the pious. In my freshman year, I took an upper-division class on the 17th century English novel. The books were long and difficult but I secured my standing in the class when I responded to the teacher's mention of deconstructive theory. "Yes, each idea undermines itself," I parroted, channeling the memory of my sophomore extra credit report. "Paul de Man says..." With that bit of arcane spittle, I hit pay dirt. The teacher gave me such a hyperbolic recommendation, I was able to transfer to a better school. Once there, I evaded undergraduate classes with their demanding finals and multiple writing assignments and insinuated myself into graduate theory seminars of all departments: anthropology, literature, political science, theater, history. With a host of other would-be intellectuals, I honed the fine art of thinking about thinking about ... What we were thinking about was always pretty irrelevant. I developed minor expertise in the representation of the hermaphrodite in psychiatric literature, the uncanny relationship between classical ballet and the absolutist state of Louis XIV and the woman as landscape in Robbe-Grillet's "Jealousy." Now I was just warming up, I told myself. Someday I would find an important issue worthy of all my well-exercised mental muscles and then watch out hegemony!   While I was being treated to the many joys of a great liberal education, I was also learning some rather insidious lessons. I discovered I didn't have to read the entire assigned book. After all, the "ideas" were what was important. Better to read the criticism about the book. Better yet, read the criticism of the criticism and my teachers would not only be impressed but a little intimidated. By extension, I learned not only a way of reading but a way of living. The more removed I was from a primary act, the more valuable it was. Why scoop soup at the homeless shelter when you could say something interesting about how naive it was to think that feeding people really helped them when really what was needed was structural change.   My friends now fall into two categories: ex-Theory nerds (like me) making a living off their late-learned pragmatism, and those who still live and breathe by Theory's fragrant vapors political theorists, literary critics, historians, eternal graduate students. I love talking to them and often I covet the little thrones their ideas get to perch on. Yet when I come away from a conversation that has swooped from the racist implications of early French embalming techniques to the "revolutionary interventions" in the margins of "Tristram Shandy" and ended with the appalling hypocrisy of the right wing, I often feel a strange discomfort. Because these are some of the smartest, kindest and most energetic people I know, I cannot resist the question: Is this the best way for them to spend their lives? If they acknowledged that they were largely engaged in the amoral endeavor of pure intellectual play, that would be one thing, but each of these people considers their work deeply, emphatically political.   Is this theory-heavy, fact-free education teaching people to preach one way and live another? Are we learning that political opinion, however finely crafted, is a legitimate substitute for action? Sometimes it seems that the increased political emphasis on language the controversies over "chairpersons," "people of color" and "youth-at-risk" did more than create a friendly linguistic landscape, it gave liberals something to do, to argue about, to write about, while the right wing took over the country, precinct by precinct. After all, in a world where each lousy word can stir up a raging debate, why worry about the hard, dull work of food distribution or waste management?   I know how high and mighty this sounds, and the side of me that appreciates subtlety and disdains brow-beating is wincing. Political moralism has fallen from fashion, leaving us to cobble together myopic philosophies from warmed-over New Age thinkers like Deepak Chopra or archaic scriptures like the Bible. If it's any consolation, I include myself in the most offending group of educated progressives who squandered their political power over white wine and words like "instantiation." Moreover, I'm not saying we're all a bunch of awful, selfish people. We learned to read, we learned to think critically and at least pay lip service to certain values of justice, egalitarianism and questioning authority. But I do wonder if we're handicapped, publicly impaired somehow.   Like most of my siblings of Theory, from time to time I have tried to get off my duff and do something concrete: protest, precinct walk, do volunteer work whatever but I always get impatient. I wasn't meant to chant annoying rhymes. I am trained to relish complexity, to never simplify a thought. I am trained to appreciate "difference" (between skin tones and truths), but I don't know how to organize a political meeting, create a strategy or make a long-term commitment to a social organization. As Wallace Shawn wrote in "The Fever," "The incredible history of my feelings and my thoughts could fill up a dozen leather-bound books. But the story of my life my behavior, my actions that's a slim volume and I've never read it."   Lentricchia argues that by politicizing the experience of reading, we ended up degrading its beauty and pleasure. In the same fell swoop, we also robbed concrete political action of its meaning. The progressive pragmatists studied political theory; the progressive idealists studied literary theory; and the eccentric radicals became conceptual artists and sold their work to millionaires. In any case, everyone bought the idea that they were engaged in political work. Having a radical opinion was tantamount to revolution.   Back in college, I remember going to a party at the home of one of my professors, who was a famous Marxist. The split-level house was decorated with rare antiques from all over the world, exclusive labels filled the wine cellar, the banquet table overflowed with delicacies. Like an anointed inner circle of acolytes, we students sat around as our professors argued that Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was justified from the perspective of the underpaid Palestinian servants who worked in Kuwaiti homes. The following month, while I was house-sitting at the professor's house, his black gardener came to the door wanting to be paid. I discovered that my professor was paying the man minimum wage for less than a half day of self-employed work. That night as I plundered the refrigerator for the best cheeses that money could buy, I chided myself for not having doubled the man's wages. But that might have embarrassed him, no? It definitely would have embarrassed me. It would have been acting on a belief, and action makes me uncomfortable.   Recently I went to a conference on "Women's Art and Activism." I found precious little of either. Instead I found a lot of Theory garbed in its many costumes. There was a lesbian conceptual artist talking about her work, triangular boxes that "undermined the patriarchy of shapes"; a "revolutionary" poet lecturing on her experience of biculturalism; and an "anarchist" performance artist discussing "strategies for subversion." And what fabulous haircuts! The keynote speaker was Orlon, a French performance artist whose work consists of having her entire face rebuilt by plastic surgery. After a very French explanation as to why she needed a third face lift, she answered questions from the packed house. "I think you're just incredible," said one woman. "You say your aim is to reconquer your body as signifier. How do you feel about letting a doctor touch your signifier? And how do you see your revolutionary techniques emancipating women from the prisons of their bodies as sign?"   Had I stumbled into a satanic ritual, I couldn't have felt a more chilling sensation of alienation. Once I would have smiled at these liturgies and savored their impenetrable truths. Now I only wanted to run away and do what? Dig a ditch? Perform open heart surgery? Administrate a charity? Even after all these years, I was still expecting Theory to visit me like the Virgin Mary and give me more than a sign.

#I was michel foucault's love slave #carol lloyd #theory #writing